Time passed swiftly, and before he knew it, Minoru found himself in the final week of June; a single week before their written and practical finals.

  “I didn’t study at all!” shrieked a panicked-looking Kaminari alongside a surprisingly laid-back Ashido during a break period between classes. Kaminari clutched his head. “Between the sports festival and the internship, it totally slipped my mind!”

  “Indeed,” muttered Tokoyami, his bird-like faced cast in a worried frown.

  “Ashido, Kaminari, let’s try the best we can!” cheered Midoriya. “It’d be great if we can all go to the training camp! Right?”

  “Yes!” chimed in Ida.

  “Haven’t you been attending class? How could you possibly fail?” added Todoroki.

  “Words hurt, you know!” shouted Kaminari, clutching his chest. Apparently blithe good wishes—and one helping of scorn—didn’t help much coming from three of the top scorers in the class.

  “You two…if it’s academics you need help with, I could lend a hand,” offered Yaoyorozu. “I’m a little worried about the practical exam, though…”

  Jiro, Sero, and Ojiro all jumped at the chance of getting tutoring from the first-ranked student in the class.

  While their lively celebration over Yaoyorozu’s offer percolated out into the rest of the class, Yaoyorozu turned to Minoru. “Would you be willing to help?”

  “Wha—?!” Minoru froze up. Did Yaoyorozu just invite him to her house?! That had certainly never happened in his past life.

  His wide-eyed silence apparently made her nervous, because she shifted in her seat and continued. “I can certainly handle two people, but five might be a little much, and you scored almost as high as I did on the mid-terms…but if you’re busy, that’s fine!”

  “Oh, no I’m not busy. I can totally help out.” Minoru found himself agreeing before he’d really given it any serious thought. Apparently he was critically weak to a flustered Yaoyorozu.

  Her expression immediately shifted into a sunny smile. “Thank you! Here’s my address…”

  Several days later on their weekend day off, Minoru found himself standing in front of what could only be described as a mansion, jaw slack as he boggled up at it. He’d known, in an academic sense, that Yaoyorozu was well off.

  He hadn’t realized, in a practical sense, just how rich her family actually was.

  “Welcome to the Yaoyorozu home. Allow me to take your jacket,” said the man who answered the door, who could only be described as a butler.

  “Uh,” replied Minoru.

  “Right this way, young sir,” gestured the woman standing in his shadow, who could only be described as a maid.

  “Uh buh,” responded Minoru.

  “You must be Mineta! Thank you for helping our daughter during your battle training and sports festival obstacle course,” gushed a gorgeous woman standing next to a man in a suit after intercepting him just before he could enter the room the students would be studying in. They could only be Yaoyorozu’s mother and father. “She’s had nothing but good things to say about you.”

  “Uh buh wuh,” Minoru managed.

  He finally made it through the doors into a dining room the size of his parent’s apartment, only to find Yaoyorozu apparently cosplaying as a teacher in a prim top and glasses.

  Minoru spent the first several minutes of the group study session standing in the corner gently steaming while staring fixedly at a potted plant until a worried Yaoyorozu was finally distracted from fussing around him by the arrival of their other classmates.

  Despite Minoru’s early system failure, the study session was a success on multiple levels. Not only did he feel like Yaoyorozu and he were both able to cram some much-needed knowledge into the likes of Ashido and Kaminari, but it gave him a chance to hang out and talk to all five of the students who had attended, several of whom he hadn’t interacted with very much in class. And thankfully for his mental state, Yaoyorozu spent most of her time drilling various subjects rather than focusing on him.

  He still had a hard time keeping his eyes off her, but through truly heroic effort he managed. Mostly.

  Finally, the day ended with the seven of them treated to dinner and then bustled out the door by the house staff and Yaoyorozu’s parents. Minoru went straight home, laid down on his bed and proceeded to scream into his pillow for several minutes.

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  Yaoyorozu was downright unfair.

  Soon after, the class managed to pass the written tests—including Ashido and Kaminari—and the day of the practical arrived. After suiting up in their costumes, the students of 1A found themselves facing a row of their teachers, also in costume.

  “Let’s begin your practical exam,” drawled Aizawa sensei. “It is, of course, possible to fail this exam. If you want to attend the training camp, then don’t mess this up.”

  Aizawa was strangely fidgety as he continued. “Knowing you guys, you probably asked around and you might think you have a vague idea of how this’ll go…”

  “It’s a robot rumble like the entrance exam!” crowed Kaminari.

  “Fireworks! Curry! Truth or dare!” celebrated Ashido.

  Principal Nezu popped out of Aizawa’s shirt collar, shoving the man’s head to the side. “Not quite! Various circumstances have demanded a revision of the exam format!”

  The students froze, not least because Principal Nezu had apparently been riding around on Aizawa under his clothes.

