Assesments are just Shorter Deadlines

Honestly, Hans should've known better than to hope for anything but races in UA's curriculum. First, there was the recommendation exam. Now? There was this… obvious track field that he was standing in.

He looked down at his uniform. His legs were a gigantic, walking 'A' that was dwarfed by the other uniforms cleverly showing the letters 'U' and 'A' in an effort to promote school spirit.

"These uniforms are… kind of ugly." he muttered, looking down at the logo. "It's like I'm a walking billboard. Did they seriously just make us wear the school name?"

"What do you mean school name?" Kaminari said, raising an eyebrow at Hans. Then, he looked down at his own uniform.

"Oh. UA. I get it now."

"Stop fawning over your uniforms and get on with our exercise." Aizawa droned on, "This is the hero course."

"Yes. We know. We all found the classroom." Hans said dryly, looking at the irritatingly apathetic teacher. The cold glare that Aizawa had was making Hans slightly jealous, to be perfectly honest.

But it wasn't a totally cold glare. In his eyes were still a tiny hint of fear. There was a tiny hint of joy, too, along with a hint of sadness.

Hans narrowed his eyes, then smirked. He had almost gotten down Aizawa's backstory.

"Do you think that your attitude is really fitting for the hero course?" Aizawa said. "As sidekicks and in the hero industry, you will have to follow those superior to you in order to better assist in arrests. It's irrational to-"

At this point, Hans had toned out the conversation. As Aizawa rambled on about whatever irrationality this… pro hero was talking about… He realized one thing.

Aizawa was only being this harsh to scare people off of the hero track. There were very little second year UA students because of said scare tactic. The vague statements about practicality and the rush for preparation meant that because of his own lack of strength or preparation, it had cost Aizawa something.

As Bakugo threw the ball with a violent exclamation, Hans looked at the "impressive" score of seven hundred meters in "shock".

While he couldn't do that even as a servant, even the Phantom of the Opera could do something more impressive. That something was nothing related to physical ability (and, instead, was the ability to charm a female servant with a mismatched deck and 2 star servant stats), but still…

The resulting jubilation about finally being able to cut loose, however, made Hans a little more concerned, though he wasn't that afraid of it. In many a times of him initially going onto the streets and roasting those who stood above him (literally), he had been faced with several violent threats by either surly heteromorphs or egomaniacs with slightly more impressive quirks.

Them going "all out" wasn't exactly terrifying or particularly dangerous, in comparison to all the mobs he fought in Chaldea.

"The person that places last on this exam… Would be expelled."

Oh, great. And he had just paid the tuition to this school, too. Hans sighed. Why did hypocrites have to follow him everywhere he went?

Thus, as they all gathered in order to participate in- you guessed it- a short distance sprint, Hans looked at all the other hero students giving it their all, looked up at the sweltering sun, and sighed.

The mock gun fired.

As Tokoyami, the person who sat besides Hans, ran for it without using his sentient quirk, Hans decided to walk deliberately slowly across the track.

The whole class stared nervously at the diminutive child casually stroll across the tracks that they had so fervently ran across.

"Student number seventeen." Aizawa said, glaring at Hans. "What was that?"

"I was completing the test." Hans said, looking at Aizawa, still standing in the middle of the track.

"You think this is a joke, you little shit?" Bakugo roared, his hands crackling like firecrackers. As other students backed away, Hans sat down and looked straight at Bakugo.

"I'm last in this test anyways." Hans said, smirking. "Also, rationally…"

Aizawa glared at Hans, who stared back into Aizawa's silently fuming eyes before returning to his rant.

"...If I'm already going to be placed last on this test, why would I still try to waste my effort on this dash?"

"It's fifty fucking meters. If your weak ass can't run fifty fucking meters, then you might as well get out, extra."

"There you go again. Flaunting your physical and genetic superiority over us hereditary peasants." Hans said. "If you weren't born with that fancy explosion quirk, where would you be now?"

