"Choose wisely, students," Chemex's voice calls over the loudspeakers as the competitors barrel down the tunnel to be met by three large doorways covered in white paper. "Time to roll the dice at the Doors of Chance!"

Each doorway is labeled with a big red number 1, 2, and 3, respectively. From Takara's position, she sees students ripping through the thick paper. Right in the middle, she sees a person run through the second doorway, only to get thrown up in the air by a red boxing glove. The whole floor of the center room becomes a minefield of a reverse whack-a-mole where those brave enough to cross are at risk of sustaining a nasty punch.

Okay, so not that one, Takara tells herself, instead turning to the right. By now, all the paper has been ripped away, so the girl can see fully into room number 3.

The blazing light is enough to make her rear back. The majority of the floor has been replaced with some sort of fiery murk. She's positive it's not lava, since how could U.A. possibly insure that? But it doesn't look pleasant. The only way through is a rocky path with foam hammers crossing back and forth over it.

Takara knows that she'd be too far behind the pack if she dares to go back and look at the room behind door 1, so this will have to do. Wearing her shoes from her hero costume, she extends the jade on her feet to protect her skin from the heat of the potential lava.

She follows the line of people already picking their way over the rocky path, pausing with the rest of the line for the hammers to pass. One person becomes impatient with a student ahead of them and pushes them aside. They fall into the hot liquid with a yelp.

The girl closes her eyes at all the screams she hears. How there can be this many people screaming already is past her. And it's only the first event!

When she finds her footing on solid ground, Takara can finally breathe a sigh of relief. She looks up to see...another set of three doorways.

Similarly, students are already picking their way through yet another boxing glove room ahead of her. In the middle corridor is the glow of another lava room.

Far ahead, the pixie twins stay close to the ceiling and easily maneuver between boxing gloves with more time to see their approach. Takara has to remind herself where she is and what she's doing. She can't afford to hesitate.

She decides to ford her way across the boxing glove room. Extending the jade on her legs, she begins running and hopes that any impact won't be too great.

The first punch trips up her feet, causing her to fall on another opening. Before she can scramble upright, another glove hits her right in the gut and sends her flying up to the ceiling. She falls back to the ground, but is caught with another vertical punch to the shoulder. She screams as she falls once more to the floor, landing in a small area between holes.

Students continue to race by, unconcerned with her laying on the ground. The room is spinning, and the only way Takara can tell which way is the end is by watching students run past. She seems to be close to the end of the room, but behind it is only another, and probably another and another.

That's when she sees him.

A boy with red-tipped dreadlocks and, strangely enough, a blindfold runs straight through the paper door in front of her without pausing. The room seems to be filled with bamboo.

Harmless bamboo.

Sure, it seems densely packed and hard to get through, but it's not going to hurt her. Why has she been bothering with these dangerous rooms?

Takara pushes herself to her feet and maneuvers through the last of the boxing gloves. A few students have caught on and begin following the blindfolded boy. She tags along behind them as they push through the thick forest of green.

Appearing on the other side, the boy makes a beeline for the second doorway, then the third. All rooms filled with clusters of bamboo. He's the first one through the first obstacle, followed by his four stragglers. The sun greets them on the other side of their long dark hallway, and they all take off running along the dusty path around the stadium.

"Aeyo Phoenix of Class 1-B has a commanding lead after the first obstacle," Kumarēza commentates. "And it seems as though others have taken notice and followed his path. If you'd have told me the blind competitor would be the one seeing through our tricks, I wouldn't have believed you!"

Flying students soar above them as they make their way to the second obstacle. The path drops out from under their feet, leading to a substantial drop. Takara and her crew of tagalongs skid to a stop before the edge. She notices one boy stamp his foot in frustration as the winged competitors merely fly over the second obstacle altogether.

"How could this possibly be fair?" he whines, trying to analyze the new obstacle.

"Watch your footing!" Chemex announces in a dramatic voice. "Or risk an icy plunge! The game designers were really sick and twisted with this game of Platform Peril!"

Stretching before the students is a sizable canyon, filled with water. After the incident at the USJ, Takara knows that falling is not an option. The only way across, barring flight, is to leap between platforms. The only problem is the constant motion of the field. Some platforms rotate, some have treadmills moving forward or back, some are large foam balls that provide different terrain to walk over. And then there's the fact that some seem to randomly drop then pop back up.

