Momo is anxious, but she hides it well.
"The reason I've chosen you all is because our formation will be by far the most stable." She hears Todoroki explain. "Kaminari. You guard left and keep enemies away with your electricity. Yaoyorozu." She feels an uncomfortable amount of pressure when he stares at her. "You take the right. Provide an insulator, shield us and supplement our movement." Momo nods.
She is not happy being relegated to strictly support, but she understands Todoroki's reasoning. He looks beyond her for a moment, and she could assume where his attention is. "Heat resistance will also be needed." She is not surprised by this choice, after all, she is entirely convinced that at least part of the reason why she was chosen was to spite Harushi. "Iida," Todoroki continues. "You take the lead. We'll make use of your mobility and physicality for defense."
"And you'll hold them off with your fire and ice, Todoroki?"
Shouto's eyes grow distant before shaking his head slowly. "No..." He turns to look at the crowd, specifically a glowing ball that stands out like a candle in a dark room. "In battle, I refuse to use my left side."
Momo figured enough, but couldn't help but to feel a bit of trepidation for the upcoming round. Todoroki will need every ounce of power he could muster if he wants to take first place from Midoriya, and if he wants to settle the score with Harushi. She wants to tell him this badly, but the intensity of his expression makes her swallow her words.
Hitoshi Shinso is somewhat regretting the choices that led him up to this point. When he first came up with his plan, it was foolproof. He had heard the tan teen's name come up in several conversations since his arrival in the hero course, and it, of course, naturally led him to being curious and a bit annoyed. From what he could gather, Harushi was nothing if not incredibly strong, strong enough to even challenge Midoriya; the person Shinso believed to be the strongest of the first years. So, he played up the act. After all, his quirk required a verbal response to activate. All he needed to do was to find the boy's tell, pull him under his quirk, and then allow himself to be carried to the final round.
What he didn't expect was the sheer hostility and malicious intent emanating from the boy. It was akin to being strangled.
"You." Ryoya said, his voice losing that booming effect. He eyed up and down, noticing how the heavy bags under his eyes and drooping eyelids gave him a rather gaunt appearance. He looked about as far away from a hero hopeful as one could get and it only pissed Ryoya off more. "What the fuck did you do to me?"
"Time's up for the team selection phase! Time to plan!"
Something about Mic's announcement spurred something on in the purple-haired teen, as if remembering where they were in the safety of the public eye. "Needless to say, the time for team selection is already over, leaving me as your only choice for a teammate. You could forfeit, of course, but something tells me that option isn't really an option for you."
Ryoya's mind raced, considering every possible scenario that could've led up to this. There were several possibilities, but the fucker was right. What Ryoya didn't have at the moment was time.
He sighed heavily and ran his fingers through his hair, mentally doing some exercises that Ryu taught him when he needed to calm down. "So instead of just asking me like a normal person, you decide to do whatever the hell you did to force us into an unfavorable situation? Ugh, I'll deal with that later. Who the hell even are you? We're going to be... 'teammates' after all." The quotations were heavily evident in his voice.
"Hitoshi Shinso," the teen drawled in return, clearly not acknowledging Ryoya's question. "And I did ask." He added a moment later.
Ryoya eyed him up and down, thinking of the possible implications of his words, while mainly wondering about his plan of attack for this event. "Ryoya Harushi." He says automatically, but his mind is elsewhere. This Shinso character seems to be light and frail, clearly not an ideal teammate, and Ryoya can already tell that he'll be doing most, if not all the work here. "Whatever the case, I guess I can work with this."
"That's the spirit, Gen-Ed-kun."
Ryoya scowled as Shinso attempted to put his hand on his shoulder. He reached up and clamped his hand around his wrist. "Don't." He warns and Shinso wisely retracts his hand. "You seemed to have planned this out. Even with a two man team, you seem really confident that we can progress."
Hitoshi rubs the back of his head with a fake smile. "Class 1-A's very vocal about you and your abilities. But something tells me they were watering it down, just a bit."
"You tell me. You're the one who risked your chances in the finals on my abilities. What even is your quirk? At least tell me that so you aren't dead weight here." Ryoya says dryly.
The tall, skinny teen glances away, lazily scratching the back of his head in thought. "It's nothing that will help us."
