Chapter 11: Entrance Examinations (2)
The practical section of the entrance examinations was being watched from an observation room within the campus, where the institution's faculty, alongside President Haruto Sakamori himself, could watch each of the applicants try their hand at the mock neighbourhood simulation through an array of large monitors.
Most of what the screens displayed were in-line with he and his faculty's expectations. Students chasing villains, shouting instructions, helping civilians. All very par for the course.
Until one monitor in particular drew their attention.
The drone camera following Takumi Kisaragi, one of two students in the institution that would be receiving a scholarship should they successfully pass the entrance exams. The intelligence-type quirk wielder could be seen entering a street where a common criminal was unleashing carnage upon the windows of a humble ramen store.
An applicant with a speed quirk could be seen rushing the thug down, alongside another applicant who needed a little longer to catch up. Again, all behaviour that was completely within the staff's expectations.
"Applicant 42 isn't engaging," muttered one of the faculty members observing Takumi.
Another instructor frowned. "Is he freezing?"
Haruto remained silent, his eyes fixed on the monitor with hawk-like intensity. He wanted to see what the B-Tier was truly capable of with his own eyes, outside perspectives were meaningless to him.
Takumi paused for a second, his gaze sweeping the street.
Then he made a decision.
He turned away and bolted towards the ramen shop, completely ignoring the criminal on the street.
"Wrong call," the same instructor scoffed quietly.
Haruto murmured a low chuckle. "I wouldn't be too sure of that."
His employees all turned to him with stark confusion, the sound of a metal pipe banging against something alerting them before they had a chance to make their inquiries.
Takumi's voice transmitted through the monitor.
"All of you. Move down the alley, now. There's going to be an explosion here."
Instantly, perplexed mutters resounded throughout the observation room.
"Explosion? What's he talking about? I don't remember us arranging anything like that?"
A wry smile crept up their boss' face. "The gas leak scenario's active."
Like a chain reaction, the faces of his faculty all whitened in horror.
"P-President?! You can't be serious!" The scenario had been brought up as a possible scenario they'd enact, but most of the staff agreed that was far too dangerous of a situation for a group of untrained civilians to tackle.
Even if this was a university-level entrance exam, certain limits had to be drawn.
"I can, and I am." He pointed to the monitor. "Don't worry, certain failsafe procedures are in play. This applicant's clearly perceptive enough to have noticed the issue, so let's all sit back and watch how he deals with it."
With conflicted expressions, they all begrudgingly followed his suggestion, It wasn't as if any of them could refuse the man who signed their paychecks.
The faculty expected Takumi to fumble around the store, not knowing what to do with all the strange appliances and gizmos present in the aged shop…
…only to witness the exact opposite.
Step by step, Takumi handled the scenario with masterful poise and precision. They all watched with bated breath as he extinguished the stove flame, found the gas valve almost immediately, and disabled the building's electrical breaker without a hitch.
No hesitation. No fear. No miscalculations.
What they saw was sheer, unadulterated perfection.
The room grew quieter with each of Takumi's actions. In what world did a seventeen-year-old know how to maneuver a building with a layout almost three times his age? Their eyes all gravitated towards their tablet, quickly going over the applicant's quirk in hopes of finding an answer.
"Battle Algorithm?" A staff member blurted aloud in confusion.
How the hell did a quirk like that help with a gas leak defusal?
Haruto offered no commentary, watching Takumi as he exited the store and confirmed that the two other applicants had already apprehended the window-smasher before casually wandering elsewhere.
'Takumi Kisaragi.'
His outward silence was merely a mask for his turbulent inner thoughts, NMHU wasn't exactly a institution of particular renown, thus it very rarely ever got students who could be considered 'cream of the crop' in terms of hero potential.
He knew he had struck gold with Ren Arakawa's enrollment, but never in his wildest dreams did he think lightning would strike twice, and in the same cohort no less.
'A hero who could respond to a disaster before it even happened.' He couldn't help but smile. 'Remarkable.'
///
.
