Motivation (Rewrite)

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Oh boy, it's the Quirk Apprehension test! Remembered that I had to finish up this chapter and post today when I was about to start playing SWTOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic) and oh man does my computer hate me right now, the fan is going wild

This chapter covers the second half of the old chapter eight as well as chapter nine and the first line of chapter ten. More or less. Happy reading, and once again, this is unedited so feel free to yell at me if I fucked something up.

The first test was the fifty-meter dash, an event Kazue wasn't the fondest of. For starters, it meant everyone would be sprinting as fast as they could, and now they'd also have the chance to use their Quirks. Except for Kazue, that is. He was still operating under the assumption that he wasn't allowed to use his Quirk on his classmates.

"Yo, Kimura, looks like it's you and me for this one!" an enthusiastic voice said from above him.

Kazue glanced up from where he was crouched, one leg extended off to the side as he stretched. Kirishima, huh? His Quirk wouldn't give him an advantage during the dash, more of a disadvantage, so they'd technically be on even footing. Not that it particularly mattered since they were up against the rest of the class, not just one another.

"I guess," he returned blandly with a half-shrug, standing and heading to the line alongside his classmate. They got into their ready positions, waited for the robot in charge of timing, and took off at the sound of the recorded pistol.

Thankfully, they were one of the later groups to run, which gave Kazue a fairly good estimate of how fast he had to run. He was pretty damn miffed about it, too, given the speed at which his feet pounded against the dirt just to stay average.

"Six-point-five seconds!" the robot chirped as he crossed the line, about what he'd been aiming for. Most people who could use their Quirk in some way for their sprint scored under six seconds, while the others tended to break just over seven. If he'd calculated it right, he should already be vaguely in the middle of the class.

"Bro, that was fast for not using a Quirk!" Kirishima grinned widely, jogging over to him after crossing the line a moment after. He'd scored six-point-nine seconds, a fairly good score given his obvious muscular build. "I was sprinting as fast as I could, but you got me beat without even breaking a sweat!"

Ah. Shit.

If Kazue scored average in the class while not even using his Quirk, that also might make him stand out among a class full of students using theirs to their advantage.

That... that could become a problem, now that he thought of it.

The second test was easier to downplay, combining the average grip strength of an unaugmented person with a bit extra force. Nothing too crazy, since the majority of Quirks wouldn't help all that much save for ones like Dupli-Arms.

The third test was a different story, with several of his classmates clearing the entire sandbox for their standing long jump. Given the fact that it was essentially impossible to do so without using a Quirk, and over half the class could use theirs in one way or another to get near the end or across entirely, well, Kazue could only grit his teeth and jump as far as he could.

Test four was a fucking pain in the ass. Enough said on the matter of repeated side steps.

Test five coincided with the demonstration at the very beginning of the so-called "Quirk Apprehension Test," and it came with even more intense scrutiny from his classmates than Kazue would like. No one had been watching him all too closely during the other tests, but the softball throw was obviously considered to be the biggest opportunity to show off.