My Hero Academia - Under Pressure - Season 2 - Chapter 9 - Finesse and Speed

The UA Sports Festival had completed half of the matches in the first round of the finals, and each match was special in its own way. Including with the match of Anno v Kuroda where the ring was very much destroyed due to their combined powers.

As Kuroda walked towards the entrance where some of her friends waited, The Tinker walked by her with some robots and immediately went to work fixing the damage.

"And here I thought my match was violent," joked Tonen as Kuroda approached.

She gave a play curtsy to him and Eri in reply, "A lady knows how to show off her skills. But to be fair, I just set the set the stage, Anno did most of the damage."

"If this tournament is doing nothing else, it's showing our creativity more than any class could," pointed out Eri with a curious expression.

"What do you mean?" asked Tonen.

"Think about it, every stage has had to test us not just in problem solving, but use of our Quirks beyond what we've trained for so far. You for example did that flying gambit in the relay, you've never done anything close to that in class. Kuroda turned a giant robot into feathers and now a stage into glue. Hana used a kind of sneak attack style to pop in and out of battle, and on it goes."

"Huh, that's quite something, actually."

Kuroda mulled it over as well, "That's honestly why they do this festival in some ways, I guess. To see how potential Pro-Heroes will adapt on the fly, push themselves farther, and how they react to unexpected things. I certainly didn't expect Anno to go jackhammer on the stage."

"Yeah, and that brings us to our next match with you. You're up against one-half of that duo that did the laser beam attack on Kanagita!. You ready?"

Eri met his and Kuroda's looks for a second before looking away at the stage, "As ready I can be. The good news is that I won't have to worry about that laser beam attack as that was a combo strategy, clearly."

"True, nor are you a machine and thus that Izuro girl can't fry you," added Kuroda.

"Her brain is a machine with all that data it stores," teased Tonen, but Kuroda pushed him a bit to make him stop.

"Knock it off, Tonen! Eri's trying to be mentally ready and you're not helping."

"Sorry Copycat."

Eri shook her head at the banter, "I'm fine. My only concern is that I only witnessed her powers with that partner of hers. So I wonder if like Kuroda...I might not know what my opponent can truly do."

At this, Kuroda got right up in her face, expression full of confidence, "Don't worry about that, Eri. You're one of the best in our class, by far. You have the skills in your head to get this done. You won't need a second chance to make this first impression, because you'll nail it. You hear me?"

Eri was taken aback by Kuroda's pep talk. It was true that they had a playful rivalry at times, and even came to trust each other, but this was something more. This wasn't Kuroda looking out for Eri in terms of Kuroda being the class rep. This was her cheering her on as a true friend. Something Eri didn't always get to have...

"Thanks Kuroda."

"We look forward to seeing you win," added in Tonen with a thumbs up for support.

"Thank you, Tonen. I hope that I-"

"Alright, everyone!" came a loud voice. The three turned to see it was Projection in her booth. "I've gotten the go ahead from The Tinker and the battlefield is ready to go! So, shall we begin the next half of the matches?"

The crowd cheered as they were ready for more action to commence.

"Excellent! So now, let's head to another match of Class 1-A vs Class 1-B! First up, from 1-A, we have the enemy of all machines via her powerful field, Izuro Honokuri!"

Izuro walked onto the battlefield and gave a slight wave to the crowd. Who mostly cheered, with one very loud exception being The Twins, who booed one of the girls who got them eliminated.

"And from 1-B, we have the girl of a thousand skills, Eri Ogata!"

With assuredness in her step, Eri walked from the entranceway to the field, clearing her mind as she always did before a contest, that way her thoughts could be focused solely on her techniques that she wanted to do.

In the booth, Projection looked over some papers and they brought a smile to her face, "Huh, just realized folks this is our first all-female fight. Alright ladies, show us what you can do! Let the fight...BEGIN!"

Projection let loose her horn to start the match and as if on instinct, Eri, rushed forward, trying to end this with a series of blows before any shenanigans could be had.

