As the match ended, Mai realized two things; one: she was very dumb, and two: she was not very smart.
She was very dumb because although tossing away her glasses seemed cool in the moment, now she was stuck having no idea where they were with no decent way to find them. She was not very smart because, as she hit the ground, she could hear Asamu laughing so hard a clumsy cat could have taken her out; in no way was it Mai's mental prowess that won her the battle.
"You okay? I didn't hurt you, did I?" Mai asked.
"No, oh goodness that was beautiful," Asamu said in between laughs. "You can get off me now."
"Sorry," Mai said, releasing Asamu and scooching back to sit on the ground, still with no idea how she was going to find her glasses before the second round started.
"That was seriously the best time I've activated my quirk!" Asamu kept laughing. "You have no –"
"Alright girls, move along, it's time for the next bout," Midnight stepped in. In the blurry haze, Mai could make out next to her the blob with bright purple hair – Asamu – get up and start to leave the arena and a white and blueish blob – probably Midnight – came to stand above where Mai was sitting. "You can't see a thing without your glasses, can you?" Midnight asked in a softer tone.
"Barely," Mai responded.
"Here, let me." A moment later, Midnight kneeled in front of Mai and slipped on her glasses for her. "There you go."
Mai blinked everything into focus. Having someone else put a person's glasses directly on their face was usually an awkward gesture ending in a barely avoided poked-out eye, yet somehow Midnight managed to seamlessly slip Mai's glasses over her ears and up the bridge of her nose to position them perfectly on Mai's head. Even for a pro-hero, that was pretty impressive.
"Thanks," Mai said as she stood up.
"I got you." Midnight lifted up her hero costume's mask worn around her eyes to wink.
As Mai went back into the stadium, she wondered if Midnight's mask included prescription lenses. She had always assumed visually impaired heroes just used contact lenses while on duty, but including a prescription into the eyewear of a hero costume was even more brilliant. As Mai was mentally thinking through which hero outfits could have immaculately incorporated prescription lenses, she nearly walked right into a conversation Asamu was having with someone a few meters from the arena entrance.
"I don't know, that's usually what I'm least skilled at doing," Asamu was saying. As Mai's eyes adjusted to the lower light inside the stadium, she could see that Asamu was talking with Komua on his way to his match.
"Would you let me tell you what it is before you shut me down?" Komua said. "I just asked if you could do 'something' for me."
"Well yeah that's what I'm least skilled at," Asamu responded. "'Things'."
Komura rolled his eyes with a good-natured grin when Mai heard an all-too familiar laugh rise up from the other side of Asamu. "Can we be friends?" Ai stepped in front of her to stare at Asamu with awe. For someone who was consistently the life of the party, Ai easily developed friend crushes on others and would often fawn over them as she became friends with the person.
"Uh, sure?" Asamu said hesitantly.
"Yay, thank you friend!" Ai squealed and excitedly shook her hand.
"I should be off to my fight." Komura moved to leave them to their conversation. "You did great, Benihama," he added with a kind smile at Mai as he passed her. "Maybe we'll see each other in the final round."
"That's making a lot of assumptions," Mai muttered under her breath with a faint smile.
"Look Mai, I made a new friend!" Ai said as she turned to Mai, oblivious to anything else around her. "And she's so cool!"
"Oh, are you two sisters?" Asamu said as she glanced between the twins, now the excited one.
"Yep, that's my twin sister who beat you." Ai nodded proudly. "Sorry if you were trying to be scouted, but Mai's absolutely awesome."
