Interlude.2: Sparring Matches

(A/N I lied about the less Denial) (A/N 2 – No Beta for this chap)

Training Ground Z-Beta Arena – With Dormant and Rzuku- 10 Months until the sports festival…

Dormant and Rzuku, start off their sparring matches the same exact way every single time, an extended stare off.

Both of their quirks are similar in that they require precision. Dormant's chain boxes are located on his wrists and ankles, meaning that the way he needs to fight is rooted in sharp and sudden movements. Each jab is accompanied by a swish of air and rattle of chains coming from his direction. The pro of this is that enemies need to be kept on guard, even after Dormant pulls back from a landed or whiffed punch the risk of a chain slamming into their side and opening them up for an attack.

However, the downside of this power is that anyone who has fought Dormant more than once knows the risks and can take advantage of the gap between the punch and the chain. Rzuku's quirk is much the same.

Rzuku's quirk is based in both resource management and precision, the amount of smoke he is able to store is large but attacking with it is more complicated than just releasing a large amount at once.

Releasing his smoke doesn't produce much of a concussive effect on it's own, in fact there is very little force produced at all after the initial release effect. The force produced is similar to that of a sudden gust of wind resulting from the smoke displacing the air suddenly. It's enough to knock over someone who is unprepared or unbalanced, but on it's own it will never be the deciding factor of a fight.

However, for an opponent who's attacks rely mainly on momentum, it might be the perfect choice.

Suddenly, the small sparring ring bursts into movement, Rzuku making the first move, he dashes towards Dormant while keeping his upper body as low to the ground as possible to make attacks from Dormant's chains require him to commit more to the attack.

Dormant makes the decision to jump backwards to avoid what he thinks will be an uppercut from Rzuku, however he predicted incorrectly.

Instead Rzuku slides to a stop in front of him and shoots his hand forward with the palm flat, releasing a plume of smoke from the hole in his right hand.

The smoke is closer smog than smoke in the state that it was released, it singes Dormant's nostril hairs and makes his eyes water. In a play to avoid inhaling too much smoke, Dormant leaps to his right side and shoots out his left arm, flicking his wrist at the end of the motion in order to send out his chains to whip at Rzuku.

Rzuku who had dedicated too heavily to the initial smoke blast is still in the process of standing up from his slide. He see's the chains coming towards him and prepares to dodge out of the way, but he doesn't need to.

Dormant's body is suddenly wracked with harsh coughs, a result of suddenly inhaling the smog-like smoke at the start of the clash. The harsh coughs shake his body enough that the chains that he sent out are destabilized enough to be knocked off course.

Seeing the moment of weakness for what it is Rzuku dashes in. Dormant, still off balance from the coughing fit, tries to use his other arm to release launch the chain in a sweeping motion; but this time Rzuku is ready. He dodges to the slide and lands a picture perfect palm strike on Dormant's kidneys, folding Dormant over his hands. It's accompanied by a strong release of smoke which sends Dormant down to the ground.

Rzuku slowly walks over to where Dormant lands on his stomach, and sits on his back, then he proceeds to pull out a neat tobacco and nicotine free cigarette from his pocket and light it.

He smugly proclaims to Dormant, "I win."

When Rzuku retells this story in the future, he claims that he can't repeat what Dormant said in response, as he is a man of faith.

Training Ground Z-Beta Streets – With Pink and Peace- 10 Months until the sports festival…

Crash

With the benefit of hindsight, Pink thinks that maybe irritating Phantos wasn't them smartest thing he had ever done.

It wasn't his fault, he hadn't really set out with the goal of bugging Phantos all day because he had nothing to do, that was just sort of where the pieces had fallen. He had learned not to do the same with Denial around the 2nd time that he had been thrown through a wall with a makeshift Warhammer.

When Phantos had finally given in and turned everyone's rest day into a sparring day where he would arrange the fighters, he should have anticipated that this probably wouldn't be very fun for him.

