Hey guys! Here's another chapter for those of you who are reading this story of mine. This is the last little fluff chapter before I start progressing the story because next chapter we're going to finally start making some progress... sort of. You'll see whenever I get around to it. Until then, enjoy this chapter.

As the warm afternoon sunlight shone upon them through the window, Izuku and Ruby stared proudly at the design of a gauntlet which was displayed on a large monitor on the desk. The gauntlet was light pink, the colour that Nora herself suggested, with light blue electric patterns which ran from the forearm to the wrist. After numerous suggestions and ideas being thrown back and forth, being implemented and then taken out and sometimes reimplemented once more, they decided on which active features would be implemented: the electrical shocks (the gauntlet's main purpose); a quick-action grappling hook (which Nora enjoyed a little too much when she was given the prototype); and an energy-dust shockwave system (which boosts the strength of her punch when activated.) Izuku also added in a smaller passive change to the gauntlet such as adding sharp studs to the gauntlet's knuckles, a lock and unlock feature which ensures that the gauntlet didn't ever slip off and (after a lot of requesting) the ability for the gauntlet to channel the electricity through the metal and shock outwards (in the off chance someone ever caught Nora's fist.)

"So, we did well, don't you think?" Izuku couldn't help but give a satisfied smile as he looked at their first fully-featured prototype which was displayed on his screen, "Didn't take as long as I thought it would."

"It was way faster than I thought," Ruby echoed, smiling as she looked at her handiwork, "We worked well together, right?"

"Yep," Izuku scratched his neck, "It's going to take a while to turn this into a physical product. We can continue it another day at Beacon's workshops and forges."

"Another day?" Ruby almost seemed insulted since they were so close to the end, "We've almost finished though!"

"S-Sorry but I tend to split apart the design and the building aspects of the inventing process. Why don't you go hang out with your team?" Izuku asked, hoping that the girl wasn't being left out of her team's activities.

"Nah, they're all doing something right now so I doubt they'll want to hang out with me," Ruby pouted sourly, "I was kinda hoping we'd take longer so I wouldn't have to drift around by myself."

Izuku's heart melted just a little when he saw her saddened lookl, "Well, erm, I was going to do some training by myself in the Emerald Forest. I wouldn't mind some extra company."

"Training?" Ruby pondered about it for all of a second, "Sure. What kind?"

"My original plan was to get better at mobility. Some sprinting training, some endurance running and," Izuku remembered something that Ruby had mentioned during initiation, "even a little bit of parkour."

"Oh my gosh, I completely forgot that I asked you to train me. You don't mind, right?" the girl reigned her excitement in before it became too overwhelming.

"O-Of course not; I wouldn't have offered if I didn't mean it."

"Oh, right. I guess it's a little silly to think that you didn't mean it."

"Right," Izuku quickly made sure that he saved the file before closing the computer and clicking the 'shutdown' icon, "Anything you need to pick up before we go down?"

"You have a sniper, don't you Izuku? You wouldn't mind bringing it with you, would you?" Ruby didn't wait for his answer before she continued, "I'm thinking of doing some marksman training with Crescent Rose. We could both hide in the woods and then hunt each other down. It'll train recognition and tracking skills as well as shooting a fast moving target. Whaddya think?"

"Err… Sure. Let me just get SDS and some standard bullets and then we can head out," Izuku answered before pointing at the door, "You should probably get Crescent Rose whilst I'm at it."

"Alright, I'll meet you at the fountain," Ruby saluted the boy before jumping out of her chair, "See ya, ya super cool cinnamon roll!"

"I-I thought you forgot about that!"

"Forget? Nah. I was just waiting so it has an impact," Ruby seemed to scratch her chin a little, "Plus, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, y'know. Can't just say it all of the time. Anyways, I'll see ya in a bit."

"I'll see you then."

As soon as Izuku reached the fountain inside of his armour, he was met with the impatient look of someone who'd been waiting for a tad too long. Ruby glared at him jokingly, tapping her foot on the floor to a rhythm only she could hear. It was to be expected; she freely used her semblance to run through hallways whilst Izuku walked without any kind of speed boost. She'd probably been waiting for a few minutes which would be annoyingly long for someone as fast as her.

"Took you long enough. I almost thought you forgot!" Ruby stuck her tongue out at the boy in mock annoyance, "Anyways, you good to go?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Izuku began their little trek towards the cliffside, "You brought Crescent Rose, right?"

"Of course; it's not like I have any other weapons. I focus on one weapon and making it as multi-functional as possible; it's enough for me after all… That's probably another reason I won't be able to shift to using a stand-alone crossbow," Ruby's face soured slightly at the thought but quickly brightened once she met Izuku's eyes, "But, we can talk about that the next time we're in your workshop. Until then, we're going to have some fun training and stuff…. I-I've never done this before so, erm, if I end up being a little too aggressive, do tell."

