Chapter Text
When the five individuals walked through the gate they drew the attention of faculty and potential students alike. The crowd seemed to part around them the same way a school of fish will part for a shark. Something about them had set the principal’s fur on end as he observed from his office. Finishing his cup of tea he started to feel that this year was going to be very interesting. He wondered based upon their attire whether these were the students from The Alexandria Institute. Five applications had arrived after the mail had already run on the final day and they were lacking any kind of postmark he found it interesting as the only way for that to happen is if either a faculty member dropped it off or if one of them managed to sneak past all his surveillance and defenses to personally drop it in the box. If it was the latter he would give them a seat in Aizawa’s class just based on those stealth skills. His research showed that there was no school with such a name but to receive the applications for five students all using the same fake school was definitely interesting. One support applicant, four hero applicants. They might fail out before ever getting in but he felt they would definitely be in his school.
Pressing a couple of keys on his desk. “Maijima I want to personally be involved in the examination of one of the applicants. Mei Hatsume.” As if he could be heard, the woman with pink hair stopped and looked up at him despite the fact the morning sun would turn the wall of windows into a mirror from the outside. That gaze sent a shiver through his body. The other four took a couple more steps before turning back to her before looking up at him as well. The combined weight of their perceived gaze had the entirety of his pelt attempting to crawl away to hide.
“If you’re sure, boss. I’ll have her among the first to present so you can get back to the observation room.” The voice belonging to the Dean of the Support department came back over the line. “I will say the blueprint she submitted with her application is confusing me and I would appreciate it if you could translate whatever language she wrote in the margins.”
The five applicants continued on their walk to check in. He pressed another set of keys. “Eraserhead, Ectoplasm I need your assistance with something extra during this year's exams.”
The tired Dean of Heroics responded. “Actually warning us instead of just jumping out of a vent this must be serious.” He actually sounded amused but there was a thread of real tension hidden in the depths of it.
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Eraserhead was in the rafters of testing room 4 listening to Mic give the long monotonous instructions about how the written exam would be followed by additional exams for each specialized course; he was more interested in the five applicants in the strange leather outfits. Applicants were of course allowed to wear whatever made them the most comfortable given how stressful U.A. 's entrance exam was considered to be. Most took the chance to wear gym clothes, shorts and tees or some other relatively normal outfit. The support applicants tended to be the ones who dressed the most unusually for the tests and even they tended to wear oil stained outfits and leather aprons they hung off the back of their chairs.
These five sat together as did every group of students from the same schools but given they didn’t appear to be from a real school he thought it was odd that Nezu hadn’t split them up and used them to separate different schools like he did the individual applicants. He had been put in charge of watching them taking this part of the exam. If they cheated they’d be gone but he wondered softly why the special treatment. And cryptic instructions like not speaking their names. Nezu was strange but he was rarely wrong about the precautions. He noticed that Mic had stopped talking and Ectoplasm and his clones began passing the testing booklets out, finding each student and handing them their specific test. Part of Aizawa wondered if Nezu had changed the exam for those 5. He had done it in the past if something in an applicant's file warranted it. It was a rarity and normally only happened to one applicant out of a thousand.
As the test began in earnest he watched them until the green haired girl was writing her essay and wrote at the top of the page.
We hope you enjoy the show Eraserhead .
When he looked away the words vanished from the page.
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Nezu loved to read over the works created during the support entrance exam but almost never actually attended the presentations. The video was also always enlightening when it came time to work to assign first year support students with first year hero students to create symbiotic teams where each class got more talent when it came to working with others and the communication skills of both have shown to improve vastly since the programs started the cross-over five years ago following obtaining both Aizawa and Maijima. This time however they had a fourth. One of Ectoplasm’s clones was observing as well due to the strange nature of the first of the five Alexandrian applicants.
Nezu sat in a specially made chair so he was at the same height of the table as both Maijima and Hikari, another support class instructor who was more focused on the civilian side of their work. Not all support gear was for heroes of course Maijima occasionally forgot this detail when picking the thirty students who made up the first year support classes.
The applicants were expected to submit blueprints before arrival to be studied by the staff. Then when they arrive for the practical exam they draw lots to determine the support gear they need to create a fresh blueprint for and if they feel comfortable they may submit a prototype they create with the tools available to them in the support lab.
Mei Hatsume took the full 90 minutes afforded to every applicant group before she came in with a rolled blue print under one arm and in her other hand was an odd bracelet.
Maijima spoke first. “So what were you hired to create?” Following along the script they had used to get applicants thinking like a professional.
“A hero who has an electricity quirk wanted a ranged weapon to use but firearms gunpowder was cooked off when he touched it due to the high electrical charge in his body at all times. Taser batteries malfunctioned.”
So she had by some stroke of bad luck drawn what was largely considered one of the more difficult scenarios to have to overcome. Most made something to prevent his electricity from interacting with what he was holding.
Hikari spoke in a voice like rain on glass. It tended to lull those who heard it to sleep with prolonged exposure. “So would you mind walking us through your thought process for this.”
Mei gave a smirk. “Well the obvious answer was to create a device that could bleed off the excess electricity somehow protecting his gear from his charge.” So she had seen the same route every other applicant to receive it had. “But I don’t like the obvious route.” All four instructor heads snapped up at that. She had a viable route and abandoned it. “Instead I went a different route.” Offering the blueprints which the instructors spread out to see the bracelet she was holding in excruciating detail and how it used the excess charge from his body to power 5 lasers. “The five lasers are capable of creating a channel of excited air allowing him to instead fire a bolt of lightning down the corridor with minimal risk of it being grounded off of nearby metal or hitting a civilian as long as they don’t cross the channel.” She explained in a tone that reminded them of a mad scientist discussing the birth of a monster that proved Dr. Viktor Frankenstein really could reanimate the dead.
“Unfortunately we do not have anyone who can test it but this is definitely a fascinating answer to the problem. I would love to see how you handle some of the other challenges that are put forward to our students.”
“When you accept my brother into the hero course you will.” The way she spoke made it clear there was no way he wouldn’t pass. Which was insane given only one in three hundred applicants were accepted at all into the university. Let alone into the hero course.
“You may go. You will be informed of our decision within the week.” Nezu answered with a nervous cackle.