Izuro didn't move, which signaled to Eri that something was wrong, so she dived to the side and encircled her before trying to go for a blow.

But this didn't get anything from Izuro, save for a smile as she went and released her quirk. A field of energy, almost resembling smoke poured out of her and engulfed the field in a light mist.

Eri went and did her best to avoid it, even going to the outer reaches of the battlefield to stay away, but eventually, it consumed her, and when it did...things went into a haze.

As she tried to step through the field, Eri found herself on a wobbly legs. Almost everything she tried to do had a heavy toll, and she didn't understand why.

"What...in the world...?" she struggled to say as she tried to move her arms.

Through the mist, Izuro emerged, a very pleased expression on her face, "Begging your pardon, but Projection didn't do you a favor by calling me the 'enemy of all machines'. Most people see my short-circuit field and think it only affects thinks like computers and robots, but it's more complex than that. It has a way of messing with electric impulses. Which yes, can be found in machines primarily...but also can be found in humans...via their muscles and brains."

Eri went wide-eyed at this. As she feared, she didn't know enough about her opponent, and now, she was in deep trouble.

On the side, Tonen and Kuroda were shocked at the turn of events.

Tonen especially was beside himself, "Crap, my joke was more accurate than I thought!"

"What do you mean, Tonen?" asked Kuroda, still trying to grasp what was going on.

"Our bodies are full of electrical impulse via our atoms, molecules, and the nerves and synapses that connect it all. Everything you do sends a message via these electrical impulses to let the appropriate body part know what to do. But if you can't get the signal, or the signal goes haywire..."

"Your body can't function."

"And if her body can't function properly..."

"She can't win!" Kuroda finished, now wide-eyed.

Back on the field, Eri was struggling to get back to her feet after nearly collapsing onto the ground. But despite wanting to, her body wouldn't let her.

Izuro loomed large over her as she approached, "To be fair, I didn't have this ability when I started. But after working with Onaki and pushing myself, well...you see the result."

With a smile, Izuro gave a playful shrug and then swiftly gave Eri a kick in the head. She was launched backwards, but was able to stay within the arena. Though barely.

Using what strength she had, she managed to roll away from the edge to give herself some breathing room.

This didn't bother Izuro, who merely walked slowly to Eri, ready to strike again, "Do know that this isn't a personal thing. In a fair fight, your talents would be incredible to behold. But in this case...I guess I just trained harder than you."

Those last words rang in Eri's head. Her eyes flared and her memory went into overdrive as she remembered literally every single kind of training she went through from the moment she learned of her Quirk. From basic skills, to athletics, to fighting techniques, to special talents, she pushed herself hard to be as good as she could be.

Eventually, her mind clicked to a memory that she desperately searched for. But it wasn't an old memory, but a rather new one from only a few weeks previous.

She was in a clearing getting loose, but Eri wasn't alone. Across from her in the clearing was Iha.

"You sure about this?" Iha asked in her usual deadpan way.

"Yes, Iha, I am," Eri answered as she continued to prepare.

"Why though? Why this?"

Eri paused and looked at Iha with a rare expression of vulnerability, "In the team battle we did soon after coming to UA High, you used your Quirk on me as I faced Tonen. You...for lack of a better term...crippled me."

"Sorry."

"It's not something to apologize for, Iha. We were in battle. But for me, I had never felt something like that before, ever. My Quirk enables me to use all sorts of skills, but when I was in your power dampening field, I couldn't do any of them. I could barely move. I need to know why."

"Why?" asked Iha, more confused than before.

"Because before I met you, I had never heard of an, heh, "Up Down" Quirk like yours. So it goes to reason that someone out there might be able to put a similar effect on me if given the chance. I need to know how to fight it. If I can fight it at all."

"Fair."

Eri restrained a smile at Iha's brisk way of talking, "Right. So, please Iha, bring out your field."

"...ok."

