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Gambler Chapter 13: Apprehensive
🕑 Added 2025-08-17 16:32:13 +0000 UTCThe Gambler's Guide to Heroism
Chapter 13: Apprehensive
~Hakari Kotaro~
The courtyard was filled with a tense silence as Aizawa's cold gaze regarded everyone before he pulled out a phone. Showing off a list that was too far away to read.
"Up until now, you all have been subjected to basic fitness tests without getting to use your quirks; it's not rational. This time, you all will perform the same tests with your quirks."
Then he turned and singled me out from the crowd.
"Hakari, you ranked first on the Practical Exam. In Junior High, what was your maximum softball throw?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"No idea, don't remember it."
Aizawa let out an exhale of frustration before tossing the softball over to me.
"Damn problem child. Whatever, take this ball and go stand in that circle and do it with your quirk this time. You can do anything you want as long as you stay in the circle."
Taking the ball from his hands, I moved to the circle while tuning out the peanut gallery muttering things like "So he is the number one" or "I wonder what he is going to score".
I was actually pretty happy that this whole event stayed the same and didn't get remixed. Because I made liberal use of Meta Abuse and trained these events specifically for the past few days.
"Spectral Claw."
My spectral claw expanded, forming a large crushing purple arm. But that was not all.
"Bikaku."
My Bikaku expanded from my coccyx, drawing shocked gasps and an eyebrow raised from Aizawa. But I did not care as my Bikaku stretched and wrapped around my Spectral Claw like a snake. Adding both of their strengths together, it was a bit awkward to use, but I had enough practice with it to at least throw a ball far with it.
I passed the ball to my new giga arm and got into a pitcher's stance before fully sending it with all of my strength, launching the ball across a large distance with the scary sound of it cutting through the wind.
Aizawa nodded and showed the number on the screen to everyone present.
"Know your own maximum first. That is the most rational way to build up the foundation to become a hero."
"Woah! 412!?" "That's insane." "I could have done better."
I returned to the flock; that performance was not really my proudest moment, I'll admit. If I had been given a larger range of motion, I could have used the Bikaku like a whip to launch it. As my quirks dispelled a girl piped up with an excited voice.
"We get to use our quirk? This is gonna be so much fun!" "UA really is something else, isn't it?" Mina and lightning boy said one after the other, gaining the attention, and from what it looked like, the ire, of our beloved homeless man.
""It looks fun,"huh?"
Aizawa said in a challenging tone, making the two shrink.
"You all only have 3 years to become a hero, and that is the attitude you choose to have? Will you have that same attitude for all the years."
Aizawa wore a straight-up sadistic grin that made me frown.
"Fine then, whoever scores the lowest total out of all the tests will be judged to have no potential and expelled from the school immediately."
Naturally, his statement was met with a lot of complaints.
"How can you do that!?" "That's so unfair!" "Isn't being expelled too much?"
But all of those complaints were stopped when he levelled a stony glare at everyone.
"The principal gave me the authority to expel those I see as unfit due to my special position. You may think it's unfair, but so is life; villains and natural disasters are unfair. If you came here expecting to hang out with friends and go to cafes daily, you are out of luck. UA will do its best to throw hardship your way every step of the way. If you cannot understand even that, then you are not rational enough for this."
He stared at each and every student present, making all but a few flinch.
"If you cannot even pass this test, then you never had a future here in the first place. Now go ahead and struggle with all you have."
I quietly groaned at the screwed up logic of the man. He acted like he was training soldiers when he was training Heroes. His experience is too far off from the norm to be a good teacher for people aiming to be the average hero. His trauma from his friend getting squished dyed his judgment too much.
Maybe my real thoughts were reflected in my face too much as Aizawa called me out.
"What's with that look Hakari, do you have a problem with my methods?"
"Yeah, I do, actually. For being so gung ho aboutrationalthis andrationalthat, your criteria is pretty irrational, teach."
I stepped forward as people gasped, which was about the expected reaction, in Japan you really aren't expected to challenge your teacher on matters like this. But I was never one for expectations. Aizawa calmly raised his eyebrows and asked in a stale tone.
"And what's so irrational about my test, Hakari?"
