Sunako lazily flung wad after wad of gum into the man's stake-driver while eating a funnel cake with her free hand. He'd worked tirelessly to close the distance between them but her sticky substance had begun to clog up his driver's mechanisms.

"Sir, are you going to finish anytime soon?" She taunted him as her lips took a bite out of her confectionary. She recoiled from the taste of the cake and nearly coughed it up. "Oh wow, this thing is dry as a desert! Next time I'll remember to order cake with my flour!"

He growled in frustration and wildly swung his stake from side to side in a futile attempt to hit anything. His legs bound completely in the gunk, he was essentially helpless. "Crikey, ya's jokin' me! You're telling me I'm about tae get my ass handed to me, by a li'l old baby power like this?!"

"Cry about it." She smirked, watching him flail about angrily.

"Sunako?" Her walkie crackled to life with static, Rinasa's barely audible voice nearly drowned out due to the distance. "Is everything handled there?"

"Ah, about time you called, ya goof! I overestimated, he's dumber than some of the others I've fought. So what, he standing trial or we done with him?"

"Trial." She said with extreme emphasis.

"Hello?" Another voice joined the channel "This is Erina, come in?!"

"The whole gang's calling in! What's up with you? I'm just kind of chilling out! You know, I just tried one of those funnel cakes, they're so awful! Like-"

"Just a second, Sunako…I saw someone steal money from one of the registers, he used his quirk to levitate some coins out of it. He's at the third corridor, is anyone near?"

Aki immediately responded to the inquiry. "That was third corridor? Satori and I are very close by and are en route as we speak."

"YAAAGHHH!" The man with the stake-driver started pounding the ground in a tantrum. "If yo 'on't let me out o' here, I'll have ya regret e'er bein' born!"

A massive mound of gum splatted onto his face. "Trying to have a convo here, so could you like, not?"

"mmph! Pmmph MMMPH!" He strained to remove the gum from his head. As he pulled, it began to tear the skin off his cheeks and mouth. In addition, his hands became stuck as well. "MMMMMMPH! HMMP MMNNHMM!"

"Sheesh, how'd you get louder? You must really like attention, don't you?"

"What is happening over there? Sunako, can I get a report on-"

"Click." She hung up before they could finish. "Don't worry, they'll be talking to you a lot later, I'm sure! So hold on Mr. Chatty!" Sunako completely engulfed him in a thick mountain of gum, burying him deep inside until even his moans couldn't be heard anymore.

"There! Some people are just so self-centered…"

"Uhhh…ma'am?" A woman who was resting in a tarp of gum atop a light pole peered over the edge. "I don't mean to tell you how to do your job but this seems a little much."

"What, this? Nah, I'm going easy on him!" She reached for her walkie-talkie and tuned the station back to the same one with her co-workers.

"-ko! Ms. Kazuya! Hello? Please respond immediately if you can hear!"

"Aye aye, captain!"

"I requested a report from you, I want to know what's going on at your end!"

"Nothing, silly! You're sounding more and more like Satori these days!"

A large fingernail pierced through her walkie-talkie. It retracted back to its owner with the device still clinging to life.

"Rinasa, it's Hanako. She's signing off."

"Understood."

She tossed the walkie into the trash and through her knee-length hair glared at Sunako, who was sitting on the ground pouting. "Awww, I didn't even get to tell them about the cake! "

"Every time you speak, you give me new reasons to want to drain your brain matter. You mind shutting up and letting me work without making me want to murder you?" Hanako surveyed the area. The ground was completely covered in gum, but most of the bystanders were strung up inside gum sacks that were less adhesive than the gum she used to attack. "You remembered. For once. And it seems no major injuries were sustained. Not bad, for you."

Sunako rubbed her hands through her brown hair and removed any strands of gum she'd gotten it mixed with. "Tsk, no need to flatter me. You're welcome, by the way!"

