xii.
The last green light extinguished itself. The buzzer went and the doors… didn't open.
At least not fully, and not as the students expected, being as there was a pause – a shock – which settled itself upon them. Indeed, the concrete door did not 'open', but instead did a steady drop towards the ground before stopping a little above halfway, revealing a rectangle of light above it and an immense shadow below it. The students began a sprint into the corridor, shoving and bounding over one another. Quirks flared. Bakugo appeared along the wall – yes, now a wall rather than a door – followed closely by a scramble of other students rising out from the crush.
"The first sifting, everybody!" Mic shrieked over the speakers, over the cheering. "Have these aspiring heroes learned from last year's events?"
With All Might and Midnight in the teachers' seating, Aizawa watched the events unfold, unnecessarily invested though he tried not to show it. Wordlessly, narrowing his eyes as though to see better, he waited to catch sight of Shinsou. Searching hard for that ridiculous, purple mop of hair amongst the bustle.
The boy had gotten strong. There was no doubt about that. He'd made it through the qualifier last year, and would be able to plan his way around it this time.
But still, Aizawa's mind rushed.
A Wall Race. Deceptively similar to the Obstacle Race they'd faced as first years, but with the added joy of climbing, scaling (and in the majority of cases, 'defeating') a series of troublesome walls. Eight of them around the course, each fifteen meters high. It would not do for Shinsou to simply ride along on the backs of some chumps this time round. Especially now, where a tight squeeze and sheer climb limited movement.
"Aaaand Bakugo Katsuki of Class A is on the move! Todoroki Shouto trails him closely – eyyy, haven't we seen this before?" Of course, Aizawa wasn't particularly concerned for his class. On the whole, he knew they'd excel. "Oh, but here we have Class B making an entrance into the race – it's Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu and Kirishima Ejiro neck-to-neck! Here comes Midoriya Izuku!" One or two more names. One or two more smart-ass chirps from Mic. Then the image on the big screen changed. "Interesting strategy! Kururugi Takashi has piggy-backed his sister all the way up, and now they're close on the others' tails!"
So top ten then. Not guaranteed, of course, but at the same it didn't surprise Aizawa. Not entirely, at least. Takashi and Tsukiko's most reliable ability was their startlingly good team-work – slight looks were all it took for them to communicate, little gestures and timeous coughs replacing language completely (though on the note of language, Aizawa was quite sure he'd heard them making up their own at several points over the last month; making one up, if not already speaking it fluently like a pair of tiny charlatans). Until they made it to the quarter finals – if they made it – they would likely breeze through challenges on each other's backs. Literally, apparently.
A trickle of students continued to mount the first wall; Aizawa managed a stolid façade when Shinsou appeared within the first thirty, though his pulse hiked slightly. It was hard to say exactly how Shinsou had managed it this time – in the flickering pixels of the big screen, he seemed hardly to have broken a sweat. Of course, in their training, his fitness was notably improved, but still he lacked the same hardiness as the other students in the Hero Course. Whether to blame it on less experience or simply a less active disposition, Aizawa wasn't sure. Still, Shinsou had made it. All he needed now was to maintain that position. No need for first place, Shinsou. Slow and steady progress. Keep it steady.
At the next wall, thick platforms extended and retracted sporadically from the concrete. One such platform knocked the wind out of Bakugo halfway through his propelling himself upwards with his blasts, leaving him dangling and spitting something foul. Another platform broke Todoroki's ice into a million, glinting shards so that he too had to clutch onto another step.
The Kururugis arrived at the wall just after Midoriya, who bounced from platform to platform in unsteady glows of green. Tsukiko clung once again to her brother's back. She smiled wide at Kirishima and Tetsutetsu as they passed each other, the latter two shoving and punching while digging their hardened limbs into the concrete.
"Do you think they're doing this because of the direct contact thing? The Kururugis, I mean. With how they're piggy-backing," Midnight questioned, pursing her lips thoughtfully.
Aizawa hummed. "Most probably." He crossed his arms. "Look at how his eyes are glowing. It's dim, but it's not flickering – from what I've noticed, the more energy either of them expend when they aren't in contact with each other, the more their eyes flicker. And Takashi is probably using a lot of energy to climb that wall so fast…"
"He's leaving behind holes," All Might said.
