Let's see where we stand! [1a only]

As the agility assessments went on, Yoichi stood quietly among her other classmates and observed each one. Something her mother had taught her. Watch, listen, learn. Every quirk has strengths, and weaknesses. You need to figure out these details, because you are outmatched in any fight with an enhancing quirk. Yoichi watched with an intense expression.

Koito's quirk gave him incredible mobility and speed. He could maneuver himself however he wanted, travel as far or as fast as he pleased. She noted, with a brief smirk, that his body couldn't handle it for too long. This had happened in the entrance exam, too. He wouldn't last in a war of attrition.

Yann was incredibly quick, and looked like he could dart out of the way of trouble. Yet it seemed like this was a pay-off, for his small size and stature. Yoichi wondered if he was all speed, with the potential strength of a rabbit. How, she wondered, did he get points in the entrance exam?

Karin's quirk was incredibly powerful, and Yoichi picked up her floating. Was it wind? Air? Speed and distance, but mobility could be an issue for the girl if it was something like a pressure canon. Could it be applied in combat as well? She assumed so, but Yoichi would need to see more of Karin in action to figure out where her weaknesses lay.

Sicily was interesting. Her overall control over her serpentine hair was impressive, and they gave her an overall versatility that made Yoichi ponder. Were they all sentient? Or did Sicily simply have a good level of control over all of them? She wondered of their strength, and length. A tough one. Sicily could overwhelm an opponent with a hoard of snakes with what seemed like ease, and maneuvered herself expertly with them too.

Not for the first time, Yoichi felt disappointed by Shizo. Hadn't he been wielding an insane lightning quirk in the exam? Here he was just acting normally, not using it at all. Was it some kind of fear holding him back? She thought back to his comments on the exam. Perhaps there was a mental block that stopped him from tapping into his full potential.

Then her name was called. Youchi took a deep breath, stepping up to the mark. She wasn't worried. Calmness filled her like a lagoon, and she took a deep breath. Everything she had been put through, the long days and gruelling training, weeks on end of honing her body... she focused on the task ahead, positioned herself correctly, and...

There was no way she could match the power of the quirk users, but Yoichi gave it her all. She had to, otherwise they'd leave her in the dust. She leapt like a coiled spring, muscles working in tandem across her body to fling herself forward. She landed, barely on the otherside, but the robot proclaimed her to have cleared the length of the box. Yoichi composed herself, not allowing her victory to make her cocky.

The same followed with the high jump. 3.04m, a perfect execution for someone who had trained at this kind of thing relentlessly since she was a child. Yoichi didn't acknowledge the others afterwards, no sneers or gloating. Her whole being was focused on the task ahead.

Finally it was the 50m dash. Yoichi was nimble, swift over short distances and with toned leg muscles. She was off like a flash, her whole force into her speed, crossing the finish line at 5:33 and coming to a skidding stop at the end.

After finishing her agility tests, Karin took the opportunity to take a breather and observe those that hadn’t already gone. Koito, the strange boy whose quirk seemed to defy physics, looked like he had better control over his direction than velocity, which checked out with his earlier antics in the classroom. Well, at least she wasn’t going to win every category, which honestly was a bit of relief for her. Karin didn’t catch Yann’s exercises, but figured he’d probably be pretty fast considering his rabbit-like genetics. Of particular interest to her was Sicily, the other mutant with snake hair, who had confronted her earlier before they had started. Her physicality seemed good, and the spring-like launches for the two jumping assessments were more or less what she expected, but her ground speed was fairly impressive.

Karin had gone over to the starting area to get some water for herself while waiting, but grabbed a second bottle after that showing and walked over to where Sicily had been temporarily sprawled out on the ground in exhaustion. “No such thing as overdoing it, remember?” Karin remarked, holding out the bottle of water with one hand.

There was no further explanation or comment, just another furtive smile as the pink-haired girl returned her attention to the other students. Some of these didn’t seem to have quirks that were able to assist them here, at least from what it looked like. Two of them looked to be in pretty decent physical shape, while the other appeared more pedestrian but still gave a good effort. Perhaps the other tests would give them a better chance to shine?

Shizo watched as the final results came in, Kachiya did ok for herself despite her anxiety. It was clear she wasn't in as great shape as some of the class but for a regular person she hardly did terrible. Yoichi meanwhile had edged him out in all three categories... which was to be expected really. She was lighter and more nimble than he was and had gone through similarly grueling training. With neither of them using their quirks to enhance themselves those results were within expectations.