"Never thanked you, especially not for the bare minimum. If you want someone to eat you out over that little bit, talk to Erina." She expanded a grotesque growth in countless directions to grab all the wounded individuals, lifting them down from their perches. As they were lowered to the ground, she simultaneously healed their wounds, repairing all major injuries until they looked practically unharmed save for their torn clothes. They checked themselves and each other completely astounded that they were able to move and walk on their own.

"Don't stand around licking your wounds, get somewhere safe!" She shouted to scare them away. Even with her threatening tone, they bowed in appreciation before darting off into the stadium. "No, not there…ugh. Morons. It's so tedious being the only competent person sometimes. Did we get everyone out of the-"

Her eyes landed on the large mass of gum near the streetlight, with a vaguely humanoid form.

"…what is that?"

"Hmmm? Oh, right! The class clown there wouldn't stop oversharing, so I put him in timeout."

"Get him out."

"Duh, I was going-"

"Stop talking and get him out right now."

"Fine, fine!"

She took her time walking over, further infuriating the already inflamed Hanako, and calmly removed the gum from his body. After he was finally visible again, they saw his blue face and his ripped eyes dangling from the sockets. Free of the sticky substance, his body collapsed keeping pose in the state of rigor mortis.

"Ah…that's a shame. Hope this lesson 'sticks' with any future criminals!" She leaned on the streetlamp and her eyes lit up when she saw a colorful bag beside his feet. "OOH! He had cotton candy? Well, he won't be needing it so…"

Hanako had already rushed over and began performing CPR on his body. When that failed, she destroyed it and remade it attempting to get his organs back to normal. While she vainly tried to bring life back into his body, Sunako watched with slight contempt.

"Sigh…what's the big deal? He's a baddie, literally tried to kill like, several people? Good riddance, I say."

Hanako dropped the body, still lifeless and cold. "You…you…you!" With a lunge, she managed to get one swipe across Sunako's chest before a huge wall of gum blasted her to the ground. She pulled her arm out and aimed her finger directly at Sunako's head. The vigilante ducked preemptively and Hanako's arm became glued to her face once she hit her with another patch of gum.

"Hanako! Wait! Please! How many times do we have to do this?! I don't want to fight you, but you go and do stuff like this so unnecessarily! Why can't we just get along?" She touched her chest for a moment and regretted it immediately as pain seared through her upper torso. She observed her hand and saw it dripping profusely with blood.

"Shut up! When I'm done with you, you'll never show your face again!"

A knife drove into the gum and it suddenly dissipated in a flash. Before Hanako had risen to her feet, Rinasa flew in from above and stood between the two of them knowing well what was going on.

"Sunako, Hanako! Stand down immediately!"

"She attacked me first!"

"I'll kill her if it's the last thing I do! I swear on my grave I will!" The woman's eyes went feral as she removed the skin from her hands and grew out jagged bones from her arms. "I'm not letting her get away with this anymore!"

"I'm not going to let you two kill each other!" Rinasa quickly wrapped her blade's wire around Hanako to restrain her. Sunako had already retreated away into the stadium entrance leaving a trail of blood behind.

"If you don't get out of my way, I'll kill you too."

"No you won't."

"…RAAAGGHHH!" She finally gave up and fell to her knees in defeat. With the adrenaline leaving her system, her eyes clouded up and she relied on Rinasa to keep her upright.

Her twin sister having somewhat calmed down, Rinasa glanced at the dead body to her right. "I assume she-"

"Yes. Obviously, she did, what else does she ever do? How many times are we going to let her get away with this? And with how brutally it appeared, that might as well be torture."

"I'll deal with her."

"You always say that."

"And I always do."

"But she's alive still."

"Come in, this is Erina. Has the third suspect been apprehended? I have yet to hear a response from top-half patrol, last I heard was Aki and Satori were going in to deal with the suspect."

Alarmed, Rinasa turned her walkie's station a couple times to try and find Satori's signal.

