HELLO! I HOPE THIS CHAPTER FINDS YOU ALL HEALTHY AND SEMI-SANE DURING THESE TRYING TIMES!
I'm changing shit up – because no matter how hard I try, I can not write Kyoya doing that human-horse pile thing. So… this is my replacement for that. I'm just letting you all know that the scene is slightly different, but I still have most of the main cast from canon. Enjoy?
Also, I'm sorry this is so late. Can we all just forget 2020 happened? Thank you!
(Yes, I'm aware of how poorly I've written Kyoya and all the characters in this chapter. Please, for the sake of my mental health, don't hate me for it. Once I'm back to 100% or at least 60%, I'll try to re-write a few chapters. For now, I just need to get it out, even if it's shitty, or else it won't ever come out. The next chapter might be in a similar state, but I've had the bulk of that one written for almost 2 years now, so...)
Last time:
"To his credit, Tokoyami didn't hesitate – he reeled his leg back and Kyoya could feel the power in the boy's leg as he was hurled forward. The creature cackled as he tightened his grip on Kyoya's arm as it extended and threw him an extra bit ahead than Tokoyami could kick on his own.
Kyoya grinned as he realized Dark Shadow was laughing because he threw Kyoya at the race leader – at Todoroki."
Kyoya landed less than a foot behind Todoroki, the sound of his feet hitting the ground caused the duel-toned teen to turn around and look at Kyoya from the corner of his eye.
Grin still firmly in place, Kyoya pushed more of his Flames into his legs and with one lunging step, he swept a leg out from under the other teen, causing him to faceplant in the ground. A rather unrefined noise came from the teen as he landed, and Kyoya fought back a laugh as he sprinted forward. Cold air blasted his back and was quickly followed by a line of ice he very narrowly avoided from freezing his feet to the ground.
He may or may not have heard his name mixed with a very bad word, unexpected from the prim and proper teen, but it only served to fuel the humour Kyoya found in this whole situation. He quickly came across the canyon with ropes attaching the little rock islands from one side to the other. He paused as he came to the first rope, his eyes scanning the length for any possible fraying. He hoped that the teachers would abstain from sabotage, making the students fall from this height, but at the same time, wouldn't that be so much more fun?
More cold air hit his back as he stepped onto the first rope, making him almost lose his balance. He quickly regained what little balance was lost as he continued forward – two steps and he heard the creaking of ice. He looked over his shoulder as he dropped to a crouch, grabbing the rope as the ice began to coat the length he was balancing on. Todoroki was still quite a way back, but he was swiftly catching up, and if that ice caught him on the rope, there was no guarantee that Kyoya could get away without falling down into the canyon.
With an audible growl, Kyoya forced as much of his Flames into his legs as he could, ignoring the tear in his left calf muscle 4 or 5 steps later. He reached the other side of the canyon within seconds and looked back to see Todoroki's duel-coloured hair in the distance. With a smirk, he raised an arm and gave the kid a wave – just to stir the pot. Because why not? It turned out, teasing the kid was very fun.
He had slowed down to jog when he looked back, but now that he knew he had a fair enough lead – for the moment – he stopped to bend down, to poke and prod at his leg to see how bad the damage was. For some reason, this body was less pain-tolerant than his previous life. He took a second or two, ignoring Present Mic's never-ending commentary in the background, to check and massage his muscle. He stood, took another second to tap his toe to the ground and stretch his leg out, nodded to himself, and continued his run – slower than before, but faster than a jog.
Present Mic was exclaiming very loudly that Kyoya was nearing the third and final obstacle of the race – the minefield – and that the closest second, Todoroki, had only just cleared the canyon and was "in hot pursuit".
Kyoya smiled as he looked down on the minefield, fondly remembering a time long ago when he had to battle a robot in a cage, with mines so much stronger than these, back the last time he was a teenager. He remembered beheading the robot, the Gola Mosca (a name he only remembered due to how fun the following generations were to destroy) in a battle for a ring he had originally hated the thought of. The Vongola Ring had gone from 'don't really care,' to 'it is a sign of personal weakness' by making him feel tied down by a physical chain, to becoming Kyoya's lifeblood and a major source of power, one of his favourites.