"Much better than your useless ass, even with your two-bit quirk." Bakugo said, scoffing. "Now stop fucking wasting time and move on!"

"Why should I?"

"Anderson. Move on with the race, or you're expelled." Aizawa said. The class immediately began to murmur once more.

"Fine, fine." Hans said. "Damn races… You all don't have any patience at all, do you?"

As Hans finally walked past the finish line, the little timer chirped out his score. "Sixty two seconds."

"Was I the slowest examinee in history for this test?" Hans said, turning around to ask Aizawa, who just ignored him. "Fine, then. Don't answer."

…

Next, was the grip strength test.

Hans looked at Thumbelina's gigantic hand, which could not get a good grip on the narrow bar.

"Well, this was an oversight." He said, sighing.

The machine was promptly crushed, with Thumbelina bending the bar in half.

"Damn problem child…" Aizawa muttered.

"Didn't you just go on a tirade about why hero school resources should be conserved?" Yaoyorozu said, twisting the vice in her grip to better clamp down on the bar.

"Didn't you just mention how cheap this equipment was?" Hans said in response.

Yaoyorozu staggered like she was hurt physically.

"That's right." she said, her voice hollow. "I did say that."

…

Hans slid over an ice covering of the sand pit. The Ice queen drew some eyeballs and raised brows as she popped out of Hans's mind and froze the pit absentmindedly.

Aizawa looked at the frozen ice pit, eyebrows twitching..

"Can anybody defrost this?"

Todoroki looked at the pit of ice, then at his left side, and said nothing.

…

Hans firmly stood in place during the repeated side steps.

"Score: Zero!" a camera chirped cheerfully.

"Anderson, stop being irrational." Aizawa growled. "This is a test meant to bring out your best, and to establish parameters for your training as a H-"

Anderson stepped once to the left, then once to the right.

Aizawa sighed and tallied down a one on his scoresheet.

…

Dark Shadow hurled the ball forwards, the long, whiplike bird creature sending the sphere far into the distance. Hans had to adjust his slightly sweaty glasses to see where the ball landed.

"Two hundred and fifty meters!" the annoying scorekeeper robot said.

"Alright, Hans. You're up."

Hans walked into the chalk circle. He looked up at the cloud passing the sun. Shade cascaded down from the heavens as sunlight retreated, leaving a bit of coldness in its wake.

Hans decided that… It was a good time for a nap. After all, they had stood in the sun for about five minutes, waiting for Uraraka's ball to come down from her score of infinity, so they could afford to wait for this cloud to float by.

Looking at the baseball, Hans sighed, put down the ball, and withdrew… another fairytale from his head. In his outstretched palms were several ducklings. They quacked and bickered with each other upon their summoning, some pecking their neighbors while others screeched loudly. Amongst them was a very, very ugly duckling. It was a pale gray, and its feathers were rather wrinkled.

Hans cleared his throat to address the baby animals, and they all ceased their random activities to stare their beady little eyes into Hans's eyes.

Hans placed the ducklings on the ground. The slightly larger-than-normal ducks looked at Hans, and then the ball.

"Carry this as far as you can go."

The ducks collectively nodded as many in the crowd of students looked at the animals with a confused expression on their face.

The slightly less uglier ducklings pushed the ball onto the pale gray duckling's back, before the group of animals began to waddle forwards slowly. The rather heavy ball was taking a toll on the creatures, but they were growing larger by the second.

As Hans lay down on the dirt and watched his small army of animals waddle forth, he thought that there might be a quirk introducing blurb playing if this were a shounen anime.

…'

Aizawa tapped his foot and looked at the small child that was peacefully sleeping in the shade of a rather long cloud passing overhead. His hero class had all sat down, and began to converse with one another. One slightly turtle-like student had even called over some birds and was chirping quietly to them.

