Golden Touch (BnHA)

Chapter 5: The Two Es: Exams and Explosions

Once she had gotten her card, Kula followed Toshinori to where the Support Course exam would be held. Muffled chatter drifting into the hallway.

"Good luck." He said with a smile before waving goodbye and walking down the hall.

"Well, guess I'll just tell Shitgaraki that I didn't see All Might." She muttered as she snuck into the auditorium, the muffled chatter getting louder as she opened the door. Taking a deep breath and sliding into a nearby seat in the back row, she stared towards the front of the room. She really didn't want to talk to anyone, and it seemed that with her rough appearance nobody wanted to talk to her.

"Hello boys and girls!" A voice echoed in the auditorium, and Kula looked forwards to see Power Loader standing in the front of the auditorium.

"You all want to enter U.A.'s Support Course, right? Well, it's not going to be easy!"

Of course not. Don't state the obvious. Kula thought, lazily looking up front.

"I'm here to tell you all about the Practical Portion of this exam. It's going to be a test not of courage, but of wits. Each of you will go to your assigned room that's printed on your examinee card. There will be three students per work area. Once in the work area, you'll find a list of three different quirk names and descriptions." An image appeared on the screen behind him, it showed a piece of paper being ripped into three separate pieces and three humanoid figures taking one piece each. "The three of you will decide on what quirk you will want to work on. Once decided, you will start working on a support item that would benefit the quirk."

At that, a student a few rows in front of Kula stood up, "Does that mean we're allowed to actually build stuff from scratch?" He asked, his voice seeming to raise a few octaves from excitement.

"Of course."

The boy let out a squeal before siting back down, some of the students staring at him with judgement.

God I hope I'm not in the same work area as him. Kula thought to herself.

"If that's all of the questions, then you all should head to the work areas printed on your cards."

With that, everyone stood up and started moving around. Glancing down at her card, Kula took note of the work area she would be in.

Work Area C, so that must be over here. She thought, noticing signs above each door.

Walking down the hallway, Kula stopped in front of her assigned room and opened the door, already seeing that the other two who she was going to be sharing with were in the rooms. Upon seeing who was in there, she groaned internally. The boy who had quite loudly voiced his question earlier was sitting in the room, looking over the piece of paper that he had grabbed. As well as him, there was a girl with blonde hair, green, red, and purple streaks, she had turned around and looked at Kula with an annoyed expression.

"Are you just going to stand there an watch us? Or are you actually going to work on this exam?" She asked.

Kula didn't respond and instead moved to the third and last empty work station in the room, seeing a piece of paper laid out on the table.

"You were late so we already chose our projects by the way." The girl said before turning back and sliding her goggles back on and working on her invention.

"Whatever." Kula muttered, picking up the piece of paper that was in front of her and started reading the quirk name and description.

Quirk: Energy Blast

Quirk Description: The user is able to blast orbs of energy from their hands, usually in orbs of power.

"That's not a lot to work off of. But I guess I'll make do." Kula muttered to herself. Looking at her desk at the tools that had been provided to her, Kula grabbed the materials she needed and went to work— being mindful to keep her thoughts to herself.

Halfway through the exam, a loud explosion went off from behind Kula and she and the other girl and the room looked towards the third person.

"Ah, whoops! Guess that was the self-destruct button!" He said with a laugh.

"Did your invention just blow up by a self-destruct button you placed?" The other girl asked.

"Ah, yeah. What, am I not supposed to add a self-destruct button?"

"No!"

"Huh. Guess that TV show wasn't entirely accurate." He muttered before shrugging and turning back. "All right! Back to square one!"

He's so positive it's like there's a sun in this room. Kula thought to herself as she turned and continued to work on her item.

***

"Times up!" A voice shouted over the intercom and Kula pulled away from her device.

"Just in time." She muttered. She had just finished the last touches to her invention and was now looking down at it with a proud expression.

"The practical portion of the exam has now ended, if everyone would make their way back to the auditorium for the written portion that would be appreciated. Leave your inventions where they are and they will be dealt with by professionals."

***

As Power Loader walked around to each of the work areas, they tested each of the items. Each room had gotten three of six quirks to work on, so there were many inventions for the same quirk.

The Pro had entered the 3rd work area along with three people, one of those people aging the quirk that was described on Kula's paper.

"All right, first one up is Ito Kula. She had Energy Blast, so Ren, if you could go up and try that support item."

"Yessir." Ren said, walking up to the desk. He looked onto the desk and saw a skeletal looking glove sitting in the middle of a mess of tools and scrap metal. "This is an interesting design." Picking it up, he slid it onto his hand, watching with surprise as it adjusted to fit his hand. At his palm, there was a disc. The item wasn't perfect, there were many places where if he wasn't careful he could cut himself on the metal sticking out; that and the fact that even if the device was small, it was pretty heavy.

Let's see if this works. He thought as he aimed his hand towards the wall, he activated his quirk, letting out a suprised yelp as a beam was shot out instead of the usual orbs.

"I don't believe it." Power Loader muttered. "This girl managed to make an invention that stored the orbs that were shot out and almost immediately dispersed the energy and convert the orbs into a beam of energy."

"So, does this mean what I think it does?" Rin asked.

"Ito Kula has passed with flying colors."