Izuku watched from the stands as Shinya Kamihara defeated Hitoshi Shinso. Deku sighed. To think he would have once thought this match-up almost impossible, outside of training, but here he was, watching a friend and Edgeshot fight it out. Once again, he was in awe at the Multiverse.
"Sure, I can join you." Juzo Honenuki said, Izuku's eyes going wide.
"Really?"
"Yeah. I don't have anything in particular planned in this world, and not everyone gets the chance to travel to the Multiverse. Not to mention, if the Battlemaster got to become so strong, it's because of that. I'd be dumb to turn down the offer." He replied, "It will be nice to work with you. I know the Announcer, but this is a pretty good chance to make contacts for the future Tournaments with other Izukus."
Deku felt a smile explode on his face. "Thank you very much!" He said, bowing his head. Even one of those fighters would be invaluable help, and look at how many had already agreed. The God of Thunder, this world's Kamui Woods, and now this world's Honenuki.
This was good. Really, really good. So many people willing to fight All for Deku and Alien King, and the Villains of his own world… That was it. This was the best way to save everyone's world.
He sat down next to Huanli. "How did it go?"
He raised a thumb up, and she smiled, "Told you he was the type. I can tell."
Izuku nodded, then glanced to his left, "Where did Kaminari go?"
"The bathroom." She replied with a shrug, "More importantly, Argali is next, right?"
"Yes. After him is Izumi too, and then the fighters on our side are finished for the day." Izuku replied.
-x-
Argali tilted his head, preparing to step into the ring. With Captain Kamino out, him and Revenant were the two left in the first group out of the group helping Deku. Well really, Revenant hadn't agreed to join them, but Argali had half an idea for that. More of a thought really. As for himself… Well, if he could find Kendo thanks to him, he was more than happy to help. Not to mention that it was just the right thing to do.
'I doubt I can provide that much, but Kendo should still be strong enough, and we could always ask the others. Not everyone, but a few, like Bakugo and Todoroki, might be willing to help.' He thought. The truth was, he just didn't want Deku to go through what he had to. While from what he understood his world got off relatively easily from the destruction of the war compared to others, there was still a lot of damage done and lives lost in the final confrontation between All for One and Kendo.
He was going to make sure things went better this time.
Shaking the thoughts out of his mind, he stepped into the Arena. He had gotten to pick the terrain this time around, choosing a simple grassy slope, that rose gently from the center of the arena to the left. It was a simple thing: Izuku was an excellent climber, so picking a slope to fight on gave him a slight edge over most opponent. There was a reason if he liked to help in mountainous operations.
On the other end, his opponent had picked a flat grassy terrain, giving the arena overall a look similar to a calm hillside. It wouldn't last for long, though, he realized as Monoma stepped forward.
Neito Monoma, the Copymaster. Born with the ability of copying Quirk and with the magical ability to copy magic powers, he was essentially twice more dangerous than the Monoma he knew, and even more unpredictable. If Argali could at least try to guess which powers the Monoma he knew had copied before a spar, here he had basically no idea. He was fighting a combat shapeshifter that might have had not only the skills of any fighter he had seen so far, but also of any fighter watching the matches, so long as they were Quirks or Magic.
'I see why he is considered one of the strongest.' He thought, and then the referee gave the start. Argali immediately shifted in sheep form, aiming to use his heightened speed to close the gap, but Monoma bowed and slammed his hand on the ground, large trees emerging to form a loose wall in front of the charging sheep.
-x-
"When did he…" Shinji Nishiya sighed, "He is getting better and better at copying your ability unseen."
"To be fair, copying Magic is easier than Quirks. All he needs to do is make eye contact with you to copy magic, while to copy Quirks he has to touch you." Shinya Kamihara replied.
"I know, but still, I'm more infuriated by the fact I didn't notice we made eye contact to begin with."
Kamihara hummed, wondering what else Monoma had up his sleeve. 'Good luck Argali. You are gonna need it if you want to face me.'
-x-
Argali turned into a human and immediately launched his scarf, grappling the closest branch thanks to the weighted end. Using that, he changed an unavoidable impact against the tree in more of a gentle thud against the wood. He quickly pushed back and looked around, trying to find Monoma.
The hair on the back of his head prickled and he had an instant to dodge, before Monoma emerged from the shadow of the tree and tried to grapple him. He turned into a sheep, making the man miss the neck, and dove back while Monoma vanished in the shadows. 'Kuroiro's Quirk…' He thought, 'No, I can't make that assumption. It might also be some magic power similar enough, like shadow diving. That exists, I think.'
