My Hero School Adventure is All Wrong, As Expected

by storybookknight

Hikigaya Hachiman is the last person on earth who should ever apply to U.A. High School. Yet somehow, he gets in anyway. In a world of irrepressible optimism and idealism, these are the adventures of a young man who believes that idealism is a lie.

20. Honestly, Riajuu Should Just Go Explode

A/N: Some slight changes were made from the canon omake "Once Again, Hikigaya Hachiman is Ahead of Me" to adjust for the fact that certain people wouldn't have been in the stands at that time. That omake will now be considered semi-canon.

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What was it about Hikigaya Hachiman that made other people rely on him so much? His team pushed him to take their single spot in the finals. He effortlessly took charge back at the USJ. Even as early as the class president election, it seemed like people were already following his lead.

It should have been me.

Hayama Hayato doesn't lose, right? Turns out, yeah, I do. Why was it someone else who got to be Class President, and not me? Despite the fact I took the initiative and had a decent speech on the actual day of the election, despite the fact I had a solid base of people who I thought would vote for me, Hikigaya had started convincing people he was smart from the very first day. Even if you're the fastest guy in the race, if someone else is already halfway to the finish line, you'll still lose.

It wouldn't be so bad if Hikigaya was just better than me. I could handle that. But it was dumb luck he was born with a power copy quirk, dumb luck he happened to be able to explain something impressive right off the bat, dumb luck that the teacher decided to push him into running for class president, dumb luck that he happened to bump into that villain and almost catch her, dumb luck that he was just a little bit later to get his headbands stolen than I was.

Dumb luck that he got put into Yukino's HEART group, and not me.

I could easily have resented him for it. Really easily. But, it wasn't like Hikigaya was a bad guy. He was polite almost to a fault, he worked hard, he was smart, and he had more raw courage than … just about anyone I'd ever met. And honestly, Yukino making friends with anybody was a positive step, even if it wasn't me.

So I had a few options. I could feel jealous, and also feel guilty at feeling jealous because I liked the guy; I could try to convince myself that he wasn't really as great as all that so I could stop feeling guilty, or I could do things the Hayama Way, as according to my father: instead of feeling jealous of what other people have, figure out how to copy them so you can get the same results. And then do better.

So. What was it that made Hikigaya Hachiman special? It would be easy to point to his quirk, or his physical fitness, or the way that he always seemed to have a plan for everything… but Hikigaya hadn't really stepped up his game until after the USJ. Hikigaya Hachiman had changed after he touched that Nomu.

Unlike the rest of us, Hikigaya Hachiman had a cause.

I'd thought I'd had one, once.

I sighed heavily as Hikigaya Hachiman left the stadium, preparing for his first match. Of course. Even a quirk that could do anything couldn't help someone figure out how to talk to Yukinoshita Yukino.

Luckily for him, Hikigaya had people willing to cover up his mistakes. "Ne, ne, Yukinon, you're up next after Hikki, right?" I couldn't help but look over to my right at Yuigahama Yui. All I could see from this angle was her orange hair, but her voice was cheerful. "You should go down and join him in the waiting room," she said, "I'm sure he'd probably like the company!"

Yukino hesitantly looked between the stage below, Yuigahama, and the doorway out of the seats. "I - I wouldn't want to make him uncomfortable…"

Yuigahama sighed. "Yukinon, you already apologized to me and Shoji-kun and Tohru-chan. Won't you feel bad if you don't go and say sorry to Hikki before your match?"

"I… I suppose you're right," Yukino said. Her usually icy blue eyes looked troubled. It was rare, seeing her that way. Usually she put on a mask of frigid indifference, no matter who demanded that she apologize, or how much peer pressure a group put on her to admit her 'sins'. Why did she look like she actually felt guilty this time? It was all a competition, wasn't it? "Yui-chan… do you want to come with me?"

"Oh-" It sounded like Yuigahama was about to agree, and then she cut herself off. "Nnn, I don't think I should. Bakubaku would be mad if none of us watched him fight."

Honestly, I wasn't sure that Bakugo would even notice, but it was nice of Yuigahama to give the two of them the space to talk without an audience.

Unfortunately, then things started snowballing. "I'll go with you, Yukinoshita-san." Yaoyorozu Momo said, pressing one hand to her chest. "I couldn't find a chance to say anything, either."

"Me too!" Hagakure chimed in. "I mean, I don't really have anything to say, but you guys are gonna keep him company, right?"

"Ooh, count me in!" Denki said. "I mean, he said no hard feelings, but like, I still feel bad, you know?"

I ground my teeth. Damn it, if any of you idiots had any idea how hard something like this was for Yukino… I wanted to speak up and say something, but I knew that if I did, there was no way it would end well. Every time I had jumped to her defense in the past, all it had done was alienate her further from the rest of the girls in the classroom, gotten her accusations of 'monopolizing Hayama' or something equally idiotic.

Luckily, I wasn't the only person in the classroom with more than the bare minimum of common sense. "I know you just got done frying all your brain cells again, but you could try being less of an idiot, Denki" Yumiko said with a flick of her long blonde hair. "Too many people would just distract Hikigaya. Besides, Bakugo's finishing up. There's no time for a big crowd of well-wishers."

"Indeed," Iida said. He pushed his glasses up on his nose reflexively. "If you're going to go, you had better do it now."

Together, Yukino and Yaoyorozu left. Denki of course stayed behind, while Hagakure wavered indecisively for a second before she sagged back into her chair, dejected. Not quite the ideal scenario, but if anyone was going to go with Yukino, Yaoyorozu was a decent choice. And there was a little part of me that was glad Yukino wouldn't be alone with Hikigaya - not that I had any right to monopolize her, or that I thought anything would happen inside of a few minutes, but it was there regardless.

"You should think about getting ready for your match too, Mina-chan," Jiro said as Kirishima got pushed further and further onto the back foot against Bakugo's blasts. One of her earlobes was still extended out to the outer wall of the stadium, but either they weren't talking to each other at the moment or she had gotten tired of narrating the voiceover. "I don't know who's gonna win out of Monoma or Hikigaya, but either way I bet the match is gonna go quick."

Mina nodded distractedly, her black-scleraed eyes never leaving the field of competition. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I'll go after the match is over."

"Oh, that's right!" Jiro said, a sly, teasing hint to her voice and mirth dancing in her angular eyes. "You've got to cheer on... both of the people in your cavalry team, right?"

Warily, Ashido's eyes flickered over to Jiro. "Uh huh, yep!"

Jiro leaned in a little closer to Ashido. "And you're rooting for…" she paused significantly. "Both of them totally equally, right?"

"Ah hah hah, well… yes?" Ashido said. A drop of sweat appeared on her forehead, and I briefly wondered if it was acidic.

"Hey, Mina-chan… you know my headphone jack quirk lets me hear peoples' heartbeats change when they lie, right?"

"Huh?!" Ashido shouted in poorly hidden panic. "I mean, I, uh, no, I didn't?"

Jiro smiled like the cat who caught the canary - and then, instead of leaning in for the kill, sat back in her seat with a smirk. "Well, there's no way I could hear anything like that over the noise all the explosions going on down there. Just thought I'd mention it. For no particular reason."

"Mou, leave me alone!" Ashido pouted grumpily. "I have a match coming up you know!"

"Sorry, sorry." Jiro said, a little embarrassed. "I'll be good, I swear. Just thought I would help you loosen up a little. Want me to come wait with you before your match?" Left unsaid was the obvious: Ashido had about as much chance against Yukino as Kirishima did against Bakugo. She had good reason to be tense.

"... After this one ends," Ashido said. She pouted a little more, sinking her chin down into one palm as she braced her elbow with her knee. "I don't wanna share a room with Yukinoshita, and the other one's gonna be all full of 1-B." Then she stopped, gasping in astonishment and sitting up straight. "No, wait! You can't! If you come with me, who'll tell everybody what the people on stage are saying? I need you here so you can tell everybody all the sick burns I've been thinking of saying to Yukinoshita!"

Jiro groaned in exasperation. "Mina… I keep telling you, witty banter isn't actually a prerequisite for being a hero."

"Hmph," Ashido pouted. "Shows what you know."

Suddenly, the two-toned figure of Todoroki Shoto appeared at the top of the stairs. All of the conversations going on in the stands ground to a halt. Todoroki looked left and right for a few seconds to examine the seats, then started walking, heading to the far upper corner away from everyone else.

"Hey!" Yumiko shouted, breaking the silence. "Is Tsuyu-chan alright?"

Todoroki's steps paused. "... yeah."

"You didn't have to go that hard on her, you know!" Yumiko continued.

Unlike Yukino, I didn't really know Todoroki Shoto very well. I'd run into him at some of Yukino's family gatherings once or twice, but he'd always been standoffish, withdrawn. All I really knew about him was that Endeavor, his dad, was proud of him - and that Yukino was worried about him.

"I…" Todoroki started to say, before he shook his head. He continued to his seat in silence.

"Man, what the heck was that?" Tobe muttered quietly. He was leaning forward, his dyed brown long hair screening off my view of his face, but I doubted it was making a pleasant expression. "He could at least say something, y'know?"

I cleared my throat. "Well, not everybody likes talking." I was tempted to add the words 'as much as you,' but even if I was going to stick up for Todoroki that didn't mean I had to be rude about it. "So, Hikigaya and Monoma. Who do you think will win?"

"It's gotta be the Pres, right?" Tobe said excitedly, turning to face me with a wide smile. "I mean, like, sure, Monoma's pretty tough, but he was only such a problem to deal with because Todoroki has a super powerful quirk and let it get stolen like an idiot. I don't think Hikitaicho said anybody in 1-B was on that level, right?"

"I'm not sure that's true, Tobe-san." Surprisingly, it was Midoriya who spoke up. He never paused in his fierce observation of the match as Bakugo pushed Kirishima further and further towards the edge of the stage, leaving me nothing but a bushy head of curly green hair to stare at from behind. "I'd like to see Hikigaya-san win, of course, but even if he can overcharge his quirks he can't make them work at anything like full power. Trying to compete with full powered quirks when you don't have one is… rough." Oh, right. Midoriya had been 'quirkless' for most of his childhood, hadn't he? "On the other hand, Hikigaya is a pretty quick thinker on his feet and he has a lot of tactical versatility which means that he's pretty unpredictable but on the other hand he probably won't be able to know what quirks monoma has copied until he uses them so there's a disadvantage there but knowing hikigaya he probably has a plan for how to handle most of what monoma has ready but what if he already burnt out quirks he needs or…" As his voice trailed off, I couldn't help but frown. Hikigaya was one thing, and I understood Yaoyorozu, but how had Midoriya been in third place for the class representative position?

As I was pondering that question, Bakugo made a spiraling dive towards Kirishima which ended in a huge KRAKOOM, sending the red-haired student flying backwards out of the ring. "Kirishima Eijiro is out of bounds!" Midnight's voice suddenly echoed around the auditorium. "Winner! Bakugo Katsuki!"

I brought my attention back to Tobe, Midoriya, and the original question I had asked. "Well, I bet we're about to find out," I couldn't help but reply.

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A few minutes later, Bakugo Katsuki came sprinting up into the stands, just barely in time for Hikigaya's match. "Heh, made it," he said smugly.

"Oi, oi, wait for me!" Kirishima's came echoing up the hallway. I almost laughed as he came into view - his spiky red hair and his face were still blackened with soot.

Bakugo dropped himself down in the seat next to Yuigahama, one of his usual scowls replacing his temporary smug grin. "Shut up! You're slow!"

"I'm not slow! You're just! Stupid fast!" Kirishima panted, skidding to a halt next to Bakugo and bending down to brace his hands on his knees while he sucked in air. "I'll get faster! For next time!"

"Heh." Bakugo smirked. "Don't slack off on your other training, now. Cause I'm gonna be training my blasts until I can blow right through that skin of yours." He rolled his narrow red eyes and crossed his arms in displeasure. "Hmph, can't believe you actually made me go for the ring out."

