Chapter 4: Eruption
The air in the mock city street warped and shimmered, the sudden, violent spike in temperature turning the cool morning oxygen into a suffocating blanket.
Sakazuki did not break his sprint. Ahead of him, the Two-Pointer's mechanical optics flared a brilliant, aggressive crimson. The machine's twin cannons swiveled, locking onto his broad chest. A sharp, pressurized hiss echoed off the artificial buildings as the robot fired two high-velocity rubber kinetic rounds directly at him.
He did not dodge.
His right arm, now a shifting, bubbling mass of viscous, blindingly bright magma, pulled back. The heat radiating from his limb was absolute, a raw, elemental fury that defied the sterile environment of the testing ground. He planted his heavy left boot into the asphalt, cracking the pavement beneath his weight, and threw a massive, sweeping punch forward.
He did not aim for a precise, surgical strike. This was not a target that required a scalpel.
A colossal, fist-shaped torrent of superheated volcanic rock erupted from his arm. The heavy kinetic projectiles fired by the robot struck the approaching mass of magma and were instantly incinerated, vaporized into harmless puffs of gray smoke before they could even slow the attack. The molten fist slammed into the center of the Two-Pointer's chassis with the devastating force of a meteor.
The sound was deafening—a screech of tearing steel instantly drowned out by the heavy, bubbling roar of liquid fire. The robot's thick armor plating did not shatter; it simply melted, folding inward like warm wax. The magma swallowed the upper half of the machine, burning through its internal circuitry, power cells, and hydraulic lines in a fraction of a second. The metallic beast collapsed into a heap of glowing, ruined slag, completely neutralized.
Sakazuki did not pause to admire his work. The magma on his arm receded, cooling instantly back into heavily scarred flesh, and he continued his advance into the labyrinth of the fake city.
For the next seven minutes, he operated as a relentless, highly efficient engine of destruction.
He moved purposefully through the alleys and main streets, his ears tuned to the mechanical grinding of the enemy targets. Whenever he encountered a group of robots, he responded with overwhelming, mid-range bursts of pure thermal energy. He utilized his quirk to cast wide nets of molten rock, sweeping the legs out from under Three-Pointers and melting the treads of One-Pointers. The mock city was quickly becoming a landscape of localized disasters, marked by cooling craters of hardened ash and the pungent, chemical stench of burning synthetic oil and melted wires.
He kept a running tally in his head. Forty-two. Fifty-five. Sixty-eight.
He had more than enough points to secure a position in the hero course. But the physical toll of his aggressive output was beginning to collect its debt.
Unlike the controlled, brief bursts of his morning training, the sustained use of his quirk in a high-stress combat environment was rapidly turning his own body into a trap. His internal temperature was skyrocketing. Without the ability to pause and flood his system with freezing water, his cooling mechanism was failing.
Sweat poured from his brow, but it evaporated the moment it hit his flushed, burning skin, releasing thin wisps of steam from his shoulders. His throat felt as though it were lined with crushed glass. Every breath he drew felt entirely devoid of oxygen, heavy and dry. His muscles throbbed with a dull, persistent ache, screaming for hydration.
He leaned against the concrete wall of an alleyway for a singular second, his chest heaving. His vision blurred slightly at the edges, the colors of the city washing out into a hazy, vibrating canvas.
Endure, he commanded himself, his internal voice a harsh, uncompromising whip. A hero does not possess the luxury of ideal conditions.
Pushing away from the wall, he stepped back out into the main thoroughfare. A short distance away, he witnessed the heavily built, beast-like boy he had collided with at the gate. The teenager was fully transformed into a massive, furry creature, roaring as he tore the arm off a Three-Pointer with nothing but raw, terrifying physical kinetic strength.