"I'm getting static here. I haven't heard back from Aki yet and I can't override the mic setting with mine. I think something may have compromised them; I'll take Hanako with me to see what happened."

A bright yellow field of pure energy bubbled in front of the culprit inside the infirmary. Back against the wall, his skin was sweating all over from the heat and he was scared stiff. He dared not to move even an inch closer to the burning hot substance.

"Rinasa!" Satori shook the walkie several times but only got static throughout every channel. "Do you read? We have apprehended the suspect! Can you hear?"

"Appears as if modern day electronics are still much too little to overcome the grandiose nature of the universe's energy." Hijiri quietly mused.

"The interference from your quirk always makes it difficult. Crap, and I went through all the trouble of getting the latest handsets too." He pulled another metal splinter out from his arm. "Chasing him down was hard enough with him throwing all those nails and tools at me, now I've got all this stuff in my skin that'll probably need a warm bath to get out."

A middle-aged man huffed near the doorway. "No, I believe our friend will bear little issue helping you sort out your predicament."

Hijiri held his hand out with an arrogant grin. "Not so, Aki. Not when such a beautiful amount of energy is radiating from over there. Basking in its glory this close is sin enough for him stuck inside. I fear his magnetism will bear a similar fate to your rudimentary technology."

"I'll help!" Their thief shakily shouted. "I surrender! You've got me, so can you please make sure this…whatever doesn't get any closer to me?!"

Aki sighed with a gruff in his voice. "Sir, if I may inquire…how long might this plasma field last?" The older man asked, irritation barely hidden underneath.

"I can't stop it. It must become content with itself before it decides to leave our presence."

"Spare us the poetic drivel, how long in minutes?" Satori asked.

"Hah! Minutes? You believe the cosmos would be so humble? Would we not exist in this realm still if it were not for its insistence for all intelligent life to experience it's beauty firsthand? No, this is not a creation-"

The door burst wide open and a knife narrowly missed the suspect's head while it dug into the wall. Rinasa brandished her other knife ready to take action until she saw the other three in the room with varying levels of defensive postures.

She reeled her knives back in calmly and cocked her head at someone in the hallway. "Explains the drop in our communications. Hijiri, I told you explicitly not to use your nuclear fusion at such an extreme level."

"And I've explained to you that it such an immense power must refuse to be contained-"

"Stop talking." She ordered. "This must be our magnetic quirk. Satori, go retrieve the copper cuffs in my car." Her face still as dead as ever, she walked towards the field of plasma without hesitation.

"Uhhh?" For the first time, Hijiri broke his pretentious talking mannerism. "Not to state what is plainly obvious but I believe humans aren't fit to fathom the sun with their bodies."

"I said stop talking." She touched the plasma and immediately absorbed all of it into herself. As she did this, her body glowed an intense hot pink and her hair stayed up on its ends.

"Ah, Plasma Vent, I had forgotten your quirk. Your safety was the only-"

Aki quickly covered his mouth. "I believe my lady has made it abundantly clear you are not to speak."

Satori peeked out the hallway where Rinasa had looked back earlier. "You sent Hanako off? Actually, more important: is the entrance situation handled?"

"Sunako killed him."

Hijri and Aki went silent at the news while Satori clenched his fist. The suspect's eyes went wide and his eyes darted frantically between his captors.

"W-what!? Kure's dead? You're not going to kill me, are you!? I'll return the money and everything, just please don't kill me!"

"We don't plan to unless you try anything funny, so keep quiet and behave!" Satori commanded. "Chief, did anyone see it happen?"

"Not our concern right now." She took some of her stored plasma and turned it into a small pink ball. She stared at the suspect, who still clung to the wall and began to breathe heavier when she turned her gaze to him. "You could likely do something similar with magnetism, plasma is made of a lot of different metals."

He shook his head shakily. "…I'll pass."

She shrugged. "I recognize him. Ogino Futaki. Quirk: Tele-Mag. He's only a level 2 threat so he can stay with us for the duration of his sentence. Cell 5. Keep him away from Iraki, he stays in isolation."

