"So what do you think about Iida-Kun's chances?"
Izuku and Uraraka both sat at the front seat as they stared down at their friend walking into the arena to face Mei Hatsume.
"He's gonna lose, that much is obvious."
Venom's tone was harsh and dismissive, he still hadn't forgiven Iida for ditching them during the second round.
Izuku did not contradict him though.
Iida Tenya was one of the more impressive students of 1-A. He might not be in the absolute top of the class, but Izuku would have placed him firmly below the tops of 1-A. That was the problem though. He wasn't in the top of the class as far as battle abilities were concerned, and Izuku somehow knew, down to his bones, that Iida wouldn't win this next round.
Maybe it was some other, deeper sense than sight, or maybe it was just that he understood Mei's capabilities as she had shown them so far, while also knowing that she hadn't shown the full extent of her technology yet.
Either way, as the two combatants, entered the arena, Iida, tall and powerfully built, wearing a grave expression of seriousness. Mei with a new set of black lense goggles, and a carefree smile, suggesting she didn't have a care in the world.
She was a bit different than she had been in the second round of the tournament.
She had ditched the school gym jacket, and instead wore only a black top, which Izuku would have recognized as a sports bra if he had been more knowledgeable about such things.
Now that she wasn't wearing a jacket, Izuku now saw that from the harness around her stomach, a piece of machinery went up her back, looking kinda like a pseudo exoskeleton like spine.
She also wore that same set of steampunk looking gauntlets she had had on when last he spoke to her, only now both of them had cables connecting them to the metal harness.
She had also attached the plain metal Tobe to said harness as well. Other than that, she remained pretty unchanged. Her boots were the same, and so were both her metal arms and her harness itself.
It was a strange feeling looking down at her, knowing that this girl had come closer to his old goals of becoming a Hero despite being quirkless than he ever had.
Well, technically not entirely true. He still was quirkless, his powers instead coming from an alien source, rather than the next stage of evolution.
The point still stood though.
This girl had come closer to making his old dreams a reality than he ever had. In fact, he had pretty much abandoned the idea of quirkless people becoming heroes once he had gotten powers of his own. It was just now that he realized that fact.
He wasn't entirely sure how to feel about any of it.
As for the coming battle itself though, he felt distinct worry for Iida, a worry, which the rest of the class didn't share, instead chatting cheerfully about Iida's chances.
Well, everyone except Uraraka(Who seemed to share Izuku's worries), and Mina(Who just glared down at the pink-haired girl below without saying anything.) anyway.
Izuku winced as Present Mic began announcing the combatants.
"NOW, THE FIRST ROUNDS ARE REACHING THEIR HALFWAY POINT! NEXT UP WE HAVE IIDA TENYA OF THE HERO COURSE! AGAINST HIM WE HAVE THE UNEXPECTED MECHANICAL OCTOPUS OF THE SUPPORT COURSE, HATSUME MEI!"
There was a lot of murmuring around the stadium, as Present Mic paused for dramatic effect.
Then…
"START!"
Iida speed towards Mei, the powerful engines in his legs going full out.
"WHAT INCREDIBLE SPEED IDA!"
Izuku was startled at the volume of her voice. Did she have a speaker set up somewhere? To maximize the volume?
Then, as she finished her sentence, she lifted her right hand up, an open palm towards the charging Iida, like she was Iron man and about to hit him with a beam.
Iida instantly tried to jump to the side.
He was fast, incredibly fast. But not fast enough.
With a massive "CRACK!" that was amplified by whatever it was that Mei had set up to amplify her voice, and accompanied by a blinding flash of red light, a bolt of lightning shot out of Mei's hand and collided with Tenya, instantly knocking him out.
His speed kept him moving forward though, and had Mei's mechanical arms not shot forward to grab him, he probably would have gotten seriously hurt crashing and skidding across the floor.
All around, a lot of the audience swore, having been temporarily blinded by the sudden, unexpected flash.
Izuku was one of those, but his sight recovered way faster than the rest of the audience.
As he blinked the spots of light away, his eyes went wide as he stared down at Mei, holding up the unconscious Iida by her metal arms, her actual arms going up and to the sides as if she was trying to embrace someone who was standing just a bit above her.
"BUT NO MAN CAN OUTRUN THE LIGHTNING! BEHOLD! MIKASA 72.13! THE LIGHTNING GAUNTLETS! CAPABLE OF HARNESSING THE POWER OF ELECTRICITY IN AIMABLE, PRACTICAL BOLTS, RATHER THAN JUST SPEWING IT FORTH IN AN UNCONTROLLABLE STORM!"
She raised her hands to the sky, and with two new sets of deafening thunderclaps and bright red lights, two bolts of red lightning shot up into the sky!