"No no I should be thanking you." Asamu turned to Mai with an earnest face. "I'm sure you know my quirk can use physical contact to sense a person's strong thought or emotion and then create an illusion of it, so I've seen a lot of peoples' innermost thoughts." Her eyes quickly shifted, suddenly unable to look Mai in the eye. "I've been training my quirk to have more control of the illusions I create, like what exactly the illusion is or which of the five senses it effects –"
"That would definitely increase your versatility as a hero," Ai interrupted. "Then if you added a support item –"
"I mean, it would help my hero career, but actually I need control of my illusions primarily for my own sanity." Asamu released a breath from the depths of her lungs. "For the most part, my target's emotions are so obvious that I have a good idea of what the illusion will be before I create it. Honestly, more often than not my targets are so easy to manipulate it feels illegal – which is its own bucket of fish for my mental state." A quick shudder made its way up Asamu's body. "However, there are times when the most prevalent thought on a person's mind is something dark, depressing, or even twisted." As Mai watched Asamu speak, she could see her face involuntarily flinch. "I already can't afford the amount of counseling I should have," she muttered to herself where Mai could barely catch her words. "Anyway, seeing the illusion my quirk created for you, well," Asamu's entire demeanor suddenly changed as she began to laugh a bit. "It was the best illusion I've ever created, the first time I enjoyed using my quirk in a long while."
Mai's sympathy for Asamu immediately became dread for herself. "Why, what was the illusion?" She asked, hoping against hope it wasn't something mortifyingly embarrassing.
Ai's grin did nothing to relieve Mai's concern. "Oh, didn't you figure it out from the colorful blobs you could make out without your glasses?" Ai began to laugh hysterically, causing Mai's heart to fall into her stomach.
"It was a picnic," Asamu explained. "A picnic with bentos and drinks and games –"
"And those orange headbands from the second event," Ai said in between laughs. "With enough seats for the orange team plus everyone in your class." She looked at Mai through the many tears that had formed in her eyes from laughter. "Will I get an invitation for the party you're planning for your new friends?"
"Ughhhhhh," Mai groaned and rested her forehead in her hand. "Alright, for the record I did have the image of a picnic between Sports Fest competitors on my mind going into our match, but it was specifically because I was thinking how we aren't going to all become close friends singing Kumbaya together once today is over. I mean, no offense to you and your peers; I'm just saying the Sports Fest isn't intended to establish connections between the students."
"Sounds like someone's avoiding her new friendships," Ai sang quietly.
"Even so, seeing that a simple picnic was the most prominent thing on your mind was just – it's so sweet and wholesome, I couldn't have stopped laughing if I had all the willpower in the world." Asamu's light returned to her eyes as she was reminded of it. "I don't even care that I've been eliminated. Besides, any scouts have already seen quirk and athleticism in action during the other events."
"Oh, well, glad it worked out then I guess," Mai said.
"I think the second round is going to start soon; I should probably show my class rep some support." She headed further into the stadium towards the students' stands with a kind wave to the sisters. "I'll see you around, Benihama Ai and Benihama Mai, I'll be pulling for you."
"Um, okay, thanks," Mai waved back. She turned to gauge what Ai was planning to do during the second round of the third event, only to see her twin grinning at her. "What?"
"Oh, I'm just waiting for you to explain how the illusion Asamu created from your thoughts is absolutely not you wanting friends because they disappoint you or some nonsense."
"I thought we already got this cleared up." Mai groaned. "Let me try again with smaller words: before my fight, me talk to other people but me realize it waste energy." Ai smacked Mai upside the head. "Yeah that's fair. Look, you know my track record, so much as remembering anyone's name will be meaningless by next week; even if I tried to chat with any of these people after today, at best they may vaguely recognize me as a fellow UA student."
"Psh, you're such a downer," Ai huffed as she led the two back towards the students' stands. "That's why I'm always making new friends, so when each person moves on, I still have plenty of friends."
"See, you say that like it's better than my mentality, but it's really not. At the end of the day, it's still the underlying fear of loneliness driving our –"
"Now, now, we don't need to deal with that now, this is the time to focus on your next battle... and solve all of your opponents' deep emotional problems, what's with that? The spirit of a therapist re-incarnate in you?"
"More like the spirit of an elephant and a rhino: 'el-if-i-no –"
"Language dear sister," Ai cut her off.
Mai rolled her eyes and continued walking towards the students' stands. Having a twin meant there was always someone who had an uncomfortably accurate idea of what one was thinking, sometimes even having a better idea of a situation than the person in the midst of it. The one consultation was that it went both ways; Ai may know just about everything about Mai but Mai also knew just about everything about Ai. With both of their deepest fears revolving around abandonment and loneliness, Mai couldn't help but wonder if Ai had a backup plan in the event the two of them started going down different paths. Mai couldn't imagine living without Ai nearby, but did Ai have similar feelings? Were these feelings even healthy?