He promised himself he would play more fantasy games with his daughter once he was home. Now that he knew magic was real, those were basically instruction manuals.
Monoma emerged from the closest shadow, but made the mistake of emerging a bit to close, and Argali rushed forward, slamming his head in his chest. The man coughed, clearly surprised he had reacted so fast, and was launched back, vanishing through a shadow the moment he passed through one. 'Alright, so intangibility is out of the list.' Argali decided. Good, fighting Mirio was a bit of a drag for a physical fighter like him.
Not that fighting Kuroiro was much better, for him, but that was probably why Monoma was using that ability. After two rounds, it was dumb to assume their opponent weren't preparing in advance for the match.
Izuku turned back into a human, scarf in his hands, and started to step to his left, making sure to keep his eyes on the line of trees and the shadows they casted.
And then a hand grabbed him from below, and he started to get dragged away.
"Wha- Oh, the grass' shadow!" He realized, feeling like an idiot. If Monoma had asked for a grassy terrain and not just a barren one, of course it had to be for a reason. Under the artificial lighting of the arena, the grass would have at least some shadow, small and close to the ground as it might have been.
'But dragging me is a bad idea.' Argali thought, turning into a sheep and instantly about tripling his own weight. He felt Monoma's pull suddenly stop, and figured he had probably just broken his wrist… but then the ground under him started to give way.
'Honenuki…' He freed himself from the arm and turned back into a human, using the change in position to dive toward solid ground, and grimaced. The Copymaster had done his homework. The trees to stop his charge, the shadow diving to hide out of sight, and now Honenuki's Quirk to bog him down if he tried to use his sheep body as a weight.
Argali looked around, trying to spot where Monoma would come from next, and suddenly realized something. Why had Monoma emerged from the shadows earlier?
He stared in the general direction, finding nothing of note. Some lack of skill perhaps? That seemed unlikely. A time limit? No, if that was the case he would have had to emerge by now. He looked around, and then realized something. He moved his scarf, and threw the weighted end forward, landing about a step away.
A hand emerged, snatching it, and he grinned, pulling. A bewildered Monoma emerged from the ground. 'He can't see in the shadows!' Argali realized, dashing forward and delivering a kick on Monoma's chin. The Copymaster was sent flying back, and made to dove into the shadows again, but Argali had learned his lesson, launching the scarf's end and snatching him by the leg, pulling him out of the shadow and toward himself.
Monoma grinned, and activated another power.
And then the grin vanished.
-x-
"No!" Huanli shouted, standing up.
Then Monoma started to scream. The martial artist stood up and rushed toward the edge of the arena, unsure of what to do.
"The match is interrupted!" Announcer declared a moment later, looking down toward the crowd as Monoma kept shouting and screaming, his whole body convulsing, "Can someone help-"
"I'm on it!" Huanli shouted, jumping down. Using her Qi, she landed easily and then rushed forward. Only then she realized Deku had followed her, likely wanting to help even if he didn't know how. They rushed to the Copymaster's side, and Huanli grimaced. Even by that distance, she could tell she had been right.
"He must have made eye contact at some point." She said, pushing aside Argali to check on him, "That was the requirement, right?"
"Yes." Argali replied, "What's going on?"
Huanli didn't answer, instead taking a deep breath. She closed her eyes, and pushed her negative energy forward. Qi was a powerful force, but it wasn't meant to be used by anyone. It required control, discipline, or the willingness to endure horrible, writhing pain. While all creatures had Qi, the energy flowed through their body without a real direction, even but aimless.
The first thing a practitioner of Zhandou Quan did was to redirect their own Qi so it could flow with a purpose. Normally, that came through training and meditation. Focusing not on activating the power, but on just controlling its movement.
The alternative was trying to do what Monoma had. Push it out all at once, and let nature take its course. The Qi wouldn't kill the body, but it would try to force itself through the course it was supposed to take to do so. Until it did, however, it was basically raw energy of the soul bouncing through every nook and cranny of the body. It was burning, scorching fire, the very life force that tried to find a direction and an outlet. It would rush to one part of the body, that felt dead, but in doing so would leave the other half truly as if dead, only to then rush there instead. Muscle pains and spasms occurred as the muscles were essentially killed and resurrected.
This kind of awakening didn't kill, but it could very well cripple. 'And this idiot did it to himself without even realizing.' She thought. Of course he had. He probably figured Argali would draw him in close quarter, and what better way to counter that than to copy a martial artist that used magic?
Except that wasn't how it worked.
She finally felt the last speck of positive karma vanish, and she felt the hungering emptiness that came with it.