Yuigahama leaned forward, offering a handkerchief to Kirishima. "Great job, both of you! It was a really impressive match!"

"Oh, uh, thanks," Kirishima said as he tried to wipe the soot off his face. Nobly, he deliberately tilted his chin back to avoid taking advantage of the view that Yuigahama's lean forward offered him.

"You sure got back up here fast," Yuigahama said, "didn't you stop at Recovery Girl's office?"

"What for?" Bakugo asked truculently. "Kirishima never even touched me." Although he put on a brave front, I noticed a tremor in his crossed arms. "Besides, like hell I'm missing this match."

Kirishima winced as he took a seat, but he waved away Yuigahama's look of concern. "I'm fine! I can go see the nurse whenever. This much is nothing."

Yuigahama sighed. "Honestly, you two… there's a monitor in Recovery Girl's office, you know."

Idly, I turned my attention away from the three of them and towards the ring, where Monoma and Hikigaya were already standing face to face. I could have watched it on the monitors, of course, but like most people with flight quirks I had better than 20/20 vision. There was just something more satisfying about watching the scene with my own two eyes, even if it was harder to see.

Of course, it did come with its own hazards. I had to tear my eyes away from Midnight as the act of raising her arm to signal the start of the battle set various other parts of her body in motion, hurriedly refocusing on the two contestants before I missed anything.

"Start!" Midnight shouted.

Even with my eagle eyes, I almost missed it - the very first move of the match, Monoma did something to the ground to turn it into quicksand. I shook my head in disbelief. "I would have lost, right there," I couldn't help but mutter.

"Eh?" Yumiko made a sound of surprise. "Wait, I don't get it. Aren't you a better flier than Hikigaya? He flew out of that trap just fine."

"I need to jump to take off," I said dejectedly as I watched Hikigaya effortlessly levitate over the tarpit. "He doesn't."

"Heh." Tobe let out a dry laugh. "Maybe it's a good thing Todoroki fucked up, then. At least we're not getting shown up on stage."

"This looks bad, you guys!" Denki shouted. Monoma was closing in on Hikigaya with his hands now the size of his whole body, but something told me it wasn't time to worry just yet.

"It wasn't Todoroki's fault," I replied to Tobe with a sigh as Hikigaya avoided being pummeled by turning his body to mist and letting Monoma grab his clothes instead of his torso. I paused for a second to avoid talking over Present Mic's narration, then continued. "It was mine. If I had just flown out of range of everybody from 1-B once things started getting heated, we would have been fine."

"You sure do like taking cheap shots, huh Hikigaya?" Jiro loudly copied Monoma's dialogue, as if trying to draw attention back to the match instead of the current line of discussion.

Miura shook her head. "That's not true, Hayama! You were counting on us to have your back! If we'd seen a little sooner, we could have gotten you out of those vines - "

"I mean, we all made mistakes," Tobe said, still keeping his tone of voice lighthearted even as he occasionally glanced in Todoroki's direction, "but at least we were all sticking to the plan and doing our best. Unlike some people who were just half-assing it."

I was saved from having to respond by a wave of vines that erupted from Monoma's skull, expanding in all directions to attempt to enshroud Hikigaya. I couldn't help but wince at the carbon copy of the move that had ended my participation in the Sports Festival. If I had been going fast enough, I might have been able to escape that attack back during the cavalry battle, but once the girl from 1-B had killed my momentum, she had rendered me pretty much helpless.

Naturally, the same wasn't true for Hikigaya. Even from this far away, I could see his hands grow until his palms were as big as dinner plates, and as he shoved them forward in a double palm strike they erupted in a burst of heat, light, and pressure. The giant mass of onrushing vines was blown back like a weeping willow in a high wind, and Monoma himself was knocked off of his feet, the blow hitting him hard enough that he was forced to dig into the concrete with vines to avoid being sent out of bounds. My eyes widened. Where the hell had Hikigaya been hiding that particular combo?

Present Mic said something excited-sounding, but it was completely drowned out by Bakugo's enthusiastic shout. "Yeah! Rip that extra apart!" Bakugo yelled, pumping his fist in the air. I stared at him in mild amusement, as did most of the rest of the class, which had him turning ever so slightly red with embarrassment. "What the fuck are you looking at?" Huh. For all that Bakugo gave off the impression of being a total violent misanthrope, he did have a friendly side to him after all, didn't he?

"Personally, I could have done with a little bit less enthusiasm from that team," Hagakure said to Tobe in the silence created in the wake of Bakugo's shout. I'd almost overlooked that she was sitting so close to our group, "I mean, we would have gotten our headbands back if Yukinoshita hadn't bent the heck out of the rules and kicked Hikigaya in the stomach."

"Ah! That's my quirk!" Kaminari shouted in excitement as Hikigaya lunged forward before Monoma could reclaim his balance and electrified a vine, shocking Monoma.

"Nobody cares!" Bakugo shouted back.

"She did apologize to us," Shoji said to Hagakure, "do you really need to hold a grudge over it?"

"No…" Hagakure said reluctantly, "I guess not? Maybe? I don't know. She - ah!"

The sunlight reflected brilliantly off of Monoma's steely bald head as he executed a perfect shoulder throw straight out of a judo textbook. Hikigaya landed hard, hitting the hard concrete in a way that had me wincing. Then Monoma added insult to injury, softening the ground to mud and shoving Hikigaya's head under it.

"What a vicious combo from Monoma!" Present Mic shouted. My undivided attention, like everyone else's, was now riveted to the drama taking place below. "The power copier of 1-B is pulling no punches here, folks! This may be the end for Hikigaya!"

No. It wasn't. I could see it in the tension in Hikigaya's grasping hand, the only part of his body still above ground. I took a second to check Midnight, and sure enough, she was watching it as well; after a second, the monitors zoomed in on the hand to show the audience what we were seeing. The fingers under tension, grasping at the air in almost a claw. A hand that was still fighting. Then, all of a sudden, they spread wide into a fan, almost in panic. Midnight's hand slowly raised, preparing to call the match.

I almost missed the moment when Hikigaya clenched those fingers into a fist. A shadow erupted from the ground, Hikigaya seemingly merged with it, and the fight was back on. The stadium erupted in yells and cheers. For a few minutes, nobody was in any mood to chitchat or snipe at each other, all of us wholly absorbed in the fight. Hikigaya's burst of gigantic strength, saving him from a pin and once again forcing Monoma to grab the concrete in order to stay in the ring. Monoma's last stand, and the unnerving claim that there were no limits on his copied abilities. And finally Hikigaya's last second cheap shot, catching Monoma off-guard with a quirk he had already fallen for once before.

It was hard not to be jealous of someone, I mused, when figuring out how to copy and surpass them was literally impossible. Compared to the incredible versatility of his quirk, the simple flight power I had been praised for all my life seemed rigid and inflexible. What's more, Hikigaya's victory galvanized the class in a way that none of the other fights had. Maybe it was the fact that he was squared up against someone from 1-B instead of a classmate, maybe it was the fact that he was using quirks from our class, or simply the fact that he was the Class President. Somehow, his victory felt like a victory for all of us.

That sentiment of mutual triumph carried the class forwards in a friendly ambiance. People pleasantly bid Tokoyami farewell, we collectively ignored 1-B as they all filed back into their section in ignominious defeat; it was a good feeling, and it lasted right up until Present Mic started announcing the next match. "For the seventh round of the tournaMENt -" suddenly, he stopped, coughing a few times.

"Uhm… it seems that Present Mic overexerted his voice in the last match…" Eraserhead's voice droned. "So, I guess I have to announce this one while he gets a glass of water." The microphone picked up a heavy sigh, causing the audience to break into laughter. "Uhm… both from the hero course, on the left… Ashido Mina, on the right, Yukinoshita Yukino…"

"Oi," Mic's voice rasped. "Come on, you can do better than that!" Again, laughter echoed through the stadium.

Hagakure's sleeves bent and folded over each other on the back of the empty seat in front of her, giving the impression that she was leaning forward and resting her chin on her folded arms. "It's not like I'm still mad at Yukinoshita, exactly, not for wanting to get into the tournament anyway? It's just, she kicked Hikigaya right in the stomach. Like, that's pretty much against the rules, you know? And the refs didn't even call her on it, and I can't help but wonder if it's because her team had people related to two famous pros on it, and ours didn't."

As the gluk gluk gluk sound of water being noisily swallowed echoed over the stadium speakers, Eraserhead sighed again. "Ashido's quirk lets her create acids from her skin, while Yukinoshita's lets her convert ambient heat into kinetic energy." As if fearing further interruption, Eraserhead hurriedly added, "Match seven, start."

"I'm sure that isn't the case, Hagakure-san!" Iida shouted defensively. I winced. I agreed with Iida, actually, but given who was speaking...

"You would be," Hagakure muttered.

"Let's just watch the match," I did my best to interrupt the argument before it could get heated, keeping my eyes peeled as I focused on the stage.

Ashido was a natural acrobat, and her Acid quirk provided her a combination of additional mobility and offense that was pretty tough to beat. She did her best to slide in and out of close combat range with Yukino, throwing heavy globs of acid whenever she got close enough.

"Heh!" Jiro loyally narrated, her fingers tensed up into fists. "This is gonna be easy! Sorry, Yuki-chan, but you're gonna wind up with your clothes frozen to you again today, too! Don't worry, though, I'll keep the acid mild!" Jiro paused and rolled her eyes. "Really Ashido? That's the witty line I had to stay up here for? Honestly…"

If Ashido moved around the ring like she was on roller skates, then Yukino moved like she was skating on ice. A wide arc of acid sprayed from one of Ashido's swinging arms, and Yukino faded back a few feet before curving backwards and sideways, bursts of kinetic force from her feet causing her to hover over the cement of the stage.

"Sorry, Ashido-san." Again, Jiro was narrating, but my eyes were focused on Yukino's face. My hands convulsed around the armrests as I saw it. Her eyes… I hated those eyes of hers. Cold, haughty, and desperately, ineffably sad. Her mouth moved, and I almost knew what she was going to say even before Jiro repeated it. "I'm afraid I can't afford to keep holding back."

Ashido's acid sizzled momentarily where it hit the ground, then started to slowly crystallize as more and more of the ambient heat in the arena started getting sucked into Yukino's body. She might not have realized it, but Ashido's skating arcs into the frosty air surrounding Yukinoshita got shallower and shallower, the pain caused by entering the frigid cold making her instinctively shy away. To compensate, Ashido started making her acid sprays more and more concentrated, relying on the heat caused by the chemical reactions to keep her attacks liquid.

"You know what, Yuki-chan?" Jiro narrated for Ashido. "Me neither!"

"Uh… apparently Mic would like me to mention that the battle is heating up even while the arena cools down," Eraserhead announced in exasperation. "Well, corny jokes aside, if you look closely you can see that both contestants are competing for an advantage in agility."

"Hey, is this really okay?" Yuigahama asked, one hand coming up to her mouth so that she could bite a nervous knuckle, "that acid looks like it could hurt somebody."

"Pretty sure you don't need to worry about Ice Queen," Bakugo scoffed.

Kirishima nodded in agreement. "Yeah! Don't worry, Yuigahama-chan, Ashido knows what she's doing! She won't aim for anywhere Recovery Girl can't fix!"

"Heh." Bakugo scoffed, glaring at Kirishima. "Not what I meant, Spiky Hair."

As splash after splash of acid peppered the pavement between Yukino and Ashido, the safe terrain for Yukino got scarcer and scarcer. Slowly but surely, Ashido used lines of sizzling acid to push Yukino slowly back towards the edge of the arena, hoping to force her to either get hit by the acid or dodge out of the ring.

"I think you're right, Ka-" Midoriya froze for a second at Bakugo's sudden evil glare. "-tsuki!" he finished with a yelp. "I-I-I mean, it might sort of look like Ashido-san has the advantage just going by their positions, but just look at the stage! The whole right half of the concrete is covered in frost! It must be like the middle of winter where Ashido-san is!"