"Never done what? I'm sure you've had friends to hang out with and I doubt you haven't trained with your sniping since you seem borderline fanatical about your weapon," Izuku spent a second for self-reflection, "Not that I'm any better."

"Er, well, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm just pretty… focused when it comes to training and fighting. And, when I really get into the zone, I become a little too quiet which Yang always tells me is unnerving. I just wanted to warn you before you think I'm mad at you or something."

"I… didn't expect that. You talked to Weiss a lot during the Initiation and you did pretty well despite that."

"Yeah, well, the difference is that when Weiss talks, I feel a deep instinct to respond. I don't know what it is but her whiny voice just forces something out of me. It still threw me off enough that I wasn't fighting at full potential. I'm just glad that it didn't lead to me, erm, dying, ya know."

"Yeah. Dying doesn't seem like the greatest thing to do," Izuku scratched his chin, unsure how to continue with that topic, "But, erm, how are things with Weiss now? It's been a week and a bit since our initiation so you must have made some sort of progress."

"Things are going better than I expected. She started, y'know, listening to me and stuff as long as I studied and 'didn't ruin the reputation of Beacon Academy.' She still doesn't believe I was at the top of my class."

"Y-You were?"

"Oh, don't you give me that too! Even if I sleep in class and don't pay attention half of the time, you can't just label me an academic failure!" Ruby huffed, blowing a loose strand of hair off of her face in the process, "Although, I can sort of see why you might when I say it out loud."

"Still… if what I've seen of you in our classes is anything to go by, I don't think you'd ever have struck me as the studious type."

"Eh, I may not be one of those gifted kids who can breeze through textbooks in minutes but I have boatloads of enthusiasm and that's good enough for me. But, well, if you really want to know, I can revise pretty well. If I couldn't, well, " Ruby blew a raspberry and made a declining motion and then an explosion sound effect , "Let's just say I wouldn't be here. Without my dreams to be a huntress, I wouldn't have revised anywhere near as hard as I did."

"I kinda get it. Even if I have the whole inventor thing, Kacchan always ended up doing better than me in our tests. I think the only thing I did better than him consistently was-"

"Maths, right?" Ruby interrupted, "We wouldn't be as good at inventing if we didn't have a decent grasp at it."

"Yeah. Same thing with you?" Izuku responded, assuming so because of her response.

"Definitely! People always say it's so hard and I just don't get it," Ruby shuddered slightly, "English is so much worse."

"Really?" Izuku asked, not expecting this, "Considering you like stories, I'd have thought you'd be great at it."

"No, no, no. I'm not bad at it. You see, I'm alright at it; some might even call me good at it. But, I like stories first and books second and all that boring analysing of the book just ruins it, y'know. I want to read about well-written characters, not decipher some sort of hidden code about why certain words are repeated every six sentences and what that implies… Wait, what did that imply?"

"Heh, I, er, don't think it ever got that far for me..." Izuku chuckled slightly before he realised that Ruby really was trying to remember something and almost laughed in disbelief, "Y-You're joking."

"Nah. It was something some kind in the back of my class suggested. Thankfully, it was too far of a stretch that we did have to give it much thought," the shorter girl waved the subject away, "But anyways we're here, at Beacon, where those dreaded English lessons are nothing more than bad memories… And, we're also at the cliff, where we do the stuff. You're going to use your wires to climb down, right?"

A few wires slammed into the cliff wall before Izuku nodded, "Yeah. You're just gonna run down, right?"

"Yep!" Ruby gave a mock salute before taking a few steps away from the cliff, "I'll see you at the bottom!"

Once she had zipped away, leaving those red rose petals in her wake, Izuku dove over the cliff and scuttled down the wall. On his descent, he was able to take a more in-depth look at the forest which the two would fight in. Since he had time, he was able to quickly pick which areas were the most densely wooded and which areas would be relatively clear so he had an idea of where he should go.

Of course, that plan mainly depended on him hiding and playing evasively, which would leave him at the disadvantage of having to react to everything Ruby did. Whilst he'd spent a decent amount of time with Ruby when they were designing and creating the gauntlet for Nora, he hadn't fully grasped how she'd do in their little sparring match. Considering she said she might be more aggressive than usual meant that Izuku was thrown for a loop on how this would play out. Nonetheless, Izuku formed a plan: head to the thickest part of the woods, scan for heat signatures and aim for a bright, speeding blur of red petals. If he couldn't do it then, he could rush up to the neighbouring area with taller trees on higher ground to take advantage of his greater vertical mobility.