  Nezu continued. “From now on, we’ll focus on battles against flesh-and-blood opponents. It is critical that our teaching simulates practical experience as closely as possible! As such, you students will be pairing up and fighting one of the teachers you see here! Your pairings and assigned teacher have already been decided. Your battle moves, your grades, your friendships and knowledge of one another…all these factors and more were considered, so without further ado…”

  Aizawa cut in. “First, Todoroki is with Yaoyorozu against me. Next, Midoriya is with Bakugo, and your opponent—“

  “Will be me!” crowed All Might, emerging from the side.

  Minoru found himself distracted as the assignments continued, already coming up with ideas for how he and Sero could take down Midnight without either of them failing, but he was jolted out of his plotting when the principal interrupted Aizawa partway through.

  “Ashido and Mineta will be facing me!” Nezu proclaimed.

  “…Indeed,” said Aizawa. “Next, Sero and Kaminari will be fighting Midnight…”

  Minoru stared at the principal in shock. Nezu noticed, and gave him a somewhat feral-looking grin.

  This was not going to go the way he’d originally expected. Which was no doubt exactly what the principal had been aiming for.

  Ashido and Principal Nezu chattered happily back and forth the entire bus ride to the testing location, but Minoru remained quiet.

  In his first life, he’d been paired with Sero against Midnight. He could see the logic; all three of them were focused on villain capture, so she was something of both a natural foil for the two of them and offered them the chance to learn from a pro in the field. He’d passed, but only after Sero pointlessly sacrificed himself.

  Meanwhile, he was fairly certain Ashido had been paired with Kaminari against the principal. He wasn’t entirely sure what the goal had been there, but given how lackadaisical the pair were, maybe the teachers wanted to give them a reality check.

  But this time around, they’d swapped Kaminari and Minoru, and he was pretty sure he knew why. He wasn’t training as a straight-forward capture-type hero anymore. His training, particularly with the internship, had leant far more into tactics and battlefield positioning, which he suspected was very much the principal’s forte. Additionally, next to perhaps Todoroki, Ashido was the classmate who offered the worst possible Quirk mismatch for him, since the acid she produced could and likely would dissolve his grapeshot.

  That meant for him the question was how to out-smart or out-position the principal without being able to rely heavily on his Quirk, while Ashido was getting a double dose of “why thinking before you act is a good idea.”

  Damn, he was feeling really pessimistic about this. Which was also doubtless the principal’s intention, given Nezu had expressed concern over Minoru giving up in the face of overwhelming power.

  At last the bus arrived, and the three piled out and entered another sprawling industrial complex. Frankly, Yaoyorozu’s family wealth was nothing compared to the ostentatious use of funds by U.A. Minoru supposed Cementoss probably decreased the cost of setting up this kind of environment significantly, but there was still an awful lot of non-cement-based goods involved in an environment explicitly set up to be destroyed by Quirks.

  He also didn’t miss the fact that there were giant wrecking balls looming over two of the corners of the area as they entered.

  Minoru gulped. This was going to get ugly fast.

  The principal led them to the center of the test area, and brandished a set of handcuffs. “The time limit is 30 minutes! Your objective is to either get these handcuffs on me or escape from the stage!”

  “We can really just run away?!” exclaimed Ashido.

  “Yes. Knowing when to attack and when to retreat is also an important part of hero work.”

  Minoru couldn’t help but shake his head. Assuming the principal used the same spiel the first time around, he was pretty sure Kaminari and Ashido had failed the test right there. Ashido was clearly pumped to be able to go all-out with her movement-oriented Quirk, but that wasn’t going to work well when the principal had time to setup before they were allowed off the mark.

  After answering a few more of Ashido’s clarifying questions, the principal scampered off. Minoru noted he was headed in a direction that could easily split off to either of the two wrecking balls. Lovely.

  Once he was out of earshot, Minoru spun to Ashido where she was jumping slightly up and down in anticipation. “Hey Ashido, do you have any ideas for how we should handle this?”

  “Yeah, let’s head after Principal Nezu and slap those cuffs on him! He can’t have gotten far on those short little legs.”

  Though that was about what he expected, it was still disappointing. “I don’t think that’s going to work. Principal Nezu is extremely smart; if he doesn’t want to be found, I don’t think we’re going to find him.”

  Ashido shrugged, enthusiasm not dimmed at all. “Okay then, you think we should just run straight for the exit?”

  Minoru shook his head. “Unfortunately, I doubt that will work, either. Principal Nezu likes to think several steps ahead of his opponents, and I’m sure he has a plan in mind to keep us from the exit. I think we might have to do both.”

  Ashido looked skeptical. “Are you sure we won’t just chase two rabbits and catch neither?”

  Now it was Minoru’s chance to shrug. “It’s possible. But with Principal Nezu, if we don’t force him to split his focus, I don’t think we’ll stand a chance.”

  “Okay, I’m game! Let’s beat this test and get straight to summer camp!” Ashido pumped a fist in the air.

  Before Minoru could respond to that, a voice crackled through a loudspeaker on a pole nearby. “Everyone in position? Let’s begin the final exam for U.A. High’s first years! Ready…GO!”

  Simultaneous with the announcement to go, there was a resounding crash of collapsing concrete from the direction of the gate.

  The final exam had begun.