Mai was so deep in thought she almost didn't realize Ai had led the two of them to Class 1-K's stands as opposed to going off with her own class. "Ai –"
"Great, we just made it!" Ai exclaimed as they could now see the field where Midnight had just started the match between – hold up which two was it again? The crimson girl with the blood quirk, that was Chikawa, and class 1-B's rep, which was Komura. That should be interesting enough.
"'Scuse us, Sports Fest champion coming through," Ai bumped her way through Mai's class to get them to sit in the very front with the best view of the fight. "Here we go." She squeezed Mai's hand as the challengers made their first moves.
The moment Midnight's hand went down to start the match one of Chikawa's blood veins shot out of her heading directly for Komura's chest. A second before it could make contact, Komura suddenly multiplied into three and Chikawa's attack was thrown off to only pierce one of his arms.
"Are you gonna want this back, or can I keep it?"
Mai snorted in the stands while Chikawa stared at Komura with no response. Judging by his nonchalant but slightly strained face, it seemed Komura had trained himself to ignore pain (which definitely would have helped his chances of getting into UA on recommendation), but Mai wondered if it were purely to throw off his opponents, or if his clones didn't feel pain and this was also a way of keeping ambiguity as to which Komura was the original and which were clones.
The three Komuras began to approach Chikawa but she used her veins to create a series of rings around herself to keep him at least a yard away from any of her limbs. The Komuras multiplied into six and tried to move her veins on all sides but Chikawa stood firm, though she did have to take a knee. Seeing a slow and steady route to victory, Komura and his clones continued to nudge the rings of blood back and forth, forcing Chikawa to expend more energy just to maintain her barrier. Nevertheless, it seemed Chikawa had put as much training into using her quirk as Komura had to ignore pain, and even after vomiting on the ground next to her, Chikawa's protective barricade of veins did not let up.
"She's running out of time," one of Mai's classmates said behind her. "She'll have to make a move soon if she wants to win before she loses consciousness."
"I hope she knows that too," Ai responded casually without taking her eyes off the match, as if she were sitting with her own classmates. "She's really been pushing herself the entire Sports Fest."
As if she had heard them, Chikawa pushed out more of her veins to stab each of the Komuras somewhere in either the chest or stomach.
"Wow, rude."
"Not how I imagined my day going but here we are."
"I think you misplaced this."
"That's fair."
"Dangit I'm allergic to being stabbed in the chest."
"Can I return this?"
Each of the Komuras responded to the veins sticking out of their torsos with a different one-liner, earning an amused smile from Mai and some confused chuckles from the rest of the stands.
"How many responses to being stabbed do you have at the ready?" Chikawa shouted at him before pulling back her veins from the Komuras' bodies and using them to wrap around their necks and force each one to the ground, seemingly knocking them out in the process. Upon impact all Komura's clones disappeared leaving only his actual body on the ground.
A panting Chikawa brought all her blood veins back into her body and approached where Komura laid bleeding. Just as she was reaching down with her capture tape Komura's hand suddenly shot up, spraying some of the blood from his stab wound in Chikawa's face. "Distraction! Trademark Asamu Risa," he exclaimed as he leapt back out of her reach. In the time it took Chikawa to wipe her eyes clean he had already created ten clones to surround her with his capture tape spread out between each one.
"Oh come on!" Chikawa screamed once she saw that once again Komura had surrounded her. "Ultimate move, blood surge!"
Instantly all of Chikawa's veins burst out of her and shoved everything in the arena away from her body and out of the battle area, forcing Komura and all of his clones out of bounds.
"Komura Takahiro has been pushed out of bounds. Chikawa Hiromi moves on to the finals!"
The audience erupted into cheers and applause for the competitors, meanwhile, even though the battle was over, Mai couldn't seem to pull her eyes away from the arena. "Oh my All Might," she breathed in a whisper. "How am I in the same standing as either of them?"
