章節 3: Entrance Exam Arc 2

"...Big"

Arriving at battle center A, Ayajo was the first person to speak after seeing the sheer size of the battle center, the rest of the examinees were in awe and unable to formulate a verbal reaction.

The staff member who had led them there had wished them good luck and had promptly left without any further instructions, leaving the examinees to idle at the entrance a bit confused, wondering if another staff member was on their way for the next part of the exam.

All of them were doing their preliminary preparation such as testing out their support items and equipment, stretching themselves out and some even sitting on the ground crosslegged to calm themselves.

Though there was no need for Ayajo and her companion to prepare similarly, they had their own set of special preparations themselves.

'No better time than now to reveal myself isn't it?'

Ayajo nodded, taking that as a sign of confirmation, her companion slowly pulled back their hoodie to reveal leaves where hair should've been shaped to look like a typical guys hairstyle.

Some examinees had watched on in interest as they were the only person in their group fully covered in clothing that revealed none of their skin, curious about what they would look like.

They had all assumed it was due to their quirk that they had to cover every inch of their body, so they were little disappointed as something like leaves for hair wasn't anything special or worth hiding.

Though that disappointment soon turned into surprise as they watched them remove their shades and surgical mask, followed by their gloves and then finally taking off their hoodie jacket.

Revealed was a featureless wooden head similar to a mannequin head, with a slight protrusion coming out the front similar to a nose.

It had wooden arms and fingers, with each segment ending in a joint which allowed it to have the same range of movement as a human, or even beyond that.

Though the examinees had seen their fair share of physically altering quirks in society, it was the first time for them to see someone so different that they would've assumed it was an actual puppet if not for its ability to move unaided and was clothed.

Despite their curiosity, they still had the exam to focus, no longer paying attention to their puppet-like competitor. The puppet person shrugged its shoulders, not caring about their reactions as it turned towards Ayajo.

'Hey, hurry up and bring out One to Five already'

Ayajo nodded to the request, though not seeming to do anything, the concrete road started rumbling around her, alerting the surrounding examinees.

In five different spots around Ayajo, five figures burst out from the ground, bringing up concrete dust with them. With dust clearing, the figures revealed themselves to be humanoid puppets made out of concrete from the road.

"One..."

Ayajo called out, a puppet shaped to resemble a military general, a crack going across its expressionless face to resemble a scar saluted, reacting to its designation and name. At its sides were two concrete combat knives, looking sharp enough to rival a regular combat knife despite its material.

"...Two..."

Another puppet, shaped to imitate a certain green muscled hero punched its massive fists together, creating a resounding boom in the area that kicked up some dust, reacting as well.

"...Three..."

The third puppet was shaped to look like a ten-year-old kid with a baseball cap holding a concrete baseball bat over its shoulder and giving a thumbs up, confirming its name.

"...Four..."

A puppet that had the form of a shapely woman that seemed to be wearing a mini dress and had short static concrete hair gave a little wave, in its other hand was an open concrete umbrella, whether the umbrella could open and closed was yet to be seen.

"...Five..."

The final puppet, shaped after a stereotypical gentleman, donning a concrete suit, a top hat, a monocle and finally a concrete walking stick gave deep stage bow with hands extended by its sides.

Nodding towards her creations, Ayajo turned towards her wooden companion and called out his name.

"...Zero"

'Yo, a little unnecessary to call out my name wasn't it? Well not that i mind though'

The wooden puppet called zero crossed its arms, tilting its head to the side as it looked over at its master and its colleagues.

The commotion of the ground shaking had attracted most of the examinee's attention and the little display that followed had them dropping their jaws out of shock and disbelief.

Most of the shock came from the sheer aura of strength exuded by both One and Two, Two being easily over two times taller than the tallest examinee in their group.

Even a certain explosively violent examinee had a bit of a shock when he had looked over at the commotion, unlike most examinees, he could slightly feel the level of danger that the unnoticed Three, Four and Five had despite their weak-looking forms.