As if in response to Midoriya's words, the acidic gel that Ashido was skating on froze under her feet. As the gooey substance crystallized and lost its slipperiness, Ashido stumbled.

"Heh. You bet I'm right, you useless nerd!" Bakugo crowed. "Eat shit and die, Raccoon Eyes!"

Yukino wasn't the type to let an opening pass her by. She darted forward - only to see too late that Ashido made a last minute attack as she was falling, and that she was charging straight into a spray of acid. She put up her arms in front of her face to defend herself, but the thin layer of fabric sleeve that the gym uniform provided was no match for Ashido's acid. I was sure that Yukino had tried to freeze as much of the acid as she could, but from the look of pain on her face I could tell that at least some had gotten through.

But not enough to stop her. With a swift movement, Yukino reached out, slapping Ashido's bicep in a move that looked like it shouldn't have done any damage. Ashido went tumbling away from Yukino like she had been hit by a sledgehammer. She crumpled to the ground in a heap, then half sat up, clutching her arm in a way suggesting that it was broken. By the time she was able to recover enough to search for Yukino, however, Yukino had already skated behind her in a blur, one hand swinging for the back of Ashido's neck - and stopping, hovering just centimeters away from skin contact.

"Winner!" Midnight shouted. I released a breath that I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "Yukinoshita Yukino!"

"Wow, Midoriya!" Tobe shouted good-naturedly. "Your mouth is as dangerous as mine is!"

Midoriya turned red, one hand scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. "Ah ha ha no I mean I just got lucky and happened to say something at the right time your quirk is way more impressive actually I've been kind of wondering how does it work do you like have to look at stuff you're affecting and does it still work if you say stuff in english stuff like that"

Uraraka surreptitiously elbowed Midoriya in the arm. "Pssst! Deku!" Honestly, she was such a sweet girl. I had to admit to myself, getting rejected by her during team selection had stung. Only out of a competitive sense, of course, nothing romantic - but seeing their casual display of friendship I couldn't help but feel another sting of envy.

Midoriya slapped a hand over his mouth and took a deep breath with a grateful look at Uraraka, then released it. "Uh, um, maybe if you have time later I could talk to you about it?" He asked Tobe.

"Hah, yeah, sure thing man! But you gotta tell me more about your quirk too, alright?" Tobe said.

"It's good to see you two are still so chummy even though you're up against each other in the quarterfinals," Miura said to Midoriya and Uraraka. The two of them looked at each other sidelong, and sort of scooched slightly away from each other as the realization they would be fighting soon kicked in. "It'd be good if everybody in this class acted like that," she added with an accusatory glare at Todoroki.

"I know, right?" Hagakure agreed. "I mean, did Yukinoshita really have to go that far?"

Todoroki's head jerked up from his previous impassive position, and he scowled at Hagakure, the inflexible scar tissue around his left eye making the expression look ever so slightly lopsided. He wasn't the only one to take some offense at that statement, because I had to bite my tongue to keep from lashing out at Hagakure. "She did just get burned by acid right before," I said, doing my best to keep a reasonable tone to my voice. "And Ashido aimed that acid right at Yukinoshita's face. They were both fighting hard."

"I know, but -" she broke off. It was hard to judge her, not being able to see her face, but the discontent she obviously felt wasn't hard to hear in her voice at all. "I don't like it, you know? It's like, she can kick Hikigaya in the stomach or break Ashido's arm, and as long as she apologizes for it later, it's fine, right? She was 'under a lot of pressure'. Well, I'm under a lot of pressure too, but you don't see me poking anybody in the eyes or punching them when the refs can't see or anything."

"Nobody sees you do anything, Hagakure," Denki teased, trying to break the tension.

Hagakure twisted around, presumably looking straight at Denki. "Oh don't even get me started with you. 'We're cool, right?' is not an apology!"

"Whoa, hey, hold on, what?" Denki said, startled. "I mean, jeez, is it really that big a deal?"

"I dunno, Kaminari, is it?" Hagakure asked sarcastically. "Because it's really starting to seem like as soon as it's time to explain why you zapped us in the back, or why Yukinoshita gets to kick people when it's against the rules and a jerk move even if it wasn't, or when Todoroki screws up and hurts Tsuyu, that it's understandable because everybody's under so much pressure and everything is such a big deal, but as soon as it comes time for any of you to apologize for any of it, suddenly it's no big deal and we're all just friends!"

"U-um, Hagakure -" Midoriya tried to interrupt, but Tobe talked over him.

"Oh, man!" Tobe chimed in. "You mean like how it's supposed to be okay that Todoroki didn't burn Hayama out of those vines or use fire to stop Monoma from melting anybody free, because he has some kind of reason that we're not supposed to ask about, but it's also okay for him to stab your team in the back in order to get to the finals because they're so important, even though he can probably get an internship from the number two pro hero whenever he wants?"

I sucked in air through my teeth as Todoroki's face darkened. "Come on, Tobe," I said with a forced light tone to my voice, "you don't need to go that far." I looked over to Iida, hoping for him to chime in in agreement. Typically, he was such a stalwart rule-follower that I was surprised he hadn't said anything already. But either because of his new found 'friendship' with Tobe, due to Hagakure's accusations of privilege, or maybe just because he didn't approve of Todoroki's actions either, he stayed silent.

"Just like that, Tobe!" Hagakure chirped cheerfully, ignoring my attempts at peacemaking. "So Kaminari, is it a big deal? You tell me."

"I think you're misunderstanding something." Todoroki's voice was clear, but the expression on his face was anything but. With a stormy glare, his blue left eye burning fiercely against the dark background of his scar, he folded his arms in front of him defensively. "First," he said coldly, "Kaminari, Yaoyorozu, and Yukinoshita acted on my orders. And second? The only reason I even participated in Hikigaya's plan from the beginning was because it was convenient. I was never considering any of you as friends in the first place."

The silence that enveloped the stands was as frigid as Todoroki's ice. For all that Tobe and Hagakure's complaints had been rude and accusatory, when Todoroki bald-facedly admitted that he had, in fact, been taking advantage of the rest of us to move forward in the competition it left most of us with no room to respond.

Most of us. "Heh," Bakugo scoffed. "If this is how you treat your enemies, it's a good thing we didn't need you for anything important back at the USJ."

"I mean, it's not like we did anything important either, Bakugo" Kirishima said in confusion. "All we did was fight a bunch of gangsters. I mean, sure, there were a lot of them, but All Might and Eraser-sensei fought all the real villains."

"Shut up, I know!" Bakugo snapped. "That's not my point! My point is, Half and Half keeps half-assing shit! Sure, today he managed to get into the finals because Hikigaya's team was there for him to ambush, but what if instead of Copycat and Wavy Hair he was up against villains? What if the League had been there for us, instead of All Might?" Bakugo stood up out of his chair, turning to fully face Todoroki. "How much training are you doing with your left, Two-face? Push comes to shove and you actually need fire for something, are you gonna be able to handle it? Or are you just gonna let someone die?"

Todoroki stood up too. I wanted to say something, to try to defuse the situation, but the air around the two of them was so intense that it was hard to imagine what I could possibly say. "I don't need to use fire," Todoroki forced out through gritted teeth, "and I'm going to prove it. I'm going to win this whole festival with just my right."

"Like hell!" Bakugo shouted back. "You think you can beat me one-handed? Fuck!"

"Really, Todoroki?" Miura added with a frown, "I mean, I could have maybe understood it if you were saving it for the finals or something, but just not using half your quirk at all? I don't get it."

"You don't have to," Todoroki said coldly. "It's none of your business."

Bakugo took a step towards the end of the row, as if to charge up and physically assault Todoroki for his attitude, but Uraraka and Midoriya were between him and the far staircase. As he saw them, he stopped in his tracks. "Heh. Heh heh." He started laughing, a low, dark sound, and he turned on his heel and went to sit back down. "You stupid fuck. I don't even need to deal with you myself! You keep fucking around like this, and you'll be lucky to even make it to the finals."

All things considered, it wasn't surprising that Todoroki stormed out of the stands.

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Gaaaah, why did I raise my fist into the air like that at the end? I probably looked like a complete idiot! It was a sports festival, not a boxing match! Well, at least the fight itself had been impressive... probably? At the end of the day, I had won a broadcasted competition match against a real, bonafide hero student, and only I knew just how much of a flimsy, unsustainable lie that victory was based on.

Slowly but surely, as I limped back inside and headed for Recovery Girl's office, the haze of endorphins faded from my system and I started to realize just how incredibly sore my body was. Monoma had gotten me with not one but two Big Hand-assisted slaps, once to knock me out of my fusion with Dark Shadow and again to pin me to the ground. As an expert on being hit by speeding cars, I could comfortably state that being slapped by a giant super-strong hand only hurt less than that because the area of impact was more spread out. My entire back felt like one massive bruise, and I was honestly surprised the damage wasn't worse.

But the physical aches and pains were nothing compared to the sheer mental anguish I felt when I tallied up just how many hours of quirk storage I had spent in a single fight. Eighty-three hours of work, gone. Just like that. Even stockpiling for six hours a night, I would be paying for this fight for the next two weeks.

Luckily, before that awful realization could fully set in, my misery was interrupted by the sight of Yaoyorozu Momo and Yukinoshita Yukino walking together towards me.

"They're going to stop giving you replacement shirts at this rate, Hikigaya," Yukinoshita greeted me. Despite the fact that it was a little bit cool in the shady tunnels under the stadium she wore her own gym uniform unzipped, showing off the white undershirt beneath. It would have been a tantalizing view if I hadn't been in so much pain.

"Very funny, Yukinoshita," I said through gritted teeth. "No, really. I'd laugh, but I think Monoma cracked a few of my ribs."

"Oh no!" Yaoyorozu exclaimed, rushing a few steps forward towards me, her ponytail bouncing, before stopping just short. She stretched one hand towards my chest, but stopped before she could reach, as though nervous to touch somewhere that could cause me pain. "Is there anything I can do? Do you need any help getting to the first aid station?"

Well, now I feel bad. I was just exaggerating for comic effect. I shook my head, wincing as the movement pulled at muscles in my spine. "I'll be fine," I said, "it's not far."

"If you're sure…" Yaoyorozu said uncertainly. "I'd better come with you, just in case. Good luck on your match, Yukinoshita-chan!"

As Yaoyorozu turned over her shoulder to look back at Yukinoshita, my attention naturally followed. Surprisingly, there was a look of concern in her clear blue eyes, and maybe even a little bit of guilt. Oi, don't tell me you actually fell for my guilt trip! "Seriously, I'm fine," I said, forcing a smile. "I heal fast, remember? I'm only going to Recovery Girl in the first place because her quirk doesn't hurt like a bitch when I use it."

"For the seventh round of the tournaMENt-" Present Mic's voice cut off with a squawk and some coughing, but it was still a clear sign that I was holding Yukinoshita up.

I forced a smile, turning my palms face out to substitute for moving my shoulders to shrug. "Good luck on your match," I said.

Yukinoshita hesitated for a second, as if trying to figure out something to say, but as Eraserhead took over the announcer duties she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again as cold as ice, all hints of compassion gone. She started walking again, first at a brisk clip, then breaking into a jog as Eraserhead skipped right to her name. Her long black hair and unzipped jacket shirt billowed elegantly behind her, and a cold wind blew from the corridor behind me, as if to punish me for my lack of shirt. Carried on it, I faintly heard her reply, as trite and superficial as my own encouragement had been. "Good job on yours."

For a few seconds, Yaoyorozu and I didn't speak as we walked - well, she walked, I more like trudged - towards Recovery Girl's office. The silence grew, became more and more awkward, until finally we broke it simultaneously.

"I'm sorry / Hikigaya-kun, I wanted to apologize."