"IF KAMINARI DENKI HAD THESE IN THE PREVIOUS ROUND, SURELY HE WOULD HAVE TRIUMPHED, INSTEAD OF LOSING LIKE A COMPLETE CHUMP! BUT THIS IS NOT MERELY FOR THOSE WITH LIGHTNING QUIRKS THEMSELVES! NO, ANYONE WITH A POWERFUL ENOUGH SOURCE OF ENERGY CAN USE THESE AMAZING GAUNTLETS TO FIRE FORTH BOLTS WITH THE FORCE OF TAS-" "ENOUGH ALREADY!"
Midnight halted Mei's speech(Though sales pitch was a better description), with a pretty annoyed expression.
"THIS IS A TOURNAMENT, NOT A COMMERCIAL! YOU WON, NOW GET OUT OF THE RING SO THE NEXT COMBATANTS CAN TAKE THEIR PLACE!"
Mei did not look the least bit bashful at the chastisement and simply bowed her head, still wearing that chipper smile on her face as she deposited Iida on the ground for the mechanical carriers to come and pick up.
The audience though was far, far more impressed by the display than Midnight had been. As Mei walked towards the exit of the ring, Izuku could hear the sounds of thousands of people muttering, and chatting as the shock of the sudden blinding light had gone away.
Izuku and Uraraka just stared, both of them slackjawed by the display of power.
Mina on the other hand was way more blatant about her feelings on the matter.
"Holy shit! That's… That's bad! That's really, really bad!"
She looked over at Izuku with a worried expression.
For his own part, Izuku felt a sense of creeping dread, that overshadowed any feelings he had of being nervous about facing Todoroki.
He had expected Mei's additional gadgets to be dangerous, but he had assumed that her arms were what would be the most dangerous thing she had going for her. He had apparently been sorely mistaken by that.
-Huh, yeah we're gonna have to deal with those first. Lightning is never a joke.-
I
"He'll be fine." Recovery Girl's voice was calm, and somewhat reassuring, though still with an edge that warned she would not suffer any nonsense in her presence.
Izuku let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.
Iida didn't exactly look fine, with an expression of someone who had been knocked out cold, with an open mouth and hanging jaw and non-seeing eyes.
"It looks much worse than it is." Recovery girl motioned her cane up and used the butt of it to close his jaw, and gently move his head over so it wasn't at it's side.
"Despite the flashy effects, the bolts that crazy girl used against him weren't much stronger than a taser."
"So he'll be fine?" Uraraka asked in a relieved tone.
"Yes, yes so long as he gets time to recover, he'll be fine. Now then, since you two are NOT injured at the moment, and he will not wake up for the foreseeable future, I'm going to have to ask you two to leave.
And just like that, the three of them were thrown out of the room for wounded students.
They stood in silence for a moment, before Izuku sighed.
"We… Should get going."
In the distance, he could hear the sounds of Mina's first match starting up against Aoyama.
"I… I suppose."
They walked in silence for a moment.
"So… Why does Mei hate you so much?" Uraraka finally asked.
"I really wish I knew." Izuku answered truthfully.
"According to her, we've met before, but I can't for the love of me remember any time I've seen her before today."
"Really? So like… You've got no idea who she is?"
"No."
Uraraka looked at him as they walked, then turned her head forward, and brought her hand up in a manner that made it obvious she was mulling that piece of information over.
"You… Don't have amnesia or something like that? Like, maybe you've got some time period missing in your head?"
"No, not really." Not to mention he actually had a date for their supposed meeting. And he was pretty sure he remembered that time exactly.
He was gonna ask his mom about it when he got back home. If there was anything about that time he was missing, then she would be the only person who would know.
Their silence was interrupted by a cheerful Mina, as the pink girl came up the staircase from the entrance. She was in high spirits so it was pretty obvious she had won her bout.
"Yo guys, so how was Iida?"
"He was fine." Izuku replied, not really wanting to break Mina's good mood.
"Good to hear." She turned to Uraraka. "Bg the way, you should probably go down to the waiting room and get ready. It's your match after this next one."
Uraraka glanced down the steps, and nodded, then headed down the stairs, before coming to a halt, then turning back up to look at the two of them.
"Hey, Izuku…"
"Yes?"
It looked like the girl wanted to say something, but had trouble getting it out. Then she raised her hand in with a thumb up sign.
"Let's meet in the finals."
Izuku blinked then, with only just a bit of prodding from Venom, he lifted his hand in a similar sign and nodded.
As Uraraka ended out of eyesight, Mina whistled.
"You think she's more worried about fighting Bakugou than she let's on?"
"...Yes."
They began moving to the stands.
"Hmmm… Should she be? Like, I know he's pretty good, but, frankly, from what I've seen, he's nowhere near the level of us three."