That only proved that their strength lay beyond pure strength and power, luckily or not, he had failed to even notice Zero standing at the side of Ayajo, as did many other examinees who were too occupied by the other five puppets.

Before the shock could even begin to fade from the examinees, the ground started rumbling again and twenty-four more concrete puppets emerged from the ground, with forms similar to an androgynous mannequin.

They had distributed themselves amongst puppets Zero to Five, each getting four puppets of their own.

"AAAND START" Present Mics voice had resounded in everyone's ears, unable to even react to the additional puppets Ayajo had created.

"What's wrong? There are no countdowns in real fights! Run, run!! The die has been cast, you know!"

The examinees immediately decided to forget about what they had just seen and started running into the battle center, the gigantic doors already wide open.

Before anyone had even entered, all the puppets had leaped over them, with Ayajo piggybacked on a regular puppet, leaving them all in the dust.

The entourage of puppet promptly split up, Ayajo with Zero with their team of four regular puppets. All of them had received commands on the actions they would take during the exam from Ayajo.

With there being six teams of puppets, Ayajo had split the battle center into six equal areas.

The top left, top middle, top right...

And the bottom left, bottom middle, bottom right.

With one team to one area, they were to take out as many robotic villains as they could while assisting anyone who might be in trouble or is unable to handle their opponents.

They are not allowed to interfere with anyone who is already engaged with a villain and can handle themselves.

Sounds of explosion and metal hitting the ground could already be heard as the examinees spread themselves out within the battle center, to not crowd in one area and have more chances of having villains to themselves.

Multiple examinees within battle center A were witnessing the carnage the groups of puppets were dealing to the robotic villains.

The strength, speed, and technique of a regular puppet was enough to trump the average examinee two times over at minimum, taking only one to two strikes to take out a one-point villain.

Though it was the amazing teamwork amongst the regular puppets that had them taking out two-point villains and even three-point villains with ease.

A certain group of four regular puppets were currently fighting with a three-point villain, wasting no time to deliver strike after strike at the durable robot, going one after the other in perfect sync to control the aggro so no one puppet was targetted for a prolonged period.

From start to end it had only taken nine seconds and they had already moved on to the next villain to defeat.

Puppets One to Five were special in their own right, each having their own set of unique skills and strengths.

One took out villains with such efficiency and power that each slash of it knives would incapacitate one and two-point villains with a single slash in less than half a second by aiming for their leg joints and separating their primary weapons from their main body.

Two, despite their size, was still incredibly fast and bulldozed through multiple one-point villains, instantly taking them out. They were only fighting three-point villains head to head as they considered one and two-point villains to be too weak to directly confront.

Even so, it only took two direct punches at most to destroy the three-point villains.

Though Three was actually much weaker than even regular puppets, they made up for it with their small stature and immense speed. They mostly blitzed past most villains in their area of the battle center, striking each one they passed with their baseball bat damaging the villain a little bit.

With their speed though, they were able to traverse their area of the battle center multiple times over, encountering the villains they had struck before and struck them again.

A huge number of villains in their area thus became more and more damaged each time they blitzed by, usually being destroyed by the regular puppets or examinees in the area, and you can be sure that the examinees were very happy with fighting against already damaged enemies.

Four, instead of going off on their own like the other main puppets instead joined the group of regular puppets in their area and had become the team leader.

Four was blessed with an immense tactical and intelligent mind compared to their other siblings, the result of that was the ability to effectively lead group battles and immense battle techniques that could trump One in certain areas.

Four and her team members were currently doing battle with a large group of villains consisting of all three types. The villains were not programmed to work together in teams so this large group was not due to their programming.

Four had purposely instructed her team to lead the villains to a large open area so as to take them all out at once. Usually, regular puppets would not have sufficient tactical prowess to be able to able to take out such a large number of enemies, but with Four as the leader, it became immensely different.

They had begun guerrilla warfare tactics upon the group of robotic villains, taking out villains that were secluded from the group and retreating, and striking all at once at the bigger threats like the three-point villains when they were distracted.

