Chapter 8 ~ Results
Katsuki Bakugo turned his back on the white chalk circle, the faint scent of scorched nitroglycerin trailing behind him. He walked past Sakazuki without slowing his pace, his chin raised in absolute, unapologetic arrogance. He had firmly established his dominance.
Sakazuki did not offer a retort. His facial expression remained carved from heavy stone, entirely indifferent to the provocation. He simply watched the ash-blonde teenager return to the crowd. Bakugo was not currently annoyed by Sakazuki's silence; in his own mind, the hierarchy had just been violently corrected. The explosive boy felt entirely superior, and to Sakazuki, a soldier blinded by his own temporary victory was a variable easily managed.
The apprehension test continued, moving down the class roster until only one student remained for the softball throw.
Izuku Midoriya stepped forward. The green-haired boy looked incredibly frail compared to the rest of the class, his shoulders tense and his face pale with mounting anxiety. Throughout the previous tests, Midoriya had consistently placed at the bottom of the ranks, performing like an entirely ordinary civilian.
Sakazuki watched him with a sharp, calculating gaze. This was the boy who had utterly obliterated the colossal Zero-Pointer during the entrance exam. Sakazuki wanted to see how that catastrophic, self-destructive power would be applied to a simple athletic metric.
Midoriya wound up his arm. The air around him seemed to tighten for a fraction of a second, but as he threw the ball, the expected shockwave never materialized. The softball arched weakly through the air, landing a meager forty-six meters away.
Midoriya stared at his own hands in pure confusion.
From the sidelines, Shota Aizawa's thick, cloth-like scarf suddenly levitated, unwinding itself like a nest of agitated serpents. The underground hero's messy black hair floated defying gravity, and his dark eyes glowed with an intense, piercing red light.
Sakazuki's analytical mind snapped the pieces together instantly. Erasure. The teacher possessed the ability to completely neutralize a target's superhuman genetic factors simply by maintaining visual contact. In a society entirely dependent on quirks, it was an absolutely terrifying tactical advantage. Aizawa could strip an armed combatant down to a civilian in a millisecond.
Aizawa delivered a harsh, uncompromising lecture to the trembling boy, warning him that a power requiring the destruction of his own body to function made him a liability, not a hero.
The floating hair dropped. The red glow vanished from Aizawa's eyes. He gave the boy one final chance.
Midoriya picked up another baseball. He stood in the circle, his head bowed in deep concentration. Sakazuki narrowed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable physical collapse. Midoriya threw his arm forward.
CRACK.
A concussive blast of pure kinetic air pressure erupted from the throwing circle, kicking up a dense cloud of dry dirt and whipping the gym uniforms of the observing students. The baseball vanished into the blue sky, propelled with the force of a surface-to-air missile.
Aizawa held up the digital tracker. 705.3 meters.
The class erupted into a chorus of stunned gasps. The frail-looking boy had just surpassed Bakugo's explosive record by a fraction of a meter.
Sakazuki stood perfectly still, but a jolt of genuine shock registered behind his dark eyes. He stared at the distance on the screen, then down at Midoriya. The boy was standing, but he was gripping his right hand tightly. His index finger was swollen, completely shattered, and colored a deep, sickening shade of purple.
While the rest of the class murmured in awe of the sheer distance, Sakazuki's eyes narrowed into a cold, critical glare.
A weapon that shatters its own barrel after a single discharge is fundamentally defective, Sakazuki critiqued internally, his military mindset rejecting the display entirely. He isolated the kinetic output to a single appendage to minimize the overall structural damage, but he still sacrificed a piece of his body for one strike. It is a suicide tactic. A soldier who disarms himself to fire a single bullet holds absolutely no value in a protracted war.
"Hey!"
A roar of pure, unadulterated fury shattered the awe. Bakugo lunged forward, his palms sparking with violent, crackling explosions, his face twisted in a mask of absolute betrayal and rage. He charged directly at Midoriya.
Before Bakugo could take three steps, the heavy gray cloth of Aizawa's capture weapon snapped out like a whip, wrapping tightly around the blonde boy's torso and binding his arms to his sides. The explosions died instantly as Aizawa's eyes glowed red once more.
Sakazuki mentally recorded the interaction. Bakugo was a powerful asset, but his lack of emotional discipline was a glaring vulnerability. He lost his temper the moment a variable defied his expectations.
With the throwing test concluded, the class moved on to the remaining physical trials: the standing long jump, the repeated side steps, the seated toe-touch, the sit-ups, and finally, the grueling long-distance endurance run.
It was during these final trials that the harsh reality of Sakazuki's own biology became glaringly apparent.
His magma quirk offered absolutely zero utility for these specific athletic metrics. He could not use thermal propulsion for the long jump without incinerating the sandbox. He could not use it to increase his flexibility or his abdominal endurance. For the remainder of the afternoon, he was forced to rely entirely on his raw, physical baseline.
He realized immediately that the situation was no longer a simple evaluation. If he did not push his physical limits to the absolute maximum, the specialized nature of his quirk would drag his overall average down into the danger zone.
During the side steps, he ground his teeth, forcing his heavy, dense musculature to shift rapidly side to side, his boots tearing deep gouges into the dirt. During the long-distance run, he hauled his imposing frame around the track with relentless, punishing discipline. The afternoon sun beat down on his shoulders, and without the ability to pause and hydrate, his internal core temperature began its slow, dangerous climb. He ran until his lungs burned and his thighs felt like lead, refusing to slow his heavy, rhythmic pace.
