Be prepared for some long-ass paragraphs this chapter as we delve deeper into the unknown: Kazue's eMoTiOnS.

With singed hair and tingling hands and forearms, Kazue collapsed in a heap on his bed. The fight with the second intern had gone exactly as planned, and, if he was being honest, was disappointing. All he'd had to do was give Aerogale a good slap to activate his Quirk, effectively putting out the girl's fire with a powerful blast of air combined with the leftover dust. That let him give her a nice right hook across her no-longer-flaming face. She was out cold after he did the same with his left, not wanting to try and teach her a lesson like her fellow sulking intern. Fire, unlike dust, could actually seriously hurt someone, that someone being him.

Instead, Kazue had just scribbled out a list of things she could improve on (pretty much everything in the physical category) and taped it to her forehead. She relied too much on her inability to be touched during a fight like a crutch, not knowing what to do once her greatest strength had been negated.

Like he'd said earlier, a pain in his ass.

On the not-so-bright side, the recommendation exams his father had signed him up for were tomorrow. Well, at least the written portion. The physical exam would take place a week later once a few examinees had been weeded out. Kazue would pass, obviously, but the physical exam would be another matter. He was athletic, yes, and well-versed in martial arts, but his Quirk required someone else to be around in order to be used. And the brunet severely doubted that the examiners would take kindly to him mooching off of someone else.

Kazue didn't even know if physical contact between examinees was allowed. If it wasn't, well... he'd just have to stick with his biggest strength. His mind.

~-~-~-~

"You may begin the first section," the proctor announced, his approval to start cueing the practically synchronized sound of all the recommendation applicants flipping over their packets. "Once you have reached the end of the section, place your pencils on the desk in front of you and look up."

Kazue let out a quiet yet heavy sigh, flipping his own over to scan the first page of the Japanese section and dying a little inside as he started. Shouldn't the test for people whose abilities were certified by pro heroes be a little bit harder?

As much as he loved being a genius, finding something challenging enough to actually care about was harder than one might think. If he wanted to, Kazue could probably skip all of high school and go straight to college, and maybe the first year of two there as well.

Key words: If he wanted to. The brunet was perfectly happy being without motivation and little energy to do pretty much anything other than tinker around in his small workshop and turn pages.

Whatever. The sooner he finished, the sooner Kazue could take a nap. Lugging the giant industrial vacuum around the training room to clean up all the dust had taken almost everything out of the teen, especially getting the ceiling and upper portions of the walls. And the equipment. Oh, Kami, the equipment had been completely covered in dust and had to be meticulously gone over to make sure not a speck remained. Kazue might be lazy, but he didn't half-ass his job.

He set down his pencil quietly and looked up, glancing over to the clock on the wall. Six minutes of the forty-five allotted had passed, meaning he had over a half-hour to take a nap.

Nice.

The sound of another pencil being set down echoed throughout the nearly-silent examination room, catching Kazue's ears instantly. He looked over out of curiosity to see who the other genius in the room was, eyes settling on a girl his height with black hair pulled into a gravity-defying ponytail.

And her obvious intelligence wasn't the only vaguely-interesting thing about her. From that single glance before Kazue buried his head in the crook of his elbow and began to drift off, her Quirk, Creation... Its possibilities were endless. No wonder she'd been recommended.

With that, the brunet let himself somewhat succumb to the embrace of sleep, leaving a small portion of his mind awake so he wasn't completely oblivious to what was going on. Because once he fell asleep for real, Kazue was pretty much dead to the world.

~-~-~-~

Upon entering his father's office that afternoon during the two-hour period that he was there, Kazue sprawled out on the couch with a muffled groan. "You're annoying and I hate you," he informed the man.

"That easy, hm?" Katashi hummed absently in reply, fingers swiftly tapping the keys of his laptop. The boy's complete lack of respect towards his own father never failed to amuse the man, as he knew that Kazue was extremely dedicated to the agency regardless. "Tecton is doing his homework down in the break room. When I went to get a cup of coffee, he appeared to be struggling."

Kazue raised an eyebrow at the statement, getting up and leaving with a half-assed wave. Whenever it came to his father actually saying to do something he'd actually find entertaining, he never outright told him to do it. He just said what the situation was indifferently and went back to his work.

In a way, the teen knew exactly what Katashi was thinking and vice-versa. Even if their relationship was made up of blunt insults and no respect to be seen on the surface, the Kimura family had a level of understanding that bordered on mind-reading. Sure, they might not follow up on what the other wanted, like Kazue having zero motivation for heroics and his father not giving a damn, but it worked.

The brunet pushed open the door to the break room without a second thought, instantly spotting Tecton sitting at the table on the corner, hunched over his computer and glaring at the screen.