The Fist of Hell, the form Huanli had promised herself to not use unless it was a life or death situation, took hold. The Diyu Quan wasn't like the Hungry Ghost Fist. It didn't lead to a heightening of the desires.
Instead, it left someone with a hungry nothingness, an empty void that demanded to be fed. And since that void was made of Qi, it was Qi that it devoured. She extended her hand, and Monoma's Qi responded, rushing to her hand. She felt it rush up her arm, and down into the void. Darkness trying to feed darkness, and light trying to defeat it.
Huanli focused. She had to lower the amount of Qi in Monoma's body to a point where it could start to flow more easily, but she could feel her other desire. Huanli wanted to cure. But the heir of All for One, Number Eight, Eri… This was her domain.
Huanli, or Eri, was born without positive karma. Much like other people were naturally inclined to be violent or gentle, instinctive or considerate, Huanli was naturally inclined to something. She was inclined to hunger. She would always want to see, to hear, to feel, to experience. But unlike those born with merely an extreme abundance of negative karma, this hunger wasn't born of instinct and desire. It was born of a desire to fill what felt like an existential void.
And so, as she returned to Eri, Huanli felt it. That hunger she had thought she'd never feel again, that desire to take everything another person was in hopes it would end the void.
Huanli Quanteng was the daughter of Itsuka Quanteng. She was a joyous, cheery, somewhat violent girl prone to not think but to act. She hated injustice, loved to help people. She was imbalanced, but very talented.
Eri was Number Eight, the heir of All for One. She felt nothing, and she wanted to fill that nothing with all that existed. She accepted all, good and bad. She was ready to hate and ready to love everything equally. She was talented, because she was so imbalanced.
Huanli had always been afraid to turn out to be just Eri's masks. That despite ten years spent learning from her Master, Eri would wake up one day and decide that she was done with the disguise, that even that wasn't enough to satiate her hunger.
Even if Huanli refused to admit it, even if she tried to come up with explanations time after time, from training, to copying her mother, to wanting to just see more, that was the real reason she had jumped into the Multiverse.
Because she was scared. She was scared that if the life of Huanli became to boring, Eri would toss it aside.
Even as she let go Monoma, once his Qi was lowered enough he wouldn't suffer in agony, and she rebalanced her Qi, Huanli wondered if this was her just returning to the normal she had worked so hard to achieve, or if Eri was just waiting in ambush. If she was just telling her 'This life is still entertaining. Keep it up'.
As she took a rattled breath, feeling the new Qi course through her body, knowing she had become stronger at the cost of someone else's Qi, Huanli couldn't help but feel like this was the one path to becoming strong she refused to follow.
-x-
"After asking an expert," Announcer said, glancing at Huanli, "We have received confirmation that the Copymaster won't be able to participate in the Tournament. As such, we have agreed to allow Argali to move forward in the Top 16."
Predictable as it was, the booing was still deafening, and the Announcer couldn't blame the spectators. Many of them had actual money riding on those matches, and here one was, getting decided not by victory of defeat, but by an innocent yet almost deadly mistake.
And well, the mistake itself was rather understandable in Izuku's eyes. Monoma wanted magic that could catch the opponent by surprise, give him an advantage, and give him a edge in close quarters. With his own training as a Martial Artist, he could accomplish all of those.
His only mistake was copying a magic that came with a price. And here he was, trying to put the pieces back together.
At least the next match was a good one. Tenya was in extremely good shape this year, and Izumi was proving to be a true surprise. Even if most people had no idea of how she had won the previous round, they knew that Geten wasn't the kind to lose quietly. She had done something terrifying to knock him down like that.
He really hoped to see more.
-x-
Izumi took a deep breath. As her chest slowly rose up and down, she prepared her weapons. The abrupt end of Argali's match had been quite the surprise, but it meant her turn was imminent. She only had to wait for her time.
She closed her eyes. "Nothing, this time? No limitation for the Path of Most Resistance?"
"Not from me." One for All declared. "Why do you ask? Looking for a hint on what you should do next?"
"No." She replied categorically.
"Oh, One for All really doesn't know how to ask questions, and the other one is always such a silent, lonely spirit. But at least I am more than willing to give you a hint, if you want it." The second voice said, the spirit of Overzealous Databook.
Really, calling them spirits, demons, or even angels was not entirely correct. They were… pieces. Fragments of She Who Bears Gift. If the latter was the Goddess of all Powers, then each of them was a single one of those powers. All of them sharing the same goal of making people achieve their dreams, but only through the Path of Most Resistance.