As soon as his feet touched the ground, Ruby leapt off of the log she'd been leaning on with clear enthusiasm (and a little bit of impatience.) She seemed to have been doing the same as Izuku: creating a plan that could hopefully be used during their little exercise. However, before all of that, there was something that they wanted to do. It was all well and good to know how to hide and how to hunt but what Ruby really wanted to know was the art of running cool.

"Parkour time, right?" Ruby almost smiled in amusement, "Where do we start?"

"Well, when I began doing lessons back on I-Island, we started with learning how to land correctly to minimise the damage it does to our knees because, y'know, you don't want to waste too much Aura on small things like that... We also learnt how to make precise jumps so we didn't overestimate or underestimate how far we needed to move," Izuku breathed out a sigh of relief, "Thankfully, my Dust abilities helped me out with that or I wouldn't have finished our first exam."

"Whaddya mean?"

"Well, considering my Aura is nothing, I couldn't do any of the larger jumps that are needed without damaging my joints to some extent. When my Dust is activated, my body becomes more resistant to impact although, even then, it's not much stronger than say an E rating. Still, it's better than nothing and it was enough for me to pass. Now that I think about it, I wonder what it'd be like if I had never looked at Dust infusion" Izuku almost lost himself in imagining a world where he erred a little more on the side of caution and didn't go to a tribe in the middle of nowhere. After all, without his electricity, there'd be no Dreamcatcher, he'd be stuck with the motion sensor on Black Whip and he likely wouldn't be as motivated in training if he didn't see the immediate result of his Dust powers working as they should.

"Alright, my Aura should be good enough to do most of this and, given my semblance, I'm pretty good and sticking landings. Did I ever tell you about my award-winning long jump?" Ruby giggled slightly at her feat, "I was practically flying!"

"Y-You can fly? Why don't you do that then?"

"I can't actually fly," Ruby said, almost bitter if not for the smile on her face, "But, I was close enough. I was falling so slowly that I made it across the entire training hall in one jump. I might have crashed into the wall but I still glided into the wall, ya know. Eh, point is that I'm good at the whole jumping thing."

"Well, might as well go with a trial by fire… do you want to race?" Izuku asked, giving his friend a competitive smile (which he forgot was hidden by the helmet.).

"Dude, you know I'd smoke you in a race," Ruby put her hands up in apology, "Not to offend you or anything but my semblance is kinda built for moving fast."

"Well, how else are we going to test your parkour skills?"

"Oh, right, parkour. If that's the case, I don't mind… What are we racing to exactly?"

"Erm," Izuku's eyes wandered around the place until he spotted a tall group of trees far off to their right, "Those look pretty good. Of course, to prevent you from just running on the ground, we're going to have to set in an additional clause. How about we have a rule that you can only jump from and to trees and can't touch the ground? With that, we should be good to go."

"And, how do we make sure that the other person doesn't break those clauses?" Ruby's voice wasn't accusatory but it had a hint of competitiveness, "We wouldn't want unfair results."

"How large of a lead do you think I'll have?" Izuku's voice had enough friendly competitiveness that it lit a fire behind Ruby's eyes.

"Ha, you mean how far will you fall behind? On the count of three?" Ruby's lifted her foot to the balls of her feet before activating her semblance.

"Shouldn't we start from a branch or something?"

"Oh, right," the small girl said sheepishly before she rushed to one of the trees and got into position before waiting for Izuku to do the same, "Count of three?"

"Three, two, one-" Izuku didn't bother to say go before he leapt from his own branch down onto one a few metres ahead before jumping from that one to kick off of the tree trunk and reach a higher branch.

"Hey, you didn't say go!" Ruby's sounds of annoyance were muffled by the sound of the wind, "No fair!"

She didn't fall far behind despite her late start; a quick jump to another branch and subsequent long jumps ensured that she had a fighting chance. There was a single issue though and that was that she wasn't able to path her movements as quickly as her opponent was. Whilst Izuku was making near-instant decisions on how to path his route (or maybe it was all down to instinct and prediction), Ruby always had that slight amount of hesitation in case she jumped and found no foothold.

The armoured teen let enough Dust flow through his veins that he'd be able to quickly move from one spot to the other whilst also ensuring that he wouldn't feel that burning sensation that he was slowly getting used to. Whilst he was all for pushing his abilities further and further and getting stronger over time, he would admit that, if possible, he'd prefer to not feel like his veins were slowly burning up. He could make do with around 10% for now, everything above would be reserved for fights where that wasn't enough.

