I cannot believe I've been writing this self-indulgent nonsense for six months already. We're celebrating 100 favourites today! Thank you for reading along with me xo
Chapter Twenty-Four: Off to the Races
"Start!"
The first event was an obstacle course. The students surged forward, the sound of their stomping thundering in her ears.
"Okay, here's the play-by-play!"
Hizashi narrated the scene overhead. She heard his voice over the roar like he was right beside her.
"Are you ready to do the commentary, Mummy Man?"
"You're the one who forced me to come."
Her brother was with him— the accurately named Mummy Man. She could still hear the bandages over his mouth, only just muffling his voice.
"Let's get started right away. What should we pay attention to in the early stages?"
It was a bottleneck. The entirety of the first year class was cramming through the tunnelled gateway leading to the course, hollering like they didn't realize this was the hidden first obstacle. The students pressed together like the easy targets they were.
Idiots, she thought snootily. With a grin in place, Koharu grabbed onto the shoulder of the student in front of her, and with a jump, launched herself into the air. She landed on another student's shoulder with ease, and propelled herself forward before they could do more than flinch.
"Hey!"
"What the hell!"
Koharu laughed as she soared over the crowd, moving shoulder to shoulder, and stepped on Bakugou's shoulder with a sinister glee. Behind her, she bellowed an insincere, "Sorry~!"
"Get back here, you damn bastard!"
Cries of shock followed her as ice swept down the pathway, encasing the running students' feet in ice. Todoroki was the first to break through the crowd, an icy mist billowing off the right side of his body. With one final leap, Koharu followed right after him.
"I won't let you get away so easily!"
She didn't need to look behind to know who was approaching— even without his furious voice, the Bakugou's explosions were distinct. Almost certainly, he wouldn't be the only one of their classmates to make it through Todoroki's trap— but there wasn't time to be looking behind her.
Todoroki was directly in front of her, but he was no match for her speed. Within seconds, she was next to him. Their eyes met, his wide with shock and hers alight with delight. She stuck out her tongue.
"Take this!" A voice cried from behind them. "My special attack!"
It was Mineta, one of his hands raised with a grape ball clutched in his palm. He charged forward without any awareness of his surroundings. "Gra—"
SMASH!
From behind him came a giant robot, swatting the small boy away like he was nothing more than a fly. Koharu and Todorki skid to a stop as the boy was hit, their path suddenly blocked by the enormous Zero Pointers from the entrance exams.
A tinny voice sounded from the one in the middle. "Targets found… Lots!"
"Sudden obstacles have shown up! Starting with the first barrier— Robo Inferno!"
Koharu sized up their opponents with a nod. "Okay," she said as she took a large step backwards. "You're up, Todoroki."
Todoroki didn't spare her a glance, but replied by saying, "So this is what they used in the general entrance exam?" Frost grew over his skin, ice beginning to creep across the pathway from the bottom of his feet. "If they went through all this trouble, I wish they would've prepared something better..."
Rather than watching the boy, Koharu watched the ice at his feet, sidestepping its approach to avoid being frozen in place. She didn't know if Todoroki would consider her enough of a threat to immobilize her, but she was ready for it. She quickly received her answer.
A tidal wave of ice cascaded out from Todoroki's reach, encasing the bottom halves of the robots in thick ice. She was left untouched, if a little cold. A chilly blast of air swept the hair from her face—
"Do it again."
Bloodshot eyes met as seven-year-old Koharu gaped at her brother, betrayal in her gaze. Her heavy breathing kept her from replying as her heart, pumping wildly in her chest, dropped to her aching stomach. She tried and failed to push herself up on short, weary arms.
"Get up. Do it again."
"I can't," she huffed between stuttering breaths. "I can't do it."
Shouta scoffed. "Bullshit." The back of her shirt was fisted and Koharu was dragged roughly to her feet. Her brother, towering above her childish height, glowered down. "You're not taking this seriously. Do it again."
Koharu swayed on her feet. "I can't," she repeated with a whine. "I'm too tired."
Shouta was firm. The grip on the back of her shirt was unrelenting as his furious eyes. Coldly, he replied, "Heroes don't get to be tired, kid."
"Well, I'm not a hero yet!"
"Keep this up and you'll never be one."
Tears gathered in the corners of Koharu's eyes. Shouta watched her without pity.
"Do it again."
A snotty nose was rubbed against her wrist-guard. Koharu's dark, watery eyes glared fiercely upwards. "Fine! But— but only 'cause you pissed me off!"
"Sure, whatever it takes to get you to run."
That was her cue to move. She darted forward, avoiding the icy patches left on the ground by Todoroki as he surged into action. They ran beneath the statuesque robots in tandem, Todoroki eyeing her quickly with distaste that told of his regret to leave her unscathed.
"Todoroki from Class 1-A! He attacked and defended in one hit! How elegant! Amazing! He'll be the first— what's this?"
Koharu burst through the mist, Todoroki on her heels. Her smile was bursting as she called over her shoulder, "Thanks for the assist, bro!"
"The amazing Aizawa of Class 1-A— not to be confused with the ol' Mummy Man here— has taken her opportunity to pull ahead! She's stolen Todoroki's moment of glory!"
Metal creaked overhead as the unbalanced robots began to descend, frozen metal limbs crashing to the ground. Dust and debris encased the air.