That was why them offering help was always treacherous. Whether they wanted or not, by giving a hint they were making things easier. And that meant that, as a sort of rebound, the Path would then become harder further ahead.
Really, Izumi couldn't tell if they did it on purpose, or if they were truly clueless about what their offer meant. "I can do this on my own. I was just making sure. Thank you both."
They didn't answer, thankfully, but she had to wonder how difficult this was going to be. "If you want to know, just ask me for a hint." The third voice replied. She shook her head. No, his in particular wasn't a Path she wanted to make any harder.
Izumi stepped forward into the corridor the moment she got the signal, and emerged on the wide arena. She grinned. Her side of the arena was muddy, ideal to fight a speedster, and covered by mist. That one had a different use.
"The Queen of Delinquents, Izumiiii Midoriya!" The announcer finished to call, and she wondered what else he had said, but before she could think of figuring it out, a blur of white appeared in the Arena, revealing itself to be a man clad in armor.
"And against her, a warrior that rivals the speed of the greatest in the multiverse. From a legendary family of fighters that gave us one of our longest ruling Champion, the man of speed and precision, the warrior always on time! The Ultimate Accelerator, Iida Tenyaaaaaaa."
Izumi took a deep breath, and pulled out her sword.
"Begin!"
Iida moved, and Izumi shouted as something hit her in the chest, sending her flying toward the wall.
"Twelfth President of the Student Council, a user of Crash Pain, the Deal to not feel pain." She managed to say before slamming into the wall, not feeling the pain of the impact but feeling the impact itself. She coughed and then moved.
"Plus, Twenty-Third President of the Yuuei Student Council, a user of I Fall Down, the ability to improve kinetic vision." She needed this one, desperately. As her eyes got used to it, she finally managed to see what her opponent was doing. Just in time to block a new fist that otherwise would have slammed straight into her face. She sighed in relief, and then realized why she hadn't been prevented from using any of her Deals.
She needed the three strongest to win this.
Izumi blocked each blow by an edge, and then took a deep breath. 'Here goes nothing.' "Plus, First President of the Yuuei Student Council, a user of Tutoria, the ability to teach swordsmanship."
Izumi had three Deals she used only if she absolutely had to. Two came from One for All. The other one… that one was special.
The first of those three abilities was Tutoria, the Deal that made someone a perfect swordsmanship teacher. On the surface, one might have thought that Tutoria had a very limited use.
Those people forgot that to teach, one has to intrinsically be more skilled than the person they were interacting with, and that Tutoria guaranteed she could teach anyone. It guaranteed she had something to improve for the best of the best.
Izumi slashed, hit, stabbed, her whole body moved like the greatest swordmasters to have ever lived. No, better than them. Because, for the time she used Tutoria, Izumi was effectively the greatest living swordsman of the world. Or maybe of the Multiverse now?
Of course, Tutoria would never allow her to win. The downside of Tutoria was that it was meant to teach, and teaching to someone that couldn't hear you was hard. Therefore, Tutoria came with a fail safe. No matter how hard she tried, Izumi would never be able to use the skills she gained with Tutoria to deal a decisive blow. Like a good master, she would test her opponent, put them in a difficult position, leave them bruised and battered. But she would never break bones or deliver a killing shot. She would even find herself doing her best to keep them from fainting.
While Tutoria was active, she was teaching.
Which was also why she was screaming instructions as she did.
"Keep you guard higher. Good try to grab it, but there is a very easy reversal from that position. Don't look at where the blade is, look at where it will be. Good. Bad. Good. Fine." She kept shouting instructions, Tenya Iida doing his best to ignore what had to be a pretty big distraction and counterattack, only to be stuck on defending, defending, defending.
Izumi sometimes wondered if Tutoria existed to be the most annoying of all the Deals within One for All. It was one thing to find yourself outmatched, but for the person outmatching you to try and teach you better in the middle of combat? That was ridiculous.
Izumi glanced behind him, toward her terrain. Step by step, she had forced Tenya further back, into the deepest fog. She grinned.
"Plus, Fourth Yuuei Student Council President. Different Talent, the Deal to copy other people's skills." She said, and then she felt the pain crash through her body as Crash Pain vanished. Thankfully, Different Talent countered that.
Different Talent was Izumi's second ace in the hole. The ability to copy the skill of past opponents, but only of one at a time. Moreover, it only referred to their physical skills, not anything based on their biology. Her body was still her own, it was just the other skills she knew – from sword fighting down to how to tie a knot or to solve an algebra equation – that changed into those of the target, and only for a minute. Different Talent was built that way, probably because She Who Bears Gift refused to let someone just hold the keys to what would otherwise be almost unlimited power.
