Chapter 9:

Logs tied to vines swung down, hitting each other with Baldr in between. Normally, this shouldn't do much damage, but the forest was Demeter's therefore, it was divine. Baldr could feel himself get crushed by the weight of the logs. With quick thinking, the heat of his light disintegrated the logs into nothing.

Mineta took this opportunity to crawl away. Crawling turned into limping and limping turned into walking. He used his quirk again to bounce up the branches. He took a good look at the damage done to Baldr. The god of light was bleeding all over, spitting out blood. Some of his teeth were knocked off. Blood stained the god's beard, and his face was no longer pleasant to look at. Even after all that, Baldr still smiled.

"I felt that too." Baldr chuckled, ignoring his mother begging him to stop. He will never go back from this. "Invincibility be damned. I feel alive again, mom!"

"Light Speed." The god's eyes shone, and he was instantly behind Mineta. The short hero could barely react by blocking with his quirk before Baldr delivered a punch that sent Mineta hurtling at a tree branch. Baldr ripped off the hair ball, now stuck on his knuckles along with some of his skin. It stings, yet he didn't care.

Mineta could barely maneuver his body at just the right angle. He was still impaled by the sharp branch, but not to a fatal degree. He bellowed in pain. Mineta was blown up by multiple bombs before, but nothing as painful as having a hole put through his body. His mind went back to the moment he died.

Years ago...

Carlitos had put a fist through his body as Mineta injected him with the quirk killer formula. The clown was shocked at first, but he suddenly laughed. He took away his fist and left Mineta lying on the ground. "You did a great job, kid."

The dying Mineta looked at the rest of his club members and smiled at them. Bakugou, Shiozaki, and Awase were too shocked to say anything. "Hey… it's. It's. It's up to you guys."

His body went limp. That was when he knew he was dead. His soul only stuck around to see his friends beat the clown. He watched them grieve for him. He left them a message as his soul was being pulled by the touch of the reaper. The next thing he knew, he was in the afterlife. Years after, his friends soon followed. Bakugou was the first, then Awase, and then Shiozaki. He only found out that Bakugou and Shiozaki did get married and had kids. They all hugged each other in the true reunion of the Botany Club.

He snapped back to the present. Mineta could hear the crowd, the gods and even the human audience, cheer for Baldr. The god appeared in front of him and pulled him off the branch. "Why are the humans cheering for me, dude?"

"They hate me." Mineta answered, feeling defeated. Baldr cauterized Mineta's wound with his light.

"For what? Your mistakes? Is that how it was?"

"You don't understand it, man. I was a pervert."

"That's it?! THAT'S IT?!" Baldr was enraged. "They hate my saviour for being a pervert?! How many men or women have you groped?"

"Only one."

"Did you pay for it?"

"She tried to drown me, I guess. Look, I've said some things before a friend set me straight. It was too late then."

"But you tried, didn't you? You tried to change. They all just shot you down and assumed the worst from you." Baldr noticed some people from the human audience. "Well, most of them. Look!"

Mineta looked at where Baldr was pointing. It was the Botany Club. He could see Bakugou, Shiozaki, and Awase still cheering for him. Even his killer was cheering for him. He looked a little more to the left to see a bunch of Izukus cheering for him. He even noticed some other people in the human audience cheering for him. "What?"

"Listen only to them, Mineta. Don't listen to the ones who compared you to serial killers. The ones who think you're worse than a mass murderer. Listen to your friends cheering for you instead. All of them are genuine." Baldr sadly looked at the gods who were cheering for the god of light. Only his brother Hodr was genuinely concerned for him. "They saw you for how you are and still saw the best in you. They still chose to be your friends and cheer for you."

Mineta couldn't comprehend this feeling. He couldn't see it before, but now he does. The short hero thought his friends were the exception, but he was far from truth. For the first time since then, he cried out tears of joy. "I. I…"

"Thank them later. We have a match to finish." They were suddenly up in the air, thanks to Baldr's light speed. With all his might, the god threw Mineta into the ground. Baldr followed, setting up a meteoric punch.

Mineta dried his tears, his worries replaced by determination. He took out his mistletoe garrote. He threw more of his hair balls to the ground, softening the impact and bouncing him towards Baldr. Mineta's experience in acrobatics allowed him to dodge the god's punch in midair. The garrote wrapped around Baldr's shoulder. Mineta pulled.

