Chapter 25: Fury and Fear

Shouta still remembered his first Sports Festival with vivid clarity. Honestly, it would come back to haunt him when he chased sleep— the way he tripped over his feet, embarrassing himself in front of the crowds and potential employers. His defeat at the hands of his classmates was all too easy, Shouta unable to use anything but his hands and feet against a sea of monsters. He hadn't been strong enough yet.

Admittedly, he was ready for Koharu to face the same fate. He had assured to the fact that Koharu was strong, but she was just a person. Koharu may have had the ability to switch Quirks between people, but that gave her no support, no physical enhancements, and no special abilities. If you hit her, she would bruise, and like a peach at that. She had trained relentlessly to work up her speed and endurance, but at the end of the day, she was a kid playing catch-up.

So just how was she making the course look so stupidly easy?

He should have been paying attention to the front-runners. Beside him, Hizashi surely was. Bakugou and Todoroki were neck-to-neck and battling for first place. Students were setting off harmless explosions left and right, and bright bursts of colour marked every failure. Towards the back of the group, the field exploded in a shock of pink light.

Koharu didn't miss a step. She charged forward, reckless and rampant and rewarded. It was like she wasn't touching the ground, her bounding steps unfettered by the landmines beneath her. He was sure that she had stepped on them, but the only colour that followed her was the floating purple of her hair as she propelled through the smoke.

It wasn't the first time that he had noticed it, but now that he noticed it, it was all that he could see. Her balance. Her speed. The way she went soaring with every hit, and how she could always jump just a little farther than him, just a little bit higher—

Shouta had raised her for a decade, and he had known her all her life. She was annoying and brilliant and so obnoxiously bright and fuck, she was loud. She talked, and talked, and talked, and when she wasn't talking, she was dancing— and when she wasn't dancing, she was playing, or singing, or terrorizing the cats. Shouta could still hear her thundering toddler footsteps, echoing like a demon coming down the hall.

Now he could hear nothing but her silence.

In the dark of their apartment, he would strain to hear her footsteps over the sound of his breathing. He would hold his anxiety tight in his lungs until he was blue in the face, until his heart was beating too loud to hear over anyway— and of course Shouta had noticed that she was light-footed, but—

But—

Now the world was watching her too, and he couldn't keep ignoring the implications. Someone else was going to notice that there was more to Koharu than she knew— more than Shouta could understand, more than he was ready to. Shouta had choked his fears to death without mercy, shoved them down and buried them six feet under, unseen and rotting. But now— now they would dig them up and Shouta knew.

He had fucked up. Shouta had more than his fair share of mistakes as a sudden, unwanted, first-time parent, but feigning ignorance, tricking himself into it, was the wrong call. He could see the cracks in their peaceful life, the ripples of his decision destroying it all. He could see it all being taken away from him, and Shouta couldn't survive that again—

His heart was pounding loud enough to drown out the sounds of Hizashi's campaigning and the crowd's cheering. He could feel himself sweating beneath his bandages. The way she was moving was so achingly familiar, and he swore he could feel the press of a firm hand on his shoulder, could feel grains of sand grow heavy against his feet until they couldn't touch him at all— he could feel the soles of his feet against water, his father's hand in his own, and he could see himself floating up, and up, and—

He saw a body dropping, arms loose around a little girl who wouldn't let go. He never thought his father could look so heavy.

What have you done—

"Shouta?"

Fearful eyes went sideways. Hizashi had muted their microphones and turned his body towards Shouta, his eyes heavy with concern. The crowd still roared around them. Students had gathered in the stadium below.

He had missed the ending of the race. A heavier guilt began to pool in his stomach— it wasn't fair to the rest of his students for him to have spaced out. If he wasn't observing them and finding ways to help them grow, he wasn't doing his job as their teacher. Shouta had fucked up— again.

He truly needed to get his shit together. Still, he asked, "What did she place?"

Hizashi's eyebrow twitched, frustrated with him in a way that Shouta refused to diagnose. There was no clarification needed for his friend to understand who he referred to."Fifth."

Shouta could have fainted. He swallowed his nausea down, the feeling heavy on his tongue. "Great."

"Ooh! Can we ride the Ferris wheel? Please, please, please!"

"I don't know, Haru, it's been a long day…"

"Aw, come on. She said 'please'."

"I said it three times!"

"She said it three whole times, hon. Why don't you wait on the bench over there, and I'll take this polite little girl for a trip on the Ferris wheel?"

"Hey! Haru! You should join my team!"

A hand clasped loosely around her wrist. With a scowl already jerking into place, Koharu turned to face whoever was rude enough to manhandle her, let alone to call her by that dumbass nickname—

And was surprised to see that she had no fucking clue who the guy was, despite that fact that he clearly knew her. His smile shone with expectation.

Koharu scrunched up her nose. "Who are you supposed to be?"

His thin brown eyebrows furrowed. His bottom lip popped out into a pronounced pout. "Whaaat? You're gonna act like you don't even know me?"

"...do I know you?"

"It's me! Kosei!" He patted his chest for emphasis.

Koharu grimaced. "That… doesn't really clear it up. Sorry."

The stranger's face— Kosei's face— turned incredulous as his eyebrows disappeared into spiky brown hair. "Kosei Tsuburaba? We were classmates for years…"

"Oops."

His shoulders slumped forward."Y-you don't even feel bad for not remembering me?"

"Not really," Koharu responded with a shrug, her eyes already darting away to see who was left to grab for the cavalry battle. "We obviously weren't friends, so I'll have to turn down your offer. Thanks anyway."