Two blocks away from where Takumi had just finished his defusal, Ren was in the midst of dealing with a completely different crisis.
A city bus was currently rolling downhill, its driver completely slumped over the steering wheel with no control over his own motor functions, much less that of his vehicle's which contained four terrified passengers hanging onto their seats for dear life. Its speed picking up considerably as it descended a narrow street.
Without hesitation, several applicants rushed towards the unstable vehicle, each of them with their own, spur-of-the-moment unpolished plans swimming through their brains. Stopping it with brute strength, latching onto the bus and smashing the windows to pull the passengers out, even jumping in front of it and blocking it head-on with a durability-type quirk.
But their bursts of 'courage' didn't last long.
Once the adrenaline-infused blood rushing to their head settled, they quickly realized trying to stop it could easily result in them injuring themselves and the civilians in peril.
They hesitated, their own self-preservation instincts holding them back from executing their plans, regardless of how foolhardy they were.
The sight of a speeding bus hurling towards them up-close had them frozen in terror, these weren't seasoned heroes after all, almost none of the applicants taking the exam had any combat experience whatsoever. They were simply teenagers trying to envision themselves as people who possessed such courage.
Ren Arakawa was the sole applicant present who could maintain his poise and composure.
He activated his quirk: Strategic Forecast, his brain generating dozens of micro-scenarios within a matter of seconds. Jumping onto the bus, attacking the engine, blocking the wheels, evacuating the passengers, he curated versions of his fellow examinees that explored all these options and ran the scenarios from start to finish.
Many of them ended poorly, either the passengers would be injured, the bus would be overturned, or the student attempting the rescue ran the risk of being crushed like roadkill.
None of these outcomes were acceptable.
However, Ren had noticed something everyone else overlooked. About 40 meters ahead, the road curved sharply to the left, and according to his forecast, if the bus reached that turn at full speed it would lose traction, slide sideways, and end up crashing into a row of storefronts.
His simulation predicted 14 seconds before the bus arrived at the curve.
Of all the scenarios he could run in the shortest amount of time possible, only one had a success rate that was anywhere near acceptable.
62%.
It'd require exceptionally precise timing, but Ren was confident he could pull it off.
So he acted.
"W-Whoa! What's he doing?!"
Ren didn't just chase after the bus, he went ahead of it, practically priming himself to have the vehicle flatten him into a road-pancake.
He pushed his brain further, blood slowly trickling down his nostrils as he activated his quirk twice within short-succession to maximize his plan's chance of success. Strategic Forecast detected all the elements at play: the road slope, the wheel traction coefficient, curb height, and most importantly of all, the weight of the construction barrier he was eyeing. The key component that'd bring his plan to fruition.
Ren reached the barrier, six seconds remaining until the bus reached the intersection. He dragged the barrier into position, not straight across the road nor directly blocking the bus' trajectory, but at a shallow diagonal angle across the lane. A critical measurement his quirk had accounted for.
Too steep? The bus would crash violently.
Too shallow? The bus would ignore the barrier completely.
Only with his quirk could Ren identify the optimal orientation for the barrier in order to execute his plan successfully.
SKRRRRRCH!
The moment of impact arrived, the bus reached the intersection as its front right tire struck the edge of the construction barrier. It wasn't enough to stop the vehicle's momentum outright, but the angled contact managed to create a lateral force that shifted the vehicle sideways. Its front wheels rotated ever so slightly as the bus drifted towards the curb.
Ren wore a faint smile as he observed the scenario take place right before his eyes, the true brilliance of his plan beginning to rear its marvelous head.
Friction breaking.
As the bus' rubber tires scraped against the raised sidewalk edge, two reactions followed. First, a dramatic increase in friction occurred. Second, the wheel rotation became partially constrained.
Just like that, the vehicle started slowing much, much faster than its actual break would normally allow, its speed dropping to a negligible level by the time it reached the street's most dangerous turn, followed by its front wheel bumping the curb once more, and finally bringing the bus to a grinding halt.