While her officer wrote down the instructions, she took the pink ball of plasma and moved it across to Satori, who backed away instinctually. "Whoa! What are you doing? I haven't upset you, right?" He joked nervously. Not replying, she silently moved it around his body and he soon realized what her goal was. Bits of metal came out from his clothes and skin, flying into the ball and melding with the rest of it.

"Young Miss, if I may intrude but if Sunako really has…disposed of the other associate, then shouldn't…"

"Hanako will take the loose skin and reform it for a proper burial for the family." Using Mordred to lightly slice into Ogino's forearm, she tossed him to Satori so he could tie him with his tethers. "Erina has blatantly ignored the order to shut down, I'll have to-"

The sounds of struggle came from outside and shortly after, Hanako came into the room holding Sunako up with her fingers dug deep into her neck.

"Man, you're good at hide and seek! Owww, you don't have to grip my, AH! Stop it!" Sunako cried out.

"Enough! You're lucky I bothered to heal you. I should've let you bleed out right there!"

Satori wasted no time in tying her up as well. Sunako glanced around the room to see only frowns. "Gosh, you think you were all in this dude's fan-club the way you're all upset!"

"Quiet!" Satori barked. "Sunako Kazuya, you're under arrest!"

Bits of cement were scattered all over the arena and continued to be pelted into the sky as Manaka's ruthless onslaught blasted away each new coat of armor Ikicho scrapped up for himself. Taking a dive to the left, he touched the ground and wrapped the cement around his upper body but left his legs exposed.

"Getting tired?!" Manaka snarled. "But we're just getting started! Give me something to really DEVOUR!" She flung herself from a standstill to his position in an instant with a punch so fast that it created its own wind tunnel.

Ikicho leaped to the side and was able to catch her off balance. Usually his armor had made him sluggish but leaving his legs out greatly increased his agility.

"Finally! Let's see you take on this!" He slammed his rocky fist into her with all his might and watched in satisfaction as she fell to the ground with a shout.

"And Ikicho gets his first hit in! And what a blow it was, Manaka is still on the ground! Perhaps our young lad still has a chance!"

Taking his chance, he leaped in the air and wrapped the armor around his legs in preparation for a powerful kick to her head.

Grinning widely, she turned towards him and grabbed one of his legs. "Did you think I was done, small fry?"

He quickly twisted his body the other way and kicked her temple. She collapsed to the floor and held her head in pain. With a golden opportunity to end it, he touched the ground while holding her head and, in a flash, the ground climbed up around her entire body. He didn't stop there, making layer after layer until the small encasing was nearly as big as a car.

"What a turnaround! He's covered her entirely in cement, and that stuff doesn't come off easy, folks! Is there anything she can do to come back from this?"

He stood back from the mound in anticipation. Having witnessed firsthand her raw strength, he was prepared for her to crack even this giant shell at any moment.

"SALVO 2! DREADNOUGHT!"

He didn't expect it to explode. As the shell burst open and knocked him off of his feet, the resulting wind blew him all the way near the edge of the arena. He quickly halted his movement by wrapping his leg inside of the ground.

"Truly, I must confess! You certainly have given me a much better fight than I could've hoped for! Allow me to thank you, by showing you my TRUE POWER! Salvo 2! DRAGON FIRE!"

She stomped the ground with her right foot alone, and gleefully watched as it ruptured all the way to his location. With it traveling at such speed and his leg inside the ground, he had no chance of dodging and was hit head on by the attack, smashing into his body and even extending a few meters past the arena. As he lay on the grass in pain, he slowly turned his head to the right and thanked his lucky stars he hadn't landed on the jagged spike protruding beside him.

"Oh, and that is it for the 5th match! What a great showing by these two, let's hear it for both of them for giving us such a good match!"

He wiped the bits of concrete off his body and slowly rose to his feet. He looked up and was greeted with a terrifying grin from Manaka, no less than a foot away from his face.

