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The entrance exam was difficult. That was the conclusion Rokkaku came to as he rode the bus to UA for the first day of lessons.
The objective was to save a hostage from a host of robots while minimizing collateral damage and also ensuring the safety of the citizens scattered around the area. Though it wasn’t anything wholly out of hand, the problem laid in the time limit. Thirty minutes was hardly any time at all, especially when students hadn’t been provided any information at all about the layout of the area and the location of the hostage. Rokkaku felt sorry for those who were less physically able; this exam required endurance and speed, as well as cool judgment and precision. The world of heroic education was cutthroat, wasn’t it?

Thankfully, he had it easier than most.

First, establish a safe zone. The robots were plentiful, but like all machines, were simple. As it was their programming, rather than their nature, that made them oppose him, Rokkaku didn’t lay a hand on them, instead simply leading them on, sometimes outrunning them, other times distracting them. Quick observations had marked them as machines that were programmed to roam the area they were assigned to. By having them give chase, he was able to create pockets of space within the urban center that were devoid of nearby robots.

Second, use the safe zone. In an area with plenty of vertical obstacles, Rokkaku’s ability to jump was easy to leverage, bypassing stairwells to reach citizens in apartment suites. Perhaps it was a bit rough, but his mobility allowed him to quickly shuttle them into the empty pockets of space where robots no longer roamed. To evacuate them all would require superhuman strength, and as dummies, there was no way for him to actually lead them without having to physically carry them, so the simplest method had been to keep them all in a place where he’d know they’re safe. Thus the safe zone. Completion of this task took most of his time, but being able to view things from a bird’s eye view made it easy to avoid the robots’ detection.

Third, rescue the hostage. The density of the robot guards around the hostage, while intimidating, wasn’t a large problem in retrospect. What was a greater problem was the grenade launchers that some of them wielded; robots didn’t care about friendly fire and any injury upon the hostage was a failure. Speed then, was the priority. It was unfortunate, in some aspects, that the area, despite being full of buildings, had no utilities or ornamentation inside those buildings. An improvised smoke bomb would be useful, or even just a large blanket. Maybe there was a better way to do it. A way that didn’t involve combat, that could settle things with zero damage done to the robots.

But time was running out. Thirty minutes was hardly enough time to get anything done. And as the pressure mounted, the impulse kicked in.

He got up onto an adjacent building, dropped down, and landed onto the robot closest to the hostage. It wasn't Meteoric; the machine remained unfazed as it reached out towards Rokkaku. But grabbing onto the hostage took a split-second, and the youth’s legs, powerful as they were, escaped the clutches and the rain of bullets an instant later, shooting upwards into freedom.

It was a success. It was clean. But any normal hostage would have suffered whiplash from the sudden movement.

So it was still a failure.

There had been, after all, the option of waiting for backup in order to extract the hostage without harming them at all. In retrospect, if the time limit had not made him anxious to act, Rokkaku would have decided on that course of events instead. He lacked discipline still, his self-control insufficient. A hero who escalated a conflict was a liability. A hero who harmed those they sought to rescue was worse.

He gazed darkly at his palm, callused and marked with plentiful cuts, before marching grimly towards the avant-garde buildings of UA.

There had been a [i]better[/i] way, and it was loathsome, that he was unable to see it.