A student with gills on her neck and tentacles for hair dives below into the water. Her bare feet elongate into flippers, and they propel her along as her tentacles grapple around the bases of the platforms to pull her even faster.

It's too much for Takara to think about, so she just hops onto a treadmill platform. It seems like a good choice as it rockets her forward onto a spinning platform. But her momentum carries her further forward than she anticipated.

She falls to her knees and puts her arms out to stabilize herself, but she's already skidded to the edge of the platform. With her weight hanging over the edge, she begins to fall. Scrambling for anything she can, she grabs onto a nearby platform that spins in the opposite direction.

Takara tries to maneuver to keep her body aligned, but the second platform falls. Wood bangs against her shins as she falls with the platform still in her grasp. She tumbles onto the spinning circle as it pops back up, causing her to bite her tongue.

She sits up, face scrunched in pain as she lets the platform spin her around. Facing backwards, she sees a lion effortlessly leaping from platform to platform. Araya looks at her as if to say what are you waiting for?

"And the frontrunner, Kaede Komatso, has reached the final obstacle!" Chemex announces over the loudspeaker. "She must show great dexterity to not be a fly caught in the Spider's Web!"

"What? Already?" Takara picks herself up and reorients herself to face the end of the second obstacle. "Just don't stop," she tells herself.

The floor beneath her once again falls away, and she plummets down. When it brings her back up, she's officially frustrated. She clenches her teeth and rushes forward, bounding over a foam ball to land on a backward running treadmill.

Thankfully, it isn't too fast, so she pushes herself to speed up and leap to another spinning platform. She jams her toe against the edge and bites back a curse but keeps running.

Spinning, jumping, running too fast, too slow. Everything blurs together. Finally finding herself on solid ground again, reality feels distorted to Takara. Although she drifts to the side, mildly dizzy, she runs ahead.

The third and supposedly final obstacle looms ahead. The mouth of the large tunnel yawns wide. A spattering of brightly colored clouds emanates from inside. As she nears the dark tunnel, Takara can hear screams of frustration.

Leaping directly into the technicolor fog, the girl's foot immediately hits a tripwire, and she tumbles to the ground. A projectile thuds into her back, and a giant magenta cloud poofs up.

"Ugh!" An impatient voice cries out in the mist. "Could you be more careful‽ I can barely see as it is!"

Takara looks up from the floor. How many times must she fall on her face in this competition?

Her opponent proves to be right. With the large cloud covering the mouth of the tunnel, a lot of the sunlight is blocked out, leaving them in a tinted sort of darkness. Through it, the girl can see thin wires reaching from wall to wall and ceiling to floor like lasers in a spy movie. The sound of a projectile firing echoes from down the hall, and a blue cloud of mist explodes in Takara's line of sight.

She pushes herself upright when she hears a thud, and some poor unsuspecting soul falls to the ground beside her. The air suddenly becomes green, and she fans the color away from her face.

Takara inches forward carefully, eyes peeled for the next tripwire. She squeezes between two, steps over another, and crawls under a whole row of them before another color bomb gets set off right on top of her.

What? I could have sworn I made it through!

"Crap!" A girl cries out only an arm length away, making Takara jump. When the color clears, she sees Kaede struggling to maneuver her wings around the thin wires. Her lengthy braid is wrapped around her neck like a scarf, and large splotches of color cover her face and uniform.

She tries to bend down to sneak under a wire, but her wings graze the line behind her, setting off an orange cloud.

"Are you kidding me?" she screams. "Real funny! Give everyone with a mutation a hard time!"

"Hey, it's alright," Takara tries to comfort her friend. "You're still way far ahead of most people since you got to fly over those awful platforms."

"Not so much anymore," Kaede pouts. "I'm about to just–" She begins shoving her way through the tunnel, setting off smoke bomb after smoke bomb while tripping over herself and falling to the ground.

Takara squints through the fog and tries to clear away what she can. That's one way of doing it. It won't help if she can't see the wires, but she can understand where Kaede is coming from. With a mutation like hers, it must be impossible to get through this mess of wires without hitting a few.