For every jump that Izuku took and every landing that he did, he spent a second to check his radar to ensure that Ruby didn't fall too far behind; this was a friendly test after all. Whilst he'd been initially shocked by how far the girl was able to move with a single jump (seemingly blurring into a missile of roses as she did so), it wasn't enough for him to lose his lead on the girl. A thought came to his head on whether or not he should use Black Whip to even the playing field so to speak and cover equally long distances in one jump. He set it aside since this was about parkour skills and not just a straight-up race.

Still, a hop, a wall kick and then a quick swing from one branch to the next led to him finding a nice path of close-by branches which could carry him most of the way to his goal. Since it was so easy to follow, the path was relatively boring to traverse. It also didn't have much verticality so he couldn't feel the swoosh of wind as it passed by his array of sound sensors. Still, it was the most effective route to take and he was taking the race mildly seriously so he wouldn't jump to a less effective path.

As soon as he reached the last part branch on the path, he dove off as hard as he could before kicking off of tree trunks consecutively, bouncing from one tree to the other like a blur of lightning. Gaining momentum as he did so, Izuku wasn't given much time to react to a new large object being pinged by a sensor. Deciding to trust his sensors to continue his chain of wall kicking, he turned his head towards where the object was pinged and found a large Ursa Major ready to swat him away.

Deciding that the race could wait for a second (killing a Grimm was always a public service after all), Izuku used a cable to grab a tree trunk and swing around towards the Grimm. With all of the momentum that he'd built, he lifted his legs in front of him and released explosions behind. Remembering the move that Kaachan used in their fight, he spun in the air whilst preparing a large explosion to use all of the funnelled air. As soon as the inky black flesh came into sight, the armoured teen charged up the largest explosion he could allow before crashing into the Grimm and hitting it with an explosion that, whilst much weaker than what Katsuki had produced, was still more than the Ursa could handle.

As it was blown away, Izuku spotted a blur of red petals rush towards the Grimm from behind in moments before sticking a large blade out and decapitating the beast in a single swing. As soon as the head slipped off of the Grimm's torso, Ruby fired a single round to change directions via the recoil. Watching as she sped off towards their goal, Izuku snapped back into focus and followed the girl as quickly as he could although the girl had created enough of a distance between them to make catching up difficult.

Still, as stubborn as he was, Izuku persevered. After he cancelled his momentum with a quick explosion and used a wire to pull himself forwards, the boy decided to stop holding back by mixing in his wires and explosions into his movement. With each leap he took, a few explosions went off behind him and every time the opportunity showed itself to use his wires he would take it. He was able to cover most of the ground quickly since Ruby's indecisiveness and hesitation caused some micropauses where she'd either freeze up or slow down. Even with that, it would still be a hard task to fully catch up.

"Hehe, admit you lost Izuku!" Ruby seemed to shout out, giggling as she did so, "This is great!"

Whilst the boy barely heard it due to both the distance and the speed he'd been moving at, it still triggered the sparks of competition within him. Whilst he wouldn't fall into a deep dark pit of despair if he lost their race, he'd be lying if he said that losing wouldn't hurt his pride just a little. Using that competitive flame within him, he gave his all and used every method he could to gain an advantage. His palms never stopped releasing explosion after explosion and there was always a wire to pull him forwards if he wasn't making enough progress. For a single second, it all combined together and Izuku felt like he was speed.

It was in the final stretch of the race, which was an upwards scrabble to that higher ground he'd pointed at, where Izuku could finally close the distance completely. She was faster than him, he accepted that, but she didn't have the extensive moveset that he had which meant she ended up relying on using his rifle's recoil to cover most of the distance. The issue with that method was that she couldn't make quick micro-adjustments should she make a mistake.

"Birdie, no!" came Ruby's cry as she slammed straight into a bird and, due to being thrown off by the impact, straight into the trunk of a tree, "Darn it!"

Deciding that having to wait for her to hit the ground and then climb all the way back up would take much more time than it was worth, the inventor used two wires to snag her out of the air and pull her back up onto a branch where she could start again. Of course, he made sure that she started on a branch that was far below his; he didn't want to give her an unfair advantage after such a hard fail.

"Thanks, Izuku!" Ruby seemed slightly thrown off by her misstep but threw herself into the race once more.

It took less than 20 seconds for both of them to reach their goal. As soon as Izuku stood atop the highest branch, he took a second to take a deep breath of fresh air and sweet, sweet victory. It took a dozen or so seconds for Ruby to reach where he was, although she overshot just a little which meant Izuku needed to grab her before she fell back down again. He had to say that she did better than he expected her to.

"I thought you said you were bad at this," Izuku gave her a small smile, "You did great."