Iha closed her eyes and then shot them back open, showing them in their glowing state. As she looked at Eri, almost immediately the effect took hold. Eri dropped to one knee, then had to use her hands to stay somewhat upright.

"I...I...can't..."

Worried at what she was seeing, Iha shut down the field, allowing Eri to recover.

"I didn't...tell you to stop..."

"You were hurt," she pointed out.

Eri looked up to see a real sense of worry on Iha's face, "What's wrong? You didn't hurt me that bad. It was me more than you."

"I still hurt you, like I hurt Azujima."

At first, Eri was confused by this, but then she recalled how Tonen said that Eri supercharged Azujima's powers without permission and sent him into a near mental overload.

She thought fast to try and calm her down, "Iha, it's like I said, you didn't hurt me, I hurt myself."

"Come again?" she asked with a tilt of her head.

"I realize now, my powers are more than just copying skills. It's actually all the movements I do in certain ways. My Quirk allows me to move, more or less. So when I'm in your field..."

"You can't move."

"Not at present," she admitted. "I guess I rely on my Quirk more than I realize. A somewhat...humbling revelation, I admit. But that's why I need your help, Iha. Because with your field, I can figure out how to get over this limitation. Or at least, get over it enough. You'd be saving me, Iha. Saving me from a situation where an enemy is doing this and not a classmate I can trust. So please, help me figure this out."

Iha thought about it for a second, then reluctantly nodded. Eri gave a brief sigh of relief at this before righting herself and signaling to start the dampening again.

As Iha turned on her Quirk, Eri again fell down, and she tried with all her might to get onto more stable footing, but she couldn't.

After a minute of this, Iha lowered the field again. But this time, it was because she was curious, "What are you trying to move?"

Eri didn't understand the question, "Huh? What do you mean?"

"You were trying to move, but WHAT were you trying to move?"

"My body, I was just trying to get on my feet."

"Too much."

"What?"

"You were trying to move too much," she said with a point to Eri. "Start small. One part. Build up from there."

Eri thought about this and saw the wisdom in it, "Right...just like how you don't work out your whole body at one, just the various parts in sequence."

"If you say so."

"I say so, Iha. Ok, let's go again."

Iha nodded and turned back on her field, and Eri returned to a very familiar position. But this time she focused her energy on trying to move her right leg. And though it took a while she was able to get up on it. Then she went for her other leg, and got upon that. Eventually being able to go upright.

"That's enough, Iha."

With another nod, Iha dropped the field, a small smile on her face as she did, "See? One part at a time."

"Indeed, thank you. Admittedly, this will only be use in certain situations, but it's better to be prepared than caught off guard."

"You really expecting another power like mine to be used on you?"

"In our world, Iha? Anything is possible. Let's go again."

Back in the present, Eri thought solely about that training session with Iha, and like her training, put what was left of her functioning brain power on moving one body part at a time.

The problem though, was that unlike training with Iha, this wasn't a matter of Quirk dampening, but a body misfiring on itself. Still, with enough focus, she was able to get up on one leg and right herself, though her other one wouldn't function as well.

Izuro stalked Eri, but gave a smile to show she was impressed, "Wow, you must be strong to get off your feet like that. But your body won't last like this. So allow me to finish this off, for the sake of mercy."

Eri bared her teeth and fumed, but unknown to Izuro, it was an act. She wasn't getting frustrated, she was merely making Izuro THINK that she was.

"I have one shot at this," Eri said to herself. "I can only stand on one foot, and my left arm is coming around. I can pull this off, but I have to wait for the right moment or I'm screwed..."

Izuro got closer, and Eri made various false attempts to try and move out of the away, or attack so that Izuro would get lured into an even deeper false sense of security.

Sure enough, once in arms length, and with Eri a few feet from the edge of the arena, Izuro threw a punch aimed right for Eri's head.

But with all the free ability she had, Eri dodged, used her left arm to grab Izuro's arm and with all she could muster, did a throw that launched Izuro over Eri and onto the ground...outside the battlefield.