"I… I don't think Katsuki will win, but he… Well, he's not the kind of guy who does the same kind of blatant mistakes a second time."
Izuku thought about it. Whenever he thought about Katsuki these days, a seething layer of rage began to bubble in him, but he forced it down. He wanted to be objective about Mina's question.
"Like… I know I crushed him easily during the training exercise, but that really wasn't a good showcase of Katsuki. His big weakness is that he's a Glass Cannon. One real hit and you can bring him down. But you actually have to land that hit to make it happen, which isn't as easy as I made it seem."
He fumbled a bit before continuing, trying to explain it.
"Like… I know Katsuki, I know how he thinks, how he moves, what kind of patterns he has. Like, when he hits someone, he almost always uses a strong right. And when he moves using his legs, he also almost always starts with his right foot. Also, it's not as obvious now, as it was back during middle school, but when he gets up from sitting, he always does it to the right, unless he has to do it otherwise. That's how he moves, and when you see the pattern, it's easy to figure out, then there's the way he thinks. Like you probably figured it out by now, but he's a real sadist, who loves using his powers on those weaker than him. He doesn't really care about anyone else, as his incredibly aggressive personality has pretty much wrecked his relationship with his parents, and from what I've seen, he doesn't seem to have any contact with any of his "Friends" from middle school anymore, as, without any reason to hang out with anyone, he couldn't care less about socializing. And he loves spicy food, like, every single day his parents aren't home, he'll order the exact same thing to eat, crispy chicken topped Curry from Coco Ichiban, and it is always level 5, which is the spiciest curry they have. And when he cleans himself in the shower after physical classes he always begins cleaning himself with his left armpit, using the No More Tears shampoo brand. And before he goes to sleep he always watches super scary R-Rated horror films to help him sleep, and his main hobby outside of school is mountain climbing, though he might have dropped that when he enrolled at Yuei. He's also way, way smarter than he looks, he always scored near the top of our old school. Aggressive, intelligent, arrogant, and brash. Uraraka probably has figured out a lot of this stuff seeing him here at Yuei, but frankly, I really much doubt she has a full understanding of him yet. That might be a problem for her during the match."
After he was done, it took a moment of quiet walking through the corridor, before he realized no one was talking, and he turned to look at Mina.
The pink girl(And Venom, though Izuku couldn't see him where he had manifested his head from his back.) stared at him with a completely dumbfounded expression, completely lost for words.
"What?"
Mina kept staring at him, her jaw wide open before she closed it, and finally replied, her voice as dumbfounded as her expression.
"How… How do… How do you know all that stuff?!"
"We… Used to be friends back in midd-... back in the day. I learned a lot watching him at his home and at school. And… Well, he hasn't really changed much. He's still the same prick he's always been, only now he's taller."
Mina kept staring at him with that same dumbfounded expression, and Izuku suddenly felt… Very self-conscious. Why should he be? This was all obvious stuff anyone who saw Katsuki all the time could pick up on.
"...And you picked up on and remembered all of this stuff… Just by watching him?"
"...Yes?" Izuku's voice came out a lot weaker than he would have liked. Mina's reaction had shaken him more than he would have expected. The idea she was creeped out by him… Well, it hurt, way more than he would have expected.
"WOW, man… I don't know if I should be impressed, or terrified by your attention to detail."
Her voice did actually sound sorta impressed as she said it, but Izuku shrank down from the admission.
"Sorry…"
"For what? Being attentive to detail? I wish I could remember minor clearly stuff like that."
She was quiet for a moment before adding. "It would help with my grades at least."
Despite her trying to make light of it all, Izuku could tell from her tone that she wasn't comfortable with the level of detail Izuku had just revealed he knew about Katsuki.
Suddenly Izuku felt incredibly… Guilty? No, that wasn't quite it. It was more like… A mixture of the old familiar feeling of self-loathing, mixed with fear. Self-loathing that he made her feel uneasy because of him being the way he was, and Fear she would leave him due to that.
It was a stupid, stupid feeling, something he realized as he recognized it, but he felt it, nonetheless.
I
The match between Momo and her opponent, Tokage from 1-B, was so short that it was over before Izuku and Mina got back to their seats.
"Huh. I was kinda hoping to see Tokage in action before we fight."
If she was disappointed for real, she didn't show it, as she sat down, Izuku taking his place beside her.
The battle between the two Iron Men of 1-A and 1-B might have been an interesting sight in different circumstances, but at the moment, Izuku could only focus on the match that would follow it, and as Kirishima won a less orthodox victory than others had today, it was finally time.
Down below, the two contenders for the final match of the tournament stepped up into the ring.
"IN ONE CORNER WE HAVE KATSUKI BAKUGOU! A CELEBRITY SINCE HIS SCHOOL DAYS, WITH A FACE THAT ONLY A MOTHER, COULD LOVE!... IT IS KATSUKI BAKUGOU OF THE HERO COURSE!"