My head jerked to look at Yaoyorozu, and I instantly regretted it. "Wait, what?" I asked.

Her expressive eyebrows scrunched together as she frowned. "Yukinoshita-chan and I had intended to come down and apologize to you before your match, but we ran into her older sister, and, well…"

"Her sister, huh?" You mean she wasn't just carved wholesale out of a glacier? "Wait, do they even let family members backstage?" I asked.

"Apparently they do if those family members are Pro Heroes," Yaoyorozu said.

Idly, I pictured stopping by UA after graduation, sneaking backstage so that I could cheer Komachi on. Yeah, I could see myself doing that. Of course, I would probably have to convince them that I was a real hero first, and not some creepy stalker who put on a fake costume to sneak in…. "Anyway," I said, trying to get back to my original train of thought, "You really don't need to apologize for anything. It's not like you did anything wrong. If anything, I should be the one apologizing. I ran off and made you worry for me when you should have been preparing for your match."

"No!" Yaoyorozu said reflexively. "That's not true at all…"

I looked at her skeptically.

She flushed, and looked down at the ground. "To be honest with you, I was too busy trying to think about what tools I could build to get an advantage over Uraraka. Whether I should use a pole, or a net, or a taser… but when it came right down to it, in the heat of the moment I had too many options. I couldn't choose."

Decision paralysis, huh. That sounded familiar. "When you were a kid," I said with a wry smile, "did you ever wish you had, like, just a simple, straightforward quirk? One that just did one thing, and all you had to do was figure out how to train it and apply it?"

She shared a look of commiseration with me. "Do you know, I asked Uraraka what had been going through her head, after our match? What she had been thinking about?"

"And?" I raised an eyebrow.

Yaoyorozu's eyes narrowed in a flat expression of disgust. "Victory," she said in exasperation. "She was thinking about winning."

"Must be nice," I drawled enviously.

As we reached the door to Recovery Girl's office, she interrupted me reaching for the door. "Hikigaya," she asked, "how do you do it?"

I turned around to face her, leaning back against the wall to rest my bruised back against the cool cement. "Do what?"

"Your fight with Monoma, it was like… you never seemed to hesitate. You always seemed like you had a fresh quirk, a counter to everything Monoma did to you, just ready and waiting to go." Yaoyorozu's warm brown eyes were open wide, and I could see them shine with unshed tears as she looked at me imploringly. "You have as many options as I do, more, but it's like - I mean, even during the Cavalry Battle, it was all I could do to just follow Todoroki's orders, to build what he told me to build. After the battle, I realized that I could have set up a rear view mirror to keep Monoma from sneaking up on us, or a tool to knock him out of the sky - there's so much more that I could have done if I'd only thought of it, and if I had, maybe your plan wouldn't have been ruined. How do you always know what to do?"

What the hell could I even say in response to a question like that? I mean, the real answer was that 'I sit and meditate for six hours a night, and there's absolutely nothing to do, so some of the time I think about how I would use my quirks,' but I was well aware of the fact that doing that made me deeply weird. If I said that it just came to me naturally, though, she'd think there was something wrong with her, and if I said that it was because I thought about it a lot she'd think I was criticizing her for not doing enough. "I -" I broke off, not sure what to say. Faintly, I heard the sound of the television coming through the wall to Recovery Girl's office, probably the sound of Yukinoshita's match. "I didn't make the best decisions I could have," I said lamely. "Every time I, uh, overdraw a quirk like that, it takes a while to come back. Like, days, sometimes."

"But you did it anyway, instead of letting it paralyze you," Yaoyorozu insisted. "Even if you didn't make the optimal decisions, you still made them."

I shrugged, once again immediately regretting the additional movement as soon as I'd done it. "It was that or losing. I mean, you were pulling out airbags and stuff during your fight, right? You didn't hesitate then, did you?"

She shook her head. "No, but by then it was my only option."

"There's your secret, then," I said, a teasing note in my voice. "If you can do things without hesitating when you're panicked, just start panicking earlier. Really, your main issue is that you're just too brave." A real hero, instead of a coward like me.

Yaoyorozu flushed, looking down at the floor again to avoid meeting my eyes. "I, um. We should probably get inside."

She's mad at me, isn't she? Serves me right for making a joke during a serious conversation.

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I'd been healed by Recovery Girl enough times during the first few weeks of school that getting kissed by a little old lady was now only mildly uncomfortable instead of intensely awkward. That is, under normal conditions. Having an audience for it turned the embarrassment back up to excruciating levels. It might not have been so bad had it just been Yaoyorozu there with me, but as it turned out I was by no means the only person seeking medical treatment.

"Was that my quirk you used at the end of your fight against Monoma?" Shinso Hitoshi asked. His wild purple hair stood out vividly against the white walls of the first aid room, and his sunken-looking eyes looked almost sleepy as he asked the question. I had initially been surprised to see him there, but as I moved around a bit in the ward I saw past him to someone I had initially overlooked. The shorter purple-haired kid who had been with Shinso at the entrance to Class 1-A was lying in the bed next to the chair Shinso was sitting in, hooked up to what looked like some kind of respirator. Guess Shinso was keeping his friend company.

"... Yeah," I admitted, doing my best not to crack a yawn as the side effects of Recovery Girl's quirk kicked in and reaching greedily for the gummies that she handed me. I looked over towards the television mounted on the wall, watching as Yukinoshita dodged acid splash after acid splash. "I copied it when I poked you a couple weeks ago."

"So that's how you did it," he said, scowling at me. "Did you really have to tell all of your classmates about it?"

I snorted derisively. "Ambush strategies generally work better when you don't brazenly walk up to your rivals' front door and say, 'Hey! Pay attention to me! I think I have a quirk that gives me a fighting chance against you!'" I replied dryly. "Besides, anybody who I didn't tell is somebody you could have hypnotized and then used to mess with me later. You're lucky I didn't tell the whole school."

"If you had, you'd never have made it to the finals," Shinso shot back. "I doubt anybody on Monoma's team would have decided to drop out just to make room for you."

Was getting on people's nerves something he practiced, or was he just naturally talented at it? "You don't feel even a little bit guilty for messing with their heads like that?" I asked him. It was hard not to picture the expression on Kawasaki's face as she dropped out as I said it. "I mean, if the people you brainwashed are deciding to drop out rather than continue with the competition, doesn't that suggest to you even a little that there's something wrong with the way you treated them?"

"This coming from the guy who got his whole class to team up against everybody else?" Shinso replied sarcastically, his voice getting louder. "Besides, what the hell else was I supposed to do, huh? Not all of us have great quirks like you!"

Excuse me? What? I stopped dead for a second, flabbergasted by the ludicrousness of that statement. "If you had any idea how much time I have to spend every night, just to -"

Thankfully, he cut me off; only later did I realize how close I had been to spelling out explicitly more than a few things I didn't want revealed. "I don't care!" Shinso shouted. "Whatever you have to do, it works! You have literally all the options! But me? My quirk brainwashes people! That's all it does! How the hell am I supposed to compete without using it?"

I could feel my face getting hot, the little hairs on my arms and legs prickling upright as I started to get genuinely angry. "By not using it on your teammates!" I shouted back. "If you'd just talked to them and tried to find a team normally, you might have had teammates who could have actually contributed to you and helped you out, instead of just carrying you around like meat robots!" I pointed to his friend in the bed next to him. "I mean, look at him! His team's combo with the horns and the hairballs and the spores, that was really hard to deal with! If you -"

"Hey! Do you mind quieting down?" A throaty voice shouted from behind a curtained-off area of the recovery room. "Some of us are trying to sleep, kero!"

My jaw closed with an audible click. "Sorry, Tsuyu-san," I said back, much more quietly. Guiltily, I looked back to the television on the wall, only now noticing that I had gotten too invested in the argument to pay attention. Predictably, it looked like Yukinoshita had won, though going by her arms it looked like she had wound up taking a hit after all.

"Look, it's not like I don't hear what you're saying," Shinso said, also much more quietly than he had been. A twisted expression of self-mockery surfaced on his face. "But you don't know what it's like to have a quote-unquote 'villainous' quirk. Pretty much as soon as I tell people that I can brainwash people by talking to them, they start feeling nervous around me. Which, as you might imagine, is not great for team sports."

"Surely it can't be that bad?" Yaoyorozu said, joining the conversation now that she was no longer engrossed by Yukinoshita's match. "I mean, I'm not saying that you haven't experienced discrimination, or that your feelings are unjustified, but I'd think that people would disregard any nervousness that they felt around you in exchange for a chance to win…"

Suddenly, the diminutive student on the bed interrupted the conversation with a virulent spate of coughing. He picked up his phone and started rapidly tapping at the screen. "What's wrong with your friend?" I asked Shinso in a low voice.

"Mineta breathed in some of his teammate's spores when your teammate threw that shirt at them," Shinso replied. "Recovery Girl's quirk doesn't work as well on infections as it does on injuries, so he has to wait for the fungicide to kick in." Mineta? That name sounded familiar for some reason. I couldn't quite remember why… and then I stopped trying to remember as the purple-haired midget turned the screen of his phone towards Shinso. "Mineta says," Shinso said as he read the screen, "Riajuu like you two wouldn't understand. This is our only chance to impress the teachers. Eraserhead said that only one person from General Education would even get into the Make-up Course, so we had to do whatever it took to succeed."

I couldn't help it. I started snickering, then it evolved into full blown laughter. "Me, a riajuu?" I said in disbelief. "You've got to be joking. That, or you just have no idea who I really am."

Mineta's wide, round eyes narrowed at me. He took his phone back and started typing furiously. Meanwhile, Yaoyorozu smiled happily. "Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about Eraserhead-sensei. He's really quite fond of what he calls 'rational deceptions.' It wouldn't surprise me at all if there was a spot for every student in the general education classes who made a good showing."

Shinso's eyebrow twitched. "Yeah, well, who decides what a 'good showing' is?" When Yaoyorozu couldn't immediately answer, he closed his eyes, resting his head against the wall for a second. "I mean, thanks for the info… but I'm not feeling like I can stop worrying just yet."

Finally, Mineta finished typing. He motioned at me to get my attention, and then turned his phone around to show me a Qwirker feed. At the top was a screenshot of UA's live broadcast. A muscular student, shirtless, was washing the arm of an invisible girl, the barest hints of water clinging to her body proving that he wasn't just touching empty air. A follow up post had him kissing the air, looking for all the world like an elegant gentleman. Hashtags like 'Casanova' and 'Presidential Treatment' littered the page, and the number of reQwotes was rising even as I watched. In numb shock, I looked away from the balefully glowing screen in front of me to meet Mineta's eyes. Beneath the breath mask, I could clearly see his lips move, and even without him vocalizing it I could clearly see exactly what he was saying. Syllable by syllable. "Ria." One phrase after another. "Juu." Those familiar words, ones I had used myself many times over, took their unmistakable shapes on his lips. "Go. Ex. Plode."

"May I see?" Yaoyorozu asked. I was too shell-shocked to say anything, or to try to contradict her, so she got a good eyeful of the travesty that the internet had inflicted upon me. "Oh!" She paused. "Oh my." I dimly heard the door slide open, still experiencing the mental equivalent of a blue screen of death. "Oh my, Hikigaya," Yaoyorozu said, this time with a note of teasing in her voice. "Are you sure this was the time and place for something like this? How bold of you!"

My head snapped around to give her my best withering glare, only to see to my horror that the sound of the door opening had been due to Yukinoshita Yukino and Ashido Mina entering the recovery room. "Whatever's happened, if it involves Hikigaya Hachiman, I'm certain that 'degenerate' is a more appropriate word than 'bold'," Yukinoshita Yukino unjustly accused me.

"Ooh! Is that Qwirker?" Ashido said, a pained note in her voice as she held her arm in an awkward position. "We weren't supposed to have our phones on us for the race, so I haven't checked mine since this morning! Let me see, let me see!"