"Gah! Wow, please don't scare me like-hlkg!"

He was pulled violently into a handshake and caught minor whiplash from it.

"You have earned my respect! I actually would've lost had I not used my higher salvo! We simply must do this again one day! Except to the death instead! Let us bare our all and see which one of us is worthy to be atop the other's grave!"

Ikicho covered his body, including his hand, inside the dirt and separated his arm from her hold. "…no thanks, good fight though!" He shot a playful finger gun at her while he half ran to his exit. "Whew! God damn, am I glad that's over." He muttered to himself.

Getting back to the arena entrance, he saw Daisuke nervously sat up against the wall. Even with his known anxiety issues, it was clear something else had him more troubled than usual. "Yo, what're you doing here? Oh that's right, you are up next! Got butterflies about it? I think there's exercises you can do for that stuff, yeah?"

"It's n-not…mostly that." He sighed. "Suiiki's feeling bummed. Big time. I couldn't even g-get a single word out of him after his fight."

Ikicho smiled as he recalled Suiiki and Hinote's eventful duel. "Yeah, that was awesome." He stammered to correct himself when Daisuke gave him a questioning look. "The fight I mean! Not him losing!"

"…y-yeah, I just don't know what to say to him. I guess he r-really wanted to win…more than I thought." He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. "I…I don't see why he's taking it so bad though, I mean he barely seemed to care about winning the whole past month. N-not enough to train anyway."

"He's probably embarrassed."

"Embarrassed?"

Ikicho brushed some debris out of his jet-black hair and walked over to Daisuke's side. With an arrogant chuckle, he lightly slapped Daisuke's forehead. "Listen, twitchy. I wouldn't mind losing to some of these other kids. I lost my fight, sure! But Manaka's got that wolf in her. Me losing to someone like that ain't a thing to be ashamed of. But if I went down to a nobody with some lame ass power like fire, you wouldn't catch my ass outside my house for weeks, let me tell you."

"Hey!" Daisuke uncharacteristically shouted. "Don't speak about Hinote like that!" Seeing Ikicho's surprise, he meekly shrunk back down to his usual slouch. "S-sorry…but she isn't a nobody."

"Ha! You think she cares? She's probably mentally as braindead as her quirk is! Got that monke thing going for her!"

"And just like that, it's over! Inouye advances with a blistering barrage that was all too much for Takeda!"

"Damn! I didn't even know the other match started. And I really wanted to see Inouye's Dynamo too. Must've been something fierce to take out that toolbox dude." He gently shook Daisuke and raised him to his feet. "Alright, put those butterflies in a sack and go kick some ass! Break a leg! Runoso's, that is."

"Here's hoping…"

Suiiki sat beside an empty concession stand with nothing but an empty juice-box to keep him company.

No matter what I do, I can't stop thinking about it. I was so close. THIS CLOSE.

He threw it below his table and kicked it between his feet.

But unfortunately for me, I'm fighting someone who doesn't know when they've already lost. She just would not lose. Everything I did, freezing her, drenching her, smashing her on the ground, literally EVERYTHING! She was able to make it through all that!?

He shifted his hand into a watery form and created small bubbles to shoot at the wall with.

And I even unlocked this cool extra part of my power finally! I had an entire new move-set given to me mid-fight, and still!

"Probably shouldn't just do that where people walk."

The voice startled him so badly, he fell out of his chair and hit his head on the ground.

"Ouch! Owie owie owww! Do you just go around giving people heart attacks? Why aren't y-y-y…" He lost his voice when he saw Hinote standing before him with her hand covering her clearly smiling lips. "YOU! Why are you here? Shouldn't you be in the stands watching the other fights?"

"Could ask you the same, waterspout. Your friend's about to compete, you don't wanna watch him kick butt?"

"…nah. Not really feeling well."

She nodded and took a seat across from him.

"You know, ain't no use in pouting about it."