The raven-haired man looked up at the sound of the door opening, eyes rolling as soon as he saw Kazue. "Kimura-san send you down here?" he drawled, hiding his not-embarrassment at a junior high school student being told to help a college student with his homework. Unfortunately for the hero in civilian attire, Iwata Haruma knew it was for the best. The kid was a freakin' genius.

"Yeah," Kazue replied, dragging around the chair from the other side and sitting down. He scanned the screen, eyes narrowing slightly at the first question that had yet to be answered. "Seriously, Iwata-san? You have to know who coined the term 'criminology' and the year? Just look it up."

"I can't," the older of the two elaborated, shoulders hunching. "The website detects if you leave the tab while doing the assignment and I'll get a zero on the whole thing. Also, my phone died."

Kazue snorted. The man never failed to use his phone until it was at one percent, finally check the battery, panic upon seeing what it was at, and then have it die right before he pressed the power button. "1885, Raffaele Garofalo."

Haruma's fingers flew across the keys and his face lit up. "I'm not gonna ask why you know that random tidbit of info, but thanks, Kimura-kun," he informed the boy, scrolling down past a few questions he'd already answered before stopping at another. Yeah, okay, maybe he was a little embarrassed as to who was helping him, but hey, now he could finally finish his homework quickly and maybe go get that ice cream he'd been promising himself for the past three weeks. "Now, uh... 'The classical theory rests upon the notion of...'?"

"Social contract between individual right-holders and the prefecture," Kazue answered after a second to think, changing what would've been 'state' for America to the appropriate term for Japan. Why he'd been scrolling through images under 'criminology questionnaire with answers' seventeen days ago, he'd never know, but he never questioned why he went anywhere in his nightly internet rabbithole.

"Cool," Haruma nodded, typing it out but slightly changing the wording. His professor was picky, and she had an odd sense of when her students had copied off of something, even if there was no evidence of it. Then again, he didn't know what her Quirk was...

The two continued on after that, Kazue occasionally only vaguely hinting at the general answer to force the older to finish it. Then he'd critique the answer if it was slightly off, or nod in approval if it was good. It was calming, really, being able to talk in person with someone about a higher-level course that they could actually somewhat keep up with him on. When it came to his somewhat popular YouTube channel for homework help, it was just reading comments and recording a video, not actually talking with the person themselves. Even when he walked them through something in the comment section, it wasn't really talking.

Which led the brunet back to the thoughts that had been running itself on repeat in his mind ever since he'd first laid eyes on the written portion of Yūei's entrance exam. Sure, Kazue was a lazy shit with no motivation to do better than average, but... he sometimes wondered how different his life would've been if he skipped the rest of junior high and regular high school, going either straight to college or working for his father.

And yet... Kazue couldn't bring himself to go ahead, to excel. He didn't know why he wanted to just be average, only that the entrance exam had been the first time he'd actually aced a test before. But that was different. That was because, statistically, he didn't have a great chance at scoring very high on the practical if it involved Quirk usage. Statistically, Kazue would then get in by default if he got a perfect score on the written portion and a little below average on the practical. And if he'd known what the practical would be, he would've calculated exactly what percentage he would've needed to get in order to just barely pass and actually try for once.

To stay average.

He almost snorted at the notion while explaining another question to his only friend. What was average about him, other than his fake grades and his tendency to fall asleep in class when he was bored? Teenage boys didn't stay up late reading teen romance manga, and if they did, like him, they didn't exactly broadcast it to the world. Teenage boys were rarely the sons of one of the most influential men in their country, let alone had eidetic memories.

And he severely doubted that there were many other teenage boys that had to compensate for their own weakness with their own mechanical ingenuity like he did, making sure that no one ever found out about his liability by hiding the devices inside his ears rather than around the back. People knowing he was eighty-percent deaf wasn't quite on his to-do list, which was exactly why Kazue hated fighting. All it would take was a good enhanced punch for the devices to shatter inside his ears, and with how common strength-enhancing Quirks were in today's society...

Yet another reason that Kazue didn't want to be a hero, but everyone who knew just said to slap a pair of heavy-duty headphones on and he'd be just fine. Yeah, okay.

Haruma chose that moment to glance over, eyes narrowing imperceptibly upon the slightly absent expression on the teen's face. Despite being in the middle of going into detailed depth about the different categories of crime, Kimura didn't even remotely look like he was registering that he was talking, his expression only growing more depressing to look at by the second. "You okay?" the man asked with concern, only interjecting once the boy had paused to take a breath. "'Cause you're looking a little... off."

Kazue forced his lips upwards into his usual lazy smile, shoving away his thoughts. "Yeah," he lied. "Just tired is all."

If you guessed that Kazue reads romance manga in the previous chapter, congrats, you win... Uh, an internet hug?

Also, my son's experiencing a common Gen Z condition: What the fuck am I supposed to do with my life? syndrome.

Question: What side character do you think Kazue will replace if he's put in class 1-A?

Questions/comments/things I should change?