When the final whistle blew, the physical toll was undeniable.
Sakazuki sat heavily on his rear in the dry, dusty dirt of the training field. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, and his broad chest heaved in a slow, deep, mechanical rhythm. He rested his heavy forearms on his knees. A single bead of sweat formed at his temple, sliding slowly down the flushed, heated skin of his cheek. It traced the sharp line of his jaw before dropping silently from his chin, instantly evaporating into the dry earth beneath him.
His throat felt like cracked parchment. He was incredibly thirsty.
"Gather around," Aizawa's dry voice called out. "I will present your total scores. It is a simple aggregate of your performance across all eight tests."
With a press of a button, a large holographic scoreboard projected into the air above the teacher's digital device. Twenty names, ranked from highest to lowest.
Sakazuki's dark eyes scanned the glowing blue text. Momo Yaoyorozu held the first position, her versatile creation quirk allowing her to adapt perfectly to every single test. Shoto Todoroki was second. Katsuki Bakugo was third.
Sakazuki found his own name near the bottom of the projection.
18. Sakazuki Akainu.
Directly below him was the invisible girl, Toru Hagakure, in nineteenth place. And sitting at the absolute bottom, in twentieth place, was Izuku Midoriya.
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the students at the bottom of the list. Midoriya stared at his own name, his uninjured hand trembling slightly as the crushing reality of expulsion loomed over him.
"By the way, I was lying about the expulsion."
Aizawa's voice was completely flat, entirely devoid of any dramatic flair. He slipped his tracking device into his pocket. "It was a rational deception designed to draw out the absolute upper limits of your physical and mental capabilities."
A collective, high-pitched scream of relief and pure shock erupted from several students. Midoriya looked as though his soul had temporarily left his body.
Sakazuki did not gasp, nor did he sag with relief. He simply exhaled a long, steady breath, his expression remaining entirely stoic. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, acknowledging the tactical validity of the lie. Utilizing psychological pressure to simulate life-or-death stakes was a standard, effective method for forging unbreakable soldiers. He respected the methodology, even if his own specialized biology had placed him near the bottom of the resulting data set.
The class began to disperse, heading back toward the locker rooms to change out of their dusty gym uniforms.
Sakazuki stood up slowly, the muscles in his heavy legs aching with a dull, persistent burn. As he brushed the dirt from his dark pants, a shadow fell over him.
Katsuki Bakugo walked past, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his sweatpants. He did not stop, but he turned his head just enough to catch Sakazuki's gaze.
"The bottom three?" Bakugo scoffed, his voice dripping with condescension. "Even I expected something better from you."
Sakazuki did not flinch. His pitch-black eyes simply tracked the ash-blonde hair and the blue fabric of Bakugo's uniform as the explosive teenager walked away across the field. There was no rising anger in Sakazuki's chest. There was only a cold, silent calculation, a mental filing of the interaction for future reference.
"Do not let his attitude bother you."
A heavy, reassuring hand clamped down firmly on Sakazuki's broad shoulder. Sakazuki turned his head. Tenya Iida stood beside him, a polite, understanding smile on his face. The tall boy with glasses extended his other hand forward in an offer of assistance.
Sakazuki looked at the extended hand for a moment before grasping it. Iida pulled, helping the heavier boy fully upright.
"It seems that is simply his natural personality," Iida continued, adjusting his rectangular glasses with his free hand. He looked at Sakazuki with genuine respect. "You utilized your quirk for only a single trial today, relying entirely on your baseline physical stamina for the other seven tests. I have no doubt that was incredibly taxing on your body, just as it was for him."
Iida pointed his thumb backward over his shoulder. A few meters away, Midoriya was walking slowly toward the exit, his left hand gently cradling his swollen, bruised right wrist. The green-haired boy winced with every step, the pain of his broken finger clearly radiating up his arm.
Sakazuki closed his eyes. The thirst in his throat was becoming a severe, dry ache, urging him to find a water source immediately. He opened his eyes, his gaze flat and uncompromising.
"There are no excuses," Sakazuki rumbled, his deep voice carrying a heavy, absolute finality. He did not seek pity, nor did he accept comforting rationalizations for his performance. "I am with the bottom three for today."
Without waiting for a response, Sakazuki turned his back to him and began walking toward the main building in total silence.
Iida stood in place, watching Sakazuki's retreating form with a quiet, analytical calmness.
A moment later, Denki Kaminari strolled up, resting his hands behind his head. The blonde boy let out a low whistle. "Man, he looks pretty unhappy with himself, doesn't he? He's intense."
Iida pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, his expression turning serious. "Well, consider the context, Kaminari. If I had secured the absolute top position in the entrance exam, demonstrating overwhelming capability, only to find myself sitting at the bottom of the barrel on the very first day of practical testing, I would be intensely frustrated as well. He is simply processing his own high standards."
Near the edge of the training field, Shota Aizawa stood silently, his hands buried deep within the pockets of his baggy black pants. His dry, tired eyes tracked Sakazuki's heavy, measured footsteps as the teenager disappeared into the shadows of the locker room hallway.
Sakazuki Akainu, the underground hero thought, turning the name over in his mind. As expected, a quirk of pure, widespread destruction is entirely unsuited for these specific, isolated athletic metrics. His temperament, however, is remarkably grounded and calm. I suppose we are incredibly lucky that such a terrifyingly flashy power fell into the hands of someone as rational as him.