He almost flared up in anger at how casually she said it. "Huh? I'm not even thinking about that, pfft! Like you'd know what I'm thinking."

"Really? So you just come all the way out here on your lonesome to scowl at a wall for fun?"

Seeing her point, he quit trying to keep up his appearance. "Alright, yeah. I'm upset. Big whoop, didn't take Einstein to figure that one out. Can you also figure out who the last person I wanna talk about that with is?"

"Give yourself some credit! I didn't expect you to keep up with me the whole time! I spent weeks getting ready for that fight and even longer just practicing in general. For someone who I rarely saw put much effort into practicing, you did a pretty-"

"Oooh, so I'm lazy and inconsiderate? Thanks for the pep-talk, really cheering me up."

"Wha? Where did you even get that from? I never said anything about being inconsiderate."

"I've already heard it a bunch from other people, and they were right! Of course she's right! I am lazy! I don't think at all! I'm just a big dumb idiot, just like she said I was!"

"…" Hinote said nothing and simply kicked the juice-box back over his way.

He sighed harshly at her silence. "Thanks for the words of encouragement. Much appreciated."

"Then get better."

"What!?" He turned to her with a burning desire to blast her, and that same desire was instantly extinguished when he saw how icily she stared into his eyes. "…what do you mean, get better? That isn't going to change what happened."

She outright scoffed with a look of disgust plastered on her face. "Is that what you're thinking of? What already happened? So you lost here and this is the end? Everything in your life culminates to this tiny fight that everyone will think about maybe two more times after today?"

"…you don't even understand."

Without hesitation, she walked around the table and slapped him across the face.

"OW! What the he-Augh!" Before he could even react to the slap, she gripped him by his shirt and pulled him close to her face. "Ugh! Let me go! Right now!"

"Get over yourself! I spent my whole life trying to reach a point where I could be proud of my own quirk instead of being ashamed! You think if you had beaten me, I would be sitting around in a stew of self-pity?! You know where I would be if I'd done that whenever I was teased? I'd be dead! So for you to just sit here…"

Her eyes shrunk when she realized what she was doing. Hinote let him go and ran her hands through her fiery orange hair nervously. Released from her ire, he stumbled away from her while rubbing his cheek although he wasn't really thinking about the pain in particular right now.

"…I'm sorry Suiiki. I just…there's…you've had so much more than me, and-huh?!"

She felt water go over her arms, which she suddenly realized with a fright were now exposed. "No!" She drew her sleeves down and out of sight from him.

"Your arms were bleeding, so I just wanted to help. Not trying to poison you or anything, I promise. Besides, if I could, you think I wouldn't have abused the hell outta that against you?"

She sharply gasped at the thought. "You-you wouldn't be so cheap."

"I'm tryna win a fight, not the Nobel Peace Prize."

"You're joking!"

"Whatever I gotta do. Pull hair, poke eyes, groin stuff. You name it."

"Oh my gosh, you're horrible!"

I get that a bunch, ehehe…so your arms?" He reminded her. She was brought back to the current situation and shied away from him. "What's up? You're hurt, I can-"

"Your ice can stop the bleeding and cool it off, I remember."

"You remember? I don't remember telling you in the first place."

"Huh, maybe I just figured then but either way, I can deal with it myself."

Suiiki grabbed her jacket before she got too far. "Come on, let me help you!"

"You can't! Just quit it already!"

She unleashed a large burst of flame from her body. He barely had time to jump back inside a coating of water before the flames lapped at his skin. As quickly as it came, it went away, leaving a horrified Hinote staring at him.

"…I'm sorry."

"Touchy, huh." He backed away from her and sat back down in his chair. "I'm the one who should be sorry, not you." He put his head in his arms and got settled into a sleeping position. "Guess I'll see you around then, Hinote. I'm going to sleep."

The sound of her shuffling feet kicking the juice-box became the only sound for a while. After several minutes, it stopped and her long sigh punctuated the silence as she took her seat again.