Sakazuki observed him through narrowed, stinging eyes. The boy possessed exceptional power, a natural wrecking ball. But as Sakazuki watched the beast tear through the metal, he noted the lack of thermal penalty. The boy was breathing heavily, yes, but he was not burning himself alive from the inside out. Sakazuki dismissed the thought. Envy was a useless emotion. He had his own burden, and he would carry it.
Suddenly, the ground beneath his boots lurched violently.
It was not a small tremor. The entire street pitched upward, throwing several nearby examinees off their feet. A deafening, rhythmic crushing sound began to echo from the center of the mock city, growing louder with every passing second. The sound of massive, unimaginably heavy tank treads grinding concrete into fine dust.
Above the roofline of the four-story buildings, a colossal shadow blotted out the morning sun. The Zero-Pointer.
It was a nightmare of industrial engineering. It did not have legs; it rolled forward on a massive, armored undercarriage of interlocking steel treads, each link the size of a small car. The upper torso of the behemoth smashed through a mock office building as if it were constructed of paper, sending a lethal shower of heavy concrete debris raining down onto the streets below.
Panic erupted instantly. The examinees, teenagers who had spent the last eight minutes feeling invincible, suddenly realized their own terrifying insignificance. They broke rank, turning and fleeing in a chaotic, desperate stampede toward the entrance gates.
Sakazuki stood his ground, the heavy vibrations rattling his teeth. He stared up at the mechanical titan, his tactical mind processing the variables through the haze of his extreme dehydration.
Massive scale. Heavy armor. Unstoppable momentum. Zero point value. Engaging the target offered absolutely no academic reward and carried a severe risk of catastrophic injury or death. The logical, calculated move was to turn around, walk away, and allow the time limit to expire.
Sakazuki pivoted on his heel, fully intending to do exactly that.
"Help! Someone, please!"
The faint, desperate cry cut through the roaring noise of the destruction. Sakazuki stopped. He snapped his head back, his dark eyes scanning the chaotic street.
Near the edge of the collapsing building, a young girl with short hair was pinned. A massive slab of concrete had shattered the street perfectly around her, trapping her ankle beneath a web of twisted rebar and heavy stone. She was pulling frantically at her trapped leg, tears streaming down her dust-covered face.
Worse, the Zero-Pointer was rolling relentlessly forward. Its massive, crushing treads were less than fifty meters away, and she was directly in its path. In less than twenty seconds, she would be ground into the pavement.
Sakazuki felt the intense, burning heat within his chest flair, not from his quirk, but from a deeply rooted, unshakable conviction.
Justice is absolute. A hero who ran from danger to preserve his own score was a mercenary. A hero who allowed an innocent to be crushed when he possessed the power to intervene was no better than the villains he despised. There was no internal debate. There was no emotional hesitation. There was only a duty that had to be fulfilled.
He broke into a sprint, forcing his exhausted, dehydrated muscles past their absolute limits. He ignored the tearing pain in his lungs.
As he closed the distance, he saw the Beast Boy nearby. The large teenager had stopped running away and was staring at the trapped girl, his furry face caught in a paralyzing moment of pure hesitation, unsure if he possessed the strength to lift the debris in time.
Sakazuki did not slow down. As he sprinted past the massive boy, his entire body began to glow with a terrifying, blinding orange light. The fabric of his U.A. track jacket singed and blackened from the sheer heat radiating from his pores.
"You!" Sakazuki roared, his voice carrying the commanding, terrifying weight of a military general. He did not ask; he ordered. "Take the girl and run! Now!"
The sheer authority and the demonic, overwhelming aura radiating from the magma-infused boy snapped the Beast Boy out of his trance. Driven by a primal instinct to obey the apex predator in the room, the large teen lunged forward, grabbing the heavy concrete slab. With a roar of exertion, he heaved it upward just enough. He grabbed the terrified girl by the collar of her jacket, throwing her safely over his broad, furry shoulder, and sprinted away from the danger zone.
With the civilian secured, Sakazuki turned his full, undivided attention to the wall of rolling steel approaching him.