"Wait!" Kosei pleaded as he snatched at her wrist once more. "You really don't remember me?" His cheeks began to turn a little pink. His free hand scratched at his cheek. "Honestly, I thought maybe you used to like me since you interrupted me and Juzo's fight, and there was that time you—"

The light bulb went off. "Oh, fuck," Koharu said, her black eyes wide with realization and her stomach rumbling with a pudding cup craving. "You're that one guy."

"...th-that one guy?"

Koharu rolled her eyes as she firmly freed herself from Kosei's grasp. She moved her hands pointedly behind her back and stepped out of reach. "Listen, could we do the whole 'reunion' thing later? I kind of need to find a team, so—"

"You're still looking for a team?"

Another unrecognizable voice. Koharu closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath through her nose before she began to turn to face the next bozo asking her to team up without warrant.

"Sorry—"

Her ears cleared to the sound of a roaring stadium. Her feet were firmly planted, but she felt as though they had been swept from under her. Her eyes felt heavy.

"In first place, Team Todoroki!"

"W-wait—" stuttered Koharu as she looked around her. She was standing next to her classmate Ojiro and two unfamiliar boys in the middle of an ice-strewn stadium, the crowd hooting around them. Everyone else was standing in similar groups of three or four, freshly bruised and panting.

"In second place, Team Bakugou!"

Koharu's stomach dropped into her feet. "This can't be happening," she spoke under her breath, lungs too constricted for anything higher. Beside her, Ojiro's head was whipping frantically from side to side.

"In third place, Tetsute— huh? What, it's Team Shinsou?! When did you come from behind?"

The boy standing in front of them began to turn, drawing Koharu's eyes to lavender hair, and soon, lavender eyes.

Oh, motherfucker.

It was the boy from the hallway, the one with the bastard personality and the annoying voice… how she hadn't instantly recognized him when he approached her was a mystery. A smug smile curled on disgusting lips as Shinsou's gaze swept over their small group to meet Koharu's burning eyes. "Thanks for all your hard work," he said, smug.

What hard work? Koharu wanted to ask. The entire point of the Sports Festival was to stand out, and one second with him and suddenly she was out of commission for an entire third of the festival— a nondescript, featureless puppet. Not only that, but she had missed any chance to familiarize herself with the rest of the competition's Quirks, rendering her own Quirk completely useless in the next round unless she only faced Class 1-A.

Well, Class 1-A or Shinsou.

She hadn't seen his eyes and he hadn't touched her, which meant that his Quirk was auditory based. She knew that it wasn't until she responded that she lost control of herself, which meant that talking to him again was a big fucking no. She only barely managed to restrain herself from reaching and ripping out his vocal cords.

For now.

"Go fuck yourself," she mouthed instead. With a smirk, Shinsou turned away.

"In fourth place, Team Midoriya!"

Thirty feet to her right, someone began to wail.

"These four teams will advance to the final round! Now, we'll take an hour's break for lunch before we start the afternoon's activities! Alriiiight! See ya!"

"This… doesn't feel right," spoke Ojiro, his voice weak.

Koharu pursed her lips. "I know," she agreed in a low voice. "But maybe it'll feel better once we kick some ass."

"I—" Ojiro paused. "Maybe. I guess."

"We still have the final round to prove ourselves." Koharu reached out to smack Ojiro lightly on the shoulder, encouragingly resting her hand there for a moment. "We'll just have to Plus Ultra the hell out of it." She gave his shoulder a squeeze. "You'll be fine."

The blond smiled, though his eyes still shone with uncertainty. "Yeah. Thanks."

"Whatever," Koharu shrugged in response as she dropped her hand from his shoulder. With the wave the two parted ways, Koharu headed quickly away from the crowds while Ojiro moved to join it.

For all that she comforted Ojiro, Koharu herself felt like crap. She had wasted an opportunity to prove herself, and effectively stolen someone else's place in doing so. It wasn't right that she should be able to win without any effort on her part while so many others were disqualified. She couldn't remember the second event or how well she performed in it, and yet she had moved onto the final round. It certainly didn't feel earned.

And that pissed her off. Her head was hung low and her fists clenched tightly at her sides as she stomped her way to the staging area Class 1-A had occupied earlier. Fuelled by a desperation to be alone, her feet moved quickly beneath her. The hallway blurred around her.

The door thudded closed behind her.

"FUCK!"

The sound of metal clanging filled the room as Koharu kicked the base of a chair, sending it clattering across the floor. It rattled where it landed by the lockers. Koharu's hands found the roots of her hair, tugging and tugging and tugging.

"That bastard!" Cursing, she began to pace the room. "Ugh, this isn't good. This isn't good."

Why her? Shinsou didn't even know her Quirk. Their sole interaction had involved her threatening him with a foot up the ass for running his mouth, and Bakugou had been an even greater asshole than herself. Was Shinsou taking away her opportunity to impress the scouts on purpose? And to what purpose? Why her?

A second chair clattered to the ground, followed by another. In the midst, the door slid open.

"Koharu?"

chapter end

Super sorry for the delay! This chapter was a challenge because it includes the two scenes that spawned this story back in February, so to me this chapter feels really major even if it doesn't seem like a huge deal to anyone else. I've lost count of my rough drafts, so hopefully something legible came through…

Anyway, another Shouta chapter was long overdue. Working title for this chapter: "Local Garbage Man Throws Self In Trash".

Otakugirl1996— wb! Shouta doesn't half-ass: he whole-asses. Koharu's training was essentially another full-time job for him. Thanks so much for your review!

M— wb! I'm glad you enjoyed the Aizawa training. Thanks for cheering Koharu on, and thank you as always for your review!