Memories swam in his mind's eye, filling him with a sweet nostalgia. Memories of Namimori, and the power he held over the citizens there, of him beating the blond Horse, Dino, into the ground while the man had called it 'training' for the ring battles. Memories of a future that never came to be and the fun fights there – especially the one where he had been able to literally cuff someone into submission. Memories of the gore and chaos he had caused. Memories of –
Memories that were distracting him from the current race. Kyoya blinked his eyes in irritation; his mind did that from time to time – go back to the life he had lived rather than be present in the one he was living now.
"This is unbelievable! Are you all seeing this? Himura Kyoya is not only in the lead by far, but he's dominating the minefield! It's not even slowing him down!" Present Mic's voice rang loudly in his ears, and he sneered at the stadium looming in the distance before looking down at his feet. He huffed a slight laugh as he realized that, yes, the minefield hadn't even slowed him down. He crossed the other side of the field in a few seconds and slowed to a jog once he had neared the building, listening to the first few explosions going off.
The mines didn't sound that powerful at all, and it maybe kind of disappointed him that the teachers hadn't put in real explosives. Present Mic was describing the mines as being toys, meant to be loud and flashy, but not hurt, and Kyoya pursed his lips in a sneer. Of course the teachers wouldn't be fun and have real explosives – if they hadn't sabotaged the ropes in the canyon, why would they make the bombs too powerful?
He sighed as he slowed down more, walking out of the tunnel and into first place – just as an explosion rocked the tunnel far stronger than anything on the minefield before, almost like someone set off 10 or so mines at once. He blinked as he looked back where the field was, but shrugged elegantly on his way out, where people were screaming about him having come in first, whether in praise or judgment he didn't care. What he did care about, however, was seeing a couple of familiar pompadours standing at the edge of the visitor's seats not far from the tunnel exit.
"What are you lot doing here?" he questioned as he jogged up to them, ignoring the muscle injury in his left leg and the announcement of second, third and fourth place participants seconds after he reached the wall to look up at his subordinates.
"We came to cheer you on, sir!" they all screamed in unison. Kyoya had half a mind to shoo them away, price of the admission tickets be damned, when a small child popped up from behind the railing. Kyoya recognized her as one of his subordinates' little sisters. Said specific older subordinate, and only one with a driver's permit was leaning back a bit from where his sister had popped up.
"Himua-sama!" the 3-year-old girl said cheerfully, his name having been altered with her lisp and the suffix something she had to have picked up from her brother and his friends, "Oook! Oook! My Quirk came in!" She waived her webbed fingers at Kyoya, smacking him in the face with little droplets of body-temperature water. "I se… secrrrrr… secre-wheat-"
"Secrete."
"Yeah! I se-kr-eeet water! Isn't it so cool!" The quirk was exactly like her brothers', and their parents, and with so little variance with their other 3 siblings – the quirk was so mundane at this point. Literally, it was excessive sweat without the salt and smell, with webbed fingers and toes.
"Very cool!" came a voice to Kyoya's side. Kyoya blinked and looked to his side, staring a hole into Ojiro's head. The blond valiantly ignored him and continued talking to the little girl. "Are you thinking of becoming a Hero when you grow up?"
Her eyes got all sparkly, glittering with the idea.
"No," her older brother said in her stead, stepping in behind her, "And who are you, anyway? Why are you standing so close to Himura-sama?"
Ojiro looked to his side, eyebrow lifted in question, eyes sparkling in amusement. "Sama?"
Kyoya raised his own eyebrow, "They are my herbivores, I own them. Of course, they call me-!" Kyoya clamped his mouth shut so hard and so fast his teeth clicked, and all but lunged away as his leg nearly exploded in pain.
"So, you are injured!" Ojiro called out in surprise, rushing the 5 yards Kyoya managed to jump away. Kyoya snarled at him, blinking down at the teen's tail as the offending source that hit his calf. Ojiro stopped just out of kicking range and lifted his arms in a judo stance, despite being a karate student. Kyoya watched the offender for a moment growling lowly. So, that's how it was going to be, huh? His Herbivore was going to attack him the moment he saw weakness?