Ryoya glares. "Of-fucking-course." Without warning, he grabs Shinso by the collar and tosses him up with such ease that Shinso is unnerved and catches him on his shoulders, already knowing he'll be the horse of the pair.
"Formed your teams? Made your plans? Too bad if you haven't! Here we go! The countdown to the brutal battle royal!"
"Some very interesting teams formed." Aizawa notes as he glances at the screen in the announcer's booth. Team Bakugo, consisting of himself, Kirishima, Sero and Ashido, seemed well-balanced enough, as well as team Todoroki. The team of Usagiyama, Shoji, Toga and Asui was an interesting one, because he wouldn't make out any distinct advantages or disadvantages they'd have, but who knew? Maybe they'd surprise him.
The team of Shinso and Harushi also caught his attention, as it is the only two man team. They are at a disadvantage in many ways, but Aizawa doesn't doubt that whatever nonsense Harushi has up his sleeve will be eye-catching. Thinking of 'eye-catching nonsense', his eyes wander to Midoriya who has the team of Uraraka, Tokoyami and a pink-haired girl from the support course. What makes his eyes widen slightly is the sheer amount of gadgets the girl seemed to have brought, including a large, collapsible metal sheet-like object. He doesn't know what they could use that for, and he doesn't have to wait long to see the impending strategy.
When Mic does the three second countdown and yell 'start', most teams unsurprisingly head directly for Midoriya. He appears to be startled, but it passes quickly, and the support course girl beams.
"This is really a fight for the ten million! And everyone knows it!" Tetsutetsu bellows, riding atop of a group of 1-B students.
"Yeah!" Hagakure agrees with an attempt at an intimidating laugh which just so happens to be one of the cutest things Izuku had ever heard. "We're coming for you, Midoriya!" Her team, consisting of Jiro, Satou and, weirdly enough, Mineta, were flanking Tetsutetsu's team.
"Incoming attacks right off the bat. Two teams." Fumikage points out, letting Dark Shadow float around protectively in front of the team. "The fate of those who are pursued... make your choice, Midoriya!"
Izuku takes a second to think, "Try to get better positioning! Hatsume!"
Mei needn't be told twice. She enthusiastically reached into her pouch and pulled out a handful of nuts and bolts before tossing them up. Denjin Renki flares to life and all of the metal stops, suspended in the air, then with a gesture of his hand, jettisons towards the opposition. Hagakure's team is forced to retreat, while Tetsutetsu's team marches on.
"Is that all!? I thought you were manly, Midoriya! Honenuki!" Tetsu shouts as they slowly start to sink in the ground, while the rider himself becomes solid steel. The projectiles hit and bounce harmlessly off of him and he breaks out into a sharp-toothed grin. "Gonna need to be better than that!"
Izuku grinned. He could do better than that. Much, much better. "Hatsume! Uraraka! Mobile plan!" Mei starts to cackle like a madwoman while reaching into her seemingly endless satchel to produce a silver, round, umbrella-like object that she tosses to Uraraka. With its gravity removed, Izuku puts his plan into action. "Everyone get on!" Without a moment's hesitation, the group collectively jumps and Denjin Renki does the rest of the work. The low humming associated with Denjin Renki becomes louder and then the entire platform starts to rise before Izuku and the group take to the skies entirely. It's a bumpy ride, because they have to avoid several attacks from quirks on the way up, but once they avoid tendril-like vines, they are in the clear.
Katsuki understood the appeal of Deku's ten million point headband, but even taking that into consideration and understanding enough to wait out the inevitable rush, there was a surprising amount of tunnel-vision that nearly every team rushed to his position.
The nerd fends off two teams easily, because Katsuki isn't stupid enough to know that he's something that vaguely resembles a threat now. But then, he starts fucking flying. It is so surprising that he actually has to pause to comprehend what he's seeing. Then the shock turns to anger and rage and he acts before Deku can get any higher. He bursts off of his team with such intensity that he could hear someone, the pink one he assumes, shriek out. He pays them no heed, of course, as his focus is on making sure Deku can't escape. He uses his explosions in a direct beeline for the team and gets there in no time, and if Deku's surprised reaction is anything to go by, he was much too focused on whatever the fuck he was doing to see him coming.