Five was the most unique of the group of puppets, their style of combat was similar to breakdancing, with limbs flying in all directions, and going way beyond the range of movement of normal humans, making them highly unpredictable.

They were currently spinning their upper body like a top, hands extended to their sides while running through a crowd of one-point villains, the force of the spin not being enough to incapacitate most the villains and had only flung them away.

They all jumped towards Five at the same time, with all possible exits blocked, Five started doing a head spin at high velocity with their arm and legs also starting to spin as well, creating a spinning tornado of death that instantly ground all the villains that impacted into metal scraps.

The group of puppets were decimating the number of villains by the second, though it seemed like there were still enough villains for the examinees to defeat. The examinees in battle center A all had a similar thought when they watched the hordes of villains being defeated unstoppable concrete puppets.

'If the creator of these puppets did not attend the exam, how the hell would we have been able to face so many villains at once?! How are the other battle centers handling their villains without our overpowered examinee on their side!?'

Though most of them thought this way, some were bitter and jealous that someone was gifted with such a powerful quirk. Those without that line of thinking were thankful towards the examinee that cut down the hoards of villains and didn't interfere with their battles.

Some were more thankful than others as they had been helped or rescued by the puppets when they were in a tight spot or were about to be severely injured by any falling debris or the attack of a villain.

---

Inside of a dark room somewhere in the U.A. campus were dozens of screens of different sizes on a wall displaying the examinees currently battling in the battle center, with dark silhouettes watching the screens.

All of them at the moment were currently watching a set of screens displaying Ayajo's group of puppets, all of them were watching in silence, due to their immense shock at the rate Ayajo's puppets accumulated her points from defeating the villains.

"Hahahaha!! And you all told me that my plan for situations like this wouldn't be needed!! Good thing i created it anyway~" A high pitched male voice laughed out, all the silhouettes turning their head to look at the speaker, a bitter smile on their faces.

The voice that had spoken was none other than Nezu, or principal Nezu. Principal Nezu is a white-furred creature who is a combination of several different animals, including a dog, a mouse, and a bear. He had a prominent scar crossing his right eye and sports a white dress shirt, a dark red tie around his neck, a black double-breasted waistcoat and matching dress pants.

He had previously come up with a plan in case any examinees showed so much potential that they robbed the opportunity of other examinees to showcase theirs, by effectively draining a battle center dry of its villains.

There were originally a limited number of villains in each battle center which was calculated based on the data gathered from previous entrance exams, scientific data on the increase of lethality of quirks throughout the past decade and a bit of extrapolation just in case they came up short.

With the plan Nezu had come up with, there would be a manual control that allowed him or another examiner to send out a certain number of villains to the overreaching examinee depending on how much excess potential they showed.

All the new villains sent out would have a slight inclination to fight with the examinee in their programming or whatever the examinee sent out to fight with them, such as Ayajo's puppets, they will still fight with normal examinees when attacked but will have a lesser chance of targetting normal examinees on their own.

Nezu had immediately initiated his plan when an examiner had brought the room's attention to the blisteringly fast rate at which the villains in battle center A was decreasing, which was no longer than one and a half minutes into the exam.

Nezu had sent out a number of villains into battle center A that exceeded the original number of villains at the start, able to calculate if the examinee Ayajo would be able to handle such a number alone, though when he thought about it, she is the furthest from the definition of 'alone' compared to any other examinee.

Nezu looked over to one of the screens displaying Zero defeating four three-point villains in a single slash of their wooden katana that they had acquired from somewhere.

In the background was ayajo standing around nonchalantly, being protected by four regular puppets that attacked any villain that got anywhere close to her.

He looked to two other screens, with one showing an examinee that had also over exceeded, though not as much as ayajo, and one showing an examinee that was trumping the other examinees in his battle center despite looking as if he has not been using his quirk.

He smiled brightly and thought to himself,

'The next three years will be very interesting for sure!'