Though the first exam had started no more than five minutes ago, most of the students already found themselves locked in a stalemate. After their initial attack had failed, Ketsubutsu had lost their momentum, and with it much of their confidence. Now they held back, watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike.

"At UA, you look further ahead than other schools." Ms. Joke said repeating Eraser Head's earlier sentiment. "That's a pretty condescending thing to say, Eraser. Do you have any idea how many kids in this world want to be heroes? Strength of will is far more important than going to a famous school or having renown."

Even from where she sat, so far away from the action, she could still make out the look of hardened determination on her students' faces. Even knowing their opponents' quirks beforehand, their first assault had been unsuccessful, and though this fact may have demoralized some of them, Ms. Joke knew there was one student who could always be counted on to rally his classmates.

"When you think you're the stars and look down on others, you reveal your weaknesses. That's how you fail."

The corner of Fukukado's lips upturned into a small, satisfied smirk as she watched Eraser Head's students fall into the crumbling earth, swallowed by another cloud of dust. In the ensuing chaos, UA would fall. Or, at least, a good majority. The rest would soon succumb to broken spirits. Leaning back in her seat, Ms. Joke turned to look at Eraser Head, hoping to see the signs of defeat in his normally hollow eyes. Instead, she saw him wearing a smirk of his own.

"I'll agree with you on one thing." Aizawa said. "Willpower, determination, resolve, they're all essential for someone to succeed. Without it, they won't just fail at being a hero. They'll fail at life. If you were to ask me, I would say a hero's success is a direct reflection of the strength of their will. Some would even say that it's that strength that separates heroes from the rest of the world. Wouldn't you agree?"

Emi looked at Aizawa suspiciously, but nodded, nonetheless.

"Isn't it ironic then, that the strongest of wills would come from someone who never wanted to be a hero in the first place?" 

The two refocused their attention on the ongoing battle. Once the dust settled, they could see that the earth had split, and Class 1A had been buried beneath a landslide. Ketsubutsu slid down the edges of the crater to search for their helpless prey, ready to start taking them out one by one. For all his talk about faith and hope, Aizawa's students had fallen, taken out by a single attack from just one of her students. She was about to say as much when the rocks started to shift. Leaning forward in her seat, she focused her eyes on the subtle movement, and then jumped to her feet.

"Get out of there!" She shouted at her students, even though she knew they couldn't hear her.

The rock and stone slowly began to shift and eventually gave way to a dome of brilliant white light that slowly emerged from the wreckage, rising like the morning sun. The broken earth fell in on itself as it filled the displaced space left behind by the still rising sphere. Finally, the dome surfaced completely, and in it was encapsulated the entirety of Class 1A, standing on a platform of hard light, save one student who hovered in the air just above them.

[My Hero Academia]

My name is Yo Shindo and I am a hero. My quirk, Vibrate, allows me to cause anything I touch to shake. I can create tremors fierce enough to cause seismic events and can reduce a ten-story building to a pile of rubble. Growing up, my teachers always called me a natural born leader. Miss Fukukado says it's because I have an indomitable spirit that inspires others and that's the reason people follow my lead. I've always done my best not to let myself become arrogant because of it. Confidence, though? Confidence is something I have in spades. A lot of people get nervous during exams, for example, but I've always gone into them self-assured. The Provisional License Exam was no different. But the day I met UA High School, my confidence turned to arrogance.

When it comes to competing, knowing your opponent is half the battle. Because of UA's Sports Festival, we knew we had an edge over them. We knew what their quirks were and how they used them. The time we had outside of class was spent watching their matches, studying the different tactics and strategies they employed when they fought. I'll be the first to admit we underestimated them. They weren't the same students from the sports festival. They had gotten stronger, the strongest amongst them protecting the others. And the one with the blindfold, he was the strongest of them all.

