The last of the four was Tamaki.
His test, at least on paper, was the simplest of all.
He stood quietly in the center of his assigned city block, a little tense, a little shy—just like always—holding a massive shield made from a layered fusion of everything he could manifest:
Hardened seashell fragments, curved plates of turtle bone, overlapping pangolin scales, dense cartilage, and even the chitin of giant crustaceans.
The thing looked less like a shield and more like the hide of some mythical beast.
The instructions were simple:
"Break the shield.
If you can break it completely, you pass my test."
But there was a catch—
Tamaki regenerated the shield continuously.
Whenever someone cracked, dented, or scraped it, a new layer of overlapping material grew back to patch the damage.
The students tried.
And tried.
And tried.
Some managed to chip it.
Some left hairline cracks.
One even made a dent the size of a fist.
But no one came close to breaking it.
Most eventually gave up, realizing the standard robot exam would cost them less energy than this insane endurance challenge.
Tamaki didn't blame them.
He watched quietly—awkward as ever—his eyes following each attempt with sleepy curiosity.
Then he noticed a boy staring at him.
Not at him… but at the shield.
The kid studied the structure, the patterns of the plates, the regeneration speed—eyes sharp, observant.
He had no intention of attacking yet.
Instead, he simply nodded to himself, turned around, and left to fight robots.
Tamaki blinked, unsure what that meant.
The test continued.
And then someone new stepped forward—a boy with thick lips and a round face, holding… sugar?
A lot of sugar.
He emptied his pockets, grabbed the handfuls, and swallowed it all in one go.
Tamaki's brows rose.
Immediately, the boy's muscles swelled, veins tightening under his skin as his physique bulked up several sizes in seconds.
Sugar Rush.
The boy let out a determined shout and charged the shield, his fist slamming against it with surprising force.
The impact echoed across the street—
CRACK.
He actually cracked it.
Tamaki's eyes widened slightly.
Another punch.
Another crack.
Chips of seashell and bone began to fall away, scattering across the concrete.
For the first time, someone was genuinely progressing.
"This quirk enhances his strength with external fuel…" Tamaki murmured internally, analyzing him much like Raiden would.
"Like mine… but with a stronger short-term burst."
The assault continued, the boy panting harder with each strike but refusing to stop.
Finally, with a loud roar, he broke through the entire first layer of seashell and hit the second.
The pangolin scales.
His fists struck again—
CLANG.
This time the shield didn't crack.
The scales barely budged.
The boy punched again.
And again.
And again.
Each strike weaker than the last as his sugar reserves burned out.
He slid from roaring effort to shaky breaths and trembling arms.
Tamaki watched, sympathy washing across his face.
"Sorry, kid…" he whispered.
"The first layer can be broken… but at your current level, the rest is impossible."
He knew this because the shield wasn't just some random manifestation.
It was a technique he had invented after experiencing Raiden's Hyper Beam directly to the face during one of their brutal training sessions.
He designed this shield specifically to withstand the destructive output of Mewtwo's strongest ranged attack.
A shield built for villains capable of leveling buildings.
Not for first-year hopefuls.
The boy with Sugar Rush finally collapsed to one knee, his enlarged muscles shrinking rapidly as the sugar faded from his system.
Tamaki gently stepped back, the shield regenerating fully in an instant.
He had done well.
Incredibly well, even.
But he simply couldn't break the layers meant to endure a monster like Hyper Beam.
And so, just like the others, he failed Tamaki's test.
The four of them heard it at the same time—
a distant mechanical roar, followed by an alarm that shook the entire training grounds.
Every Yonkou knew instantly what that meant.
The Zero Pointer.
In each of the four simulated cities, a giant silhouette rose above the rooftops, crushing entire buildings as it walked.
Debris rained down. Metal screeched. Concrete shattered like brittle bone.
And, as expected, the moment the Zero appeared, the examinees' role ended.
This was no longer a test they had to fight.
This was now a test they simply had to survive.
The Yonkous sprinted—or flew—toward the chaos in each of their assigned campuses.
Once the giant robot activated, any life-threatening incident became their responsibility.
Each of the four had more than enough power to obliterate a Zero Pointer with a single attack if they ever needed to, so their job now was simple:
keep everyone alive.
In Mirio's sector, everything stayed under control.
Students ran, stumbled, yelled—
but no one was in lethal danger.
In Nejire's sector, same story.
Lots of screaming, lots of dust, but nothing that forced her to intervene.
In Mewtwo's field, he simply hovered above the chaos with calm eyes; every falling rock, every unstable beam, every stray piece of metal was caught by invisible force and gently redirected away from frightened examinees.
But Tamaki's sector…
was different.
Students fled in panic as the Zero Pointer crushed its way through the block.
But amid the chaos, one girl tripped—her foot trapped beneath a chunk of concrete fallen from a shattered ledge.
She screamed.
Others looked back—
hesitated—
and ran anyway.
Tamaki exhaled.
His shoulders sagged.
He was already stepping forward to help when he sensed something—
a massive spike of power.
He turned sharply.
A green-haired boy was running directly toward the Zero Pointer.
Not away.
Toward.
Tamaki blinked hard.
"Is he… insane?"
But then he saw it.
The boy's body overflowed with energy so violent it almost distorted his silhouette.
His legs coiled, muscles tightening far beyond any safe limit—
and he jumped.
He rocketed upward, reaching the height of the Zero Pointer's head in a single leap.
Tamaki's eyes widened.
Then the boy swung his fist.
At first, there was only silence.
A still image—boy and titan, frozen mid-air.
Then—
BOOM.
The punch landed.
The Zero Pointer's massive head caved inward like crushed tin.