Izuro couldn't believe it, Eri couldn't believe it worked as she fell flat onto the ground, her hand dangling off the edge of the arena, and Projection couldn't believe it as she looked on from the booth.

"WOW! Talk about a last stand moment!" she shouted into the mic. "Eri Ogata was on the ropes because of Izuro Honokuri's Quirk, but was able to pull herself together just enough to get the ringout! Eri is the winner!"

The crowd cheered, and much of Class 1-B sighed in relief that Eri had survived, not the least of which was Kuroda and Tonen. Who looked at one another with a look that showed that were truly worried that Eri was toast.

Izuro's field dissipated, and her own look of shock was upon plastered all over her face, "I don't understand, you were crippled. How could you move enough to do that?"

With the field gone, Eri was able to get her body back to full power. She sprang up to test it out and ensure nothing was wrong. She looked upon her opponent with a gaze that was familiar to a previous scenario where the roles were reversed, "Simple, you didn't think I could prepare for a situation where I had to use my body in a hindered state. But I did. So let this be a lesson to you: no one trains harder than me."

Eri left the battlefield and went to the entrance from before where Kuroda and Tonen congratulated her and praised her abilities. But before they could get too deep into it, Projection tapped the mic.

"Alright then, let's get to the next match!" she said, excitement ripe in her voice once more. "From Class 1-A, we have the particle-emitting, Onaki Imazume!"

Giving some final words to Izuro, Onaki came to the battlefield, her expression very tense and full of displeasure.

"And from class 1-B, the speedster extraordinare, Oshibu Noka!"

From the entrance, Tonen, Eri and Kuroda felt a wave of air go by them and suddenly Oshibu was on the field, waving to the crowd and basking in their admiration.

"Showoff," the three said together.

Oshibu didn't hear them and thus kept pandering to the crowd. This got Onaki even angrier in expression, but again, Oshibu didn't notice this.

"Well, at least one of them is ready for a fight," joked Projection from the both as she observed the two. "Regardless, let's get this 6th match...started!"

With a horn sound, Oshibu finally got "serious" and turned to his foe, "Don't worry, I'll make this quick."

"Funny," replied Onaki with venom, "but you won't lay a finger on me in this match."

"Oh, I'll take that bet. And collect on it...now!"

He blinked out to rush at her. Onaki smiled and emitted some particles out of her body, ones that no one had seen in the tournament yet. Oshibu crashed into them, and when he did, they exploded.

"What in the world?" cried out Projection.

Oshibu was able to get his feet on the ground just enough to do a small speed burst forward and thus keep him in the ring. But he was very shook by this.

"What the heck was that?" he asked as he recovered.

"That's my Quirk at work," Onaki answered with overwhelming confidence. "My Quirk is routed in the particles I send out. I used to be able to only do one or two kinds, but now, I can do several, especially with Izuro at my side. But these ones are my favorite. They're unstable particles, and if you touch them, boom. I took a risk by not showing these off in the tag team round, but I feel it worked out because you literally...ran into them."

She gave a pompous laugh at her own joke. As she did, more particles swarmed around her, slowly covering the battlefield, and putting Oshibu in a very difficult position.

Projection was amazed by this, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have been a fan of this young lady for a while now, but even I didn't know she could do this! It'll be something if Oshibu can pull this off!"

Oshibu wasn't thrilled by her statement and scoffed loudly, "I'll pull it off in blitzing style!"

He reared up and launched himself back at Onaki, but soon found himself touching the particles again. But this time, because of how dense they were, they sent him into other particles that also exploded on contact. A chain reaction followed until he was once again blasted backward and almost knocked out of the ring.

Not giving up, he decided to do some recon and went around in the few open areas he could see in order to try and find a weak spot.

Onaki noticed this and laughed ever louder, "Trying to sneak your way in? Good luck, I can pack my particles as tightly as I want, or expand them to fill this entire area, watch!"