Once Chikawa heard the confirmation that she was the winner, she fell to her hands and knees as volunteers ran in bringing stretchers for both Komura and Chikawa. At first both refused, but when Komura couldn't stand without losing his balance he allowed himself to be carried out. Though Chikawa wasn't quite as wounded as her opponent, she was still barely able to stand and each step she took nearly brought her to her knees again. Despite this, no matter how much she stumbled, Chikawa shoved away the volunteers reaching out to take her to the nurse so much so that Midnight herself had to activate her quirk to sedate Chikawa enough for them to carry her off the field. Mai stayed mesmerized by the aftermath of the fight to the point that she forgot that she was still part of the event.
"Wait, shoot, Mai, your match is next!" Ai suddenly exclaimed before half-dragging Mai out of Class 1-G's seating area and into the stadium corridor. With Ai's help, Mai managed to cut through the crowd while they both made a mad dash to the participating students' entrance of the arena, all the way Ai giving Mai what was probably supposed to be a pep talk.
"You know, it is really better that you're the one still competing in the Sports Fest over me," she said.
"How do you figure?" Mai asked, glancing at Ai through the corner of her eye as they rounded a staircase.
"After watching so many hero fights I always figured they could just use their willpower to keep fighting villains," Ai said thoughtfully as she shoved aside a group of students milling about in the hallway. "I mean, there's always that adrenaline rush when your life is on the line." She ducked under a 'authorized personnel only' sign and held it back for Mai to run past. "I always assumed I would be the same in those types of situations, but the other day I accidently got soap in my mouth and was convinced I was about to die."
"You do realize that doesn't prove I'd fare much better."
"Maybe, but we also can't prove that you'd do much worse."
"Your fallacy evidence is fallacy."
"Yes but my fallacy logic is still logic."
They had finally reached the doorway where Mai was to enter the arena but were stopped by a volunteer who was waiting for the field to be fully sterilized before sending in the next competitors. As they took the moment to catch their breath, Mai finally spoke again.
"At this point both I and that Nakat…something guy have both seen each other fight," Mai said through gasps for air. "If I were a normal Sports Fest semi-finalist this would be the time when I analyze his fighting style in the last round and work on creating a strategy around it." She leaned back and felt her lungs expand her rib cage. "But here I am and have absolutely no plan going into this."
"In that case I might as well ask you now." Ai braced herself against the wall as her breathing returned to normal. "Can I get your room if you die?"
Mai's eyes became like slates behind her glasses as she looked directly at Ai. "If I die, my final wish is to have my room converted into a guest room."
Ai's nose scrunched up in disappointment. "Well now you have to survive with such a lame dying wish. Wait, there you go!" She suddenly said with excitement. "That's your plan: don't die."
"Yeah, I highly doubt UA would let someone die while participating in the highly televised Sports Fest. I figure death is bad for PR."
"Exactly, so executing your strategy of not dying is going to be even easier than you thought."
"Alright Miss Benihama Mai," the volunteer said as he got the confirmation from his headset. "Now it's your turn."
Let's see now it's been a hot... years, since I posted anything, but I promise you it's not for lack of thought for this story. I've had the basic skeleton of this one planned out since the beginning but because life I haven't had the time to actually write anything. About a year ago I finally sat down and typed out an outline so the act of writing didn't take quite as much brain power as before and since then I've been typing out this chapter in any spare minutes I can scrounge up. It's looking like my life is about to clear up a bit so in the future it shouldn't take two full years to post the next chapter, but I can't guarantee much more than that.
Just so you all are aware, I have three more chapters planned to finish out the Sports Fest including a little epilogue chapter for a total of ten or eleven chapters in this fic. I've also been toying with an eleventh/twelfth epilogue-after-the-epilogue chapter once MHA concludes to showcase where our favorite UA twins are in the aftermath of recent arcs, though it would likely be Mature rated in light of the recent manga chapters (don't worry, I'll provide ample warning beforehand if I do post it)
For those of you that are still here, please leave me a review! I graciously accept feedback no matter how short or detailed :)
Author's Note: 'PR' stands for Public Relations for anyone unfamiliar with the abbreviation