Still, Izumi had trained with more than her fair share of skilled fighter, and recently, there was a sword wielder that was a great inspiration.
She vanished in the fog. Thinking how humorous this was. She had won the previous round by copying Revenant's appearance, and now she was planning to win this round by copying his skills.
She had to admit, being Revenant was scary. She felt everything about his skills. He could sense where the enemy was, a skill he had picked up most likely through so many life-and-death situations that he might as well have been a real Revenant.
He was an excellent swordfighter too. Izumi doubted he had much to learn even from Tutoria, and that was one of the reasons she had never offered to teach him.
But she didn't need any of that, what she needed were his more subtle skill. His ability to vanish in the fog, to make himself a nothing none could find. That was what Izumi needed, as she disappeared from Tenya's sight.
She gripped her sword and struck, shouting instructions even as she aimed to Tenya's armor. If she was the actual Revenant, the flurry of moves she executed with the weapon would have probably achieved a lot more, but Izumi, while having his skills, definitely lacked his strength and unique physique, and she knew she couldn't hold on for long.
Both Tutoria and Different Talent gave her knowledge and abilities she wouldn't have had, but the biggest downside of the combination of the two was that her body had a really hard time keeping up. Even now, as she dodged a flurry of punches with an outwardly elegant and graceful pirouette, she felt her bones creak and her muscles ache at the sudden movement.
But she watched in satisfaction as more of Iida's armor cluttered to the ground, the breastplate giving way and exposing his chest.
Izumi's target. Her one shot at victory. As she did, she felt I Fall Down vanish, and knew this was it. She had one shot, before Tutoria started to also vanish. She closed her eyes, and undid the Deal herself, leaving only Different Talent to vanish in the shadows again like Revenant would.
And then she gripped her sword.
Struck Down by Love was a weird name for an ancient Contract, but such was the name She Who Bears Gift bestowed on it. For rather obvious reasons, once one read the finer print. The Kendo Clan, a samurai clan from the Warring States period, made a Contract with She Who Bears Gift, obtaining it.
The ability to always strike the hurt.
As her sword whipped out of the fog, Izumi's attack seemed to almost warp. The thrust impacted and struck true to the center of Tenya's chest, barely to the left, making the man scream. If the Kendo's sword had been an actual sword, and not just a wooden weapon with a metal core, she would have killed him then and there.
Of course, the sword's ability came with a price. Two, to be precise.
First of all, the sword could only be wielded by someone that loved a member of the Kendo Clan. On the surface, a great idea. On the other hand, not so great when they only member of the Kendo clan you knew was your best friend, second in command, and very secret crush. Izumi still felt her cheek turn red at the thought of the day Kendo had showed her the sword, saying the wielder had to love someone in the Clan, only for Izumi to find herself wielding said wooden sword easily. Conversation with Kendo had been awkward for a while after that, even if ultimately Izumi had lied and pretended that clearly the sword was also counting her friendship as love. Izumi hoped Kendo had bought it, but she still didn't know how to feel about.
The second, she thought as her opponent fell unconscious on the ground and she was declared victorious, was the price to pay for one use of the blade. A great deal of bad luck was now bound to meet Izumi, to hit her in the next twenty-four hours.
She just had to hope it would prove manageable.
(XX)
In this chapter:
Argali from Sheep go to Heaven by Dramatic_Spoon
Well, if the previous chapter focused a lot on the fight, I think it's noticeable this one was heavily focused on the strengths and especially weaknesses of our two girls. Huanli and Izumi are very different, and I'm really happy I got to write a chapter very focused into the way they think. Even if the focus on the fight is reduced, this gives us the opportunity to see a lot.
I'm sorry for cutting Argali's fight, I really am, but I knew that this was the best way for the Qi twist to happen and Huanli to intervene. Had I moved Monoma to a different fight between less important characters, it would have been a lot more... expectable, once one noticed the match for some reason had a lot of focus on it. On the bright side, Argali won, even if more by luck, and he has more rounds to show he deserves the spot.
Huanli's internal struggle is something I was very interested in writing, and I hope it's clear what the issue is. It's not exactly an easy one to solve.
As for Izumi, this chapter introduces us to two things: her - hinted before, but now fully revealed - crush on a very close friend (bet no one had guessed who that close friend was tho), and her top skill we had so far not been introduced to. Tutoria, Different Talent and Struck Down by Love are the aces in the hole Izumi almost never uses... unless she is against a speedster in a fight he would dictate entirely through speed. We'll see how her luck goes. At least we know she won't get bad luck in a fight, since she isn't fighting tomorrow.