"I…" She started. "…there's a certain feeling people have about powers that use fire."

He shifted his head so his chin rested on the table. "What do you mean?"

"Think about it like vanilla ice cream. How do you feel about it?"

"Vanilla? It's alright, but I don't usually eat it all. I'm always trying to separate the water from it. The cream turns to this weird sludge type stuff, disgusting, but the water tastes really good! You ever hear how vanilla is made? It's really gross, they take a beaver-"

"Suiiki!" Hinote slapped her hand on the table. "What do you think of the flavor?"

"Uh…basic. Boring, kind of."

She held an open hand towards herself.

"Hmm? Oh! Oh…"

"Yeah, that's how it's always been for me. Just 'that' kid. The one with fire."

"That'd be a cool hero name!"

His comment drew a slight irritation from her, evident in her groan.

"Sorry, sorry. Go on."

She gazed down at the table while swinging one leg idly. "So that's how I was viewed. Or rather wasn't. By anyone. Anywhere. Even at home. My parents don't even like to tell anyone what my quirk is. Almost like they're ashamed I'm their daughter." She looked at her hands for a couple seconds and bit her lip. "Imagine going every day never wanting to use your quirk when playing with other kids because you didn't want to make your parents feel embarrassed about you."

Her hands began to shake as did her voice. "For so many years, I tried to hide who I was, for their sake. So maybe they wouldn't avoid me anymore. So they could – for once – just be happy that I was their daughter. And of course, it didn't work. My first years at school were me pretending to be someone I wasn't. For people who don't even care. And the others found out anyway cause teachers need to know that sort of thing. And to be clear, being called lame or boring isn't so bad a couple times. For 5 years…it did a lot to me."

Suiiki was sitting straight up with his mouth slightly open. He didn't dare to speak, and instead waited through her every pause patiently.

"My first year in middle school, I decided to embrace it. Let everyone know loud and proud who I was and what my quirk could do. So I started training non-stop every day for three months. Teachers always like to let students show-off on the first or second days, and I wanted to amaze everyone with something only I could do. Even among fire users, I have an absurd amount of control over my quirk."

To emphasize her point, she created a tiny town made of fire across the table, with miniature people walking about it as if it were a real village.

"Woah." He gaped at the spectacle she made.

"Touch it."

"Are you nuts?"

"I have it at a low temperature. You think you'd be able to sit here still if it was a regular fire?"

"No way…" He marveled as he whisked his hand across the flames and felt nothing besides the warm updrafts.

"For the quirk display, I had a dragon in mind. Not just any dragon, but those ones you see in the Chinese festivals, with the lanterns and flags and fireworks going on all around it. It was pretty much the entire scene itself."

Suiiki rose from his seat with a jolt. "Wait, yeah…I remember that but, that wasn't…no…"

With a sad smile, she abruptly put out her display. "Didn't make a difference. Hell, you didn't even recognize me. Shows what good it did. We even bumped into each other again at the U.A. exam but you still had no clue who I was. And now we've been here for about 4 months and again, still not worth remembering."

He backed up against the wall in shock with his hand on his forehead. "I'm such an idiot! I can't believe all this time, I was just-" He blinked several times and shook his head slightly. "Hold it, so you're telling me you were at that exam, and you somehow didn't make it into the school?"

"I did."

He scrambled back towards the table and stared her in the eyes. "You did. You did? You DID?!"

"I got the highest villain takedown tally and I scored a good amount of rescue points too. But during the exam, I was hit by one of Ranika's attacks. It got me really bad, and I was way too hurt to make it to the classes after. I was able to move again after a month but it was already too late. My seat was taken by someone else so I got enrolled here instead."

Suiiki bit his lips together to not say anything he'd regret. However, he had some very choice words to say about Ranika.

"I don't hold it against her. She didn't know how to use it at the time."

"That's rough."

