Izuku listened with half an ear as one of the teachers, a very tall and very blocky, albeit flat man, talked about the next step of testing.
Four robots. Three that were worth points based on difficulty and one that was basically summarized as an environmental hazard.
Robots were a good choice, Izuku figured. They were replaceable, any damages they took could be repaired at whatever pace U.A. wanted to work on without risking anything permanent. They wouldn't need hazard pay or time off.
There were more and more robots being made for service purposes all throughout the world. Self-driving cars, automated delivery drones, even small ones that would automatically clean things around the home.
During their time cleaning the beach they'd come across one such robot. A little vacuum cleaner that could activate at pre-programmed times to sweep up the house while people were out.
Sadly, without its other parts the thing was functionally worthless, even beyond its original condition. Repair fixed the missing wheel and melted collection tray but couldn't bring about the device's paired remote and charging station.
It had still been used as a demonstration and had featured in several of Izuku's lessons in the dragon's rare free time.
How had he done so?
By taping a knife to the top of the Roomba, casting a spell that he would eventually teach Izuku called 'Apparent Master' and telling the green-haired boy to dodge while he told the robot to chase him.
It had just been a dinner knife, it never broke skin but it was still a frankly surprising lesson about situational awareness.
And improvised tools, though Izuku wasn't sure if he was supposed to have learned that lesson.
Standing next to a few ruined robots just a few minutes into the test, Izuku would be more than happy to make use of those lessons.
A one-pointer 'Victory' unit had been scrapped, crushed by a giant claw made of shadows. A three point 'Venator' had simply stopped. Izuku didn't know why. The internals might have been fried by an electrical Quirk, the wires or solder literally cooked by a fire one, someone might have even found the off switch.
He didn't know. Frankly, it didn't matter. The Venator wasn't his goal at the moment- The units were big and powerful but painfully slow, the economy of motion for them was terrible.
Izuku placed one small hand on the wreckage of the Victory and focused, shaping his magic to his will. Apparent Master was a fairly high level spell, one that he could perform but not with anything resembling the ease of his other spells.
It wasn't just a matter of cost... Izuku had discovered that stronger spells, at least the ones that hadn't grown stronger but started that way, required something more from him. They were harder to shape, to tame. More complicated and it sometimes felt like reality itself was debating if they should manifest or not before giving in and letting the spell happen.
"You will obey me!" Izuku grunted, forcing the magic into the broken machine. He waited for a long moment, letting the magic settle and the effect to hold before he smiled and wiped the sheen of sweat off of his forehead.
Once it was fully under his control, Izuku cast Repair. The crushed portions filled back out, the bent tire that it balanced on straightened and the arm, torn off at some point, simply reappeared.
"Help me up." Izuku commanded, climbing up to the robot's shoulder as it crouched down. "Now, arm yourself with whatever you can use from the Venator."
In one way, the spell was kind of clumsy. The construct that Izuku was commanding had to be given verbal orders. It would not act with any initiative unless it was following an order that offered some form of condition that would be completed later on. Another limitation was that the spell would outright fail if he ordered the robot to intentionally take harm.
He could order it into a precarious situation but he couldn't demand that it take a punch for him.
The screech of metal as the Victory ripped off one of the Venator's missile pods and held it awkwardly in its arm was music to Izuku's ears.
"Now." Izuku pointed in a direction that hadn't seen as many students run off in. "Go that way. Avoid harming any hero students, I can repair you. Use your weapon on any other robots that you encounter!"
Izuku held on with both arms, a maniacal laugh screeching from his lips as the robot tore off at speed.
There wasn't any guarantee that he was going to get in, he knew that.
But it didn't mean he wouldn't try his best!
-----
"...Is that even allowed?" Nedzu looked up from his screen as one of the many teachers that were watching and scoring the students spoke up.
Ah, not just any teacher it seemed. Poor Yagi looked incredibly confused as he pointed at one of the many monitors throughout the room.
On it, a small child was attached to one of the One-Point villain bots. It was moving- Actually, it was moving at something close to its actual speed rather than the parameters programmed for the test.
"Power Loader?" Nedzu asked, his eyes locked on the screen. "Can you pull up the command menu for robot... Zero-zero-one-one-seven-one?"
"Hold on..." The man, still wearing his ridiculous headgear inside of the cramped room, mumbled quietly as his fingers struck at his reinforced keyboard. "I can't."
"You cannot?" Nedzu asked, finally turning to look at the shirtless man.
There was a reason he hadn't been sent to oversee the students for the initiation tests.
"No, I can't. According to the logs, it was offline for a bit and now it's disconnected." The view on screen shifted, the tracking algorithm moving to another camera to record the boy's actions as he pointed at a robot and his steed fired a missile from a salvaged pod, taken off of a three pointer. "We got some kind of Machine Empathy Quirk going into heroics again? Or is that kid just some kind of genius hacker?"
"Neither!" Nedzu answered brightly, bringing a cup of water to his mouth.
He loved the taste of his tea. He really did... But his veterinarian had been incredibly concerned over the stress it put on his black, wicked heart.
Of course, after that delightful discussion with Alec, he'd been able to enjoy the taste of his tea regardless!
"...Okay then." Power Loader sighed and closed out of the application. "Mystery Quirk that's got the boss excited, that's great news- Right, Yagi? We have a lot of different methods for kids to get points here. Not all Quirks are suited to direct combat, even the ones that are might not belong to kids that are suited for front-line fighting-"
"I am aware of the rescue points." Toshinori cut in, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Showing that one is capable of looking out for their fellows is a great indicator of true heroic spirit!"
The man's smile literally brightened the room.
"...Right. Mind letting me finish this time?" Yagi chuckled sheepishly at the vaguely hostile tone Power Loader had taken with him. "Immobilizing a robot counts. Turning it off counts. Helping out counts, we don't even split the points so long as both kids did something worthwhile. We have a number of robots with fairly weak security so some of the smart but fragile kids can come up with something. Three years back, one brat even tried to upload a virus to the intranet and just deactivate all of 'em. Kid was doing it on his phone. Nedzu took them on as a personal student after that."
Power Loader waved a clawed hand towards a screen that was lit up in red, using infrared filters to track an invisible girl.
"So yeah, whatever the green kid is doing? It's legal. A bit unusual but that's actually a good thing." Power Loader brought one hand up to the front of the construction equipment he wore as a helmet and tapped at his 'chin'. "He passes, you think his teacher might let me borrow him? That trick he did, fixing the villain bot? That would save me a lot of time."
"Thank you for your delightful explanation, Power Loadermon." Nedzu... May have also been a bit more vindictive recently, since he'd started taking his doctor's advice and cutting out some of his caffeine.
"I will hurt you." The shirtless man grumbled, several of the other teachers in the room snickering at his toothless threat.
"Your words wound me." Nedzu chuckled. "They do such a better job than the mousetraps you set outside my office."
Nedzu's tailed flicked behind him, caught between his back and his chair as a few of the teachers chuckled uneasily at his behavior. Midoriya Izuku utilizing the skills taught to him by Alec was an incredibly exciting prospect, one Nedzu was eagerly looking forward to...
But he was only one child out of many. All of the applicants would need to be reviewed, their conduct judged and their efforts evaluated. Izuku was exciting and new...
But he was still just one of many.
This charm makes a construct regard you as its master. The spell only affects mindless constructs that are attuned to the commands of a master, such as animated objects, golems, retrievers, and shield guardians. All constructs with Intelligence scores, even those that explicitly follow the...
aonprd.com
"NOT ACCORDING TO PLAN! NOT ACCORDING TO PLAN!"