Bakugo, however, stood and glared at the blue haired child, while the other problem child in his class, Midoriya, was still a nervous wreck, pacing and muttering about his results.

The blue-haired child sat at a rather below average sixteen out of twenty on the placements, but this test was about to raise that score. Aizawa looked at the slowly rising numbers as the ducks (why did it have to be ducks, of all things?) waddled forwards to the other end of the field.

Yawning underneath his bandages, Aizawa considered sitting down as well, but decided against it. He still had his image as a teacher to maintain.

Aizawa, instead, decided to try to analyze the student that was Hans Christian Anderson, an incredibly cynical student with an ironic quirk that didn't coincide with his personality at all: one about fairy tales.

That was, possibly, a summon of the Ugly Duckling that carried the ball away. Not to mention the other summons from before.

Was this some sort of allegory? Some sort of statement that he was trying to make? Why were the summons only from fairy tales?

For a moment, Aizawa pondered this fact. He had seen the gigantic hand that appeared during the grip strength test, and had seen its power. Why would Anderson summon such a mundane group of ducks instead of a… more efficient method? He knew that Anderson was anything but irrational, holding the most realistic view of heroism out of the whole class.

…Was he trying to make a statement?

His mind shot back to Shirakumo, and his constant regrets about his own inability to jump in and do something about that gigantic villain. If only he had acted earlier…

But Shirakumo is dead now. And it was all because of his incompetence.

But this kid. Had the audacity… to suggest that they could relax in the hero course?

Does he want to die? Like all the others?

Aizawa's stalwart expression did not falter, but his emotions were twisting like a raging storm.

…

Hans opened his eyes, noting with slight irritation the sweat that was slowly sliding down his forehead. After a bit of deliberation between getting up or continuing to pretend to sleep just to irritate wannabe heroes, he got up.

It wouldn't do to antagonize everybody.

He yawned and ruffled his hair, surveying the class. One blonde looked seething mad. Another one was smiling like he had told a good joke. Tokoyami was brooding cheerfully, while Yaoyorozu was still glaring at him, her eyes telling him that she was no doubt thinking about some sort of socioeconomic theory to continue to argue with him.

Looking at Yaoyorozu and Bakugo, he gave a smug smirk. The best he could manage. Predictably, it pissed them off. Then, he turned to the teacher.

"What was my score?"

"...Still undetermined." Aizawa muttered blandly, though with a flatness born of habit, not of boredom. "How long can your ducks exist for?"

"Theoretically?"

"Yes."

"About fifteen years, which is the average lifespan for a duck. Then, they'll create the next generation and the ball will continue to be carried forward.

"...So does your quirk just create ducks?" the green haired kid constantly having a panic attack asked.

"They're still fake ducks. They just act like real ducks."

"Then what's the difference? Can you still feel them draining your energy? How do your summons work, by the way? Is there a quota?"

Hans felt a bit of irritation well up inside him. Did the kid have any social awareness? Hans was well aware that he just pissed off half the class, but to be perfectly honest, he was well aware of the consequences of doing so.

That kid just didn't have a filter.

Somebody, though, did the yelling for him.

"Shut the fuck up, Deku!"

…That gratitude was immediately erased when he realized that it was Bakugo who shouted that.

"Bakugo, back off. Midoriya, it's your turn to throw the ball."

The perfectly normal kid walked up to the ballpit… and threw the ball normally. Hans raised an eyebrow. He felt like he was missing a narratively important moment, and it did not stick well with him as an author.

"But my quirk… I was using it."

"You fucking idiots! Deku doesn't have a quirk! He must have cheated in the entrance exam, because there's no way he actually got in." Bakugo said, crossing his arms and smirking.

"Are you not aware of what he accomplished in the entrance exam?"

As Aizawa mumbled to Midoriya, Hans came to a sinking realization.