"Well, yeah, but I kind of relied on my semblance more than I should have and I was only using Crescent Rose in that last bit unlike you who did those kicky things. You can do all of those jumps and wall kicks and speedy cool stuff and make it look so easy," Ruby took a deep breath to stabilise her heartbeat, "I mainly did long jumps that I sometimes stumbled on. You, er, probably didn't notice because, you know, you were ahead of me for most of the race."

"Ah, I… probably shouldn't have suggested a race then. I've never really taught anyone before, if you couldn't tell," Izuku thought over what they should do next, "Do you want to do the hunting thing then?"

"Gimme a minute, that took a lot more juice than I thought it would," Ruby sat on the branch before dangling her feet over the edge, "You wanna talk about anything? This seems like the kind of moment where we talk about some sort of deep secret."

"I don't have anything on my mind," Izuku followed the girl's lead and sat next to her before looking down at the forest, "Anything on yours?"

"Nah. I've got nothing…" Ruby scratched her chin, "Or do I? I dunno. Wanna talk about team leader stuff because that's all I can think of right now?"

"Now that I think about it, we don't talk about much aside from that and inventing stuff," Izuku thought about all of the time that the two talked to each other and that seemed to be the only thing that came up.

"Seems like the two big things we both have in common. Well, that and being students at Beacon but, since we're talking at Beacon, that kinda goes without saying," Ruby scratched her chin and, seemingly out of a nervous tick, unsheathed Crescent Rose and extended it, "You know, we're probably pretty boring people now that I think about."

"It is what it is," Izuku shrugged at the comment and sighed, "Not everyone is a really deep character."

"Yeah but you're the protagonist… I think. I haven't finalised the theory but it's possible. You fit into the trope so well that it'd be wrong of me to leave it be."

"You aren't going to have another crisis, are you?" Izuku raised a concerned eyebrow, "Yang is nowhere near close enough to be able to stop it before it gets out of hand."

"Course not. That was 'cos it was overwhelming at first because everything fit so perfectly so I had no idea what to do. Now that it's more like a conspiracy theory, it's kinda fun to think about. You seem like the type of person the world would revolve around," Ruby gave a sweet smile, "Anyways, back to what we could talk about, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure, ask away."

"Why do you take two vials of Dust?" Ruby seemed to realise that she should probably specify just a little more, "Since you only use Electric Dust, shouldn't you only need one?"

"I use Energy Dust too," Izuku clarified, expecting the question to be answered.

"Yeah, but, what does it do?" Ruby contemplated something as she stared down at the trees, "Oh, er, I see an Ursa down there. Should I shoot it?"

"Of course; there's no reason to show the Grimm any mercy," Izuku increased the contrast of his cameras to see if he can see any of the other inky black monsters, "You can hit it from here, right?"

"Probably. Gimme a second," Ruby stopped talking, looking down the scope of Crescent Rose and adjusting the weapon for bullet drop and distance. She took a quick breath before making the final adjustments and breathing out. She pulled the trigger with practised ease and Izuku, from their vantage point, spotted where the bullet hit.

"Nice shot," Izuku noticed a splatter of purple in his vision from where the Gravity Dust bullet hit, "I think it's still hanging on though. It's stopped moving so it should be pretty easy to hit."

After repeating the adjustments she made before and pulling the trigger, a second bang echoed off of the trees and Izuku was able to see the Ursa drop. It took a few seconds for him to tell whether the Grim was beginning to disintegrate but once he could see the small black particles rise and left it. He told her what he could see and checked to see if there were any other Grimm they should pick off from their vantage point.

Seeing no other targets, Izuku decided that he should answer her previous question, "The energy Dust mainly acts as a general strength amplifier. Whilst my electric Dust mainly focuses on boosting my speed as well giving me my sparks, the energy Dust boosts everything."

"Can't you push the energy out? You know, like an energy shield or force field?"

"I tried when I first got it but nothing happened. I couldn't even slightly nudge something with it so I decided to scrap those ideas," Izuku breathed a sigh of disappointment, "Would've been great to have."

"Have you tried it since?"

"Hm?"

"Have you tried it since? Like, have you tried to do a force field since you've strengthened your Dust abilities?"

"Er, not really…"

"What!" Ruby's screech of indignation almost hurt his eardrums, "Why wouldn't you try again?"

"Well, if it didn't work the first time, it likely wouldn't work the next. You know 'the definition of insanity is to do the exact same thing over and over again and expect a different result' and all of that."

"Yeah, yeah, we all played the game. But still, you realise that most semblances don't start as strong as they could be. When I first found my semblance, all it could do was form petals out of thin air. Then I played around with it and boom speed semblance," Ruby made wild speed gestures and more than a few whooshes to emphasise, "You should probably try again during your next training session."

"Good suggestion. I'll talk to Ren about it; he likely has the best idea of how to train Aura which might help me train this force field thing if it works."

