Inquisitor

- Chapter: 21 -

Izumi stood before the testing ground she was assigned. She was shaking while marveling at how big the testing grounds were.

"Like a whole city!! And they've got a bunch of these on the grounds?" One contestant spoke out loud, voicing the thoughts that others had been thinking.

Izumi looked at the other examinees and subconsciously started analyzing them. 'They all look so confident! Aren't they nervous?! Ah... they've also brought equipment, though, theirs matches are made to work with their quirks...'

Izumi then noticed the same brown-haired girl that had saved her from falling at the school entrance. 'It-it's her!! We're at the same test site! I should... yeah, I've gotta thank her for earlier...' Izumi, after psyching herself up a little bit, started taking shaky steps towards the girl.

The blue-haired boy from the explanation noticed Izumi's movement and mistook what she was doing. He believed that she was going to mess with the other girl as a form of sabotage. He walked over to Izumi and put a hand on her shoulder to stop her from walking. He then spoke in as commanding sounding voice he could make. "Why are you here? Hoping to interfere?"

The moment the boys hand landed on Izumi's shoulder she almost jumped out of her skin. The other examinees noticed this and started to talk about her. They all felt relieved and lucky, as they believed that she would be an easy person to overcome point-wise.

"START"

The examinees looked up at the platform they heard Present Mic scream off of, except for Izumi. She grabbed her newest piece of gear, a brand new present she had gotten from Katsuo before the tests started.

---

"Hey Izumi I have something to give you, you can think of it as a reward for completing your training over the last ten months." Katsuo said as he opened up his bag and reached into it.

Izumi quickly spoke up, her face turning slightly red as the idea of getting a gift from Katsuo. "N-no, I couldn't a-accept that. I already got A-All Might's qui, his quirk. Y-y-you don't have to also g-give me something-"

"Don't care."

"Huh?"

"I don't care if you don't want it, your still going to take this."

"B-but I don't-"

"I already said that I'd give it to you, so I will, here." Katsuo pulled out the gift from his bag. It had a metallic shine to it's green coating. Izumi instantly recognized what it was, or rather what it's design was based on.

Katsuo was holding out a modified version of his mask. It only would cover Izumi's mouth versus how Katsuo's covered his whole face. It's sides were made of several metal plates lined up from the back to the front. The mouth was covered in one large plate that had a bend in the middle, with eight holes in it for air to enter into it's ventilation frame. It had a strap around the back so that it could sit at the base of the neck and not on the face.

Izumi felt her face grow redder when she saw the mask. Katsuo pretending to not notice continued to speak. "Your biggest issue right now is that you worry to much in the face of danger, you let yourself get distracted from your anxiety. I thought that this might help you to try and control it a bit. Think of it this way, my full mask suppresses all my emotions, while your half mask only suppresses your negative emotions. When you put this mask on you should take a deep breathe and stop being Izumi Midoriya, and start being the future pro hero Deku. Okay?"

Izumi was still processing what Katsuo said when he finished speaking, causing her to nod her head yes without her realizing it. "Okay, then I'll head to my test ground... oh and Izumi, you better not fail the test, or I'm going to triple your workload."

That shocked Izumi back to reality and had her realize that Katsuo had already put the mask in her hands and was running off to get ready for his test. She looked down at the mask in her hands and sighed.

---

Izumi grabbed the mask from where she was keeping it on her side and put it on and started running to her testing grounds. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then another, and another, and another. With every breath she felt her anxiety slowly slip away, until she couldn't even tell it was there.

She very quickly realized that she was the first one into the testing grounds at her area and she decided that she wanted to use that lead to try and stay ahead. She started moving higher up by using her capture scarf to swing from lamppost to lamppost. Since she didn't have a way to quickly rewind the bands like the Aizawa's did she had decided to learn how to move without returning them, instead she kept the bands uncoiled and used it to move around without recoiling it.

She quickly came across a two pointer and swung above it, spinning in the air and aiming on of the scarfs bands at the button to turn it off. The band swung around in the air and slammed into the button with enough force to press it, deactivating the robot and earning her two points.

She then used the other end of the capture gear to attach to a lamppost and continue her search for robots. She found some more robots fairly quickly, but they were attacking another examinee when she saw them. She didn't even think twice and used one of her capture scarves ends to wrap up the boy in the middle of the robots and pull his out of it, landing on a lamppost so she could get proper footing to pull the person to her.

She released the person the moment he was safe and she went at the robots,moving through them and taking them down one at a time. She grabbed one's leg to unbalance it, having it fall into another. Using her scarf to pick up scrap metal so that pressing the buttons is easier. Grabbing the two pointer's stinger and redirect it at another robot.

When she finished she went over and helped the boy get up and she started moving to the entrance so he could get some help. "C'mon I have to get you somewhere safer so you can relax, you got hit in the head pretty hard." Izumi was taken aback by how calmly she spoke, she realized that Katsuo's idea about the mask helping her really did help.

She entered a street that was littered with robots and examinees, she recognized the brown and blue haired people form earlier in the mix and heard their point counts. She realized that she didn't have enough to pass with only seventeen and that she couldn't get more without dropping the injured boy, something she wasn't going to do.

She sighed and accepted the fact that Katsuo was going to work her to death because of this and hurried to get the boy to safety. Her route was soon blocked however by a giant robot the popped out of seemingly nowhere.

Izumi looked up at the robot, then turned to the side and ran with the boy on her back into a building and put him down inside of it, then ran back outside. She saw all of the examinees running away and turned to look at the zero pointer gimmick.

It had already destroyed several buildings and was moving after the examinees. Rubble was everywhere and people were panicking and running away. Izumi turned around to head back inside of the boy when she heard something. It was barely audible over all the other noise but Izumi had heard it and started running towards the gimmick the moment she heard it.

Izumi saw that the brown-haired girl had fallen and had her leg trapped under a small bit of debris. Izumi ran at the gimmick with the intent to strike it down.

She bent down slightly and activated her newly acquired quirk in her legs and jumping up an incredible height and an even more incredible speed. She was moving so fast that it only took her a second to be at the same level as the gimmick. She then reared her arm back and charged up her quirk, then punching the robot in it's head. A giant shock-wave followed after Izumi punched, destroying the robot in the process.

Then Izumi started to fall...