Speaking of not using quirks though, Yoichi seemed to be angry at him for not using his? He wasn't even upset she was berating him, more confused than anything.

"My quirk doesn't enhance my body. It's got a lot of destructive power... but my quirk doesn't help me jump or run." Shizo said "all my physical training is to help my body handle my quirk better. Honestly I'm not even sure how I'd even attempt to use my quirk to enhance my body... I'm open to suggestions of things I could try if you have them."

Shizo glanced over to Yoichi, her expression and body language was a bit odd to him. It wasn't as... hostile as the other times she'd yelled at him? Was this her trying to be encouraging? He was going to choose to believe that. He was open to advice too, he wasn't arrogant enough to believe he knew everything or had no room to improve or learn. If he already knew everything about his quirk and all, he wouldn't need 3 years of classes to learn to use it better.

"I am giving it my all though. Despite the stuff I said in our first class, I'm plenty serious about doing well here. It just took the incident last week to really light a fire under my ass and get me back in gear" Shizo said, it was no secret that he'd recently had a run in with a villain, it had caused him to miss a day of classes while he recovered from the fight. He'd come back wrapped in bandages too. Since then he'd been more motivated than before, despite not yet having a clear vision for his end goal just yet.

Looking up to Karin, Sicily uttered a small chuckle and a smirk. No such thing as overdoing it. She snatched the bottle readily and popped the cap. She downed a good portion of it before exhaling and sticking up her nose. "I guess you do have a point." She exhaled irritably at the remark but also thoughtfully looked to Karin with something she didn't always give to people. Understanding. Why understanding? She wasn't sure. They didn't put her down or rub that did better in her face. They did their best, same as she. That was all she asked for. That was probably her best and she didn't feel insulted. They did their best as much as their Quirks would allow.

Then she looked to the others and expected a bit more from a few but some were bound by their limits. That one Yoichi certainly was lacking for all her bite but perhaps her Quirk was suited for agility. 

Kachiya put a small smile on her face. Seeing someone like her try just gave Sicily a sense of hope. So earnest. Like someone she knew.

Yann's results seemed to catch the attention more of her snakes than she herself who expected those kinds of results. Why the snakes followed his movements so intently remained questionable...

Koito's results were...to be expected. His quirk had alot of usage in these kinds of tests.

The same could be said for Karin whose Quirk seemed to be made for agility in particular. 

Shizo perplexed her to some degree but his explanation for his Quirk usage made a bit of sense to her ears. But she hoped to see some improvement or at least some better results in the next tests.

She had no words to personally give any of them besides Karin who she already said something to...and Kachiya whom she just simply gave a nod to and nothing else.

Yoichi felt more in her element in this test. She struck the sit ups hard, focusing everything into pushing herself to her very limit. She stopped at 168, flopping backwards with a grunt of exhaustion. Taking a few moments to catch her breath, she flipped onto her front and powered into the next.

Yoichi's press-up game was on point, her years of intense training into her upper body strength meaning she hit 196 before collapsing, a panting sweaty mess. She might not have all the help of a quirk, but like the previous assessments, Yoichi had been doing these day-in and day-out since she gained her own quirk. As soon as her mother saw her potential to be moulded into the best Hero of her generation.

The strength grip was something she had thought about since the start. Perhaps... her quirk did have an advantage here. She braided a few strands into a rope-like braid, then knotted it it around the pressure grip in a classic constrictor knot. Yoichi placed the grip on the floor, stepping heavily on it, then took the other end of her hair in one hand, and...

Yoichi's hair was a quirk in itself, but until today she had just used it to craft arrows, as per her mother's training. For years, she had pondered other uses, only to have them shot down and stamped out. Your hair is only good for arrows! But what if...

Her hair, stronger than your average person, tightened. The knot constricted, and the pressure rose. Yoichi winced, bit kept going, feeling her hair reaching its breaking point... then removing it from the roots with a swift motion.

"898.3!"

She smiled to herself. Another step towards being her own kind of hero, and wielding this quirk how she wanted to!

The block break was the last test. Yoichi found herself thinking of Koito, to her disgust. He had tried a wild move with his quirk.. and his words the other day made her think. Ever tried braiding your hair?

She took several steps back, and twisted her hair again. This time she removed it earlier, coming away with what looked like a streamline drill, an arrow with a corkscrew head. Yoichi brought out her longbow with a snap, aimed it at the centre of the block, and... released!

