The first robot came around a corner at him and Riku put his fist through its face.
The metal caved inward under his knuckles, the sensor array behind the visor shattering into plastic shards that peppered his forearm. His fist went through to the wrist. The one-pointer stuttered, sparked, and toppled sideways into a fire hydrant that buckled on impact and shot water across the street.
His hand hurt. Not bad. A dull ache across the second and third knuckles that faded while he shook it out. The Drain had his body running at a level where punching through sheet metal was feasible but his skin hadn't gotten the same upgrade. He was going to have to be smarter about this.
A two-pointer rolled out from behind a bus thirty meters up the street. Treads grinding asphalt, targeting sensor swiveling toward him. Its arm cannon charged with a whine that climbed in pitch.
Riku didn't wait for it to fire. He sprinted. The Drain-boosted speed covered the distance in under three seconds and the robot's cannon tracked him but couldn't match his lateral movement. He cut left at the last second, slid under the arm cannon on the wet street, grabbed the base of the cannon with both hands, and wrenched.
Metal screamed. The cannon tore free at the joint, sparks arcing, hydraulic fluid spraying his shirt. He swung the severed cannon into the robot's chassis like a bat. The impact buckled the torso plating and knocked the two-pointer onto its side, treads spinning in the air. He hit it again. The sensor array went dark.
Four points and he'd been in the city for thirty seconds.
He kept moving. The fake city was designed to funnel students into robot encounters and Riku had spent enough time in real cities to know how to avoid funnels. He took rooftops. The Drain-boosted legs got him up a fire escape in four seconds and from the top of a three-story building he could see the whole grid. Robots moving in patterns, clusters of students fighting in the streets below, the sound of explosions and quirk discharges echoing between the buildings.
A three-pointer was patrolling an alley two buildings over. Heavily armored, bigger than the others by half. Riku dropped off the rooftop, caught a window ledge one floor down, swung, and launched himself across the gap. He landed on its back hard enough to dent the plating. The robot lurched, trying to throw him. He grabbed a maintenance panel, yanked it open, and drove his hand into the wiring.
Vitality Drain activated on contact with the electrical system. It wasn't designed for machines. The quirk tried to pull from circuits that didn't have life force and the result was a power surge that blew every internal fuse at once. The three-pointer locked up, smoked, went dead with Riku still standing on it.
His hand tingled from the feedback. The Drain had pulled something from the electrical current, not energy exactly but a jolt that buzzed in his fingers for a few seconds.
Ten points and the robot's electrical jolt was still buzzing in his fingers.
He jumped down from the dead robot and took the alley at a run. Two one-pointers blocked the exit, their sensor arrays locked onto him. He picked up a chunk of concrete from the three-pointer's impact crater and threw it at the first one's face. The sensor shattered. The robot swung blindly and Riku was already past it, driving a kick into the second one's knee joint. The leg buckled. The robot dropped. He stomped the sensor array flat and kept running.
Fourteen. He was barely warm.
The exam was fun. He hadn't expected that.
He'd expected the power-up to feel mechanical. Better numbers on a stat sheet. Instead his body wanted to move and the Drain's charge made every movement faster and harder than his muscle memory expected. He overshot a jump and went through a window instead of landing on a ledge. Glass everywhere. He rolled, came up bleeding from a cut on his forearm, punched the two-pointer waiting inside the building so hard its head flew off and embedded in the drywall.
Sixteen points and blood running down his wrist. He grinned.
Two blocks east, through a gap between buildings, he saw a flash of pink. Get faster updates on g.com.
Mina. Different battle center but the zones shared borders and from his rooftop he could see into hers. She was fighting a two-pointer and fighting was a generous word for what she was doing. Her acid ate through the robot's leg at the knee. It fell. She jumped on its back, laughing, and melted a handprint through its armor plating. The robot sparked and died and she was already running toward the next one before it finished falling, her acid leaving smoking footprints on the asphalt.
She fought like recess.
Riku watched for two seconds and dropped back into his own zone.
More robots. His knuckles were raw by the time his count hit twenty-five and he'd switched to using environment. Kicked a parked car into a cluster of one-pointers and watched the pile-up take out all four. Used a street sign pole to lever a two-pointer onto its back. The three-pointer he caught from above, rode face-first into a wall, and let six tons of concrete do what his fists couldn't.