"Course it will," Ruby grinned and gave a light jab at Izuku's shoulder, "Likely whenever you end up against some sort of national criminal syndicate; that sounds like the perfect time for a Deus Ex Machina to show up."

"Aren't Deus Ex Machinas meant to be a bad thing in writing?"

"Yep!" Ruby giggled just a little, "Whatever God or Author is planning your life out doesn't seem that original. They'll need one eventually."

The two snickered slightly at the jab. Perhaps it was just a little funny that Izuku's life ended up being so cliche and perhaps it was just a little funny that he probably was as generic of a protagonist as they came. If it was something that led to moments like these where the two were hanging out and having fun, Izuku couldn't complain about it. They continued their uncontrollable snickering until they heard the sound of wood straining.

"Er, wh-" Ruby jumped off of the branch on instinct and watched as the part she'd been sitting on fell to the ground.

Izuku decided to not use his wires when she jumped(this was the fourth time in the span of five minutes) and watched as Ruby slammed face-first into the trunk of another tree. Whilst it cancelled her momentum and didn't do much damage to her Aura, it meant that she fell quite a distance before she finally landed on a branch. Peering down, it took Izuku a few seconds to locate the girl.

"I'm sorry Author!" she squeaked, her cry loud enough that he could hear it echo off of the trees.

Rolling his eyes, Izuku decided that this break had gone on long enough, "Are you ready to start the actual match?"

"Sure. Just, not here please," Ruby looked around almost paranoid, "I'll be up there in a second."

Izuku mentally counted as he waited, holding back a snicker as he did so. Was it wrong of him to expect her to fall again? The shriek of surprise from Ruby told him that no, it wasn't. Perhaps her theory held some weight. Thoughts for later.

"Alright, we've set out everything, right?" Ruby yawned as she finished, clearly waiting for their game of cat-and-mouse to begin.

It hadn't taken much longer than a minute for all of the rules to be set out. First, they'd thought about how everything would work: they'd split up, go hide for a minute and then try to shoot the other person before they were shot themselves. They decided to limit themselves to the higher ground they'd reached because allowing the entire forest to be used would lead to a long game of cat-and-mouse that likely wouldn't end. They had a very brief talk about whether or not they should allow Izuku to use his thermal vision which led to it being banned. It was also decided that Izuku could only use his rifle to attack although he was allowed to use his other tools for utility and mobility.

"Yeah," Izuku stared down from the branch they'd been standing on and planned out his path, "On the count of three?"

"Sure. Three!" Ruby jumped down with her semblance before Izuku had a chance to respond, "Good luck!"

Whilst it took him a second to realise what had happened, the armoured inventor hopped off of his perch and dove towards the ground. Having dropped several metres, he quickly grabbed a branch with a wire and manoeuvred his way from one spot to the next. After spending a second to tune his sensors to fit his needs, Izuku froze on the spot and used his wires to hang off of a branch and get a reading on his location. There was a little bit of anxious energy that came from being put into a situation where he was both the hunter and the hunted which he needed to tap into.

Knowing that Ruby relied on her semblance to move around quickly, she would remain as a blur of red petals most of the time that could easily be detected by increasing contrast and saturation slightly. Considering she took such long jumps with her semblance, she would be relatively exposed should she use her semblance. Then again, there was also the possibility that she would be more discreet with her movements since they were actively trying to remain hidden unlike they had been in their race. Despite that being plausible, there was also no reason that he shouldn't make those adjustments so that was what he did.

A second thought came to Izuku's head: wind direction. Ruby's semblance left behind a lot of red rose petals which would show the direction she went and leave behind a breadcrumb trail for him to follow. His eyes glanced at his HUD for a second before realising that he hadn't implemented anything to check for wind direction. Well, it wasn't something that would come up often so he wasn't sure why he'd expected himself to put it in. Still, if he didn't have a high-tech solution, there were other methods. After he couldn't find any small twigs to use, he stripped a piece of bark from the trees and set it on fire with some sparks.

'The flame is blowing North-East,' Izuku double-checked his map to make sure he got the direction right. This was good: it meant that he'd have some indication of where each petal came from and made sure that he'd be able to follow any petal trails more accurately. He also kept the direction in mind considering that, if he was south-west of his Ruby, he likely wouldn't be able to track the petals. That would only come in to play whenever they found each other. Until then, he should move that to the backburner.

Checking the time on the HUD, he assumed that Ruby had stopped trying to create a distance so she wouldn't have to spend a long time looking for him. He turned around and swung from the branch he'd been hanging on to another tree and clung to the trunk to quickly scan for any blotches of red in his vision before moving to another spot to repeat the movement. In the back of his mind, he wondered if he should make an AI for colour recognition. Since ORC already used some image recognition, it could be ported over… at least in theory.