"YOU FUCKER!" Came a shout from Kyoya's left, followed by some small explosions. "HOW DID YOU GET FIRST!"
Kyoya may have made a mistake in the following seconds. Maybe a total of 3 mistakes.
1) Kyoya looked to the side, at the offending screaming gremlin and away from the 'threat' in front of him.
2) Kyoya, like a stupid herbivore, didn't notice his omnivore using the shadows to mask his presence.
3) Kyoya blamed this on his injured leg and the distraction, but he ended up tackled and then scooped up into Ojiro's arms.
Before Kyoya could do more than hiss in surprise, Ojiro threw Kyoya at the deepest shadow at the foot of the wall, Dark Shadow coming out and wrapping claw hands around him.
With betrayal in his eyes, Kyoya watched Tokoyami and Ojiro high-five as they watched Kyoya struggle to get away.
"What is the meaning of this?" he growled, watching as Hagakure bounced up to them, the blond bomber coming in from the other side.
"What, you can take care of us, but we can't take care of you?" Hagakure asked, sounding sad. He was sure if he could see her expression, she would have watery, puppy-dog eyes that Kyoya would never admit to falling for in his past life. Chrome had always been really good at throwing around puppy-dog eyes, even working with only one eye.
"Yes." Kyoya growled out. "You're all mine to care for, not the other way around. Now put me down!"
"HOW THE FUCK DID YOU GET FIRST PLACE?! WHEN THE FUCK DID YOU GET PAST ME?!" Bakugou screamed, completely ignoring the nearly just as loud shouting of Kyoya's Disciplinary Committee subordinates demanding that their commander be put down. Kyoya snapped toward Bakugou.
"Could you not swear? There is a small child right over there and I would rather her not pick up your language."
"THAT STILL DOESN'T TELL ME WHEN YOU GOT A HEAD!" He screamed back, notably without swearing. The entire thing was beginning to gather the attention of all the participants, teachers and audience, and honestly, Kyoya was starting to reach his limit.
"Let. Go." He growled at Dark Shadow, glaring over his shoulder until the creature obeyed him, setting down kyoya gently on his good foot and hiding behind Tokoyami, shaking. Once he was down on his feet, with a teacher coming over their way, Kyoya spoke lowly to the teens that had mistakenly thought to 'care' for him.
"Do not do that again. It is not your job to be concerned with my well-being, especially if I can clearly still stand." He dismissed them with a glare and turned to Bakugou, ignoring the way his herbivores started getting noisy about helping him because they cared. He looked deep into the blonde's red eyes and said, rather condescendingly, "I overtook you and everyone else just after the robots. Learn to keep track of those around you."
With that said he turned away, giving one last look over to his subordinates before walking off past the referee, Pro Hero Midnight, and toward the nurse on standby. He heard the teacher ask about what happened, but he stopped caring about the response before he fully registered the question.
He did his best to completely ignore how bad his limp was until he reached the old nurse and she stared him down. After a moment, she sighed.
"How bad?"
"It's a nuisance more than an injury," Kyoya said honestly. "I would honestly just rather not have to deal with this nuisance is all." She heaved another sigh.
"Sit down, let me see it. The second part of the festival will be held in a few minutes so, take your time." He was less than a quick jog away from the main part of the stadium, and while he figured the nurses' office would be close, he hadn't thought it would be this close. He sat on the edge of the medical cot and rolled up his pant leg enough for the elderly woman to get a good look. She stared at his leg for a moment, then back at him and Kyoya could see the urge to hit him upside the head was strong behind her goggles.
Her lips elongated to kiss his leg better, and before she had started her rant abut him taking better care of himself, or asking how he got his injury, (Kyoya wasn't sure which she had opened her mouth for, and to be honest, he didn't care) he had stood and walked out the door, blatantly ignoring her.