"Recovery Girl let me grab Mineta's phone for him since he couldn't talk," Shinso explained, "though technically we were all allowed to have them anyway after lunch. I've got it up on my phone now too, if you three want to share."

"Uggggh. If you're all not going to be quiet and let me sleep, you could at least let me take a look, kero," Tsuyu's voice came from behind the curtain. Slowly she shuffled out, wrapped from head to toe in what looked like a thermal electric blanket.

It was official. I was doomed. I didn't even have to wait for my match against Bakugo in a few minutes, my life was clearly already over. "I'm in Hell," I muttered. Ignoring Mineta's grin filled with vicious schadenfreude, I sidled over to the nearby wall, and started repeatedly whacking my forehead against the cement, hoping that the pain of the impact would either make the world start making sense again, or put me out of my misery.

"Oh wow, Hikigaya, you got reQwoted by Shiketsu Academy's official account!" Yaoyorozu said, sounding impressed. "I didn't think they normally got involved in things like this!"

"I'm not certain that they did," Yukinoshita's amused-sounding voice penetrated my misery, sending chilly portents of many future teasings dancing up and down my spine. "Apparently, according to their Qwote, Hikigaya-kun is 'totes, like, ideal hero material, and totes eye candy too!' I doubt that the faculty or staff of the school had much to do with that. What could Hikigaya possibly have done to - oh."

"Aaah, how mean! Tohru-chan didn't tell me about any of this!" Ashido complained. Gee, I wonder why? Could it be because she knew that as soon as you found out you'd tell the entire school? "I never knew you were such a romantic, Hikigaya-kun!"

"Uuuuuuugh…" I groaned. I spun to look at them all, my face burning bright red. "I was just using Recovery Girl's quirk on Tohru, and you all know it! Would you stop already?"

There was a sudden silence, as if my impassioned plea had reached their frozen hearts. And then it was broken. Tsuyu took a look at the phone in Yukinoshita's hands, looked back at me, and without changing her sleepy expression uttered a truly despicable word. "Lewd, kero."

The wave of feminine giggles that this inspired, though probably pleasant sounding to a disinterested observer, was like nails running down the chalkboard of my soul. Before any of them could catch their breath for long enough to say something even worse, I very bravely and manfully decided to run away. Quick as a flash, my face burning bright red, I slipped past the four of them and out the door, heading for the 1-A stands.

"Casanoooova!" Ashido's mocking voice called after me as I left. "You forgot your shiiiirt!"

… Honestly, why even bother? If I put a shirt on, Bakugo was just going to blow holes in it in a few minutes anyway. Really, avoiding going back into that recovery room was just good sustainable economics. Down with landfill culture!

On the other hand, maybe I should have turned back. If I had been fully clothed, it might have been marginally less awkward when I turned the final corner approaching the stands and almost ran headfirst into a raging, teary-eyed Todoroki Shoto.

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"Don't touch me," Todoroki Shoto hissed as he took a giant step backwards, far out of arm's reach.

Wow. Some people really knew how to make a guy feel welcome. He wasn't the first person to decide they didn't want their powers copied over the years, but usually when people sidled away from me it was with nervous expressions, or as part of a way to bully me. It was my first time seeing someone say something like that with an expression containing as much raw anger as Todoroki Shoto's did in that moment. "No offense, Todoroki, but you're not my type." I said, trying to diffuse the situation with humor.

"Like you don't know," Todoroki said with a scowl. "Is this supposed to be your punishment for stepping out of line? Getting everyone to gang up on me?" Angrily, he rubbed his eyes furiously with a sleeve.

"Uh… what?" I stammered. Todoroki's mismatched eyes stared accusatory daggers into my own. "Todoroki, I have no idea what you're talking abou-"

"Don't lie!" He shouted. His voice cracked in the middle. His hands balled into fists. Despite the fact that he had just wiped his face, his cheeks were already wet again with tears.

I wanted to pity him. I was also a little nervous that he was going to haul off and punch me. But most importantly, "I'm not lying!" I shouted back indignantly.

He stopped for a second, an uncertain look crossing his face. For a second, his face searched mine, as if searching for signs of dishonesty.

"All right listeneeeers!" Present Mic's voice interrupted us as it echoed through the hallways. "Thanks for waiting! It'll be just a few minutes while we finish cleaning the second half of the frozen acid and repairing the stage, and then we'll be jumping into the eighth and final match of the first round!"

Todoroki's expressions closed down to a blank mask. He wiped his face once again, . "Whatever," he said, a dull heat underlying his voice. "It doesn't matter anyway." He stepped over to the other half of the cavernous hallway, clearly intending to give me a wide berth as he passed.

"Seriously? You really have to go that far out of your way to avoid me?" I said, conveniently forgetting for the moment just how tempted I had been when I saw Todoroki's display of power just a few minutes ago. "If I was gonna copy your quirk without your permission, I've had plenty of opportunities to do it by now."

Todoroki looked at me. "Have you?" He asked. His voice held an odd combination of half vulnerability and half accusation.

No, really, what the hell was Todoroki's deal? "Honestly Todoroki?" I said, looking him straight in the eye. "It's not worth the hassle. Your quirk just isn't that special," I lied. Damn it, not everybody had his raw power level! "I mean, what, you can do fire and ice? Big deal. All I need is a fire quirk and an ice quirk, and then I can do the same thing and I won't even have to be lopsided." Of course if I had a fire quirk, an ice quirk, and Todoroki's quirk, then I could stack them, but screw logic! I was pissed and chewing him out! "Besides, how much use is my piddly copy of your quirk really going to be? I could, what, light peoples' cigarettes? Put ice in their drinks? This is the hero course, not a host club!" As I said that, I became suddenly acutely aware that I was still standing around shirtless, but luckily Todoroki was still too angry to notice the irony.

"Don't take me for a fool, Hikigaya. I know you can overcharge your quirks," he said, folding his arms in front of him defensively and leaning back against the wall of the hallway.

"Yeah. Once per day per quirk, max," I shot back. "That totally sounds like plenty of time to figure out how to use your quirk for big blasts without freezing myself to the ground or lighting my eyebrows on fire. And then I wouldn't have enough juice left to use the other half of my body to melt myself free or put the fire out or however it is you deal with things." It was ironic. I'd come up with reason after reason to convince myself that I shouldn't just accidentally bump into Todoroki and steal his quirk, that it wasn't worth the hassle of having a classmate mad at me. Now I was using them to piss him off even more. "I'd rather copy your dad's power, at least his quirk makes him fireproof if that stupid looking mask of his is any indication."

The corner of Todoroki's mouth quirked upwards, once. "It does." He paused for a second. "So does mine. Coldproof, too."

I could feel my eyebrow tremble in irritation. "Gah, it's like you want me to copy your quirk or something! Just don't mention shit like that if you don't want me to be tempted!"

Todoroki closed his eyes and sighed heavily, resting his head against the concrete behind him. Now that my heart wasn't hammering away at a hundred kilometers an hour, looking closely at him I saw that he looked... well, I couldn't put a name to it exactly, but it was the same sort of familiar expression that I saw every time I looked in the mirror. Whatever it was, it looked like shit. "Sorry," he half-said out loud, half-mumbled. "I shouldn't have accused you."

The irritation I was feeling slowly started to give way. "Don't feel too sorry," I told him. "It's not like I've never been tempted." Todoroki didn't respond to that, leaving both of us standing there in silence. I hesitated. I knew I shouldn't, but the curiosity gnawing at my gut wouldn't leave me alone. "Hey," I started. "Feel free to tell me to screw off if this is horribly invasive, but the reason you don't want me copying you," going off of the burn scar on his face, the way he smirked when I made fun of his dad, the fact that Endeavor overreacted in the audience when Monoma tagged him... "it's because of the fire thing, right? You don't want to use it, and you don't want anybody else using it either?"

Todoroki's eyes snapped open. For a second, I thought he would yell at me or something, given how intensely he was staring at me, but after half a second he closed them again and nodded. "Yeah."

I swallowed nervously. I knew that heroes were just people at the end of the day, not perfect paragons of justice and goodness. But Endeavor having burned his own son's eye? That was like something out of an American anime. Maybe I shouldn't jump to conclusions so fast. Shoto could have done it to himself, it could have been a training accident - well, there was only one way to find out. I screwed up my courage and spoke again. "Again, feel free to tell me to screw off if you want to… but can I ask why?"

Again, Todoroki opened his eyes. I had been expecting a repeat of the intensity that they displayed last time, but instead they looked turbid, troubled. He took a deep breath, opened his mouth -

"Yahello! Shoto-kun! Ara, and who's this?" And was promptly interrupted. I turned my head to see a figure both familiar and unfamiliar, and I had to blink my eyes a couple of times to make sure that I wasn't seeing things. The superheroine in front of me both did and didn't look like Yukinoshita Yukino. Her hair was purple, her face was too well-proportioned in comparison to Yukino's angular chin and high cheekbones, and she actually filled out the front of the costume she was wearing. Other than that, everything from her piercing gaze to her long, flawless arms and legs could have been a carbon copy of Yukino's. Even their voices sounded similar. "Ah, you were just on stage before Yuki-chan, weren't you?" She asked.

"A-ah," I stammered, feeling heat spreading into my cheeks. Damn it, I was really regretting not grabbing a shirt. "Hikigaya Hachiman," I said, extending a hand towards her out of reflex. "Nice to meet you."

"He's a power copier, onee-san," Todoroki said as she moved to take my hand. "Don't touch him unless you're okay with him copying you."

The woman paused halfway, then smiled and took my hand. "Oh come on, I'd hardly deny a junior a handshake just because of that! That wouldn't be very nice, would it? Pro Hero Campestris, Yukinoshita Haruno, nice to meet you!" Every ounce of her seemed to ooze sincere friendliness, from the way she tilted her head a few inches to the side cutely to the way she leaned forward just far enough to give me the faint hope of seeing something I shouldn't without actually leaning forward far enough to allow it.

In other words, it was a lie. How did I know, if it was such a perfect mask, you ask? Easy. The perfection itself was a warning sign. No one acted that nice to a total stranger unless they wanted something from them. Besides, like her, I also had a quirk that activated on touch, though mine just copied peoples' quirks instead of ripping their life force out through their skins. I knew a strategy for getting close to people unobtrusively when I saw one. "Oi, if you're going to warn somebody about skin contact, you should have warned me," I complained to Todoroki.

"Eh?" Yukinoshita Haruno said with a fake pout. "That's mean, you know. I'm a Pro Hero, not part of -" she stopped mid sentence, holding a fake microphone up to her face. "The League of Villains," she said in a corny, pompous tone of voice.

…. Oh. I was going to regret looking myself up on Yap! Tube later, wasn't I? "I suppose that's true," I said with a sigh. "You're a Yukinoshita, after all. The only thing I have to worry about around you is my pride."

"Oh ho?" Haruno said, a sly smile stealing over her face. "Now that's a surprise. It sounds like you know my sister fairly well?"

I shrugged uncomfortably. "We're in the same work group for classes, so it's not like I don't know her, but it's only been a month, so it'd be unreasonable to say that I know her well."

"Ehhh, and so honest, too…" Haruno said, still smiling. "How… interesting." Suddenly, she leaned in conspiratorially, one smooth, toned arm settling across my bare shoulders in a way that gave me goosebumps. "Do you want to know more about my adorable little sister? I have all sorts of fun stories about her that I could tell." Her breath tickled my ear, sending chills down my spine. "So? What do you say?"

"Hikigaya-san! Hikigaya, are you still here? Hiki - oh!" Yaoyorozu's voice echoed from down the hall, and I immediately tried to wiggle free from the elder Yukinoshita's grip.

Speaking of the younger Yukinoshita, her indignant voice shouted from down the hallway, "what are you doing?" Agh, now she's going to think I was molesting her sister!

"What's the matter, Yukino-chan? It's only some innocent skinship. Life isn't easy for people like us that have touch-based quirks, you know." Despite saying that, however, Yukinoshita Haruno stepped back and away from me, looking self-satisfied.