The brunette crawls below another tripwire, then hops over one. Maneuvering her way through becomes more difficult as she heads steadily away from the natural light at the entrance. A student behind her seems to glow, but the effect is dizzying with them constantly moving.

Takara winds her way around the wires, yearning for the rush of fresh air. How long has she been in this tunnel? How much of this colorful dust has she breathed in? Is it getting hot and stuffy in here? Are the walls metal like they look? They must be baking in the sun.

But there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And she's fairly certain she's not dying.

At the far end of the infernal web, there's a corner to turn and then...

Sunlight.

Freedom.

Victory.

She will have it.

With a new wave of determination, Takara manages to clear the last set of wires without touching a single one. Okay, so she may have actually tumbled clean over the last one and set off a burst of purple, but it doesn't matter anymore. She's home free.

The cement floor is covered in a spattering of rainbow from the students coming in before her. She shakes her hair out as she runs, feet pounding against the ground.

In her mind's eye, she sees herself running along the dark hallway. The walls blend with the ceiling. The course bleeds into existence from the darkness behind her. A cloud of colors sheds from her skin. She's a shooting star, racing toward the light. She's a fairy sketching rainbows through the sky. She's a U.A. student on the verge of greatness.

A rush of cool air hits her all at once. Her multicolored form races over the checkered line at the end of the tunnel. Sunlight and cheers hit her like a brick, transporting her away from the painting in her head.

The girl slows, letting herself breathe in great gulps of air. Fresh air. How could she ever have taken advantage of it before?

"And that's Takara Juba in seventeenth place!" Chemex cheers from her podium. "Followed by Kaito Oba in eighteenth place!"

Takara turns to see a boy with bright orange hair basically throw himself over the line. His chest heaves with every breath. A bright blue smear of dust coats half of his face. He stumbles to a stop by the girl, and they take a moment to recover. With a glance between them, they give each other a fist bump and go in opposite directions.

The girl spies her classmates across the field. She approaches and notices Aiya laying dramatically on the grass with her arm covering her eyes. "Are they crazy?" the pixie exclaims. "They could've killed me!"

"I doubt you would have died," Araya points out, playing with a piece of grass as he stretches out nearby.

Takara sits between the two and props herself up on her elbows. "Good job, you guys," she cheers. "Top twenty is no small feat! Even if you had a rough time, that's worth it, right?"

Aiya moves her arm away to send the girl an unamused look. "One of those stupid boxing gloves hit me into the ceiling. I could've broken a wing!"

Takara's shoulders sag with sympathy for her friend. "Yeah, those got me pretty hard too."

"But again," Araya says, "you wouldn't have died. Recovery Girl is on standby for a reason."

"I'd still rather not know what it's like to break a wing, alright?"

The boy nods his head solemnly, twisting a few blades of grass between his fingers. "Still, you did well despite that."

"Where did you guys place?" Takara asks, realizing she forgot to do so beforehand.

"Sixth," Araya states, eyes still intent on his grass weaving.

"Seventh," Aiya grumbles, placing her arm back over her face. "I had to tuck my wings under my jacket to get through that stupid web, though."

Takara sits up straighter. "Whoa! Top ten!" She scoots closer. "You can't possibly be upset with seventh, can you?"

The pixie exhales loudly and scrubs her face with her hands. "No," she mumbles into her palms. "I'm just...tired," she states with another loud sigh.

The trio sits in silence for a minute, letting the announcement of students coming through fill the void of conversation.

"Yeah, I get that," Takara says to break the silence. "It was only the first competition, but that really took it out of me."

Aiya faces her friend, eyebrows furrowed, and gives her a long look. She nods and gives Takara a thin-lipped smile, then goes back to laying with her arm over her face.

I have been so lucky to get to work with my wonderful friends' OCs in this story, and this chapter highlighted the first one! My friend aBitGrim was kind enough to lend me their awesome OC Aeyo for this arc as well as some official artwork that they drew of him! Thank you so much, Grim!

Featured Character: Aeyo Phoenix
Quirks: Thermal Vision and Payback
Likes: Cherry Flavors, Racoons, and Hot Coffee