Thirty-two and climbing.
A deep, structural tremor that cracked the asphalt under his feet and rattled windows in their frames. From the center of the battle zone, rising above the buildings, the zero-pointer appeared.
It was bigger than the manga drew it. Way bigger. A building with legs, its shadow covering an entire city block. Its head scraped the sky and its footstep turned a four-story building into rubble that cascaded down like a waterfall of concrete.
Students ran. A stampede of panicked teenagers flooding away from the zero-pointer, shoving past each other, quirks firing in every direction. Riku stood on a rooftop and watched the massive robot advance.
He could fight it. The Drain had him charged enough to do damage if he climbed the leg and found a joint to hit.
But he didn't need to. Zero points meant zero points. The exam rewarded efficiency, and fighting an unkillable obstacle for no score while the timer ran down was the opposite of efficient.
Somewhere in another battle center, Midoriya was about to break every bone in his arm for a girl he'd met that morning. Riku knew the story. The kid would punch the zero-pointer into the sky and Uraraka would catch him before he hit the ground and Recovery Girl would put him back together and the hidden rescue points would carry his score.
He turned away from the zero-pointer and went hunting.
The last cluster of robots was fleeing from the giant's path. Three one-pointers and a two-pointer, stumbling through rubble, their targeting systems scrambled by the shockwaves. Riku dropped into the middle of them.
A knee strike crumpled the first one-pointer's sensor housing. A chunk of rebar through the second's processor. The third tried to run and he caught it by the head and twisted until the neck joint gave. The two-pointer lasted longest because he had to tear the maintenance panel off with bloody fingers and rip through wires until it went dark.
Forty-one points. His hands were bleeding and his shirt was more hole than fabric and the concrete dust had gotten into his teeth. He was breathing hard and his heart was hammering and he felt incredible. Visit novelping dot com for the full chapter.
A horn blared across the city. "TIME'S UP!"
Riku sat on the dead two-pointer and caught his breath. The fake city was trashed. Smoke from disabled robots drifted between the buildings. Students were sitting on rubble, leaning against walls, some of them injured, most of them exhausted. In the distance, the zero-pointer had stopped moving. Its footprint had crushed an intersection flat.
Recovery Girl's cart rolled through the wreckage. A small old woman kissing bruises and broken fingers back together, students lining up with the dazed gratitude of people who'd just survived something.
Riku's cuts were already closing. The Drain's residual charge was enough to accelerate his healing. The knuckle aches faded while he sat. By the time he stood up and walked toward the exit, his hands looked like he'd been doing yard work instead of punching robots.
The exit funneled all the battle centers together. Hundreds of students, dusty, sweaty, some limping, most talking too fast about what they'd done. Riku walked through them toward the main gate.
The recommendation students had their own entrance on the east side of campus. A smaller gate, quieter, with a handful of students coming out. Riku recognized most of them from the manga. Todoroki with his two-toned hair and his dead expression. A kid with vines for hair.
Momo was among them. She was walking out with her leather notebook tucked under her arm, her school uniform spotless. Her exam had been a different thing entirely. She'd created exactly what she needed, nothing more, and her clothes showed it.
She was talking to a proctor, asking a question about the evaluation criteria that the proctor clearly didn't know the answer to. Her posture was perfect. Her ponytail hadn't moved.
Riku watched her from across the courtyard. Forty meters of open ground between them. She was backlit by the afternoon sun and the light caught the watch on her wrist.
She finished her question, the proctor said something noncommittal, and she turned to leave. Her eyes swept the courtyard and this time they found him.
He was standing in a crowd of wrecked exam-takers with a shredded shirt and concrete dust in his hair. She was pristine.
She looked at him for about a second. Her dark eyes registered him, held for a beat longer than a stranger deserved, and moved on. Her ponytail swayed as she turned toward the train station.
She didn't look back. Riku watched her go.
She'd noticed him. Forty meters away, in a crowd, at resting aura.
He walked home with blood under his fingernails and dust in his teeth and a number in his head that was going to be enough to get him into Class 1-A.