"Attention..."

Ashleigh looked straight ahead and listened intently as the teacher walked about the room.

"Today is the first exam of the year, pretty basic stuff. Morality, Law, and order of operations in regards to crisis situations. You should already know your priorities when arriving on a scene and this should all be simple. You'll have about an hour so take your time with the written portions. Remember, you are striving to become HEROES! I believe in you all, so prove me right."

With that, tests were passed out. Ashleigh took one and passed the rest back without looking, and then almost began filling out her paper. She hesitated for a moment and looked up, realizing the teacher hadn't yet given the go-ahead. She impatiently fiddled with her pencil while the other students finished passing their papers back. She began to idly pick apart the questions on the front page as she waited, quickly dispatching each one in her head. Easy, easy, easy, every last one. Let's fuckin' go, right?

"I mean... it's only the first page." she thought to herself.

Despite that fact, she momentarily felt her own ego undeservedly rising. As if in response to that, she then felt a tinge of anxiety begin gnawing at the back of her mind; hopefully this is a sign of things to come. Hopefully everything else comes as naturally as this test comes. Hopefully. Shit. What if it doesn't? What would she do then? Work at the local coffee place? Yuck, probably not that one... If she had to work somewhere like that, she'd prefer it be somewhere that makes good coffee. And what a stupid name for a coffee spot, too. Though ideally, she wouldn't have to work an awful dead-end job like that at all. It began to dawn on her a bit that she may have been putting all her eggs in one basket with this whole 'pro hero' thing. It wouldn't have hurt for her to ask dad to sign her up for some coding classes too, or something. Huh. But what if she sucked at coding too? Isn't coding like, really hard? She'd heard on some forums that becoming a good coder is tantamount to becoming fluent in another language. Hmm. She already spoke two languages, so that definitely increases her odds... But then again, isn't there usually a lot of math in coding too? That would throw a wrench into that plan. Ashleigh was decent at math, but she still totally hated it. Whatever, for now we can keep coding on our list of backup plans. What else, what else...maybe... no. Wait. Is now a good time to start thinking of alternative life paths if this doesn't work out? Probably not since she's in the middle of taking a test. Oh shit, the test- have they started yet? She looked up for a moment, staring straight ahead at the board and scanning her peripheral vision to see if there was any pencil movement. She couldn't really tell, as any giveaways were being obscured by the hunched bodies of the students before her...

She felt a hand on her shoulder and nearly jumped out of her seat. She turned to see none other than her teacher looking at her with a confused expression. She quickly looked back down at her test.

"Are you feeling alright?" she leaned in and whispered. "The test's begun, Katsuragi-san."

Composing herself, Ashleigh gulped and nodded, and the teacher went on her way. Whew. Alright, whatever. Shake it off. This is gonna be easy. Ashleigh began to speed through the test, only stopping on questions that looked suspiciously similar to some of the other ones. Were they trick questions or something? This question definitely already popped up like three times, but the civilian's race has changed in every one... huh. Is it that common for racists to show up and try to be heroes? The idea would be pretty funny to her if it wasn't so... depressing. It kind of makes sense though; the whole 'glory and power' angle of being a hero is probably very enticing for all kinds freaks and assholes. She'd already pegged a few of her classmates as such. The ones who were too loud, or seemed too full of themselves. And the ones who were, frankly, kind of terrifying. Like that train guy... creepy...

Really, she felt bad about judging people from such shallow observations, but she couldn't help it. They reminded her of... other people. Better to keep expectations low so you can't be let down. Or worse. No... she pushed the thoughts away, and simply resolved to try her best to keep an open mind. It'd be stupid of her to sabotage possible friendships before she had a chance to really get to know any of these people. Don't want to be your own worst enemy, and all that. Hopefully some of them would be cool. Been a while since she had someone besides her dad to talk to. Not that she didn't like her dad or anything, but he was always busy with work. She hated bothering him to free up time in his schedule for her. Made her feel selfish, especially since he always did his best to make sure she never wanted for anything. Still, she just wished he was around more. Honestly, it seemed to her like there was something really wrong with the city. So many students seem to be living in really awful financial situations. She counts herself lucky she didn't have to suffer through that along with the other bullshit.

Wrapped up in her thoughts, she hadn't even realized she'd made it to the last question on the test. It was different; not a question about the law, proper quirk usage, or about the proper procedures of a rescue operation, or anything like that.

"Why did you decide to become a hero?"

What? There's no way this question is going to be graded. How on earth does one grade such a personal question?! No, wait- they can definitely grade it... it's probably some kind of test of character, right? It definitely seems like the whole point of this test is to filter out the freaks and assholes, judging by the previous questions. Shit. So what lie are we going with? Money? Plenty of heroes probably just do it for the money... but that's probably too selfish of an answer. Probably not what they want. How about... something generic? "I want to be the number one hero!" No, that's just... obviously not her. What if the whole thing is actually an honesty test? What if there's some faculty member who's quirk is truth divination or something? Well, screw it. She'd rather be embarrassed and pass than be dishonest and fail. Begrudgingly, her pencil met the paper.

"I want to be someone that other people will like, and look up to. And, I want to be able to make friends."

She looked down at the words and read them to herself a few times. A defeated expression crawled across her face, and a terrible feeling spread in the pit of her stomach. She hung her head in shame, sighing quietly in self-pity.

"God, I pray that the only person who has to read this is our teacher..."