"Zero Gravity, would you mind stepping over here for a second?" Kazue asked, turning his head slightly to look over his shoulder at the brunette girl. Her eyes widened at the name of her Quirk, but she walked over hesitatingly regardless. "Can you hold out your hand?"

She did as requested with a confused 'okay' and he touched the ball to the pads on her fingertips, using his free hand to tap her shoulder lightly and send out a small pulse. He didn't need much energy to activate her Quirk, since a single touch could negate the effects of gravity on any object, and the ball was just one thing.

Kazue nodded in thanks, turning back around before whipping the ball through the air with none of his previous holding back.

"That better?" he muttered rhetorically, shoving his hands in the pockets of his gym uniform. A score of infinity couldn't even be considered doing something halfway, and Kazue was still annoyed that Eraser Head had figured him out so quickly. Whatever. He needed at least one extraordinary score, anyway, so he might as well tie for first in the ball throw.

~

Shōta narrowed his eyes imperceptibly after the brown-haired kid left the circle to go back to standing at the back of the class, eyes unfocused and staring off into space. Something hadn't quite felt right earlier, when he'd used his Quirk on the boy. On anyone else, the hero would have felt the tell-tale slight strain on his eyes when he erased someone's Quirk.

But not this time. Nothing felt different at all, which made no sense. According to the student file, the kid's Quirk was Amplify, where he could boost anyone's Quirk just by touching them. Not exactly a front-line hero Quirk, but one good for support.

The only way it would make sense would be if the boy had inherited his father, the Number Seven pro hero in Japan's Quirk. That might explain why Shōta's Quirk had no effect, even if that didn't appear to be the way Dreynen's Quirk worked, either. Both Amplify and whatever the top hero's Quirk was called evidently required physical contact.

One thing was for sure, and that was that the kid didn't even want to be here, and Shōta didn't need to look at the answers to his interview questions to know it. All he needed to see was the completely dead expression on the brunet's face, one that the man just so happened to share.

~

~-~-~-~

The remaining three tests were a pain in the ass, especially now that Kazue knew that Eraser Head was onto him. It felt like the man's dead eyes were boring into his skull every time he was doing anything, forcing the brunet to produce actual results instead of just ones that would get him in the middle of the class score wise.

The way things were going, Kazue wasn't going to end up in tenth or eleventh place. By his calculations through watching everyone else and building a mental scoreboard, he'd end up in either sixth or seventh place, beating out several people who actually used their Quirks for most, if not all of the tests.

Kind of sad, really, but expected of someone who'd been training Quirkless for most of their life, whereas the most practice pretty much everyone else did was in their own home.

"Okay, I'll quickly tell you the results," said Eraser Head, looking a little dead inside. "The total is simply the marks you got from each test. It's a waste of time to explain verbally, so I'll show you the results all at once."

Pulling out a projector device from his pocket, the hero pressed a button. The scoreboard of the class was instantly projected into the air with a light-blue tint, arranged into ten rows and two columns. Kazue let out an annoyed sigh upon spotting his name in seventh place, right behind someone named 'Shōji Mezō' and beating out 'Ojiro Mashirao'.

He scanned the rest of the list out of curiosity, noting that Bakugō—whose first name appeared to be Katsuki—had placed third, Kirishima was in ninth, Sero was in fifteenth, Kaminari was right behind in sixteenth, and someone named Midoriya Izuku had placed last.

And based on the complete and utter look of horror on the guy with One For All, he was Midoriya Izuku.

Kazue deadpanned, knowing that Eraser Head hadn't been lying when he'd said last place would be expelled (he'd read of the hero's reputation when it came to that sort of thing, as he'd expelled his entire class the year before). However, the teen was an excellent judge of potential when it came to hero students. He'd been evaluating interns' Quirks for the past five or so years back at the agency, and hell, did Midoriya have potential. He had All Might's Quirk, for Christ's sake.

The man clicked off the hologram device, the results flickering away. "By the way, I was lying about the expulsion."

Yeah, okay, sure, Kazue thought sarcastically, snorting under his breath. Now that was a lie; the hero'd just seen the same potential in Midoriya as the brunet had. With power of that amount in just his finger, one could only imagine how far he would go in the future.

Although... there was something weird about the One For All in Midoriya, something off that Kazue hadn't dug far enough into All Might's iteration to notice. It was as if multiple other Quirks were shoved inside of the main power, but held back by an unknown force. In a way, it was like his own Quirk, only this time, he could 'see' the powers being suppressed.

Interesting, to say the least, although he doubted the barrier would be able to be overcome. Even if the other powers were there, they'd never be able to be used through natural development. Hell, Kazue doubted his own Amplify could activate them.

And at the moment the teen decided to stop thinking about it and pay attention, Eraser Head decided to smile creepily. "It was a rational deception to draw out the upper limits of your Quirks."

At everyone's collective shock, Creation girl looked over at the class with her hands on her hips. "Of course that was a lie," she said, seeming confused as to how everyone had believed the truth. It should've been obvious if you just thought it through."

Kazue coughed awkwardly to hide his snort. She was smart, sure, but appeared to be slightly dense when it came to trusting others.

"That was a little nerve-wracking, huh?" Sero remarked to Kirishima.

The redhead clenched his fist, grinning in determination. "I'll take up the challenge anytime."

At which point, Kazue stopped listening to other people's conversations because their cheerfulness made him die inside. Seriously, why were they so pumped to become heroes? He knew not everyone thought the same way as he did, but even with all his brain cells he still couldn't understand.

Whatever. Not his problem.

"With that, we're done here," Eraser Head concluded, turning and walking off without so much as a glance back. "There are handouts with the curriculum and such in the classroom, so when you get back, look over them."

After handing Midoriya a pass to go to the nurse's office, the man trudged off with his back hunched and hands in his pockets. Kazue huffed out a sigh, sparing his score one last fleeting thought of annoyance before beginning to trudge back off in the direction of the locker rooms.

He paused momentarily as a hand tapped his shoulder, his Quirk letting him know who was behind him before he even turned his head. "Yeah?" Kazue asked the Zero Gravity girl, glancing back as they walked.

"How'd you know the name of my Quirk?"

Ah. He figured someone would ask sooner or later, considering he addressed people he didn't know the names of by their Quirk. "It's part of my own Quirk," Kazue finally decided to reply in a dull tone. "A bit complicated to explain, but I can tell what someone's Quirk is just by looking at them, how it works, etcetera etcetera."

Her eyes lit up. "Oh! So you can do that to help you activate people's Quirks without them having to explain everything?"

The taller teen nodded once in affirmation, not failing to notice Midoriya not-so-secretly listening in on their conversation. "Yeah, I guess," he shrugged, remembering how much of a pain in the ass it'd been to learn how to control it. Back when he'd first developed his 'read' ability, it was on all the time. All the information flooding in every time he looked at someone overwhelmed his mind that he had to quarantine himself for a week to learn how to control it before his head exploded. 

Only in the case of Midoriya, who seemed to be deep in thought after eavesdropping, blow off his limbs.

When you write a chapter that's just below 1.5k words right after one with around 2.3k...

Whoops

Izu overheard Kazue's explanation of his Quirk. Kazue knows he did and can't control One For All for shit. This'll be fun.

Questions/comments/things I should change?