"He's searing grips into the concrete." Midnight twiddled her fingers. "Tiny blasts from his fingertips and toes, I think. His energy is so youthful!"
Rubbing his nape, eyes burning from staring, Aizawa nodded in silent agreement – both with Midnight and with the twins, for their strategy. "Probably smarter than trying to fly over. They're less likely to be winded like Bakugo just was, if they can hold onto the platforms."
"If they're using explosions though, does that mean their quirks are similar to Bakugo's?"
"Not at all, I think." All Might tapped Class A's pile of folders. "From what I understand, the twins produce something very similar to nuclear energy. Right, Aizawa-kun?"
"Right."
Aizawa said this. But he himself wasn't one hundred percent sure. It was what their documents said. It was what the twins themselves explained quite confidently to others. However, there was something off Aizawa couldn't place about the way Tsukiko managed her quirk compared to Takashi. Apart from the fact that she had an obvious aptitude for quirk-usage which her brother lacked (making him over-compensate in combat abilities), her attacks tended also to be more… electric. A touch more 'zing' to them than Takashi's blasts.
It didn't seem like either of them noticed it though.
"Oooof!" Mic's voice reverberated over the speakers. "They were so close to the top, but the Kururugi twins take a hit!"
Sure enough, eyes on the screen again, there was an image of Takashi and Tsukiko tumbling. Blonde hair flapping. Hands grasping about the air for each other like a scene from Titanic.
Aizawa was about to say something when – fingers uniting in a very touching spectacle – Tsukiko straightened herself acrobatically and, with feline preparedness, flipped her brother onto her back. She landed on one of the extended platforms. Then they were up again in a shock of white light. Smoke plumed and lingered in a shadow against the wall, clearing only enough to reveal crumbling concrete and several lower students trying anxiously to dodge shrapnel.
Sparks flaring beneath her feet, Tsukiko landed perfectly on top of the wall and promptly shoved Takashi off her back. They pointed fingers. They stuck their tongues out at each other. They jumped down and were running after the race's leaders once again.
"What a recovery!"
"Why didn't they try that from the beginning?" Midnight cooed.
"Probably because they noticed the wall aiming for flyers," Aizawa said. "They were close enough to the top now that the risk of getting hit was less."
And so it went.
The top ten remained relatively stable. Bakugo, Todoroki and Midoriya overtook and overtook and overtook. The twins stuck together in a tied fourth place – at the fourth wall, they flung each other in a sort of two-person cartwheel to maintain momentum and an even balance of weight against the air-bullets* being shot at them; at the seventh (made up of several lesser walls), they quite expertly followed Midoriya's lead in jumping from one spinning surface to the next, tiny explosions sparking beneath their bare and by now very dirty feet to drive them upwards.
The rest of Class A held their own. Yaoyorozu created any number of gadgets and lifts and hoists. Uraraka floated herself over walls, but lost her position consistently when running between. Mineta used his grape-ish abilities rather more than he did the previous year. Sero had a sticky advantage.
And in the end, Aizawa had to restrain the jump in his throat when Shinsou came twenty eighth.
A high colour had splotched itself across Tsukiko's cheeks, crisp and rosey against her face's whiteness – something wildly soft about it as the knotty sweep of curls bounced about her face. Back in the stadium, she gestured elatedly to her clone and made a disgustingly concerted effort to congratulate everyone as they came in from the race. And Katsuki, not nearly as absorbed with having come first as he should have been, swallowed sharply against the catch in his throat.
To the strained blush on her face, he paid particular attention. It annoyed him how pretty it looked – just like last night, when she'd glowed dewy and sleepily flushed while sleep walking – and what a pang it left in his stomach when she threw her hands to her cheeks and cried something sugary-sweet to everyone and no one. Ridiculous. She was so fucking ridiculous. But Katsuki was no longer so sure he completely disliked it.
Of all the times to talk to her, now would likely have been the best. She and her clone had just come fourth in the qualifier, which wasn't entirely good but (Katsuki supposed) wasn't the worst thing either. All things considered. Maybe. So if he wanted to talk to her, he could always have… what? Congratulated her? For what? Fourth place didn't exactly deserve congratulating.