The arrows thundered through the air, rotating viciously as it went. It hit the concrete block and went right through, then through the robot behind, and finishing several inches into the wall a few dozen feet behind. There was no "Cleared" from the robot, which had collapsed after being expertly skewered right through.

Yoichi breathed out, bowed to Doctor Brine and returned to the others. She made eye contact with Shizo as she passed.

"Think outside the box."

Yoichi stood next to Kachiya again, turning her head to her.

"I didn't say before, but... don't let the first round get to you. You'll do well this time. Hey, did you realise that the robot holding the block has a glass eye? It's reflective enough that I could watch myself prepare for the test."

She turned back to watch the next student step up, a small smile on her lips as she did so.

The rabbit giggled slightly as Yoichi sought to channel this indignation into a motivation, though he shrunk a bit as she demanded her space back, stepping back and quietly closing and putting away his comb with both hands.

Yann understood the academic necesity of these tests, but it seemed rude to just put up as a scoreboard that implied winners or losers. It also didn't help that he more or less was going to bottom at least two of these tests, it was fine, probably, it wasn't like they were going to send the rabbit home for having a rabbit's strength, even if the tree-climbing analogy was starting to look more and more real as Doctor (Nurse(?)) Brine added a rather exotic test just because. Koito made a swift recovery, and kind of trivialized the rules for a moment, before resuming to stare down the concrete block and conjure some sort of physics defying contraption in the palm of his hand. As the block was obliterated into shreds, Yann inched to the right, lowered his head, and covered his eyes with his ears as the bulk of the debris whizzed past him, prompting him to sigh as he retreived his comb to clean his ears again. Yoichi looked like she had the motions down to a science, despite clearly being worn at the end of it, and wielded her hair with both might and precision, the school's budget must be extensive for them to put these robots into harm's way so easily. When Yann watched the sparks fly from Shizo's hand, he slowly went for his comb as he blankly stared at the destructive attack, but it had the decency to destroy the cube in one direction as opposed to every one. Welp, he was next, Yann put his comb away and moved in.

Sit ups were a hindrance, less so in that they were particularly taxing to him, but the shape of his (hind?)legs meant he couldn't plant his feet as firmly from the position that was required of an excercise designed for the greater denominator, causing him to struggle to keep himself grounded more than what he did with pulling himself up, which is why the rabbit wasn't tired by the time the clock ticked out, just frustrated as the machine proctors refused to count some of his sit ups for a minor slip. Push ups were the opposite, for the same reason. The motion was more or less a bend or so away from his usual natural sprint, and he moved up and down with such ease that he weaved some hop claps in as he upped the speed, he felt more refreshed than he was weary. It was, unfortunately, only getting worse from here.

Yann took the test device that was definitely not fit for his hand, whining as he looked upwards. He faced away from all his classmates and huddled down, it had some give to it, so hidding away from everyone's gaze, he put it in his teeth and chewed down until the bells in his head told him to stop for his own sake. It was unsightly and it sored him ever so slightly, but it for sure gave him a somewhat reasonable looking score, and if he talked any funny for this stint he could just shrug it off as his accent. The concrete block dwarved him even more. Even considering the fleeting distant thought of making an earnest attempt at punching the block caused every alarm in his body to quake in terror. Yann harrumphed with a disinterested squint, sitting down in front of the slab, hopping towards it to bounce off of it with another hop, then retreating back to sitting in front of the benches as the robot announced "No Result!" with inversely proportional enthusiasm.

Karin narrowed her eyes as she mapped out her plan for this section. It seemed like the sit-up and push-up assessments were pure endurance tests, which struck her as odd, inefficient, and in poor organization to have such things in the middle of the list of activities, with more still to come. Endurance testing was typically done on separate days from other athletic exams to retain the maximum strength of the testers, but here it seemed they were going to get them all done regardless. The other two tests for this section... well, she'd let her results speak for themselves.

Sit-ups were first, so she prepared a comfortable spot to lie down on, assuming a proper form with knees angled appropriately. Rather than speed, control was the name of the game here. With years of training and experience in a military setting, simple exercises like these were not only expected, but a relief. The goal, however, was to exhaust her stamina as efficiently and completely as possible. Rushing would do no good here. Breathing in and out at a constant, steady pace of 120bpm, she would synchronize her breathing with her movement for as long as her body would allow her to. In, out. In, out. Up, down. Up, down. Karin's steadiness and almost robotic efficiency and timing mimicked that of a windshield wiper as she cranked out one per second, unceasingly, unerring. Yet, at a certain point, Karin suddenly transitioned to a slower tempo to compensate for her dwindling stamina, allowing her to retain her form and tempo even through her tiredness. Several more minutes passed, and sweat was visible as the girl's expression was the definition of concentration, but when her strength was about to expire, Karin made a final push and was able to eke out about a dozen more before falling still on the ground, save for the rising and falling of her chest. She turned her head to the robot who had been waiting in attendance, eyes expectantly awaiting her answer. It had seemed mesmerized by her metronome-like motion, but quickly exclaimed "341!" at suddenly being the focus of the girl's attention.