Living up to her promise, she let loose even more particles and slowly, Oshibu got boxed into a literal corner as the particles got closer and closer to him.

"Silly boy, your arrogance betrayed you. You can't rush to victory every time!"

As Oshibu stared down the barrel of a particle-shaped gun, another female voice filled his head, one he hadn't heard in some time.

"Will you please slow down and listen to me, Oshibu?" shouted the voice from within his mind.

Oshibu flashed back to about a year before his time at UA. He was in the backyard of a rather nice house, and glaring at him was an older girl with incredibly stylized hair and outfit. A slightly younger Oshibu was blitzing all around her and mocking the girl as he did.

"Lighten up, Ninagi!" he said to her, "I know what I'm doing."

Ninagi groaned, "That's not the point at all! Now stop running around before I MAKE you stop!"

Following her request, he blitzed right in front of her and gave her a mocking smile to signal he was "ready to listen".

"Yes, dear sister?"

"I'll smack you if you don't remove that smile."

"Fine...now what did you want again?"

"What I WANT is for you to listen to me so that you can better at using your Quirk!"

Oshibu laughed and put on a pose, "I'm already great at using my Quirk, sis!"

Ninagi groaned even louder at his bravado, "At its base form, yes, you are. But you can push your Quirk farther if you would actually train in ways beyond what you're doing now. Look at my Quirk! I can ricochet off things without getting hurt, and for a while I could just do that for tactical uses. But then I learned that the more I bounce off of things, the more power I build up and thus the more damage I can do to foes. If I didn't learn that before the entrance exam, I would've been in trouble! And then at UA I learned to boost my skills even further! I'm just trying to help you be the best version of yourself before you have to take the exam."

"I'll be fine! My speed burst can slice up the robots you told me about, and I've gotten good at discerning when to do things like that. As long as I have a line of sight, I'll be fine."

"Robots are one thing, little brother, people are another! You're going to be facing Quirks that might have a distinct advantage to yours."

"Like what?" he asked not believing her.

"I don't know! That's the point!" she yelled. "The world is full of Quirks of various power levels and styles and if you rush in without knowing what's going to happen, you'll get hurt, or worse! I don't want that. With me traveling abroad with my mentor's agency next month, you're going to be on your own, and you're not exactly the best at pushing yourself when you got it in your head that you're-"

"Awesome? Skilled? A speed demon?"

"Unbeatable. No one is unbeatable, not even Mythical. If you pushed yourself you could do so much more."

"For example?"

"Well, if I was going to fight you, I would notice that you have to see where you're going in order to attack, I would use that against you by bouncing all over the place so you wouldn't know where to go. How would you counter that hotshot?"

Oshibu made to speak but couldn't get out an answer.

This pleased Nigani, "That's what I thought. And what happens if you're facing an opponent that can literally box you in so you can't run? How would you counter that?"

Again, he didn't answer, but merely looked away from her.

Her expression softened and she gently turned his gaze to her, "Look little brother, you can be so much more than I am, you just have to do the work to get there. Use your eyes to see more than just what's ahead of you, slow down your mind so you can see all the possibilities. And THEN you can blitz someone to death...you know...if that is the only option."

She stuck out her tongue teasingly, Oshibu laughed, "Very funny."

"Yeah, I know. Trust me, Oshibu, we all have room to grow. Even me! Even though I graduated and am at an agency, I can still grow. Just listen to me and try it sometime, please?"

"Ok sis, I will."

He tried to maintain a serious look, but Nigani rolled her eyes as she could tell he wasn't meaning it, "I'll believe it when I see it."

"But with how fast I go, you may not see it at all!"

His laughed at his own boast and she walked away knowing he wasn't paying attention to her words.

Back in the present, Oshibu understood for the first time what his sister meant, and he needed to move fast and think fast in order to get out of this mess he put himself in.

"Alright, don't rush, but think quickly, what can I do to get out of this?" he asked himself.