"Getting pretty ahead of yourself, huh you bastard!" Bakugo says with a manic grin.
"Tokoyami!"
Dark Shadow moves quickly and with the fluidity of a snake, uncoiling itself and snapping upward to block Bakugo's impending explosion. The blond is taken aback by this development and starts to fall back, only for a piece of tape to shoot up and attach itself to his shoulder. Sero says something as he pulls his back in, but Bakugo's not paying attention. His focus is on Deku.
"And there goes team Bakugo leading a vicious assault against team Midoriya only to be thwarted at the last moment! Is leaving your unit allowed!?"
Midnight gives a thumbs up. "It is here, on a technicality! As long as your feet don't touch the ground!"
"Those Class A kids sure are something else..."
"It's even fun to watch, given all of their flashy moves. Guess that's just the level they're at after fighting real villains."
"What about that one kid from 1-C? He's not even in the hero course and he's one of the strongest out there!"
"Both the doggedly pursued first place team and its determined pursuers from Class A are nothing to sneeze at! Let's take a look at the current point spread! How are our teams looking at seven minutes of play!?"
The crowd turns toward the jumbo screen to see the standings, and weirdly enough, half of the teams don't have any points. It seemed like the overall point total was lower than it ought to be in general, which got plenty to raise a brow.
"What? Wait just a second! Besides Midoriya, Class A isn't doing so hot! What happened!?"
Mic's question is swiftly answered when Monoma and Class B attack.
"Too simple, really. Class A." Bakugo feels incredibly weird for a split second being on the opposite side of a taunting blonde.
"Give that back! I'll kill you!" He yells but Monoma pays him no mind.
"When Midnight announced the first event, it didn't take a genius to realize they wouldn't be thinning our numbers that much in a preliminary." Monoma started condescendingly. "It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine they'd be letting a good number of us advance to the next event. Forty or so seemed reasonable. It was the perfect chance to hand back and observe our soon-to-be rivals' quirks and tendencies. So it's only fair that we ended up placing more modestly."
"What a load of shit!" Out of nowhere, Rumi bursts onto the scene with a large pink tongue wrapped around her waist and several headbands around her neck. She looks ecstatic as delivers a two-footed kick to Monoma's chest that sends him and his team reeling back while snagging the headbands out of his hands. "You talk too much!" She says with a loud laugh before being reeled away like a fish.
"Mother. Fucker!" Without waiting, Bakugo explodes from his team once more and rockets towards Rumi, hoping to catch her with her guard down. What he doesn't expect is to be swatted away by another tongue. Like before, Sero's quick reactions save them from disqualification and when Bakugo gathered his bearings, he noticed with wide eyes that there were two frog girls on the back of the multi-armed teen.
"Sorry Tsu, kero." One of them said, "It's harder to aim than I thought."
"No worries, kero." The other replied. "It takes getting used to."
Katsuki paused for a solid five seconds before his mind fully caught up to what was happening. "Kirishima, change of plans. Before we go for Deku, we've gotta get that shit back! I'm gonna kill 'em all!"
Things were going rather well for Team Shinso. Ryoya clearly had more than enough power and skill to not only keep their headband, but also keep a lot of teams from even trying. What started off as being seen as nothing more than an easy target, quickly turned into a desperate attempt to survive.
"How are you holding up down there, Gen-Ed-kun?"
Ryoya scowls, not that Shinso could see it. "Would be better if you weren't completely useless."
Shinso makes an amused sound, "I would like to be, but my quirk isn't as heroic and powerful as yours. Besides, you seem to have this under control."
Ryoya opens his mouth to say something but is cut off.
"WHAM!"
Without any warning, Ryoya is hit by a solid... something that seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
"What the fuck?"
Ryoya jumped away from the wall (object? thing?) that had randomly appeared before him, only for two more of whatever they were to crash down onto the field, barely missing them by centimeters.
"Nice one, Manga!" The rider called to her teammate, who Ryoya assumed to be the source of these barriers.