Despite trying to be as silent as he could with each movement, Izuku couldn't help but flinch just a little every time he heard a thud when landing. The thud's volume was likely only so loud due to the increased sensitivity in his sensors but he couldn't be sure that Ruby wouldn't hear them. Landing as lightly as he could, Izuku checked his radar to see if there was any non-standard movement that he hadn't noticed but came up empty. Instead of moving away to actively look for her, Izuku stayed put. The girl would end up stumbling at some point, he knew it, and all he had to do was capitalise on the opportunity.

Ruby was by no means bad at creeping around: she wasn't great by any stretch but she also wasn't horrendous. That was why she was surprised that Izuku somehow hadn't found her in under five minutes. All of that tech that went into his sensors should have made it a cakewalk to find her in a bright green forest, especially if she allowed him to use his thermals (which she hadn't.) If she didn't know any better, she'd have thought that he'd already spotted her and was trying to line up his shot. Her eyes darted around quickly and, when finding nothing, turned upwards on the off chance that Izuku had drones that were out looking for her; she could never be too careful and it'd be wrong of her to underestimate him.

Keeping her semblance use to a minimum, she carefully hopped from one branch to the next. She'd almost tripped twice since they started so the girl decided that it'd be better to move around more slowly and not fall than to move quickly and make a lot of noise. Despite not having the array of optimisations that her opponent had at his disposal, she was a marksman and that meant she had an eye for details. She knew from experience that she was fairly good at knowing when a touch of colour was out of place or a shadow didn't match up. Without his thermal vision, Izuku didn't have that large of an advantage over Ruby.

That was how she noticed when a certain blob of green didn't quite match its surroundings. The smudge of green in her vision didn't seem to move much but that didn't make Ruby feel at ease; she'd seen Izuku when he was lost in his armour's HUD and UI. He may seem catatonic from outside but he was likely running through a lot of things in his head to try and track her down. Unluckily for him, Ruby spotted him first and that meant that all she had to do was line the shot up.

She dove into a bush, knowing that her clothes would stand out from the green of the flora around her and knew that she'd need to push the offensive. Raising her rifle and adjusting herself so that she could see past all of the leaves in the bush, Ruby only needed a few extra seconds to make sure that she landed her shot. After all, it'd be really embarrassing if she missed despite being completely undetected. She had this in the bag. Nothing could go wrong. This win was hers for the taking. Pulling the trigger, Ruby almost started wondering what they would do next.

The bullet went straight through the blob… That wasn't Izuku; those were just some off-colour leaves. She distantly realised that Crescent Rose didn't have anything to muffle the noise which meant that Izuku already had her location. It was through instinct that she dodged a bullet that struck the bush she'd been hiding in. If this hadn't simply been training meant for fun, Ruby would have scolded herself for making such a silly mistake. She swallowed that shame as she realised that whilst she'd lost the stealth phase of their battle, the actual winner of the match had yet to be decided.

Izuku knew he hadn't hit her when he saw the blur of red petals which shifted away from the bush. His brain worked on autopilot which meant he'd only realised he'd found Ruby after taking the shot. Despite that, his eyes finally caught where she was and he could finally start planning out how he would go about landing his bullets. According to his map app, she was moving southwards which meant that he'd be able to spot her red rose petals easily since they'd be all but thrown in his face.

Sparks were left in his wake as he landed. He kicked off of a tree, barely avoiding a bullet which shot through the air in front of him. Thankfully, it seemed that Ruby was keeping her rifle in its bolt-action sniper-scythe form instead of changing it to its marksman form which meant that Izuku had give-or-take a second and a half of time between each bullet. That meant there was only a mild amount of pressure on Izuku's shoulders; enough that he'd be pushing himself hard but light enough that he was nowhere near crumbling under the pressure.

Increasing the electric Dust running through his veins kept Izuku on edge, likely another effect of pushing his Dust past the 12% mark, which meant he was never caught off guard by every bullet that came his way. He could usually avoid them either with a quick pull of his wires or a light explosion to give him that extra push to reach cover. He had to give Ruby props for how quickly she'd adapted to his speed: the last few bullets had almost hit him if it wasn't for his quick movements.

As soon as Ruby was pinged by his radar, Izuku knew that he could push the offensive. Twisting around the trunk of the tree he'd landed on, he snapped SDS towards where Ruby was and fired two consecutive bullets which missed like his first. With the rational assumption that Ruby would be moving to aim at his current location, Izuku chose to move to another branch and took a few quick shots as he jumped, trading fire with his fellow team leader. His sensors picked up the sound of a splitting wood from his left which he turned to with his rifle pointed. Unfortunately for him, he was too late since nothing was left behind.

