Cheat Code: Support Strategist

Chapter 5: Test Taking Skills

Izuku didn't think that tests were normally supposed to be fun, and while his test anxiety definitely wasn't, he found himself forgetting to be nervous the more questions he answered. Even though the questions for the general section weren't extremely interesting, since they only covered the standard subjects he'd learned in middle school, they were challenging enough to make up for it. Izuku was glad that he'd studied in preparation for the test, because that meant that instead of being intimidating, the more difficult questions were actually invigorating.

And then came the support section. Izuku assumed that part of its purpose was to gauge each student's potential for the other tracks, because the questions were pulled from all three. Izuku felt like he did decently well on the design questions, even if that wasn't exactly his passion, but the only questions about invention that he could even make sense of were the ones that dealt with computer hardware. Maybe he should have studied mechanics a little more? Oh well, it was too late for that now....

To Izuku's surprise, there were only two questions about analysis and both of them were essays, so he could only hope that would be enough to show his skills and set him apart from the other applicants. He didn't want to have to think about what he'd do if his new dream got crushed like his last one had been.

For the first analysis question, he was given a quirk registration form and told to theorize about the strengths and weaknesses of the quirk, as well as give suggestions about how to use it. To his surprise, he actually recognized the quirk! It belonged to a retired hero named Glimmer who could manipulate light energy around her body in the form of sparkles.

At first, it didn't seem like a very powerful quirk, but Izuku knew better. The sparkles that Glimmer controlled didn't just look pretty, they could get bright enough that looking at them was like staring into the sun. Tempting, sure, but definitely not recommended. As a pro hero, she had used it to blind and disorient her opponents, leading to a high rate of capture.

The drawbacks, of course, were that if Gimmer wasn't careful she could permanently blind villains, bystanders, or even herself. She had to carefully manipulate the light of her quirk to make sure that it was bright enough to be effective without causing permanent damage, which was a pretty fine line. She wasn't a well known hero, but from what Izuku knew about her, she had done her job well.

All of that was common knowledge, though, if someone knew where to look, so while it was necessary to list that out, Izuku didn't think that basic level of analysis would help him stand out. But what else...well, he was supposed to give suggestions, right? It felt kind of blasphemous to give suggestions to such a successful pro hero, but Izuku forced himself to look at it like it was any other quirk. The test hadn't actually specified that the quirk belonged to a pro, after all, so he couldn't let that hold back his analysis, not to mention that if he was accepted into the support course, he'd be giving pros suggestions for a living.

So how could the quirk go beyond what Glimmer had used it for?

Well, she manipulated light energy, right? But...Izuku's eyes widened and he started writing the ideas as fast as he could structure them out. Not all light was visible, so what if she could manipulate not only the intensity of the lights but also the wavelength? From the footage he'd seen, some of the sparkles Glimmer had used had appeared colorful, especially that one time she'd produced rainbow sparkles during a pride parade, so it was definitely possible for her to shift the wavelength within the visible spectrum. And if she could do that much, she could probably train enough to create ultraviolet light and infrared light, which meant that she could use her quirk to burn rather than blind and maybe even use it like a black light to find forensic evidence at crime scenes!

In the end, Izuku's essay ended up being three pages long, two of which were entirely suggestions based on his theory that Glimmer could manipulate the wavelength of light. It really made him wonder why she'd never used it that way. It would have effectively negated a lot of the drawbacks of her quirk, since she wouldn't have had to worry about blinding anyone if her light was invisible. It would also make her much more difficult to fight, since the threats wouldn't be as obvious. It was almost a shame that she had already retired, because Izuku would have loved to see if any of his theories were actually useful.