Although even if he had, he never would have reached the conclusion that he would be placed against Peace in the form of a massive fuck off dragon.

Normally, the only 2 that Peace are paired up with are Denial and Krabbo, Krabbo being much more durable than everyone else, and Denial with their quirk's ability to avoid damage for short periods of time. Really, Pink should have said something the moment Phantos announced the matchups, but he was too busy being shellshocked to speak out until it was too late.

Pink has had quite a bit of time to ponder this, as he currently resides in a Pink shaped hole in the wall of a building about 3 yards away from where the fight started, a result of not getting out of the way of a tail slap in time. He didn't take any heavy damage outside of what will probably result in some bruising, but he's taking the recovery time to ponder how he ended up in this situation.

Ah Shit, I should probably be planning.

The fight's been going on for less than a minute and he's already been embedded in a wall. It doesn't look great for Pink if he's being completely honest with himself.

Slowly Pink pries himself out of the hole and shakes the dust off, the entire time, Peace silently stood and waited for him to recover. The reptilian doesn't have a mouth structure that allows him to smile, but Pink can feel the amusement rolling off of the Dragon in waves.

The issue is that taffy is much less viable in a combat situation than it may seem. At a glance you could compare it to rubber, however the quality of rubber is that it bounces. When you stretch out a rubber band, it'll snap back to place the instant you let go. Taffy isn't like that, Taffy stretches, but it doesn't bounce, it just hardens. Sure, Pink can swing around with it like Spiderman, but he's always low enough to the ground that he has to make sure he's careful about avoiding obstacles.

At the start of the match Pink attempted to swing away to make distance and got rewarded with a tail slap and back pain for the rest of the year.

"That, was so uncool."

Peace lets out a noise that's somewhere between a growl and a laugh, before taking off towards Pink at speeds that should be illegal for something that large.

Pink dashes away, having learned his lesson from earlier, he keeps his center of gravity low to the ground, and darts around corners, down streets, even over fences when they pass through a particularly fancy looking simulation of an apartment.

God Damn why doesn't taffy bounce! Pink shouts in his mind as he once again takes a sharp turn around a Bodega, not even pausing as Peace rams through it like it's not even an obstacle. Just like he has through every other obstacle helping Pink put distance between the two of them.

As Peace shakes off cement before continuing his chase, Pink is struck by a realization.

Wait a minute, Taffy doesn't bounce! Struck by inspiration and what seems like a second wind, Pink uses his left hand to stretch out the taffy on his right arm before launching his arm forwards at the top of a near by building. A thin line of taffy latching on to the building in front of him, Pink pulls with enough strength to launch himself over both the building in front of him and the one behind it.

With a large shout of effort, he tears apart the line of taffy attached to his right arm before preparing to pull from his left arm. Quickly, he attaches one side to a fence post on the right-side of the building he just vaulted over.

As he hears the sound of a giant dragon dashing through the first building he vaulted over, sprints to the other side and tears the taffy still connected to his arm out and connects the end of it to a light post.

I really hope this works, thinks the pinkest member of Class 1-C.

See, the lagiacrus is a primarily sea-based dragon. Its body is adapted for combat deep underwater, while it can rise up above the surface, it normally does so to either sunbathe, or avoid a powerful combatant which is attacking it under the sea's surface. This means that the Lagiacrus, has very poor eyesight when outside of land.

So, when the large reptile burst through the building at full speed, prepared to ram down Pink, it doesn't see the large trap that Pink has set. And instead of barreling through like it expects, it comes to a sudden stop. The sudden shift in momentum being enough for it to flip end over end and have its back slam into and break through the powerlines that are above head before stopping on its back slowly.

Pink saw Peace writhing on his back struggling to get back on his feet and couldn't help but gloat. "Ha, take this you shitty lizard," he says. "You will always remember this as the day you almost beat Pink the great and powerful."

Pink turns away and begins to walk away leisurely, basking in his victory… when he hears a spark.