He could not unbalance a machine built on tank treads. He could not sweep its legs. He had to kill it.
He stopped directly in the path of the Zero-Pointer. The massive treads loomed over him, threatening to pull him under. He took a final, ragged breath of the dusty air.
Burn.
Both of his arms erupted into thick, churning columns of superheated magma. He threw himself forward, leaping directly into the heavy, sloped frontal armor of the undercarriage between the massive treads.
He drove his molten fists forward. The magma did not splash against the steel; it burrowed. Driven by his physical momentum and the catastrophic temperature of his quirk, his hands melted through the thick, military-grade armor plating as if it were thin ice.
He didn't stop at the surface. Sakazuki pushed his entire upper body through the molten hole he had just created, forcing his way deep into the dark, mechanical belly of the beast.
Inside, it was a chaotic nightmare of spinning gears, thick hydraulic pistons, and massive electrical cables. The noise was deafening, the smell of grease and ozone overwhelming.
Suspended within the chassis of the machine, Sakazuki let go of all restraint.
He unleashed the entirety of his stored thermal energy. His body became the epicenter of a volcanic event. A massive, omnidirectional wave of pure, liquid magma exploded outward from his core, flooding the interior of the Zero-Pointer. The liquid fire washed over the internal circuitry, instantly vaporizing the cooling lines and melting the primary drive shafts.
From the outside, the fleeing students turned to witness an impossible sight.
The colossal machine suddenly shuddered violently. Its relentless forward momentum died instantly. The thick armor plating around its midsection began to bulge outward, glowing a terrifying, blinding cherry-red. Thick plumes of black smoke and pressurized steam erupted from its exhaust vents.
With a final, catastrophic groan of failing structural integrity, the internal explosions blew out the back plating of the robot. The machine died, frozen in place, a hollowed-out, melting monument to pure thermal devastation.
"TIME IS UP!" Present Mic's voice boomed through the speakers, echoing across the sudden, eerie silence of the mock city.
The battle was over.
Ten minutes later, the heavy metal gates of the testing ground opened again. This time, a team of U.A. medical staff, accompanied by several small, automated stretcher-robots, rushed into the ruined city. They navigated past the melted husks of smaller robots, their eyes wide as they took in the sheer scale of the environmental damage.
They found the Zero-Pointer, entirely disabled, its chassis still radiating intense heat.
"Over here!" one of the paramedics shouted, pointing toward the ground beneath the destroyed behemoth.
The medical team rushed forward, but as they approached, they were forced to slow down, raising their arms to shield their faces. The ambient temperature in this specific area was oppressive, causing sweat to instantly drench their uniforms.
There, in the center of the street, the concrete had been completely melted down into a wide, shallow crater of glowing, viscous lava. It bubbled softly, radiating a heat that felt like an open furnace.
Lying squarely in the dead center of the molten pool was the young applicant.
Sakazuki was flat on his back. His athletic jacket was entirely burned away, leaving his heavily scarred, muscular torso exposed to the open air. His chest rose and fell in a slow, deep, perfectly even rhythm. He was completely unconscious, his face relaxed into an expression of absolute, exhausted peace.
The paramedics stood at the edge of the crater, completely paralyzed by confusion and awe.
"Is he... is he asleep?" a young medic stammered, frantically wiping the pouring sweat from his brow, unable to step any closer due to the sheer heat of the lava pool.
The senior paramedic stared at the boy, watching as the liquid magma gently shifted around the teenager's shoulders, acting more like a warm bath than a lethal hazard. The boy's skin was not burning; it was merely flushed, absorbing the residual heat of his own creation.
"How is that even biologically possible?" the senior medic whispered, his voice trembling slightly. "He's sleeping in the middle of a literal volcano... and he isn't melting."
Sakazuki did not hear them. His internal furnace had finally quieted. The debt of his power had been paid, and his body had shut down to recover, resting comfortably within the only element that truly understood him.
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Power Stones!!
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