-Did Mic seriously just call Bakugou ugly as sin?-
He had, but Izuku was too focused on the other person in the ring at the moment to take any joy from it.
He felt real, genuine worry for Uraraka. Worry that she would get hurt, that she'd lose and have her hopes of winning this tournament crushed here, by Bakugou.
'VERSUS MY PERSONAL FAVORITE! URARAKA OCHAKO, ALSO OF THE HERO COURSE!"
The two students spoke something to each other down there below, but whatever his former friend and his current one said, he was not privy to hear.
Whatever it was, they now stared at each other as they waited for the signal to start.
"START!"
Then they began their dance.
With bolts of pink lightning around her, Uraraka moved forward with a speed that made the kind of movement she showed when fighting him seem, if not slow, far less crisp and unpolished.
Katsuki however, did not wait for her to engage in a fisticuffs brawl.
With an explosion from his left hand, he shot up and into the sky, and as Uraraka's hand slammed where his stomach had just been he was 6 meters above.
Then he brought both hands up over his head, a couple of crackles dancing along his fingers, then he brought them down towards Uraraka, an explosion engulfing the entire section of the arena, hitting Uraraka head-on.
Izuku, who had been sitting as he watched, shot up into a standing position, both hands on the railing, accidentally breaking his chair seat with the massive force he used as he sprang up.
He heard mutterings of shocked people all around, but he ignored them as his eyes watched the arena, desperately looking where Uraraka had been.
There was still smoke from the explosion covering the ground.
Bakugou suddenly made another explosion with his fist, making him yet to the side.
Izuku blinked. It looked like he had dodged something, but if so, Izuku hadn't seen what.
As the smoke cleared below, he dodged again, another explosion in his hand.
Then a third time.
This time though, as he dodged, something new happened, and something, that was invisible to the naked eye slammed into him from below.
He almost fell straight down, but he managed an emergency landing, cushioning his fall with two explosions.
As the smoke from the massive explosion cleared completely, Uraraka stepped out of it, towards Katsuki.
The explosion hadn't been without effect. For one, her school uniform was in complete tatters, looking like it was about to fall to pieces all over. The entire sipper on the front had been ripped away, along with pretty much the entire front of her jacket, though thankfully for her modesty, the upper part of her black undershirt was still intact, with only her stomach being visible.
Her pants were similarly in tatters, though with them, it looked more like she had been hit by a grenade, with a ton of holes that looked like they had come from shrapnel. From the rocks thrown about from the explosion, Izuku realized.
Bodily vise though, she at first seemed rather unharmed, other than singed hair, and a ton of scorch marks.
Then Izuku noted that she had blood dripping from one ear. The explosion had damaged her ears at the very least.
That was probably why she seemed in excruciating pain, judging by her expression as she stepped forward.
Katsuki didn't seem to be in much better shape, hunched forward where he stood, clearly in massive pain.
"What just happened? What was Bakugou hit by!?" Mineta asked from behind in a frantic tone.
Izuku opened his mouth to answer, only to realize he wasn't entirely sure.
Mina, however, had caught what he hadn't.
"She threw stones at him. Small ones, at massive speeds, probably a result from the explosion hitting the arena floor."
She stepped up besides Izuku, though unlike him, she didn't lean out over the railing.
"Then, when she saw she wasn't hitting him with those, she threw one of them as a distraction and hit him with that technique she used in the cavalry battle. Seems to have been way more powerful this time, though."
That it had. When she had hit him with that explosion during the cavalry battle, it had been like he had collided with something in the air. This time, it looked like she had broken several of his ribs if that posture was anything to go by.
Then suddenly, both his hands shot up, their palms pointing towards Uraraka who was maybe 5 meters away.
With a massive burst of speed and pink bolts, she moved from the spot she had been, to the corner of the ring behind Bakugou, avoiding an explosion of a magnitude similar to the previous one.
She was about to attack when suddenly she froze as Katsuki slammed backwards from the force of the explosion, his legs suddenly no longer bracing for the impact, and he hit the ground unconscious.
It was over so suddenly that it took a moment before everyone realized it.
"Katsuki Bakugou is unable to continue, Winner is Uraraka Ochako." Midnight said calmly, as she quickly went over to the unconscious boy, and lifted him up. She carried him to the side where a carrier speedily came.
"What… What just…"
-One of his broken ribs probably pierced a lung when he fired off that second explosion. The git really is a glass Cannon of the highest caliber. Frighteningly high destructive power, but man, has no defensive power at all.-
As he was carted off, however, Izuku did not focus on Katsuki, but instead of Uraraka, who stumbled her way out of the arena, both hands clutched around her bleeding ears.