"BANG! POW!" A weirdly echoed voice called with each shout getting more and more hoarse by the moment. On further inspection, Ryoya's assumptions were confirmed, as he noticed a previously unseen member of the group that had been pursuing them seemed to be spawning these things with each cry. He was beginning to understand what people meant by the term, 'quirks are bullshit.'
This kid had a speech bubble for a head which was already strange enough that Ryoya thought this person to be some kind of cryptid, and on closer inspection, he saw that whatever the bubble said, mimicked the barriers that fell from the sky. This was easily the single, most bizarre quirks that Ryoya had ever personally encountered and he just had so many questions on how this creature came to be.
He also silently hoped that Izuku never cornered this guy, for both of their sakes.
Ryoya gave the team a hard stare and wondered if dealing with such an annoying, and troublesome ability was worth the 125 points he could see printed on the rider's headband. "Really, Quiet-chan?"
Yui, as expected, remained impassive. Then she shrugged. "You're pretty strong. It only makes sense to try to take you out now."
"Fair." And with that, Ryoya activated Heat Rush, surging his ki just enough that Shinso wouldn't be burned, but he most certainly wouldn't be comfortable with the heat. Then he shifted his feet. "Get ready to grab." Was all he said before dashing forward. Shinso is like a rag-doll blowing in the wind, and somehow, by some miracle, his arm flailing is enough to snag a headband, or at least, what he hopes is a headband.
He hears the team make a sound of surprise, and when he turns to face them, Ryoya is already back on the offense, taking a deep breath and blowing a stream of fire wide enough to completely engulf the other team.
"Isn't that a bit much, Gen-Ed-Kun?" Shinso's calm façade broke somewhat and he stared with wide eyes.
"Hardly."
Not a second later, the fire is cleared and Yui is there with her hand raised, dark grey ki whirling around her palm. She looks drained, and somewhat singed, but capable. "...well, I can't be too mad. At least you're stopped holding back."
Ryoya grins. "Shinso."
Hitoshi, still somewhat reeling from the speed, understands the plan and tosses the headband up and in quick breath, watches as Ryoya incinerates it.
"Umm what? Is that allowed?"
Midnight looks around, confused. "Uh, I don't know? But I'll allow it because he's in my class!"
"Blatant favoritism aside, there is no rule against it! But expect that to change very soon!"
With Ryoya's plan clear, the field's entire atmosphere shifts. People aren't nearly as aggressive and opt to closer guard their headbands.
Todoroki's heterochromatic eyes tracked Midoriya's path overhead, even as Yaoyorozu defended the group's right flank from a single, weirdly disembodied hand that had been trying to snatch the team's headband for the last few minutes like an annoying wasp. The girl's mastery over his Creation quirk proved to be even more useful than he expected, since she had been the main defense thus far. He had asked her for a staff to serve two purposes; one being grounding him and his team and the other being direct contact with the ground when he is, inevitably, forced to attack and use his ice.
Shouto's gaze locked onto the team responsible for the constant harassment and a mere thought sent a precise blast of ice to restrain them for the time being. He keeps his eyes on them as the troublesome girl and the rest of her team are beaten back by the frost. It leaves them encased in ice from the waist down, the lone appendage trying and failing to free its master a few meters away.
It was intended to keep them from being a nuisance while he focused on the biggest threats, and upon closer inspection, the rider wasn't even wearing her headband anymore. There was nothing to gain from fighting here, so Shouto turned away.
Todoroki taps his hand on the multiple headbands on his neck in thought. With Harushi destroying them, it definitely reminded him of how dangerous he was, if he could ever indeed forget. Then his thoughts drift to his team. Combining Kaminari's toned down electricity attacks and Yaoyorozu's insulation left their opponents vulnerable to an almost laughable degree. Freezing them in place was admittedly somewhat overkill, but the results being the collection of headbands he's amassed spoke for themself.
His eyes returned to quite possibly the biggest threat circling overhead.
"Looks like the match is already half-way over! Class B is putting up a great fight and the two-man team of Shinso and Harushi have really opened up the field!"
"I won't claim to know how the teams came to be but," Aizawa started slowly. "But Shinso and Harushi's actions have really put other teams in a precarious position. The cavalry battles in the past usually devolved into a fight over the ten million points, but the absurd amount of mobility offered by Midoriya and his team's combination throws a big wrench into that strategy. Assuming they hold onto their current point value, the lower point values become much, much more valuable. But with the team of Shinso and Harushi actively picking off and destroying the lesser valued ones, teams are getting frantic."