His eyes were fixed on the particle field getting closer to him, but hearing his sister once more he looked away just enough to see the edge of the battlefield. An intriguing notion got in his mind at this.

"I can run across anything with a surface I can touch, that could mean an edge...I'll have to react fast though else I'll fly out of the ring..."

He looked back at the particle cloud that was literally inches away from him.

"No time to break it down. Just focus and GO!"

He positioned himself to run along the edge of the arena and then blitzed away. The moment he got to the corner he reacted quickly and shifted just enough to blitz to the next corner, and then the next, and then back again.

The crowd was in awe that he was able to seemingly defy physics by doing this roundabout way of running, but doing it he was. Although, it wasn't solving his problem as the particle cloud was getting closer to his now angled running position.

"Dang it!" he said to himself. "I'm not out of danger! Ok, time to go flat out, it'll by me some time!"

Adjusting his body position once more, Oshibu started running not on the edges of the battlefield, but the literal sides. Even the stairs didn't affect him as he literally blitzed over them.

Onaki watched in surprise as he did this, but regained composure quickly, "I'll admit, that surprised me, but that won't stop this particle storm!"

With a roar she unleashed more particles, sending them out in all directions within the battle area, including sending them at a downward angle to try and get to Oshibu.

A gut feeling hit Oshibu's mind and he decided to pour it on and go faster than he ever could before. As he did that, another feeling came over him, one that he honestly barely noticed when he blitzed: the air. He could feel it following him, getting caught in his vortex as he raced around.

And just as the particles started to get close to him, the whirlwinds that he was building up sent them away.

"I'm creating a mini-tornado...that's it!" he shouted in his mind, a very fun idea now shining in full.

With a small laugh he continued to race from point to point, increasing his speed until the gusts of wind weren't just following him, they were building up and rising. Getting so strong they were lifting the army of particles into the air and away from him.

Onaki tried to counter this, but the air blasts, not unlike a certain classmate of Oshibu's, were too much to overcome.

Oshibu watched as the gales of wind raised the particles higher and higher, and eventually, got above Onaki's head.

Realizing his opening, Oshibu shifted his position one final time and raced right towards his foe.

"Tag, you're it!" he shouted at her.

Before she could react, he connected his fist with her stomach, and with all his amped up speed and power, shot her out of the ring and onto the ground, ending the match.

A horn sounded and Projection could barely contain herself, "And here I thought I had seen it all, folks! Oshibu Noka went from being boxed in to literally clearing the battlefield just enough to land a punch to send Onaki Imazume flying out of the ring! This final round continues to be something to behold!"

The crowd cheered for Oshibu, who again basked in their praise, but a noise caught his ears. It was Onaki, she was punching the ground in frustration at her loss, "No, no NO! How could I lose like that? It doesn't make sense!"

"Sure it does," bit back Oshibu. "It's true, I was arrogant to rush in like I did, but you were just as arrogant to think that I couldn't figure a potential way out of it. We always have to expect our opponents to go beyond and push us to think beyond what we can do. My sister taught me that. Oh, and by the way...I won our bet. Because I definitely landed a finger on you in the match."

With a laugh he walked away, leaving Onaki even more frustrated than before.

Far away, Nigani was watching a TV along with some other heroes. As her brother posed for the cameras and the crowd, she shook her head and rolled her eyes in a very familiar way.

One of the heroes looked at her, "What's wrong? Aren't you happy for your brother?"

"Thrilled," she said honestly. "It took him long enough, but he's finally seeing that there's more than one way to go and do things."

"So why do you look so displeased?"

"Because he's still an idiot, his posturing right now proves it. But hey...it's something at least. Stubbornness runs in the family, I can attest to that. I just hope he remembers this in the rounds to come. He's got a LOT of growing to do still."

Even with these sage words, as she watched her brother walk off the battlefield in victory, she couldn't help but crack a small smile in relief that he finally listened to her.

*credits*