Most of the way back to the main stadium, Reborn tossed him a bottle of some blood-red coloured water. He caught it, paused to look it over thoroughly and raised an eyebrow at the teacher.
"Recovery Girl uses your own stamina to heal you, so take the electrolytes. You'll need it for the next round."
"Is that a hint of what the next round is going to be?" he asked in jest, opening the bottle and swallowing half the contents in a few gulps.
"No matter what it'll be, you'll need the energy." The man said, sounding amused. Kyoya smirked and tilted his head back to finish the bottle. Kyoya tossed the empty bottle back at the teacher and continued on his way to the stadium.
"Round 2 will be…?" The Rated R Hero, Midnight said, the pitch in her voice rising with the words as the dial spun on the large screen displaying the revolving sections. The tension in the stadium was building again as the sections began slowing. Kyoya was once again hit by the nostalgia from the pre-battle tension, but it was tainted by the knowledge of the travesty that was the first round.
Imagine his joy when it was a free-for-all, a last man standing kind of battle between 10 students at once. As it was explained, there would be 8 battles of 10 students each, in the order that the students came in the race. So, the battle stage that Kyoya would be in would consist of him, the first-place student, the 9th, 17th, 25th and so on, and the next battle would be with the 2nd person (Midoriya), the 10th, 18th, and continued. All the way through the top 80 students' total.
{Author's note; if there is any confusion, I kinda made a chart at the end to help. It's a little convoluted, mostly so that the main cast don't take each other out right away.}
The rules for the battles seemed a little… needlessly complicated, but it was made simpler when Midnight, the referee, announced the students that were to fight in that round one at a time.
The first stage felt a little overcrowded for Kyoya by the time all the students were called down, and he ended up just kicking two people off the edge the moment the round started. Another kid came up behind him, arm pulled back to sucker punch Kyoya – the kid was quickly rolled over his shoulder, off the edge of the stage. He tripped another two off in the following few seconds – a total of 5. The other 4 were having 2 bouts of wrestling. Kyoya hid a small yawn behind a hand, took 2 steps forward and crouched down to wait for the teens to beat themselves tired.
Five whole minutes later, and finally one of them was victorious – until they met Kyoya's eyes.
It took less than a second to Judo throw the kid over his shoulder and off the edge.
"Winner: Himura Kyoya!"
Kyoya sat with a 'whump' into the section marked off for his class, watching the end of the second round. Midoriya finally managed to push the remaining opponent off the edge and a victorious shout from the small teen rang out. Kyoya couldn't completely smother the smirk in the corner of his lips. Midnight's overjoyed voice rang out along with the commentary from Present Mic and Erasure Head commending the teen for his balance, as he had teetered on the edge more than once and used that to throw other students off.
The next round was the shortest yet, with Todoroki using a blast of ice to throw all the other students off in a second, Tokoyami and Sero included.
The fourth round was… interesting. The blond gremlin, Bakugou and the brown-haired girl that could make things float (Uraraka?) actually seemed to team up for the beginning. She ran around smacking people, dodging different punches and hits, making almost all her opponents float up – crouching down just in time to dodge a large-scale explosion that sent all 6 kids floating in the air out and away from the stage. She released her Quirk, all students falling off the side. Bakugou had taken care of another 2 kids while Uraraka was doing her thing, leaving just the 2 of them to face off.
The ensuing battle was magnificent. He was ruthless – she refused to give up. There was strategy and brute force, tenacity and a fearless recklessness from both sides. It ended after a large explosion that left her unconscious.
It was beautiful in its brutality.
Kyoya gave a standing ovation as the audience boo-ed Bakugou for hitting a girl – only shutting up when Erasure Head chastised them. Kyoya knew that was Reborn shining through. The man had always had a soft spot for strong women – whether it was teaching them how to be effectively stronger or admiring their strength, Kyoya knew Reborn liked when a woman could kick ass. Especially when said woman could kick his ass.
"Of course, you would applaud a girl getting beaten up," Todoroki said snidely as he slinked past toward his seat.