"It all puts a lot of…thoughts in my head. Things I don't like to hear or think about. I kept training every day in middle school even after our quirk reveals were done because it took my mind off of it for a while. But at night, just lying in my sheets…I was really trapped inside my own head. Listening to myself scream at me, talking about me."

She reached inside her back pocket and shimmied around for a second. It seemed she found what she was looking for, and now was hesitating to bring it out. Craning her neck back, she blew all her tension out and removed her hand from her pocket, still clenched around whatever she was holding.

"I attempted to end it once. On a beach. I was staring at the sun for an hour or so. I started to incinerate myself. Just kept raising my fire more and more. I even started to smell smoke from my skin. I was so close to finally getting out. I thought it'd be nice to do it while staring out at the sun while it was touching the water. Maybe I was feeling poetic that day."

Blood began to leak out of her closed hand. He nervously watched it form a pool yet still kept himself quiet. "And then my father touched me and it was gone. All the heat around me just vanished. Like he snuffed me out. I've never felt more dead than on that day. All because someone complained about me 'showing off' my quirk in public. That healer inside was the one who got me fixed up after, said I was lucky she happened to be there. I didn't feel lucky. I just felt…imprisoned in my own body."

Finally opening her hand, a very bloody razor blade sat inside. "That's where this came in. I heard that…I heard that it worked. Like a cheap anti-depressant. I was desperate. The first time it opened my skin up, I was so happy. It felt like all my worries, my thoughts. All of it was being released into the world and outside my body. It even shut my own voice out. As if I had taken every negative emotion I had, pooling it into my arm, and just-"

Her hand was forcefully pulled back and her blade knocked to the floor. She turned to Suiiki wide eyed, forgetting she was talking to someone else. Following his line of sight, she saw she'd pulled her other sleeve back and placed it down onto the table.

"I don't need a demonstration."

"…right." She weakly laughed.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Hinote pulled her arm away from him. "The whole time I've known you, people have always talked so positively of you. You have friends, teachers who push you forward, even now half the stadium wishes you had beat me! You have everything I wanted a millionth of, so to see you in here sulking about losing one fight is…"

Abruptly, she shook her head and rubbed her hands vigorously into her face, unknowingly smearing some blood across it. "Mmbmbmblah! I get it, TMI! Alright!" She stood up and stretched her body. "I didn't mean to keep you so long! What time is it? We probably missed two of the fights already! That's precious battle info I could be using!"

Suiiki launched himself into her body and held her tightly to his chest.

"Whoa! Hey now, don't go trying to get back at me outside the ring! You've-"

"I'm so sorry."

"What? What are-"

"For everything. Forgetting you, what happened at the exam, never noticing your quirk. All of that."

She laughed at his gesture. "Nah, it's alright! With the way-"

"I don't really know what to say but I know you shouldn't be saying that. You don't deserve any of what happened to you. If I had known, I would've tried so much harder but I'm-"

"Stop." She pushed him off of her gently with a sour face. "I don't want your shallow pity. Honestly it makes me sick to my stomach that you care now." She bent over and picked her razor blade off the ground and back into her pocket. "So, what are you gonna do? You staying in this dumpy place or you ready to return to the land of the living?"

"Uhm…maybe not. I might just head on home." His face sullen, he put his hands in his pockets and turned away from her. "Thanks for sharing that with me but, I'm just not really feeling so up right now.

"Hmm. Okay, but it wasn't really a question. Come on!" Now it was she who pulled him into a hold and started shaking him. "Today's the festival! Gonna let a little gloom rain over the whole thing?! Let's go!"

"Stoooop iiiiitt! I just want to go to the arcade to think for a while!"

"If you leave, you'll be the sorest loser in the history of losers, maybe ever!"

"…alright! I did want to try that funnel cake."

At the mention of it, her stomach growled and she blushed. "Whoops. Looks like being top dog around here takes a lot out of you."

He blew a raspberry. "Okay, we are SO having a do-over one day."