The squishing noise of an arm being sliced off the body silenced both the gods and the human audience alike. Baldr landed, and soon after, his left arm followed. It plopped on the ground next to him, like the flesh of a pig in a slaughterhouse. The adrenaline ran out, and the pain Baldr felt was barely bearable. Even then, he still smiled.

"What is this?! Minoru Mineta not only successfully impales Baldr but also slices off his arm!" Hermes yelled in shock, while the audience could not believe what they were seeing. Frigg wailed in Hodr's arm while Hodr, despite his blindness, knew that his brother was at a disadvantage.

The Botany Club cheered for Mineta when they saw him slice off Baldr's arm. Even Shiozaki, someone who abhors violence, was happy to see Mineta able to damage the god heavily.

Mineta didn't want to let up. He positioned himself to fall into once of his hair ball stuck to a tree trunk. He bounced off it to follow up with his attack. Baldr saw it coming and dodged, punching Mineta with his good arm. It stopped the short hero again in his tracks, vomiting blood when Baldr punched him in the same wound he was impaled on.

He felt like passing out, but Mineta let the pain keep him awake. "I… I…"

"You what, friend?" Baldr held him by the neck again, slowly using the burning light to kill Mineta.

For the longest time, Mineta thought himself as nothing more than a sidekick. He suspected he would have died soon if he ever survived the clown's attack back when he was alive. Only now, he could now hear what Bakugou was telling him for the longest time. Mineta, in an act of defiance, looked at Baldr in the eyes and matched the god's smile. He wrapped his mistletoe garrote around the god's forearm and pulled again, chopping off the other arm. The gods gasped as their invincible fighter lost his only hand left.

"I WANT TO BE A HERO TOO."

Even with the loss of his arms, Baldr laughed and didn't relent. He felt proud for at least helping Mineta with his abilities. He tried to kick Mineta away, but the short hero parried and wrapped the garrote around his ankle and sliced it off as well. Years of carelessness, because of his invulnerability, caused Baldr's combat skills to diminish. It was there that Frigg realized that her obsession with protecting her son finally came back to bite her.

Standing on one leg left, and bleeding out quickly, Baldr unleashed every bit of light he had left, knocking Mineta back. That was what Mineta was planning for. He angled his body to hit his hair ball on a tree trunk, and then another ball, and then another, and another, building up momentum. Baldr knew it was over, but he still yelled in his last attempt to fight Mineta. His missing limbs didn't help.

"GRAPE SHOT SLICE LARIAT!"

Mineta flew over Baldr with his garrote wrapping around the god of light's abdomen. Pulling with all his might, he sliced Baldr in half. There was only silence after. The only noise heard was Baldr's upper half falling in front of his lower half. Mineta quickly rushed over to the dying god of light.

"Heh. Eons of not feeling anything, only to end up like this. It really says a lot that this was my best day ever, dude." Baldr coughed up blood. Mineta took off his scarf and wiped Baldr's mouth. "Thanks, friend."

"Is there really no other way than this?" Mineta asked, hoping to save the god who believed in him.

"No. It is what it is. Don't be sad, dude. I was jealous of humanity, you know? They have struggles, they have challenges, they have hard lives. Yet, even after all that, they persevere and try to do good. When they succeed after so many failures, it feels great for them." Baldr's tears touched the ground while he smiled at Mineta, his first real friend besides his brother. "Man, I wish. I wish I could experience that, too."

Baldr finally stopped talking, bleeding out from his fatal wound. Mineta used his hands to close the smiling god's eyes. He laid him down and surrounded the body with flowers as it fades away into dust.

"And… and the winner of the third match of the Archived End!" Hermes could not believe what he was seeing. He tried his best to break any illusion, but it was simply the truth. He watched Mineta pay his respects to Baldr. That scene alone snapped him back to reality. With regained hype, Hermes announced the winner.

"MINORU MINETA!"

Match 3
Baldr vs Minoru Mineta
Winner: Minoru Mineta
Match Time Length: 12 minutes, 3 seconds
Deciding Move: Grape Shot Slice Lariat
Gods 2-1 Void

YEAH HE WON. Cope.