Its whole body staggered, gears screamed—
and the titan collapsed backward, defeated in an instant.
For a brief moment, Tamaki felt something he rarely felt:
Admiration.
But that feeling vanished the instant he saw what happened next.
The boy's arm—
the one he punched with—
was swollen, sagging, purple.
Completely destroyed.
Then he noticed his leg—
twisted, doubled in size, wrong in every possible way.
Both limbs looked like the bones inside had been turned into dust.
And worse—
The boy was falling.
Fast.
Unconscious.
Tamaki launched himself forward immediately, manifesting giant wings—
sharp, wide, powerful—
but halfway into his flight, someone else intercepted.
A girl.
She struck the green-haired boy mid-fall, reducing the speed of his descent.
Not enough to save him fully—
but enough to buy Tamaki precious seconds.
Tamaki swept under both of them with a burst of scaled wings and caught them before they hit the rubble, gliding them to safety.
They landed gently, dust settling around them.
Tamaki knelt beside the injured boy and finally saw the truth up close—
the arm swollen like a grotesque balloon, the leg twice its normal width, the skin turning deeper shades of purple by the second.
It wasn't just broken.
Both limbs were completely pulverized.
Tamaki swallowed hard.
He had seen self-inflicted damage from powerful quirks before.
But this…
This was something else entirely.
At the same time all this unfolded in Tamaki's sector, the other three Yonkous felt it as well—
the shockwave, the distant burst of wind, the unmistakable sound of something massive collapsing.
For an instant, all three had the same thought:
"Tamaki destroyed the Zero Pointer."
But that idea vanished almost immediately.
If Tamaki had done it, he would've been subtle—quiet even—
not something so loud it shook three different training zones.
A moment later, the familiar buzzing of a drone hovered near Mewtwo's ear.
Nezu's voice came through, calm yet urgent.
"Raiden-kun, one of the examinees has defeated the Zero Pointer. However, the backlash was extreme. He requires healing, and Recovery Girl will arrive late."
Mewtwo didn't hesitate.
His response was short, flat:
"Can I eliminate the Zero Pointer?"
A soft "yes" echoed from the drone.
Instantly, Mewtwo raised one hand, focusing his telekinesis on the massive robot in the distance. His eyes glowed faintly—
and the Zero Pointer froze mid-step, as if gravity itself had forgotten it.
Then Mewtwo clenched his fist.
The entire robot imploded, metal shrieking as its enormous frame crumpled in on itself until it became nothing but a dense sphere of compressed scrap.
And with that done, Mewtwo shot into the sky, a silver blur moving at full speed toward Tamaki's field.
He arrived in less than a minute.
What he saw made him stop for a moment.
There, lying in Tamaki's arms, was the same green-haired boy Mewtwo had met the previous year—
but now his arm and leg were a horrifying mess.
Twisted. Broken in dozens of places. Swollen beyond recognition.
Mewtwo knelt beside him immediately.
"This is severe… his arm and leg are shattered into multiple pieces. He needs treatment."
Without wasting time, he cast Life Dew.
A soft glow enveloped the boy, and slowly, the destroyed limbs began to shrink, the swelling diminishing bit by bit, bones slowly righting themselves.
But one cast wasn't enough.
Not by far.
Mewtwo cast the healing ability again—
and then a third time—
and only after that did the arm and leg finally return to their natural shape and color.
Once finished, he used his telekinesis like an invisible scanner, checking every bone, every tendon, every joint.
Perfect.
No cracks.
No fractures.
Not even a scar.
"Just how did he end up like this? Did the robot hit him?" Mewtwo asked, turning toward the boy who was slowly regaining consciousness.
Tamaki shifted uncomfortably before answering.
"Well… it was his own Quirk. Looks like his body can't handle it."
Mewtwo blinked, stunned.
"A Quirk too strong for his body? But a body is supposed to adapt—limit the output if the power exceeds what it can withstand."
That had happened to Mewtwo himself.
And Tamaki.
And Nejire.
Everyone he'd ever seen with a powerful quirk had gone through that natural adjustment.
Except Mirio—
but Mirio's Quirk didn't deal with power output. His case was different.
Tamaki shook his head.
"Yeah… but that doesn't seem to apply to him. He doesn't have the body for his own Quirk."
Both students looked at the green-haired boy with a mix of confusion and concern.
It was strange—
But still…
It wasn't their place to judge.
Then the test finally came to an end.
Mewtwo, alongside Recovery Girl, spent the next stretch of time treating the injured—closing wounds, fixing fractures, soothing strains and bruises. Any examinee who needed healing received it. Only after they made sure no one was at risk were the applicants sent home.
They were told the results would be released within the next couple of weeks.
Pass or fail, every single one of them would receive a notification.
When the last examinee left the grounds, the four Yonkou were summoned to the director's oval room.
Inside, nearly every U.A. teacher was already gathered.
Screens showed footage of the exams, data files projected in the air, robots frozen mid-explosion, students running, falling, pushing themselves past their limits. A dozen teachers were already arguing over quirks, potential, attitude, and danger signs.
And right there—four empty seats waited for them.
Seats usually reserved for senior heroes, not students.
When the Yonkou entered, the room quieted almost immediately.
Not out of fear, but out of respect.
Their presence mattered now.
Director Nezu stood at the center table, tiny paws folded behind his back, eyes bright with expectation.
"Well," the principal began, voice calm but carrying authority, "this is also part of your new responsibilities."
He looked at them one by one—Raiden, Nejire, Mirio, Tamaki.
"We need your impressions on the candidates. Tell us…"
The small creature smiled, tilting his head.
"Which ones do you believe are best suited for U.A.?"
His tone was gentle.
He wanted
Their evaluation as the four strongest students in school.