See, the large horns that line the Lagiacrus' back aren't just for show. They are highly conductive of electricity, which it uses to charge it's bites and launch powerful blasts of energy. All it needs to get started is a spark; while the spark is usually provided by Fulgurbugs which are native to the Lagiacrus' habitat, those don't exist in the world of My Hero Academia, thus Peace never sought to experiment.

However, due to the fact that the members of Class 1-C are currently living inside Training Ground Z-Beta, the powerlines are active meaning plenty of electricity hit the conductive horns on Peace's backside when he got flipped by Pink's trap. Meaning…

The sparking on Peace's back grows more and more violent, and Peace finally manages to roll over onto his feet. The man turned menacing beast stares down at Pink as his eyes and the horns along his body begin glowing blue.

"You have got to be FUCKIN-"

Training Ground Z-Beta False Apartment –Denial and Krabbo- 10 Months until the sports festival…

A girlish scream echo's from somewhere outside into the building. However, Denial is too busy dealing with her own problems to acknowledge it at the moment.

Currently, Denial wishes that her quirk was being as fluid as her gender is, as she's taken only one hit from Krabbo and it was enough to render her right arm completely useless for the rest of this fight.

The Dapper Crab human walks slowly around the corner which Denial had just sprinted around. The tip-tap beat of his cane against the hard floor of the faux apartment ringing through the halls. The chain on his monocle jingles with each subtle movement, and he's tall enough that the top hat brushes against the ceiling of the area just strongly enough to make a noise.

Frankly, at this moment in time Krabbo is the pinnacle of intimidation. And the fact that he's a hard counter to Denial's quirk is just another nail in the coffin.

Denial's quirk, Denial, burns through her stamina like hell, even after 2 months of nothing but a specific diet and stamina training straight, trying to use a consistent effect is enough to knock her out after 10 minutes. While this is a large increase from the 30 seconds at the start, it's still variable depending on how powerful the effect she want's to use is.

Basically, in this fight, there is a 0 percent chance of Denial's victory if she uses her power for a consistent effect.

One shot effects that nullify the effect of one attack are slightly better, but that means if she get's hit by an attack hard enough to knock her out there isn't much she can do about it.

Krabbo, on the other hand, has a mutant quirk that massively increases his strength and gentlemanliness with no effort on his own. Outside of a diet that requires some seafood, his strength is far beyond that which can be obtained by a baseline human. Hence, he's a perfect counter for Denial.

Krabbo's slow walk continues, a side effect of his large frame not having the space for him to move full speed in these hallways.

"As much as I love spending time with a madame such as yourself, you must realize that you have no chance of victory." Krabbo's face screws up as he says this, the first part was probably something that just slipped out.

Normally Denial would feel some form of pity for Krabbo, who's had both his mind and body changed by his power. But right now Denial only felt irritated by Krabbo's pompous tone.

Krabbo, ever the gentleman, goes to apologize for the statement he made, "Apologies, I do not mean to offend you. I was simply trying to demonstrate that my victory is inevitable."

A vein bulges in Denial's forehead.

"There's on problem with that Idea, my large dapper friend."

"What's that Denial?"

"I'm already gone…"

With a bright flash, the normally empty black pits that are Denial's eyes flash red with the sign of her quirks activation, and she slips through the floor as if she had never been there in the first place.

I might not be able to get a definitive win, but I can make this as much of a pain in the ass for the big guy as possible. Denial concludes. I'll make it up to him later, I wonder what foods he likes.

Denial turns to make her way to the nearest staircase, as she's making the decision on whether it would be more of a pain for her to go up or downstairs, she hears a large crash.

Turning around, she see's that Krabbo has punched the ground of the above floor and fallen through, landing right behind her.

"You will have to do more than that to escape my grasp, milady."

Denial resolves to find out if Krabbo has male genitalia in his new body by stomping on his crotch as soon as she's in a more masculine mood.

This is going to be a long day.