"Great commentary, buddy!"
Todoroki scowled, recognizing the truth in his sensei's words on the situation. He could reach Midoriya's height if he went all-out with his ice, but without a suitable distraction, Shouto knew that he would be able to avoid such a straightforward attack due to the team's lack of gravity and weight.
The glance at his father watching stoically in the stands did nothing to ease his increasingly sour mood, nor did it help his spatial and general awareness.
"Todoroki!"
In his moment of inattention, a team of his peers, annoyingly headed up by Usagiyama slipped past their position and grabbed Shouto's original headband right from his forehead.
"Gazing off into space at a time like this, Todoroki!? Rookie mistake!"
Two-toned eyes narrowed dangerously, while Todoroki willed a crackling path of ice after the offending group. The student acting as the horse, Shoji, was quicker than he remembered him being, but asking him to evade Shouto's ice was a tall task. He would be overcome in mere moments. Or at least, he would've if not for Usagiyama seemingly dismounting her horse and kicking the ice until it shattered.
"Um, what? Did she just disqualify herself?" Kaminari asked with a tilt of the head.
Their question was answered seconds later when Shoji's arms opened like a cocoon and revealed another Usagiyama, but this one having the distinction of having several headbands wrapped around her neck. "You fool!"
Disbelief gave way into frustration as Todoroki watched the girl so casually wrap the headband around her neck and attempt to flee. He exhales heavily, frost dripping from his lips as a cold, intense, razor focus asserts itself once more. The girl was a thorn in his side since the start of the year; she wasn't someone with noteworthy power, nor was she either of the two boys he felt challenged by, but she was annoyingly determined and persistent.
Shouto jabbed his staff into the ground and a jagged, unrestrained wave of ice, one several times larger than most of his attacks that day, rocketed from the arena floor towards the offending team. Usagiyama, both of them, try to fend off the ice with a flurry of punches and kicks. It works for a few moments, and then Shoji joins the fray, but Shouto's unrelenting in his assault.
Before long, the team of his peers are revealed after a moment in a statue of ice, leaving only their heads exposed to the open air. Usagiyama is, obviously, cursing up a storm, and the doppelgänger melts away to reveal a shivering Toga. The crowd gasps, though whether it was due to the brutality of the attack or another reason altogether, Todoroki neither knew nor cared.
"Annnnd just like that, Todoroki puts the members of team Usagiyama on ice! That's a bit overkill, don't you think!?"
"Get ready," He says to his team while looking up. "It's time."
The temperature dropped.
Izuku's eyes snapped open and his concentration wavered just a bit to give his team some turbulence. "Get ready! Incoming!" He flared his ki and the low hum became a loud chirping. The gear his team wore forced them closer together with him being the epicenter; it got uncomfortable quickly, and people voiced their opinion.
"Deku? What's going on -"
Ochako's inquiry was immediately cut off by an extremely loud thundering that shook the venue. A tsunami of ice, branching the entire width of the stadium, exploded from the ground and lanced diagonally towards their location. Izuku disregarded his light, slow revolution and dodged up and away from the growing ice wall. He barely had time to shift the platform in such a way that the ice collided with the bottom, but even in the chaos, Izuku's mind was clear and ready.
And so, the opposition came...
The wave of ice by itself was already a formidable attack, but more importantly, it acts as a way to actually reach the height they've been lazily hovering at. While Izuku had been keeping his senses open to several people, Todoroki's team in particular, he hadn't truly realized how formidable they were until they got closer.
It was a scary team, he could admit that much and Izuku could feel them clashing and defeating teams left and right since they began. They generally followed the same pattern, if his ki sense could be trusted, leading with Kaminari, then having their own members insulated by Yaoyorozu's ki-enhanced creations and then crushing the incapacitated with Todoroki's overwhelming range. Iida is used sparingly, and mostly just to get them from point A to B as quickly as possible.
"Uraraka! Hatsume! Push us forward! Tokoyami! Deflect anything that comes near!"