As she released me I turned to see an angry Yukinoshita Yukino and a lightly blushing Yaoyorozu Momo, the latter of whom was awkwardly holding a sports uniform shirt. "Here," Yaoyorozu said, handing it out to me. "You forgot this."

"Oh." Todoroki said, suddenly taking an interest in the conversation. He pounded a fist into his flattened palm, as if he had just found the answer to a problem that had been bothering him. "So you forgot it."

My face burned hot. "I didn't forget it, I - oh, just give me that!" I said, snatching it away from Yaoyorozu.

"So rude, Hachiman-kun," Haruno said teasingly. Oi, who gave you permission to be so informal with me? "A pretty young lady like this comes all the way from the nurse's office to bring you the shirt you forgot, and not even a word of thanks? Tsk tsk." She clicked her tongue obnoxiously.

"Nee-san." Yukinoshita Yukino's voice was curiously flat and expressionless as I worked the shirt over my head. "What do you want?" Unlike her, to be all business when she could be joining in making fun of me.

Yukinoshita Haruno let out an amused sigh. "Hmm, I wonder. Originally, I wanted to talk to Shoto-kun, since I saw him leaving the stands looking upset, but I seem to have gotten a little bit sidetracked."

I pulled my head through the central hole of the t-shirt just in time to see the flash of concern that crossed the younger Yukinoshita's severe features. "I see," Yukino said quietly. "Should we give you some space to talk?"

"Hmm… nope!" Haruno said cheerfully. "Actually, all of this has been giving me ideas! Shoto-kun." She turned and looked back over at him - then, bizarrely, turned towards me. "Hachiman-kun. How would the two of you like to work at my agency next week?"

I blinked. Ordinarily, having a guaranteed offer in hand from a pro hero would be a good thing. I was banking on being accepted by Cyberpunch, but if I wasn't, then having a backup plan was handy. Unfortunately, Yukino's sister was fresh out of high school, so she can't have been active for long. Odds were, she was just trying to grab whatever UA students she could while we were still popular in the news so that she could get a boost to her hero ranking. If she weren't, I doubt she would have made an offer to Todoroki and I in the same breath. "Sorry," I told her. "I already have plans."

Haruno blinked, apparently surprised at the flat rejection, then pouted. "You could take a little longer to think about it, you know," she said, faking a note of hurt to her voice. "I'm kind of curious, though. Who managed to scoop up an impressive kid like you before the festival?"

Sorry, predator-onee-san. No matter how much you compliment me or flirt at me, I'm not going to be taken in by your desperation. "Actually, it was Cyberpunch," I said, doing my best not to sound smug.

"Eh, Cyberpunch-sempai?" Haruno's mouth quivered slightly, as though her smile was struggling to stay fixed. That's right, you nobody! I have an offer from a real hero, not a desperate high school graduate trying to relive her glory days by acting all buddy-buddy with her much younger and more attractive sister's friends! "Wow, that's -" she paused for a second, clearly intimidated. "Well, I'll send you an invitation anyways, just in case you change your mind."

"Sorry, Haruno-nee-san," Todoroki started, but Haruno held out a hand to stop him.

"I know, I know, you've already got an offer from Uncle Enji," she said, "but hear me out. You've had a lot of chances to see his agency before, even shadowed him and his interns unofficially. To a certain extent, you already know how his agency does things. Right?" Todoroki nodded reluctantly. "Right," she continued. "That's the first reason. Second, you'll have a lot of opportunities during the school year to work with your father, and most of those will be longer than the week long session for the internships. So if you wanted to take a quick look at how a different pro does things, a short session like this one is perfect. And finally?" She grinned confidently. "Uncle Enji's agency is established. Me, on the other hand? I'm an up and comer. Which is where you'll want to be when you graduate, right? Setting out on your own?"

Todoroki nodded again, a little bit more thoughtfully. Oi, don't get taken in by her nonsense! Even if she's a family member, there's a limit to how generous you can be! "I see," he said. "I'll think about it."

"It'll let you see some sides of the hero career that Uncle Enji doesn't usually bother with, too," Haruno said. "I know that the media side of things isn't really your focus, but honestly when you're just starting out you could do worse than to get your name and face associated with a few well known brands in order to build your own recognition."

Ah, so that was her game. I'd heard that starting out as a brand new hero could be rough, and that brand new heroes often wound up resorting to modeling or advertising gigs in order to make ends meet, but I hadn't thought Yukino's sister would be unscrupulous enough to rope in her younger cousin for a signing bonus. I couldn't help but interject before Todoroki got completely swindled. I didn't really like the guy, but even I couldn't just sit there and watch as his cousin tried to pimp him out to sell underwear or whatever the hell. "What sorts of brands are you associated with, senpai?" I asked 'innocently'. "Anything we'd have heard of?"

… What? Why was everybody looking at me like that? "Wormygaya," Yukinoshita Yukino said in amusement, "you may be a lower life form, but that's no excuse for actually living under a rock."

"What's wrong with not watching television?" I asked defensively. "I like to read, so sue me."

Yaoyorozu looked at me sadly. "I don't watch much television either, Hikigaya-san, but it's sort of impossible not to know who Haruno-senpai is if you follow hero news even a little. Rookie Hero Campestris beating out Ingenium for the Strike Athletics contract was big news, you know."

Bemusedly, I looked down at my feet. Beneath the grime and dust of the training field, almost unrecognizable with how badly I had battered them to hell and back, my own shoes bore the distinctive Strike 'lance'. My gaze traveled forwards, to the completely pristine set of shoes that Pro Heroine Campestris was wearing, and the matching branded symbol upon them. "... Oh," I said foolishly.

As I scrambled to find some kind of excuse or explanation for my ignorance, Present Mic's announcement once more crackled to life over the interior speakers. "Alright, ladies and gentlemen, the field is cleaned up, so it's almost time for our eighth match! Hurry on back to your seats, because we'll be starting soon!"

Yukinoshita Haruno smiled gently. For once, it actually looked sincere. "You face the winner of this match, right Yuki-chan? You shouldn't let me keep you."

Yukino's amused smile at my expense dropped, vanishing as if it had never been there. "Yes, I do. Goodbye."

Oi, what kind of cold goodbye to your sister was that? If Komachi ever said goodbye to me that meanly, I'd wondering what I did wrong, or if I already knew I'd be on the ground begging for her forgiveness! I wanted to watch the match too, so I hurriedly said "Uh, yeah. It's my block too, so… see ya," before turning to go catch up to Yukino.

Before I could leave, Todoroki called out to me. "Hikigaya." He paused for a second, as if trying to decide what to say, before settling on "... Thanks."

"For what?" I said ironically, before nodding at him and heading out.

With a quick bow, Yaoyorozu bid her farewells as well, and the two of us rejoined Yukino. We walked briskly towards the stadium in silence for a few seconds, before I finally couldn't help but ask. "Oi, Yukino," I called out, still stuck in the mindset of distinguishing between her and her sister, but as she suddenly glared at me I frantically backpedaled. "...Shita," I did my best to save it, "your uncle is Endeavor, your sister is apparently in Strike's ad campaign… is there anybody you know who isn't famous?"

Her cold, emotionless expression persisted for a second, but after a little while a note of humor thawed Yukino's icy blue eyes. She looked at me and smirked. "Let me think. You, maybe?"

My mind involuntarily flashed back to the glimpse of Qwirker I had seen, and I hung my head low. "Ugh. I wish."

"That's infamy, Casanova-san," Yukinoshita said. "An entirely different concept that I'm honestly surprised you aren't more familiar with."

Dammit, Todoroki. Why'd you have to stall me like that?

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By the time we got back to the 1-A stands, Yukinoshita and Yaoyorozu had both returned to their previous state giggling at my expense, a problem only exacerbated by the fact that I kept walking faster and faster to try to escape the teasing without being quite so undignified as to break into a run. I got weird looks from Midoriya, Uraraka, and Iida as we passed them on their way to the waiting area, but I did my best to ignore them, nodding as we passed them by.

As we reached the top of the stairs, those giggles slowly faded away. The atmosphere in the stands was solemn. Awkwardly, no-one spoke as we found our seats, taking the empty spaces behind Yuigahama and Bakugo. Was it related to how Todoroki had left the stands in a huff?

Thankfully, the distraction of the match starting saved me from having to ask any awkward questions. "It's the Misty Maiden, Orimoto Kaori! Versus! The Shadow Sovereign, Tokoyami Fumikage! Will Orimoto's incredible evasion carry the day, or will Tokoyami's combined offense and defense prove too tough a nut for her to crack? Let's find out! Ready?" Below, on the athletic field, both Orimoto and Tokoyami shifted slightly, remaining in their neutral stances but both prepared to unleash their quirks. "Start!"

It was an interesting match-up. Unfortunately, that didn't necessarily make for an interesting match to watch. Orimoto's fog blocked enough light that Dark Shadow got stronger inside of it, so the dynamic between her trying to be aggressive enough to hurt Tokoyami and diffuse enough not to be hurt by his shadow should have been a really interesting back-and-forth of two quirks playing against each other. Who knows? It probably was. Unfortunately, from the stands all we saw was a big cloud of mist that occasionally had a few bits of black stuff peeking out.

It didn't take UA long to turn on the thermal cameras so that we could see through the mist, but unfortunately Tokoyami's Dark Shadow didn't show up on those, so all we saw was Tokoyami standing still to avoid walking out of the ring while bewildered. Technically speaking, a silhouette of a guy with a bird head who occasionally flinched as the fog cloud he was in punched him was slightly more interesting to watch than an opaque ball of fog would have been.

But only just.

To the surprise of presumably no-one watching who knew her from Jaku Middle School, Orimoto Kaori won handily as the accumulated punches that she kept landing on Tokoyami's body eventually took their toll. Class B erupted in cheers, thrilled that at least one of them managed to make it out of the first round.

"Tche. Dammit, Birdbrain," Bakugo muttered. "We almost had the whole top eight."

"Don't mind, Bakugo," Yuigahama said, patting his knee in consolation. "We're still gonna get the top four, right Yukinon?"

Yukino just nodded. "Of course."

It was a little scary how the idea of being the 'strongest class in UA's history' had infected my classmates, even though it was just something I came up with to manipulate them into helping me get into the final round. It made me feel like cringing. "I mean, the whole 'strongest class' thing was based on teamwork anyway," I said. "It's not like there was any reason for us to think we were stronger than them as individuals."

"Of course there was," Bakugo said brashly. "1-A's got us, doesn't it?"

As Yuigahama and Yukinoshita rolled their eyes at Bakugo in what could probably be best described as tolerant exasperation, I couldn't help but notice the conspicuous silence now coming from the 1-B stands over the divider. Yeah, I should probably try to repair as much damage as I could. "If they were actually weak, all of us teaming up to beat them wouldn't have been…" I almost said 'necessary', but Bakugo would probably say something about enjoying stomping on weaklings, and it's not like it was strictly necessary for anyone other than me in the first place. "It wouldn't have been worth the effort. It's because I knew they were strong that I pushed for it." Silence continued to emanate from the other side of the stands. I could only hope that it was a slightly less hostile silence.

"Oh, that's right Hikki! You were classmates with Orimoto-san in middle school, weren't you?" Yuigahama said, twisting slightly in her seat to look back at me. "What was she like?"

… Talk about your uncomfortable questions. "We didn't really talk much," I demurred, "but pretty much everybody knew she had a strong quirk, so I guess you could say she was popular?"

"Oh, I see!" Yuigahama said with a big smile. "I knew somebody like that back in middle school."

"You weren't?" I asked curiously.

"No, no," she said, waving her hand in front of her face to ward the idea off. "I mean, I had friends and stuff, but I was just normal."

That sounded suspiciously like something that a riajuu would say to try to act modest, but given that it was Yuigahama saying so I decided to take her at face value. "And? What happened to them?"