With the use of nothing but a construction barrier, Ren had defused the situation. He never needed to overpower the bus in the first place, instead, he masterfully brought together terrain, friction, and geometry to achieve his desired result. He had turned the bus' main problem, its momentum, into his solution.
His quirk simply found the one environmental configuration that turned physics in his favour.
Ren turned to side-eye the drone watching over him, almost as if he were silently challenging the institution's standards.
'That good enough for you?'
///
.
Within the observation room, hushed murmurs around 'Applicant 42' could still be heard, only pausing when another alert flashed across their monitors.
"Runaway vehicle scenario initiated. Sector C." One of the faculty members in charge of simulation coordination spoke up.
Unlike the gas leak scenario, this situation was well within their planned expectations. However, that didn't mean they were any less interested in seeing how the examinees resolved the problem.
A relatively young instructor leaned forward in concern. "The bus is about to hit the commercial curve."
Another examined the street layout. "Yeah, if it enters the corner at that speed, it'll crash straight into the storefronts."
The monitor flashed with the projected 'casualties' of civilian actors who were silently being protected by one of the on-the-ground instructor's barrier quirk, the room sparking up with intrigue once they noticed one of the applicants rushing towards the scene. Not stopping halfway like the others, but fully committing.
Ren Arakawa.
This cohort's predicted golden goose.
One instructor frowned. "Applicant 11? What's he doing? Is he trying to intercept it?"
Another shook their head. "Impossible. He's too far, without a speed quirk there's no way he'll reach the driver in time."
Instead of rushing towards the vehicle, the applicant made the strange decision to place himself ahead of it, reaching towards a construction barrier placed on the roadside.
An immediate chortle left Haruto's mouth. "Watch closely, you're all either about to witness Arakawa-kun overestimate his own abilities, or accurately perform a strategical masterclass." As the most experienced hero in the room, there were some things he'd notice a moment or two earlier than his less-experienced colleagues.
Ren dragged the barrier across the road, positioning the object at an odd angle.
"How's that going to stop the bus? It'll just ram right through it." The simulation coordinator shook their head in disapproval.
"It's just going to shatter on impact." A faculty member concurred.
Haruto observed his employees with a questioning look. "You all seem rather confident he intends for the barrier itself to stop the vehicle."
SKKRRRRCH!
The sound startled everyone in the room, their breaths sharpening as the bus' front tire collided with the barrier. Failing to stop the vehicle as expected, and causing it to jolt sideways. Everyone, excluding Haruto, expected the bus to go spiraling out of control as a result of the impact.
But instead, its rubber began to screech as tires scraped along the sidewalk, the bus' momentum experiencing an alarmingly quick decrease, its speed all but vanishing completely by the time it reached the curve they were all worried about.
All it took was another bump against the curb, and the bus grinded to a complete halt. The civilians and driver inside successfully saved from experiencing how it felt to be a crash test dummy.
"That, my dear colleagues, is what we call friction breaking." This time, Haruto allowed himself an open grin, deeply pleased that Ren had met the expectations he had of him. "Expertly executed, might I add."
At that moment, a crucial realization swept through the observation room.
Two applicants had handled the most dangerous scenarios in the entire urban simulation, all on their lonesome.
The staff disguised as villains didn't really count since they had been ordered to hold back a great deal in order to give the applicants a chance to try solving a situation or two without being knocked silly.
Takumi Kisaragi prevented a catastrophic explosion before anyone else noticed the danger.
Ren Arakawa successfully manipulated his environment to safely stop a multi-ton vehicle.
One stopped a problem no one even knew existed.
The other stopped a problem in a way no one thought possible.
Their minds and methods couldn't be any more different, but they had both demonstrated one rare trait: the ability to handle situations in ways others couldn't even begin to conceive before everything was already over. As a matter of fact, in Takumi's case, they still didn't fully understand how he had done what he did.
Haruto's smile widened with anticipation, he couldn't wait for the next section of the practical exam to begin.
One-on-one combat evaluations.
///
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