Not to say that he was really desperate, but he could also always have reserved her as a teammate in the next round, if the challenge called for it...
"Hey ~ Bakugo-kun."
He'd only stopped looking for a moment. Just for a moment. And now here she was, having crept up and into his face, all pink and blotchy like some rare watercolour lily.
Throwing his shoulders back, pretending not to be so distracted as he felt, Katsuki narrowed his eyes. "What do you want?"
Even more to his surprise, Tsukiko smiled. Small, compared to the grin she flashed everybody else, but much more personal somehow. Or maybe Katsuki was just flattering himself. "You came first," she said, a little too fluttering, a little too unsteady in that Shitty way of hers. "Well done."
Over her shoulder, Katsuki could see her brother and the brainwash dude from Class B talking in reserved, repressed expressions. Takashi paid no attention to Tsukiko, for once – the last few times she and Katsuki had spoken, he had stared with infuriating attention. Now he was apparently too absorbed, too concerned with choking through his own conversation to notice how his sister had slipped away.
Without thinking, Katsuki scoffed. "Whatever. I haven't won yet."
"Yet?" Tsukiko cocked her head – it was like she wanted to look like a puppy; and even if she didn't, the resemblance was too much to bear. "You sound so sure you're going to win."
"I am sure."
"Why?"
"Because I've fucking worked for it, is why."
She sighed tetchily, and pouted. "I think everyone here has worked for it," she murmured. "What I mean is… How are you so confident?"
"You got a problem with it?"
The pause, the freeze about her expression seemed to suggest that she did have a problem with it. But a quiet one. A hard-to-swallow one which didn't suit her sweety-sweet façade of delight and politeness. Because if Bakugo could say anything about Kururugi Tsukiko, it was that she didn't want to have a problem with anything. "There's really no need for you to get so iffy about everything," she said after a while, uneasily touching her fingers to one of her ponytails. "I was just trying to be nice. It wouldn't kill you to maybe try it too."
"How about no?" Katsuki said in turn. "And honestly, you should just stop trying to be so nice. It pisses me off."
Tsukiko did the nose-crinkly thing that made her freckles pop. "Probably because you have no idea how to be nice and it annoys you to think that you're no good at something." From embarrassment or annoyance or both, the colour in her cheeks darkened to a watery red and made Katsuki's heart do frustrating things.
As though by magical prompting, Takashi's head snapped towards them. Though distorted by those nerdy goggles, Katsuki could feel Takashi boring holes into his head with an impassive, irritating knowingness. Was it true then? That twins feel each other's feelings - pain, vexation, shame - even through such a distorting blur of colour and noise as that of the Sports Festival? Despite the weightiness of his stare, Tsukiko paid no heed to her brother. Katsuki tried not to either.
"No," he spat in reply, fully meaning to sound as harsh as he did. "It pisses me off because it's so fake. And it's going to get you slaughtered."
"We'll see about that."
"Don't come crying to me when shit hits the fan and your cuteness doesn't get you anywhere, Poodle."
He meant niceness. Niceness. Not cuteness.
Tsukiko clicked her tongue with the sound of popping gum. "I'd rather eat my brother's toe nails, puke them up and then eat them again from a paper plate, you… you…" She spun away in a huff. "You puffy goblin thing!"
And with her insult hanging in the air – and indeed, it did somehow manage to sound very insulting – she stomped very daintily back to her brother and to the brainwash dude from Class B. Poodle-curls springing in their ponytails, bare feet precariously balanced over their tiny (the tiniest Katsuki had ever seen) toes. To watch her go left Katsuki's face flaring uncomfortably. He didn't like it. Not one bit.
And he couldn't help but wonder: was it too late for him to ask her to be on his team in the next round?
A/N: * With regards to these supposed 'air-bullets', think in terms of the Wind Release from Naruto. XD
Sorry I've been a bit AWOL on this story lately. Work and family has hit me hard in the last few weeks, and for some reason I'm finding writing the Sports Festival mega-hard. Feedback is always super appreciated, dear readers! Hope everybody is keeping safe. xxxxx