Nothing except for a trail of rose petals which slowly fell to the ground below. Assuming that the wind direction remained the same, Ruby should be… Izuku caught the girl in his sights for a split second after a moment of scanning for red. She moved behind the cover of trees, which meant Izuku needed to move before she completely disappeared and he'd be at the mercy of her ability to sneak attack him. Izuku spent a second to wish that he had a drone or some other form of remote surveillance, both of which would make this easier. He'd keep it in mind next time he went to the inventory room for design work.

A few hops and jumps later, Izuku was caught off-guard by a bullet which struck the branch he was just about to jump to along with the shuffle of footsteps away from him. Ruby tried to preemptively shoot him before he could respond and she misjudged. Using his wires, Izuku scaled up the trunk of a tree before kicking off the tree with enough force to crack the bark. As soon as he was airborne, he looked at his radar and twisted. Catching Ruby off-guard, Izuku was able to take a single shot that should have won him their training match.

He missed.

Despite looking somewhere completely different only seconds prior, she pointed her rifle at Izuku near-instantly and started firing. He was lucky that she hadn't taken the time to aim so all those bullets missed, allowing him to shoot a single bullet back at her. He quickly grappled the trunk of another tree with his wire and used it to swing around so he could shoot Ruby from above. As he was swinging around, his sensors caught the whoosh of a speed semblance and a radar blip quickly told Izuku where she'd moved. Using that information, he took a shot as soon as he thought he could hit her.

The bullet neither struck Ruby nor passed through thin air as Izuku had expected. Instead, it struck a rose petal left behind by Ruby's semblance. The blur that left the petal behind quickly rushed in front of him before the girl cancelled her semblance, leaving behind a cloud of red petals in his way. Using an explosion to cancel his movement and blow the petals away, Izuku pushed himself back, narrowly dodging a rifle bullet that slipped through space he once occupied. Using another explosion, Izuku rammed straight into the fifteen-year-old and pushed both of them into the air.

Knowing that she was at a disadvantage, Ruby activated her semblance, which caused a swarm of red petals to shroud her. The veil of red also blinded Izuku: the red petals covered the cameras which left them useless, the loud whoosh of petals overpowered all other noises his sensors could hear and the swarm of objects hid everything behind it from his radars. Despite all of that, she was still swung to the side with a wire, taking her swarm of roses along with her.

Whilst it took a moment to remove the lingering rose petals, Izuku barely stopped himself from hitting the ground by wrapping a wire around the trunk of a tree and retracting it. As soon as his feet touched down on the tree, Izuku was faced with a stream of hot lead coming from above. Whilst it only took a roll to dodge the attacks, it meant he was forced to move quickly. As soon as he made his move, Izuku heard the swoosh of Ruby's semblance as she circled him, taking quick shots as she did so. Muscle memory served him well and his sensors gave him an indication of where to dodge to.

She was getting closer on the target with each of her shots which meant that Izuku needed to counter-attack. Extending a wire, he intercepted his opponent midway through one of her jumps and fired his rifle. Instead of the quick end that he'd been hoping for, Izuku heard the clink of metal hitting metal which caused his eyes to widen almost comically. Instead of aiming her rifle at him in a normal position, Ruby swung her scythe to block the bullet with her weapon. Capitalising on his shock, the girl sent a bullet to his chest, ending the match in a burst of glory

Loosening his wire's grip on the girl, he pushed her onto solid ground where she could catch her breath. He spent a second to take a deep breath before turning to Ruby to congratulate her. Despite how close she'd been to losing, Ruby was able to put on a shit-eating grin like no other, filled with smug confidence that he'd never seen on her before. It took a moment for him to adjust from the oddly stoic face she'd had before to the now more emotive expression.

"So... I did good, huh?" Ruby's sly grin changed into a genuine one as she enjoyed her victory.

"Yeah," Izuku couldn't deny that he wasn't impressed by how well she did, "Did you learn anything from our time out here?"

Ruby scratched her chin and remembered a thought she'd had earlier, "You need a drone."

Nodding in agreement, Izuku took off his helmet to let the cool air touch his skin, "Next week?"

"Drone or the hunting thing?"

"Do you want to do both?" he offered, answering her question with his own.

"Both it is!"

There we go friends. Now that this chapter is out, I'm going to continue moving the plot along next chapter. Hopefully, you all didn't mind the wait although I am considering changing up the order of chapters a little later on so that pacing isn't really weird. Anyways, I'm going to be spending some time playing Deus Ex 2004 and Human Revolution so it might be a while until the next chapter, especially if a certain game doesn't get delayed for the nth time. See you all sooner.