Non-standard hair color…

The boy looked at the distance with a steely expression…

Almost unrelenting determination…

Then, Midoriya wound back his arm, twisted his body… and threw. A sonic boom emanated throughout the track field, blowing Hans back into the examinee behind him. Regaining his footing after a hand helped him up, he collapsed to his knees.

"And uncontrollable power at the start of the series." Hans mumbled out loud.

Oh fuck. Hans really was in a shounen anime. And the protagonist was useless.

Hans foresaw a couple of power buffs to the protagonist in the future. Still, as a side character in this newly established shounen genre, he faced an even greater challenge:

Surviving.

…

At the finish line of the long distance run, Bakugo looked back at the pathetic extras still struggling to finish the race.

He wasn't alone at the finish line, though.

Ponytail had pulled a fucking scooter out of her stomach and finished the race before him, and Four-Eyes had a shitty speed quirk. Bakugo looked down at his slightly shaking hands, tired from making all the explosions to change directions rapidly in the curved track. Despite what excuses he could make in his mind, he was still pissed off.

Meanwhile, he looked at that blue haired little shit that was walking down the race track… and paused.

That little shit HAD made it past a hero test. It was probably his weird fucking quirk about storybook characters or some shit that let him pass, but…

"If you weren't born with that fancy explosion quirk, where would you be now?"

Instead of being given a stupid ass weak body like that blue haired kid, Bakugo had always been stronger and faster than the other kids. His bones were even tougher, and his skin was more resistant to fire.

(What if he was like Deku… and didn't get his quirk at four? Would he still be here? What if Deku got his explosion quirk instead? Would he be more useful?)

That kid, though… Bakugo narrowed his eyes, and looked. Even though there was no fire in this test, the kid's arms were patched with angry red spots that were probably burns. He had seen a lot of those in his… very misguided youth.

"What the fuck…" Bakugo muttered. "Is wrong with this kid?"

Across different dimensions and even inside a computer, several nuns, summoners, and storybook incarnates simultaneously sneezed.

…

Hans ended up thirteenth in the rankings. Even if he was dead last in a couple of tests, he did manage to get optimal results in most of the other tests. Ball throw? Infinite. Grip strength? Machine was destroyed. Long jump? He walked past the sand pit. Seated toe touch and situps were pretty easy as well, with many of his humanoid summons assisting him.

Sadly, however, there was still the matter of expulsions. Midoriya quivered in his boots at his last place result, but Hans knew that they probably weren't going to expel the protagonist.

"Nobody will be expelled." Aizawa said dully. "It was a rational deception to draw out the upper limits of your quirks."

Hans smirked at the expressions of his classmates and Yaoyorozu's self assured expression. If only they knew that there were only ten second year students that remained in Aizawa's class last year.

Hans began to walk off of the accursed track fields. His legs were sore from walking the whole length of the long distance run, and he regretted his choices made in petty spite.

This whole world was hypocritical, including him. Why didn't he just lie down and get expelled, if he was so against the system of heroics?

Sadly, he already knew the answer. Because his own pettiness just couldn't resist.

…

A week ago…

…

Walking out onto the rooftop of his apartment complex in a loose ensemble of red and black gear, all the while carrying a large, black bow, weird sword-like arrows, and two curved swords, Spinner grinned. Overall, he looked like an anime cosplayer reject.

It had only been a week since he had been recommended the Fate series. And ever since he had been told to read the story from a 4chan message chain arguing about Stain's ideals, he had never put down the computer until he finished it.

"A true hero saves everybody…" Spinner said, smiling. "Even the villains… Hans Christian Anderson, honored author, you are truly wise. You have opened my eyes to a new tru-"

Then, out of nowhere, a movie poster attacked him. The last thing he saw was a demonic drawing of the little mermaid pouncing on him, opening its jaws within the picture frame, and putting down on his face.

That night, Spinner nursed several bite marks on his reptilian skin. Going out to do a true hero's work would have to wait a couple of hours.

Inside a plastic bag, the demonic movie poster thrashed.