Koharu's pace didn't falter. With how easy Todoroki made it for them, it wouldn't be long before their competitors would be following them— even with the sky raining frozen robots. Everyone who had applied to the Hero course had already fought the robot villains before, and that was even before any legitimate Hero training they had since received. Even without Todoroki's assistance, the first obstacle would be all but a warm-up for people like them.
"Hey, hey! The first barrier's a piece of cake? Then what about the second?"
Before them was an enormous field of pillars so tall that their bases were lost to shadow, their tops connected by zig-zagging tightropes. Todoroki ran ahead, using his ice to aid his path across the tightropes without a moment's hesitation. Meanwhile, Koharu jogged momentarily in place as she assessed the course, eyes darting across the landscape as she considered her best course of action.
"If you fall, you're out! If you don't want to fall, then crawl!"
The gaps between the pillars were too large for her to jump, and the paths created by the tightropes were too irregular. She couldn't risk taking a path that would come to a dead-end. There had to be a path of least resistance— there was no way the paths could be entirely haphazard. Koharu's eyes swept the field.
There it is. She would have to run backwards and to the left, but the pillars there were closer than the others, with a more direct line to the other side. She was off without another thought, disappearing into the tree-line to another tightrope start.
"It's 'The Fall'!"
"I'm gonna die," the eleven-year-old Koharu whined from the ground, her back beaten and bruised. Her back still twanged from an earlier tumble. "I'm hungry. Can't we stop yet?"
"You haven't even made it once," her brother firmly reminded her. "I told you that we aren't having lunch until you've done it three times. Try again."
"But I'm really, really hungry!"
"You'd better hurry up, then."
Koharu huffed into the dirt, and pushed herself up onto her knees. Without shame, she crawled her way back to the ladder, too tired to pull herself to her feet before absolutely necessary. The ladder she had to climb was only just shorter than herself, and she climbed it with a drag in her bones.
Shouta sighed as he handed her a bow. "If you get it this time, I'll let you have a ten minute snack break."
"Deal," she said as she snatched the proffered weapon from his hand. With a new determination glinting in her eyes, she shoved the bow between her teeth and walked forward.
Her feet met the tightrope carefully, her arms outstretched and swaying up and down to keep her balance. Reaching the middle of the rope, she carefully spread her feet and turned to the side. Her back wobbled with the effort to stay perfectly upright. Her eyes were locked in front of her.
Three battered dart boards were posted against the trees. They were well-loved, riddled with holes and dented by arrows. A crude drawing of her homeroom teacher was taped to the bullseye of the one on the right.
"Hit the one on the left," Shouta ordered as he handed her an arrow, placing it directly into her hand.
Koharu dropped her bow from her mouth to her hand in order to pout— the left was her worst side. Determining that her brother was trying to trick her out of her snack break, she grumbled a pointed, "You suck." For good measure, she stuck out her tongue.
Shouta didn't reply as she windmilled her arms and struggled to steady her legs, her cursing having thrown her off balance.
Koharu reached the first pillar with a running jump. Her feet hit the ground and kept moving, the teen making her way quickly to the wire on her left— she would be forced to slow crossing the tightrope, so there would be no wasting time.
Well, here goes nothing.
Koharu took a centring breath and raised both of her arms up to her sides. Head straight, eyes focused, and stomach taut, she took her first step forward.
Walking a tightrope was akin to riding a bicycle in that Koharu detested both; however, it was hard to forget the skill even being months out of practice. She ignored her competition as she made her way steadily forward, her steps careful and calculated. She wouldn't fall.
Her feet hit the welcome security of the second pillar, and Koharu darted across once more. As she stepped onto the next wire, she grumbled, "I bet Shouta's so fucking smug up there right now… I wanna smack him just thinking about it…"
Being mentored by Shouta was an experience that Koharu would never trade. Everything she had learned— everything she was good at— was because he had spent years pushing her to be better than she was the day before. There was no way in hell that she could have gotten into U.A. if she hadn't been specifically trained to fight without a Quirk.
"They haven't announced how many people will make it through, so you can't relax! You must push forward!"
Her failures had felt endless. Shouta's tests were ridiculous, and while Koharu had understood the greater concepts of balance and focus to be gained in tightrope walking, she hadn't expected the skill to become so literally applicable. It was just yet another thing that Shouta had been right about, the smug bastard.
Her feet met solid ground.
"And now, we've quickly arrived at the final barrier! It's a minefield!"
"What? Fuck!" Koharu cursed as she sprinted forward, knowing Todoroki would have been the first one to reach the obstacle with his head start. How many people were ahead of her now? How had she gone from 'amazing' to mediocre so quickly?
She couldn't let Shouta down. Couldn't let her training go to waste. Her hair fluttered behind her as she ran, floating. Desperation clutched her chest, her lungs suddenly smaller as she pushed herself to go faster, faster, to be better—
Be the best.
chapter end
I spent a very long time watching tightrope stunts when you consider how little time Koharu actually spends walking them. #noragrets
Otakugirl1996 — wb! Thank you so much, that is so sweet of you to say.
Fahdza — wb! I've had the exact thoughts that you have, and it made it hard for me to decide, too! Thanks for your review :)
M — wb! Thanks for much for your review- you haven't missed a single chapter in six months and I love you for it.
AmIValid2 — Your review made me so happy! I'm so glad that you're enjoying Koharu and her story, and I hope you'll continue to read along! Twinning for the win!
Peacekeeper904 — Thank for you laughing at my dumb jokes. I hope you'll continue to laugh along :)
TishaLiz — I guess time will tell ;) big plans, though! Thank you for your review!