"Did you not just listen to Aizawa-sensei explain that she wasn't 'beaten up'? She gave her all in a fight she knew she had no chance of winning, came up with an admittedly very clever plan and executed it as well as she could, considering her opponent." Kyoya said as Todoroki sat down, not once taking his eyes off the teen.
"You really think she did well?" Midoriya's voice asked meekly from the front row.
Kyoya readily dismissed Todoroki to respond to the green herbivore sitting upfront, the smaller teen fully turned backwards on the chair and looking over the back, his fingers, eyes and unruly green hair was all that was visible. "Of course, I do. She obviously went into that fight knowing she didn't stand much of a chance, but with all the determination she had in her to win." Midoriya's eyes widened, and he sat up a little more, a bright grin on his face.
"Right? She was so cool!"
The next round was announced to be a few minutes late because the stage needed to be rebuilt before Midoriya could fully lose himself in gushing about his friend.
Remarkably, the next two rounds were basically the same. Almost literally – the winners of each had practically the same Quirk, and they used it in similar ways. His red-headed classmate, Kirishima, and class 1-B's Tetsutetsu. Same Quirk, same idea of digging in their feet and imitation the 'immovable mountain', same win time. Hagakure was beaten by the kid from 1-B, but she put up one hell of a fight.
Kyoya wondered, hopefully, if he could get to bite a wall to death. It sounded fun.
Iida spent the round running too close to people and knocking them off the edge, tripping up at the last moment to face off against some weird teal-green-haired girl shouting something about her babies as she showed off her many, many machines. It ended when Iida finally managed to gather the nets she was shooting at him in his hands and literally catapulting her off the edge by running in a tight circle several times.
It startled a laugh from Kyoya when the girl tumbled off the stage and landed on a couple of failures, causing everyone to turn to him. He recovered with a cough into his fist, because no, he absolutely didn't laugh.
Kyoya pretended that no one was looking at him as the last of the girls' machines and gadgets were cleared from the stage so the final group could go up. Ojiro was one of the first stepping up on stage, and Kyoya found himself sitting one the edge of his seat, watching like a falcon.
Something… something in the way he walked up onto the stage, the way he stared blankly out into the middle void – not quite the far distance of a trance, but definitely not focused. He wasn't the only one, either; four other teens were acting odd and staring into the mid-distance. They started in a circle, just like the other 7 fights previous, but when the referee signalled for the start of the fight, all five students that had been acting oddly turned around to grab whoever was closest and jumped off the edge of the stage on their own. Kyoya all but jumped from his seat as Ojiro pulled a student down by their jersey, plummeting with all the rest of the students.
Or, no. There was one student left on the stage. Wild purple hair, apathy in his eyes, a slouch in his posture, the teen walked up to the referee and just looked her in the eyes as the other students shook themselves standing on the ground below.
"Uhm… Winner, Hitoshi Shinsou!" Midnight called to the crowd's confused applause.
Kyoya wasn't even sure when he had moved to the front row railing, he just suddenly realized he was leaning over the edge, metal gripped so tight his knuckles turned white. How? How had he won? What happened to Ojiro?
"What… what just happened?" Hagakure's voice was close to him, but it sounded distant as if Kyoya heard it in a funnel.
"I don't know, but I'm going to find out," Kyoya growled and leapt from the railing down to where Ojiro was holding his head in confusion.
Last-Man-Standing battles. Hope this clears things up… it's just so that all the main cast don't fight up front in the second round.
round 1 – 1, 9, 17, 25, 33, 41, 49, 57, 65, 73
round 2 – 2, 10, 18, 26, 34, 42, 50, 58, 66, 74
round 3 – 3, 11, 19, 27, 35, 43, 51, 59, 67, 75
round 4 – 4, 12, 20, 28, 36, 44, 52, 60, 68, 76
round 5 – 5, 13, 21, 29, 37, 45, 53, 61, 69, 77
round 6 – 6, 14, 22, 30, 38, 46, 54, 62, 70, 78
round 7 – 7, 15, 23, 31, 39, 47, 55, 63, 71, 79
round 8 – 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 72, 80