She turned back away from me, facing the athletic field, and shrugged. "I dunno. I think they applied to UA, but I don't think they got in."

Bakugo snorted in contempt. "There's all kinds of losers out there who'll slack off just because extras say nice shit about them to fluff their egos."

"Eh heh heh… maybe?" Yuigahama said. "I mean, it could have been just bad luck, you know."

"Tche." Bakugo said, putting one foot up on the railing in front of him. "Hikigaya got hit by a car the day of the test and he still made it in. If you're good enough, luck doesn't matter."

No, no, Bakugo. I can see why you'd think that, but actually getting hit by a car was a lucky break for me… if you called a chance at a career where the majority of people were either retired or dead by age forty-five lucky, anyway.

"Now, to our ninth match, the first match of the second round, Midoriya Izuku versus Uraraka Ochako! This dynamic duo teamed up for the cavalry battle, but now they're being forced to go head-to-head!" Seriously, Present Mic? The internet is a foul enough cesspool without you waving red meat in front of delusional heroshippers' eyes. On the other hand, if you set them on Midoriya, they might pay less attention to me, so on second thought I wholly approve. You go, Mic-san!

"Ne, Bakubaku, who do you think is gonna win?" Yuigahama asked.

"Round Cheeks," Bakugo replied without even a moment's hesitation.

"Wait, seriously?" Kirishima asked. "Even though Midoriya's, like, crazy strong?"

"Fuckin' Deku is the kind of little bitch who'll pussy out if he has to hit a girl," Bakugo said confidently. "Only way he wins this is if Round Cheeks pussies out too, and from the way she fought Ponytail I don't think it's fucking likely."

"Eh heh heh," Yuigahama laughed nervously. "Right, I forgot who I was asking. What about you two, Hikki, Yukinon? Who do you think will win?"

Obviously Midoriya. But I didn't really feel like getting into a shouting match with Bakugo, so… "Uraraka," I said with a grin. "Midoriya's the sort of guy who'll wimp out if he has to hit a girl."

"Don't just steal my explanation, asshole!" Bakugo shouted at me good-naturedly.

"It isn't theft if there's only one correct answer," Yukinoshita said with a smirk. Oi, is that the first time the two of them actually agreed on something?

"Well, joking aside -" I began, but Bakugo interrupted me.

"I wasn't fucking joking!" He shouted.

"- This is actually a potentially really hard fight for Midoriya," I said, looking at the field intently. "He's fast, but he's so new to that speed that he's still clumsy. All Uraraka has to do is tag him once, and odds are good that he'll send himself right out of bounds."

"I admit," Yaoyorozu said, "I wouldn't mind seeing that. Uraraka-san and Midoriya-san are both close acquaintances of mine, of course, so if one of them has to lose right now then I'd prefer seeing the person I lost to looking even more impressive."

"Are you ready?" Present Mic's voice shouted. "Round nine! Start!"

While the strengths and weaknesses of the contestants on stage were evident to us watching, they were even more evident to Uraraka and Midoriya. Those two had been thick as thieves since practically the entrance exam, to hear them tell it, and were both very familiar with each other's capabilities. Midoriya ran in circles, trying to find an angle to approach Uraraka from; she kept her hands up and ready while spinning in place, waiting for him to make his move.

As fast as Midoriya was, he wasn't literally fast enough to run circles around Uraraka, so after a second he decided to try to rush in, dodging left and right as he approached to try to get in close enough to affect Uraraka. But with all of his maneuvering, he missed the subtle change in Uraraka's weight as she took the initiative. Lunging forward from her position, she stretched out and just barely managed to tag Midoriya's sleeve.

The audience gasped as Midoriya started floating away. "Well, that was fast," I said to no-one in particular. "Come on Bakugo, we better start getting ready for our match."

"Wait." Bakugo said, and I looked at him in confusion for a split second before looking back at the field. To my surprise, Midoriya had maneuvered himself in mid-air, one hand out in front of him while the other grabbed its wrist to brace it. Bakugo grimaced. "The useless fucker's not done yet."

The camera zoomed in on Midoriya, granting us a clear enough view of his mouth to read his lips. As expected from All Might's love child - when he reversed the situation in a split second, he did it with a shout of "SMASH!" Like he had during the fitness test, Midoriya channeled his power into a single finger, breaking it in exchange for a powerful gust of wind that propelled him back towards the earth and into a collision with Uraraka. Before he bounced off of her, Midoriya managed to use his undamaged hand to grab onto her arm.

Uraraka tried to pry Midoriya off, but even without the super-strength, he was still stronger than her. He pulled himself forward using his handhold, and reached around with his other arm to bring himself closer. Uraraka's face went red. I'm sure that part of it was that a boy was hugging her, but more of it probably had to do that Midoriya wasn't holding back with the strength as he squeezed the air out of her.

The following few minutes were ugly, almost certainly embarrassing for both parties, and a show of some of the most boneheaded stubborn determination I'd ever seen. First there was Midoriya flopping around like a dead fish in the air as he tried to figure out how to use Uraraka's weight to get both of his feet on the ground and lift her; then once Uraraka figured out what he was trying, she tried to do the same thing to him, only for him to wrap his legs around her legs to keep her from walking anywhere. Then Uraraka tried hitting him off of her, but he was stuck so close to her that all she could throw were knees and headbutts. Midoriya didn't respond in kind despite the fact that given his strength it might actually have been effective, instead just hanging on doggedly and grimly.

After about the third or fourth knee, Uraraka lost her balance, and the two of them fell together onto the ground. To his credit, Midoriya didn't flinch and didn't let go of her when the two of them landed on his already broken fingers, though the television showed his face was clearly in agony. The two of them rolled around on the ground for a while, with Midoriya squeezing the air out of Uraraka and pushing her off balance whenever she tried to stand. Somehow, he held on until she literally started throwing up all over him and had to release her quirk, at which point Midoriya picked her up and carried her out of bounds in a full nelson as she still struggled frantically.

Glamorous, it wasn't. But it was Midoriya's win.

"Now we can go," Bakugo said, sounding a little pleased with himself as he dusted off his pant legs and stood.

Yuigahama picked up on it too. "You sound pretty happy your friend won, ne Bakubaku?"

"Shut up, Airhead! Who the hell is friends with him?" Bakugo erupted, "I'm just looking forward to watching Half-and-Half-Assed getting his ass beat by puke-boy next round if Glasses doesn't take care of shit for him!"

"Of course, of course," Yuigahama said with a smile. "My mistake."

He leered at her suspiciously. "Damn right you made a mistake," he said with a haughty sniff. "You coming, Hikigaya?"

My eyes met Yuigahama's, and we shared a conspiratorial grin before I stood up and started following Bakugo. "Right behind you."

"Good luck, you two!" Yaoyorozu said cheerfully.

"Yeah, good luck you guys!" Kirishima added. A few more generalized well wishes were sparked by the first two, as people in the class bowed to peer pressure and cheered for us out of societal expectations.

"Feh. Who needs luck," Bakugo said as the two of us moved together into the tunnels in the stadium. "It ain't gonna be luck when I finally kick your ass, Hikigaya."

I felt a cold knot in my gut, but I swallowed heavily and pushed past it. "Right. About that." I paused for a second, and Bakugo looked over at me with an obvious question in his eyes. "How would you feel about a bye into the third round?"

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"Right. You wanna run that by me again?" Bakugo said, both elbows on the table in the waiting room. Despite the fact that we were nominally competing next round, when I hinted that I might withdraw from the competition Bakugo had followed me into "my" waiting room without taking no for an answer.

"Just what it sounded like," I said, a little confused. "I'm thinking about dropping out and giving you a free pass to the semi-finals. I… kinda thought you'd be happier about the idea, to be honest."

Bakugo's scarlet eyes narrowed as he stared into mine. "Hikigaya. Fucking why."

Ugh. This would be so much easier if I could just *tell* Bakugo about the fact that I had to store up quirks. How much work it was, how fucking tedious it was, how I was staying up in the middle of the night just to be able to keep up with the hero course. How committing to another fight meant committing to another two weeks of backbreaking work. But Bakugo was a thug. An intelligent, hardworking thug, but still he was fundamentally someone who only respected strength. "Two reasons," I said. "First, I'm pretty sure I already have what I want from this Sports Festival."

"Which is?" Bakugo said evenly. Despite the fact that he was clearly trying to keep his cool, the muscles in his arms and shoulders were tense, and I could see him clenching his jaw from across the table.

"An internship with someone working on the investigation into that Nomu," I told him.

"Heh. Why am I not fucking surprised," Bakugo said with a smirk. On the television on one wall of the room, Iida kept repeatedly running towards Todoroki's left, in the blind spot created by Todoroki's refusal to use his fire, but neither of us paid attention to the ongoing match. "You know you have it for sure?" Bakugo asked pointedly, and I had to suppress a flinch.

"Not exactly, but I like my odds," I lied uncomfortably. I wasn't nearly that sure. I mean, it felt like Monoma had been a tough opponent, and that the fight itself had been showy, but I had no idea what a real hero's standards were like. It was possible I'd have to win the whole thing to satisfy someone like her. But since there was no way that was going to happen anyway, why not quit while I was ahead? "And then there's the second point," I said, trying to cover my unease. "You know how every time I, uh, Overdrive a quirk, it takes a while to repair itself enough to do that again?"

"Yeah, so?" Bakugo said, folding his arms. "You expecting to need your quirks before tomorrow?"

I shook my head. "They don't come back independently of each other. They come back one at a time. I'm already going to be running on a half tank for like two weeks. If I fight you, I might not be back to full until summer vacation."

Some of the tension went out of Bakugo. "Fuck."

"...Yeah." I replied.

He paused for a second, clearly considering the idea. "...you gonna hurt yourself, pushing your quirk that hard?"

I shook my head. "No, just… I'll be out of gas."

"Do it then," Bakugo said with a smirk. "Come at me with everything you've got, overdrive everything at once. It'll be good training for getting your quirk to grow back faster."

If my quirk actually worked that way, I might even have taken him up on it. "Why the heck do you care, anyway?" I asked peevishly. "If I drop out, you get an extra fight's worth of rest, and you're guaranteed a spot in the semifinals at the least. Aren't you the one who's always talking about how you're going to get first place?"

"Who gives a shit," Bakugo said. "First place doesn't mean jack if I don't impress any pros getting there. Yeah, not fighting you gets me to the semifinals, but it also means I don't get to show off fighting a power copier who can do fucking everything."

Shit. Bakugo was right. If I bowed out now, I'd be robbing him of a chance that he needed for his career. I still could, of course. It wouldn't even be the first time I'd done something like that today. But basically as soon as Bakugo had played that card on me, he'd more or less ensured that I was going to have to see this through to the end.

I looked Bakugo in the eyes. "And if I decide to fight you, and you lose?"

Slowly, a savage grin spread across Bakugo's face. "To your useless ass? Like hell! If you manage to beat me, all that makes you is my measuring stick! I'll just keep coming after you until I beat you, and that'll put me one step closer to number one!"

So if I lose, I get sent to the recovery ward with explosion wounds, if I win I'll have a homicidal maniac after my head in class, and win or lose I'm signing myself up for probably another two weeks of backbreaking effort?

If I knew friends were going to be such a hassle I'd never have gotten any. Still, it looked like Bakugo was expecting some tough talk in return, so I did my best to smirk at him cockily. "Better not regret it," I blustered.

*Pin-pon!* A chime sounded over the speakers. "Next contestants, please proceed to your entry gates. Next contestants, please proceed to your entry gates."

Startled, I looked up at the television hanging on the wall. Todoroki had apparently managed to beat Iida during the bare minute or two that Bakugo and I had been talking. The field was a total mess of ice, with a giant glacier close to the size of the one that had been unleashed against Tsuyu once again taking up a huge chunk of the stadium. "That was fast," I said, feeling the familiar buzz of adrenaline as my body started getting ready to fight.