Even before I met them, I knew out of all the students in Class 1A the most dangerous of them wouldn't be the one who got first place in the sports festival. It wouldn't even be Endeavor's kid. No, I could tell that the real threat was the one who came in third. (F/N) (L/N). His were the matches I studied the closest. But even for all my obsessing I still didn't know what his quirk was. What I did know was that he would be strong. But I never imagined this.

There we stood amidst the battlefield, outnumbering UA at least five times over. Students from a dozen different schools from across Japan, all operating under a silently agreed upon truce. How much they trained and how strong they'd become didn't matter. Sooner or later, they would fall beneath the sheer numbers. At least, that's what we thought.

As the ground stopped shaking, we slowly stepped forwards to look upon the crater left by my quirk. Each of us wore a triumphant grin of satisfaction at the knowledge that UA had been buried. At the first sound of shifting rock, we readied ourselves to take advantage of their disarray. The most brazen students jumped into the crater, hoping to catch whoever emerged off guard and secure themselves a quick and easy victory. The rocks began to move in earnest and a few more students slid down into the small caldera. The rest of us kept watch from above, eyes focused sharply for any sign of UA and, in their disarray, we would pick them off one by one.

A sudden shout caught our attention, and we all looked to see a student from Isamu Academy lose his footing as the ground beneath him shifted violently. His cry was echoed by the others who walked atop the rubble burying Class 1A as light began to pour through the cracks in the rock. The ground beneath them split and swallowed them whole. The trap we had set for UA had instead been sprung on us.

Next to me, one of my classmates hopped off a boulder he was perched on and cautiously approached the edge of the crater, peering into its depths to see what had caused the commotion. The rocks in the center began to lift and slide off the to side as if they were being moved by some invisible force, kicking up dust as they crashed back to the earth. Those who had been so quick to act were now punished for their arrogance, desperately trying to escape as the ground continued to cave in on itself. The rest of us slowly backed away from the edge as the cloud of dust from the crater began to rise above grade and obscure our vision. And then we saw them. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Class 1A ascended. 

We turned our faces towards the sky, our mouths dumbfoundedly agape as we watched them continue to rise. The facility's glass domed ceiling refracted the sunlight in such a way that the angle of the sun's rays perfectly caught Class 1A. The sunshine was so bright that it caused an even greater contrast to the point where their figures appeared nothing more than silhouettes. Raising my hand to block out the glare, I noticed the students from UA Highschool appeared just as surprised as we were. Like us, their gazes were directed upwards, looking at their savior. He flew above the rest of them, just a few feet so that the top of their heads met his chest. I tried to make out the expression on his face, but the sun was positioned directly behind his head and cast his face in shadows. In that moment, I couldn't help but think to myself; he looked like a god.

Around me, people quickly began to recover from the initial shock and once again took their fighting stances. I myself was still distracted. Had I not been, I might have been able to warn the others not to do what they were about to do. If the events of the past two minutes had been any indication, UA wouldn't be as easy of a target as we'd initially thought. But adrenaline and arrogance had taken hold and any semblance of rational, strategic thought abandoned. As it stood, to a careless observer UA appeared the perfect target. The students were grouped together and had no form of cover to hide behind. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Toteki wind up as he prepared for one of his deadly accurate throws. All around others mimicked his actions, and before I could stop them hundreds of orange balls were sent speeding towards Class 1A.

Some, like Toteki, had the ability to control the projectiles themselves and some had to be more inventive in the way they used their quirks. Still others relied on their sheer strength to cover the distance required to hit their targets. A handful of Class 1A's students flinched while the others showed signs of activating their quirks to defend themselves. But before the storm of rubber balls had traveled even so much as halfway through the sky, they all came to a very sudden stop, each one caught in a net of glowing light.

A tense silence swallowed the battlefield as the balls simply hovered in the air, completely unmoving. There was a single second in which nobody moved or breathed. A single, anxiety filled second that lasted forever. And then came the storm. A meteor shower, as if the stars themselves rained down form the heavens.