Peeling herself off the ground, Karin returned to the starting area to drink some water and rest up for a while before beginning her push-up assessment. This would be performed in a similar manner, where Karin's breathing would provide a steady beat to synchronize her motions to. She was capable of doing a great number of these on her own, aided by an unlikely trait on top of her extensive training: Karin actually weighed less than 100 lbs. The act of pushing herself up would not be very straining compared to her disproportionate physical strength. But, like with the sit-ups, she began her assessment with a machine-like cadence of one repetition per second, for minutes on end. Compared to the sit-ups though, a full repetition of a push-up requiring proper form and angles was more physically demanding, so her transition to a slower tempo to adjust for her draining stamina came sooner than the previous test. It would not do to slow down gradually, any sign of breaking or weakness could cause the body to relent further, so it was important for her to stick to the tempo she had set. After collapsing onto the ground, the robot declared her score of "312!"

Again, rehydration and a break to give her time to herself to breathe and recover. The next two assessments did not require any endurance though, so Karin was ready for the grip test in short order. However, by this time, most of the students had already finished all of their tests, so she had to just wrap it up here. Of all ten subject areas, this would be her strongest. The nature of Karin's quirk in that her Wind Shroud served as an extended replica of her own body allowed her to put the full power of her quirk into this test, rather than trying to makeshift its force like with her dashes or jumps. She walked up to the grip test assessment, stopping several meters short of it, and made a motion to pick it up. Her hand was empty, of course, as the testing device hovered in the air, held by an invisible force. Karin pondered its composition for a few moments before nodding to herself and smiling. "Right, here we go." Immediately, the smile vanished from her face as her eyes took on a cold, dead stare that could pierce through the hearts of anyone caught in it. Those sensitive to emotions and any of the assessment proctors with field experience would suddenly feel a massively oppressive wave of killing intent surge from the pink-haired girl. This task was as simple as crushing the head of her assassination target like a ripe tomato. The force applied was no different. Abruptly tightening her outstretched hand into a closed fist, the testing device crumpled into an indistinguishable piece of metal about the size of a mangled coin. She didn't have any object in her own hand, the pressurized air would not feel the difference either. Grinding her fingers back and forth for good measure, when Karin let go, the debris of what used to be the testing device scattered in the light breeze as it fell to the ground. Still with an expression void of emotion, Karin's gaze settled on the attendant robot, which froze for a moment out of fear before stammering a confused "...Destroyed?"

Making her way over to the cement block, Karin's head tilted backwards to take in its size. It was quite impressive, but fortunately, it was just shy of the expansion width of her quirk, so she'd be able to strike the entire surface of the block in one go without missing a part of it. Giving the test some thought, however, a punch or kick was probably not the ideal method of breaking, as it would provide some room for the rear side of the block to break in less complete destruction than she would have preferred. So, striking simultaneously from both sides would probably be the way to go here. There was a certain sumo technique called 'nekodamashi', wherein the wrestler would suddenly reach out in front of himself and clap his hands together. On its own, it was a distraction tactic used to break the opponent's concentration, rather than being an actual attack. But here, Karin's wind shroud could use it to crush the cement block from both sides at once. Preparing her quirk, she allowed her enveloped arms to expand to its full size. Then, she began to cycle the air within the shroud, causing it to rapidly circulate with a heavy gyroscopic rotation. Ordinarily, Karin used this technique in combination with a strong punch or kick to blow away opponents, but instead, it would allow her to completely grind away the cement block. Swinging her outstretched arms together, the sound of her clap would hardly be audible over the sudden erosion of the large cement block from both the left and right. In an instant, there was nothing but a mess of tiny rubble on the ground. "Clean break!" Dispelling her shroud, Karin walked up to where the cement block used to be, crouching down to pick up a small piece. It almost looked like a spill of chocolate chips, if chocolate was gray. Karin smiled to herself with a small little "Hmhm~!" of satisfaction as she returned to the starting area to sit down.