"Because it's blatantly favoring Enhancer-type quirks. So otherwise perfectly good students and future heroes would get eliminated because their quirk did not make them stronger."
"Then they should make clever uses of their abilities. If they can't even do that then they deserve to stand here."
I furrowed my brows, he was really getting on my nerves, but I steeled myself. I was used to dealing with irrational dickheads being my superiors.
"Right, but what about those who physically can't?" I pointed to invisible girl who flinched. "How is she supposed to use her quirk cleverly in this exam? Besides, aren't there plenty of heroes who became heroes with strictly impossible-to-use quirks here? Miss Joke? Midnight? Ragdoll? and you Sensei? Or are you saying that they wouldn't pass as heroes by your criteria as well? That doesn't sound veryrationalto me."
I know he hated people having fun because his friend, who actually had fun in life, got turned into chunky salsa, but he had no right being this much of an asshole about it.
Plenty of my friends died in front of me, yet I was fine.
A tense silence passed, the tension palpable in the air, but instead of a rebuke Aizawa sighed lightly.
"Nosy brat, I was not going to actually expel anyone on the first day. This was meant to be a logical ruse in order to get everyone the best they possibly can."
Yeah sure, buddy, like you wouldn't have really expelled someone like Deku if they actually came in last place. Aizawa only didn't expel Deku in the anime was because he showed potential; if it were someone like Invisible Girl or Animal Talking Boy, he would have expelled them without a single tear shed.
"Sure, good luck coming up with a more logical one next time."
Aizawa's eye twitched because of my statement but he swallowed his frustration and declared.
"Alright, change of plans. I will be watching each and every one of your exams closely. If I see any of you giving anything less than your best, you will be penalized or expelled. This test will reflect on your grades. And
Hakari, if you interrupt class one more, you will be penalized."
I shrugged my shoulders. Whatever lets him sleep at night despite calling me out first.
As I waited in my position and waited for my turn while Aizawa made people do a 50-meter dash as the first test, someone walked up to me. Or more like their clothes did. A floating set of UA Gym Uniform walked up over to me with an excited posture that made her rather voluptuous chest move rather nicely. And I noticed that I could actually see her pink bra straps from her neck hole from this position.
"Thank yousoomuch, Hakari-kun, I thought this was going to be my end! I could never dream of standing up to Sensei like that! How did you do it?"
A bubbly and cheery voice came from the invisible girl. Seeing as I had nothing else to do, I replied to her.
"It was nothin' much really. I just didn't want my classmates to suffer from such an unfair exam. You are welcome...?" I trailed off, gesturing to her get her name as she noticed what I was implying.
"Wow, that is so cool of you, Hakari-kun. I'm Tooru Hagakure, let's get along!"
I nodded and gave a slight smile.
"Likewise, now then. It should be my turn, good luck, Hagakure-chan."
I got into position next to 2 other people, the tall engine boy and the frog girl Tsuyu, as my Bikaku came out again. Having already practiced this activity before at the gym, I knew what to do.
My Bikaku coiled into a spring behind me, the powerful tail ready to launch me like a rocket any time. Comparatively, 50 meters was a rather small distance that I could cover with a single bound thanks to my Bikaku. I was confident I was faster than anyone at this distance. Mostly due to the warming up the engine boy needed to reach higher gears. My speed was not able to stay constant.
"...3...2...1...Start!"
The small robot next to us said in a nasally tone of voice despite being a robot and I shot forward with both of my legs and Bikaku pushing me forward, reaching great speeds and halfway through the air I had my tail pierce the ground in front of the finish line to pull me forward allowing me to grab the first place quite easily.
"Beep! 2.52 seconds!"
And then Engine Boy sprinted through the line.
"Beep! 3.03 seconds!"
And shortly after, the frog girl hopped through with surprising speed.
"Beep! 5.55 seconds!"
"As expected of the first place! I did not expect that I would be beaten in the 50-meter sprint, too! I'll have to work harder!"
Ida shout-whispered to himself while Frog Girl gave him a look before giving me a short nod that I returned. We briefly chatted as we returned to the pack and the next exercise started.
--Grip Strength--
"Dude! That is insane! That tail is stronger than it looks, huh? So manly!"