Ochako, who had mostly been relaxed at this point, grows frantic as she mentally tries to adjust the weight of the platform so they could still fly as smoothly as they have, while also making it heavy enough that air resistance is minimal. Hatsume is laughing hysterically and saying something about babies that Ochako doesn't hear over the sound of... rockets? She doesn't have a chance to question it since they are suddenly and violently jerked forward by whatever device Mei pulls out of nowhere. Dark Shadow is yelling something about 'fun' while Tokoyami is screaming; Ochako herself has no idea what she's doing but she knows that she regrets most choices that led her here.
They are on them in seconds.
Izuku releases his magnetism for the briefest of moments to cause the platform to drop and dip just barely out of the way of Iida's grasping hand and towards their left flank, fully intent on disrupting their plan before it could come to fruition. He knew first hand how mentally taxing Yaoyorozu's quirk would be in the thick of battle, and despite her making tremendous leaps and strides in keeping the delay as low as possible, but it was still there, and he planned to exploit it ruthlessly. His target was obvious. The fact that it was on Todoroki's left side was just a bonus.
Momo, however, does not sit and wait for defeat, not that he expected her to. She outright abandons the insulation sheet she had constructed and yanks a hastily constructed staff out of the exposed skin of her right forearm, swinging it with a confident, single-handed grip. Izuku could see her gray ki dripping off of it as it neared his face, and flares Denjin Renki to stop the metal centimeters from his head. The force behind it is still enough to blow his hair all over the place like as though he stood before a strong fan, but he recovers quickly.
It might've been due to the stress of the moment that she made a metal staff against him of all people, but he couldn't help but to be impressed at just how quickly she did it. He reaches up and grabs it, forcing the girl to let it go or be shocked, but in a stroke of genius, she tosses the object to Kaminari. He is largely unaffected by the attack and yanks Izuku down somewhat so the headband is closer to Todoroki's grasp.
The dual-haired teen wastes little to no time in trying to grab it, but Dark Shadow springs up at the last second and swipes his hand away.
"WOW! Things are really heating up in the battle in the skies, folks. Who will take home the crown!? Will it be Team Todoroki or Team Midoriya!?"
Izuku feels the temperature flare up and inwardly swears.
"It seems like Team Shinso wants to join the fray!"
"Shinso, hold on tight." Ryoya commands. "If you let go, I can't promise you'll survive the fall."
Shinso's eyes widened to the size of plates. "Let go? Survive the fall?"
Ryoya crouches low, places two palms on the floor and fire erupts around his wrists. It slowly but surely weakens until it appears under his skin and glows like magma behind a sheet of glass, then he clenches the muscles in his forearms. "Ignition..." The fire starts to pour from his arms and Shinso grips him as hard as he possibly could. "...Wolf!"
BOOM!
A power geyser erupts from their position and Ryoya is ejected high into the sky like a rocket. He angled his trajectory in such a way that he'd likely be directly above Izuku and near the apex of the ice monolith.
"You're insane!" Hitoshi screams with hysterical tears falling down his face, but Ryoya barely hears it over the wind.
Like he predicted, he starts to slow just as he hits Izuku's cruising altitude, and the two teams stop and stare at him in shock. "You threw a minefield at me!" Ryoya barks and Izuku shakes off his shock.
"Uh... Plus Ultra?"
Then gravity kicks in and the two-man team starts to descend closer to the ice. Ryoya ignites. "Are you okay!?" A part of him isn't sure whether or not to be more upset that he actually asked the question, or the fact the question's intended purpose, which was to be a distraction, actually works.
For a moment, Shouto thought he finally had Midoriya cornered.
He honestly should've known better.
Midoriya, when it came to sheer strength, overshadowed most of their class, and perhaps most students in UA in general. If Shouto used himself as a baseline, Midoriya's strength likely exceeded that of some pros as well... of that fact, Todoroki was well aware. However, for as strong as he knew Midoriya to be, there was a single person he'd mentally placed above him, and for a while, he'd assumed he would be a nonfactor in this aerial battle. But as Harushi, the single person that Midoriya even claimed to be weaker than, came out of nowhere with a burning fist raised in the air and Shinso on his back, screaming for dear life, Shouto got a front row to seat to see exactly how powerful Harushi was.