"Half-and-Half-Assed has fuck-all for stamina, so he always tries to fucking blitz his fights to compensate. Glasses got too fucking impatient." Bakugo said dismissively.

"I don't know if impatient's the right word," I said, shaking my head. "That ice isn't easy to deal with. Iida might have thought his best chance was to get in close."

Bakugo shook his head. "He should have hit and run, let Todoroki exhaust himself, then gone in for the kill."

"I've got stamina issues too," I said. "That how you're planning on handling me?"

Bakugo's slasher grin, if anything, got even wider. "Wouldn't you like to fucking know?" The two of us reached the door. Bakugo stepped out without ceremony, turning to the left and heading down the corridor.

"See you out there," I muttered, and took my own turn to the right.

I took deep breaths as I walked, trying to slow down my heart and calm the butterflies in my stomach. If anything, my nerves felt even janglier than they had before I got ready to fight Monoma. Maybe it was because Monoma's fight had felt necessary? I wasn't a fight maniac like Bakugo. I didn't particularly want to be here. But… it was too late to back out now.

Might as well have some fun with it.

"For our tenth match! What crazy combination of quirks will he come up with next? It's Hikigaya Hachiman! Versus! A student who claims that if there's a problem that explosives can't solve, it's because you aren't using enough of them! Bakugo Katsuki!" Present Mic's corny narration echoed throughout the stadium. The flames at the corners of the battlefield whooshed to life. The crowd cheered. Bakugo Katsuki, his sleeves rolled up to avoid getting his cuffs caught in the blast radius of his explosions, cricked his neck, and shook out his fingers. The bastard didn't look nervous at all. Meanwhile I just stood there, never taking my eyes off of him. "Are you ready?" Mic said, and I brought up my hands to protect my face. For all the talking about Hit and Run that Bakugo had done in the prep room, I wasn't about to just assume that Bakugo wasn't going for a rush of his own. "Start!"

Almost immediately, Bakugo brought both of his hands forward, aimed not at me, but at the ground between us. The world erupted in noise and smoke as his explosion threw up a huge cloud of dust, screening the two of us off from each other.

I didn't like it. I didn't know what Bakugo's plan was, but I didn't want to take the chance of him sneaking up on me, either. With a deep breath, I attuned to a pair of quirks that Bakugo had probably never seen me use before, and shouted. "HYOOOOOO!" One by one, the characters "ヒョオオ" left my mouth as giant white bubbles, forming a massive word-object that shot into the cloud of smoke between Bakugo and I. The word bubbles created by the quirk belonging to the manga-headed student from 1-B weren't just solid objects, either, and I'd chosen that particular onomatopoeia for a reason. They also created additional effects according to the volume that the user shouted with - and because I was simultaneously blowing a stockpile of Present Mic's Voice quirk, I could shout plenty loud.

It wasn't quite as simple as one plus one equalling two, for reasons I hadn't completely figured out yet; I didn't instantly summon hurricane force winds that blew Bakugo off of his feet and out of the ring. Nevertheless, the prodigious gale I did create instantly scattered all of the dust in the air, revealing Bakugo, his hands clapped over his ears to protect himself against the sheer volume of my shout. He had probably started sprinting towards me at an angle as soon as the dust cloud went up, and he continued, fighting his way against the wind to try and get at me from an angle. As he saw me turn to face him, he glowered and removed his hands from his ears despite the fact I was still shouting, then rushed towards me, throwing explosions rapidfire.

I ignored the bursts of heat and light, backstepping as I prepared my next move. Bakugo's explosions relied on his sweat. If I wanted to stand any chance against him in the short run, I had to stop him sweating. Gritting my teeth, I set my feet, staring at Bakugo as he barrelled down at me like a runaway tank. I brought up my right hand to point directly at him, then grabbed it with my left to brace, and brought up a tried and true combination. My hand morphed into a metallic barrel, and a fire hydrant's worth of water sprayed towards Bakugo, almost instantly chilling down to near-zero temperatures as I sucked the heat out of it with Yuki-onna.

Unsurprisingly, Bakugo decided that he'd rather not eat a faceful of ice water. As close as we were, though, there was no way he'd be able to get out of the way fast enough to avoid being sprayed, so he dodged in the only direction he could. Up. Bakugo rocketed into the sky, getting some distance. Over the sound of explosions ringing in my ears, I heard a faint sound. "Grit your fucking teeth, Hikigayaaaa!" Slowly at first, then faster and faster, Bakugo started spinning as he plunged towards me, explosions crackling in the palms of his hands as he prepared for his signature Howitzer Impact.

I wanted exactly zero part of that. Even if I blocked a hit like that, the odds of it blowing me out of the ring were too good. Instead, I grabbed Miura's Light Arrow, pulling my hands apart to their full length against the feedback of her quirk with Stockpile-enhanced strength. A radiant bar of light sizzled to life against my chest, full of charged plasma just waiting to be unleashed. There was a slight problem with it, of course; while Miura had a lifetime's worth of archery training and probably some innate senses for accuracy I had exactly zero of those things. My odds of actually hitting Bakugo with the arrow I was holding were nearly zero. Thankfully, I had a stockpile of my social studies teacher Snipe's quirk available to turn that zero into a one hundred.

For a second, I was hopeful that the glowing bar of light that leapt from my fingers would take Bakugo out of the fight entirely. There was a lot of kinetic energy in that projectile, and as it closed in on him unerringly I saw his eyes widen in panic. Unfortunately, Bakugo's reflexes and instincts were second to none, and he brought the hand preparing his Howitzer up to act as a shield, detonating it just as the arrow was about to make impact. But while the explosion did destroy the light arrow, it also sent Bakugo into an uncontrolled tumble.

It was a chance! As Bakugo did his best to cancel his spin and explode himself so that he landed inside the ring instead of outside of it, I rushed him with all the speed that Stockpile gave me. It was possible that Yukinoshita's match was still on my mind, because as I ran towards Bakugo I attuned back to Yuki-Onna, which still had all of the heat energy that it had sucked out of the water created by Backdraft stored in it. As Bakugo hit the ground, I reached out with an open-handed slap, simultaneously expending all of the heat energy I had in Yuki-Onna with my stockpiles of Second Impact.

It was a hit that should have ended the fight. It would have pierced right through any kind of block that Bakugo put up. Unfortunately, Bakugo had apparently decided that counterattacking was better than blocking. I saw the sparks on Bakugo's palm in just enough time to squeeze my eyes closed and turn my face aside, and then I ate one of Bakugo's explosions to my face at point blank range, without enough time to switch to a defensive quirk.

It felt like a giant's fist, squeezing the air out of my lungs and pushing me backwards. The pain from the burns was secondary, a lingering pain chaser after the immediate gut punch of the wall of superheated air that threw me head over heels away from Bakugo. For a second after I came to a stop, I couldn't help but just lie there on my stomach, stunned. Then the adrenaline running through my veins reminded me that I was still in a fight. I couldn't hear the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps over the ringing in my ears, but as I picked my head up and opened my eyes I saw Bakugo charging, one arm clutching his ribs but the other ready to throw another explosive palm strike. Thinking fast, I slapped the ground between us, shoving my stockpiles of Softening into the cement.

The few seconds that it took Bakugo to notice his feet were stuck in mud, explode himself out of the trap vertically, and land again were just enough time for me to get to my feet. I hurt all over, but everything was moving okay, and the shock of the pain still hadn't passed yet. Regenerating now would just stun me with pain as I healed, so instead of backing off I just attuned to Kirishima's hardening and charged, hoping to catch Bakugo off-guard as he recovered from the quicksand.

The second explosion I took to the face hurt a lot less than the first one. It was more than enough to knock me away from Bakugo, though, and it used up everything in Hardening that I'd had stored. I needed a better plan. As I tumbled head over heels again, I wound up rolling over some shrapnel that had been blasted out of the stage. This time as I came up to my feet, attuned to Steel Skin, and charged again, I threw a rock as I approached. As expected, Bakugo dodged the rock, and I was thrown backwards again - but as I flew backwards I yanked on the rock with the grip I had stealthily applied on it using Poltergeist and hit Bakugo in the back of the head.

Bakugo staggered. I had him on the ropes! Unfortunately, I was running out of armor quirks. As I charged for a third time I pushed Yuigahama's Cloth Armor into my singed and tattered gym uniform, holding my arms crossed in front of my face like a shield. Bakugo recovered his balance just in time to see me at close range, and in a panicked reaction he released his grip on his ribs and set off both hands, right in my face for yet a third time.

Unfortunately for him, I'd gotten his timing down on the first two charges. At the very last second, a blue disk of force sprang to life in front of my crossed arms, and the wall of explosive force bounced off of one of Totsuka's Reflect Rackets. Bakugo went stumbling back, and I darted forward into the opening, winding up a punch that I was sure would knock his lights out.

Ignoring his pain, Bakugo set off even more explosions, shooting backwards to avoid my strike even as he used the blasts for cover, but I wasn't about to let him get away that easily. As I stepped forward, I felt a brief surge of dysmorphia, stumbling over my own feet as my body forgot what length my legs were supposed to be. I gritted my teeth and pushed through it, attuning to Falcon Flight. I didn't need to know how long my legs were if I was flying! I easily caught up to Bakugo, and reached out to grab him by the collar of his gym uniform. He unleashed an explosion into my side with his good hand, but between Yuigahama's quirk and the durability from Hayama's, all that it accomplished was causing me to lose my shirt for the third time today. Using Falcon Flight, I slammed him to the ground, with me on top of him.

This was it! I was going to win! I just had to finish him! As Bakugo's explosion-sparking hand came up to punch me in the side of the head, I switched to my very last defensive combination. The Nomu Special, Shock Absorption + Regeneration. It would hurt like a bastard, but as long as I survived this hit I could return every single bit -

I'd never tried a sixty percent stockpile of Regeneration before. There was a qualitative difference, when it got to that level. The pain still hit all at once, but it healed so fast that it was almost too quick to notice. Bakugo had managed to knock me off of him with that explosion, but I was able to scramble to my feet without any issues at all, and he was still on his back. My body felt full of energy. I hadn't been able to absorb every bit of the force from the explosion, but all the energy I had absorbed was sizzling through my muscles. My whole body felt cold and hot, I was sweating all over even as I almost wanted to shiver, but there was more power in my arms and legs than I had ever felt before. It was an almost floaty feeling, like they were as light as air.

It almost felt like there wasn't any strength in them at all. Well, that was easy enough to fix. I could just use Death Arms. A solid weight of quirkforce wrapped itself around my shoulders and pecs, running up and down my limbs like a warm, heavy hug. Something felt weird about that thought, but it probably wasn't important. My legs didn't want to move either, but I had Stockpile for that, just like when I was biking home. Even if I didn't want to pedal, I still could, so even if it felt like my legs were made out of lead, I could still move forward.

Bakugo's eyes went wide as I took a step towards him. It was a little funny. Seriously? Bakugo, scared of me? I saw his arms tremble as they came up to defend himself, a few sullen sparks dancing in his hands as he tried to come up with enough explosive sweat to force me back. The explosions smelled like burnt caramel, an almost sweet and pleasant smell, but in the moment it was somehow so nauseating that I had to swallow to keep from vomiting. It was okay. I was used to nausea. All I had to do was punch, and I would win! Even if there was a grey mist around the edges of my vision, and the ringing in my ears from Bakugo's explosions was only growing louder, all I had to do was punch! I took another step, and the world tilted. I had to punch! I forced my arm forward, but somehow it didn't go in a straight line. I watched in detached bemusement as my fist slipped through the air and hit the ground with a contact that I couldn't really feel, even as blood sprayed from my knuckles and the ground crackled and crumpled under the force of my blow. Bakugo went flying backwards away from me, tossed by the upheaval of the ground. I tried to pick myself up to chase him, but the world spun again, and suddenly I was looking up at the sky.

Man, sure was blue today, huh?