A small crowd gathered as I used my Bikaku to coil around the grip testing machine and squeezed it like an anaconda. And considering just how strong my Bikaku was compared to the average anaconda...
...The thing showed around 12 tons of force, enough to literally turn someone into a crushed tube of toothpaste.
I was decidedly first place, Momo scored second by creating a hand-operated press, clocking in 1,8 tons, while the multi-arm guy squeezed 540kg.
And Kirishima, the guy with spiky red hair who just commented on my grip, scored a scary 122kgwithouta strength-enhancing quirk.
Next was...
--Repeated Side Steps--
None of my abilities were especially useful for this, except for Bikaku helping root me to the ground. I still had some sort of help, though, which made me score 3rd, behind Bakugou and Grape Head. Bakugou scored second with his explosive sidesteps, while Graper bounced between his balls like a ping pong ball.
--Ball Throw--
I sat this one out and got to watch several people demolish my score. Bakugou sending the ball flying with a massive explosion, Momo sending it with a canon, Todoroki slamming the ball with an iceberg, and Deku using one finger smash just like in canon.
And lastly Ochako scoring infinity with her ball, which was frankly insane. Despite having no gravity, the ball should have still been affected by friction, but I couldn't exactly place blame for her quirk fudging physics when my ability bent physics over the table and forced it to call it daddy.
So it ended with me ranking a frustrating sixth place behind everyone I just mentioned. The upcoming tests, however, were a different ballpark.
--Standing Long Jump--
I obviously cleared the sandbox with Bikaku, but so many people did that it really did not seem impressive.
--Long Distance Run--
I performed pretty damn well in this one. I had slotted in Candy Paramecia in place of Bikaku and formed hard candy spider legs that I used to scuttle forward as fast as I could, outpacing others like Mina who despite
being pretty fast with her acid got slower faster compared to me who basically did not run out of stamina.
I scored 5th, behind Ida scoring first with his car speed, Bakugou with his explosion flight, Todoroki using ice slide and Momo creating a whole motorcycle.
Now the next ups were I shone.
--Seated Toe Touch--
I scored first.
Spectral Claws still count as my arms and can extend from my body; there really was no contest there.
--Push Ups--
Icrushedeveryone to the point where it was not even funny.
Do you know what my limit is on push-ups with boundless stamina? It is when my arms start giving up on me due to damage. Aizawa had to cut the test short when I started reaching high hundreds, and told him I could comfortably reach low thousands. Which seemed to earn me the respect of the red-haired boy even more.
And to my delight, I saw some of the girls giving some appreciative looks at my body as I did my push-ups. I knew I was a good-looking guy; how else do you think I scored all those girls?
The only one who came 2nd compared to me was Shoto, who built up a decent endurance thanks to severe abuse.
--Sit Ups--
Refer to above.
By the end, by a small margin, mostly due to scoring absolutely insane in anything strength and endurance. I had managed to finish in 1st place.
Feat Achieved! Score 1st place on the Quirk Apprehension Test
+1x Gold Ability Gacha Ticket
A/N: I just love to see Aizawa getting called out on his bullshit so much. A fine hero Aizawa is, an even remotely decent teacher he is not. And Hakari is the last person to take this kind of bullshit lying down. He better be grateful he doesn't have a wife for Hakari to pull a Hakari on.
Speaking of, Hakari is ballin', his quirks are very well balanced for the exam coupled with his meta abuse means he gets 1st place by a small margin. But hey, a victory is a victory. And a winner gets their chicken dinner.
Comments
Warren
I love this chapter I hope the students progress faster with the addition of the mc
Loghead101
It’s never an MHA fanfic unless Aizawa gets the winds taken outta his sails. Hopefully there will be plenty more until he starts to marginally improve. Also still haven’t seen any sign of Izuku. You made it clear that Ojiro and Kota aren’t in 1-A and Hikari and Toga took their spots so wondering if he just missed the day or is in 1-B and if so then who else took his place. Anyway, love the chapter man. Short, sweet and to the point, also got an in with Toru already. Can’t wait for more! Edit: Just re-read it and saw Izuku finger smash the ball. Never mind bud.