The result was as sudden and unexpected as it was devastatingly chaotic.
"BUSTER WOLF!"
Midoriya, through some miracle, manages to avoid the fist but pulling himself out of his path at the last second, but the ice wasn't so lucky.
As quickly as the monolith was formed, feather-thin cracks in the ice spread through-out the whole structure, and, not one moment later, the glacier splintered into dozens upon dozens of minivan sized pieces, and consequently sent Shouto's team plummeting to the field below while Midoriya's spiraled out of control from the shockwave and heat.
Where just moments before, Shouto was confident in his team's offense, in one fell swoop, Harushi once again ruins his plans and throws the entire stadium into a frenzy. For the second time this year, he could feel his left side sparking up involuntarily.
Izuku struggles desperately to regain something resembling control over the metal sheet, but the shockwaves of the Buster Wolf prove stronger than he assumed. "Uraraka! Hatsume!"
In one last ditch effort, the two girls combine their efforts. Uraraka flares One for All and taps herself on the hand, subsequently removing the gravity from everyone on the team and Hatsume pulls out yet another gadget, this time a massive fan to help stabilize their fall. The crowd gasps as they get closer to the ground, but at the last moment, Hatsume manages to make them vertical and the combination of Izuku and Ochako slows their fall to little more than a small drop.
They take time to regain their composure only to hear an announcement.
"Time's almost up! Let's count down! Everyone say 10! 9! 8!"
Izuku hears explosions and senses Bakugo coming.
"7! 6!"
Todoroki joins the final push for the headband. His team is shaky and clearly not all there after... that but he is nothing is not determined.
"5! 4! 3!"
Izuku hears the crackling of fire and gulps.
"2! 1! Time's up!"
Izuku takes a deep breath. He obviously secured his team's placement in the Cavalry Battle, having retained the ten-million-point headband for the entire duration. But the results clearly displayed across every screen in the arena came with a bit of a surprise.
1. Team Midoriya: 10,001,105
2. Team Todoroki: 1,350
3. Team Bakugo: 1,290
4. Team Shinso: 605
5. Team Kendo: 520
"After a riveting second round, I think we could all use a break! We'll proceed to the afternoon portion after a one hour lunch break! See you then!"
"Ahh damn it! We didn't make it!" Rumi shouted while tapping her feet on the ground in annoyance. "This sucks!"
"This does suck," Tsu agreed. "But congrats all the same to the people who made it in."
Mina looked a bit downtrodden. "Bakugo only picked me as a counter-strategy against Todoroki's ice. That doesn't really show off my strength..."
"Ugh, whatever. Where's pretty boy? I need someone to vent to." Rumi looked around and was a bit surprised to see that Ryoya was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Todoroki for that matter. Her rabbit senses were tingling. Something was amiss here. Without waiting for a response, she walks away.
She finds them in short order, mostly relying on her hearing to pinpoint their voices. When she gets close enough, she hears Ryoya speak.
"You wanted to talk?"
A/N: Annnnd scene. That was fun, and next chapter we finally get development on Shouto and Ryo! The rabbit wants her emotional support fighter.
Feel free to join me at Jade's Discord. I have my own author channel where we usually talk upcoming characters, ships and story beats!
discord. gg/ pkmgFzUkBu
NinjaFang1331: Thanks!
Acosta Perez Jose Ramiro: Yeah, Shinso's really lucky in a lot of ways here. I can't wait to go further into Ochako's powers and how she gains confidence.
Zacker1590: Yeah, Mel writing fanfics was given to me by the discord chat. It's hilarious really. And yeah, Ryo vs Izuku will be one hell of a fight.
Ppyae361999: Well, you kinda get your wish here lol, Shinso is kinda getting thrown around.
Marbled Gold: Yes, yes it is very cursed. Hilarious, but cursed.
Monster King: Thank you!
Solbandgus: Ya know, someone in the Discord used something similar to this line. Shinso trying to hypnotize Ryo didn't end well for him lol and Momo didn't have any motivations. She just joined Shouto because he asked and Ryo was already under Shinso's quirk.
Ryuujin96: Thanks, and well, you got your wish. Izuku does place higher here than he did in canon.