SANDCASTLE

"Dig that trench deeper!" Bakugo bellowed. "You think the Dekus will trip over that tiny furrow in the sand?"

Sato stared up out of the giant chasm dug into the beach. "I've literally hit rock bottom, sir!"

"Then dig deeper! What else are you supposed to do?"

Shoji and Dark Shadow braced the front wall, while everyone else piled sand into the structure. Iida gave the sand a rocket-powered kick, slapping the structure into a sturdy barrier.

"Fortifications are done, sir!" Iida shouted up.

"Fortifications my ass. I've seen toddlers build taller sandcastles! We better be fighting those Dekus in the shade, or I'll use you for ammunition."

Momo laboriously pulled another beam for a trebuchet out of her stomach, while Mineta and Sero assembled it with liberal applications of duct tape.

"Artillery's ready!"

"You call that artillery! What part of 'army of Dekus' is unclear to you ignoramuses! Make more!"

"We're out of room!"

"Then make more room!"

"We're also out of Big Macs," Momo said queasily.

"Then eat the midget. He's useless anyways."

While Mineta protested loudly, Jiro took her ear out of the sand. "They're coming."

"Right, you heard her. Tony Montana, fill the moat. Midget, 3D printer, get our ammunition ready. Everyone else, man the walls."

Sato punched through a wall of sand, unleashing a torrent of seawater into the moat. Sero fished him out and hauled him onto the sandy wall.

Over the horizon, a green band grew between golden sand and brilliant blue sky. As the green widened, individual faces emerged from the swath of color. Blank-faced Midoriyas marched by the thousands towards the sandy fortifications 1-A had erected.

"Steady," Bakugo said.

"We're not idiots," Kaminari retorted. "No way we're hitting them from this distance."

Ochako fired her trebuchet. A whole glob of Mineta's spheres plummeted amidst their ranks. A dozen went down, tangled in the sticky balls, but the mass marched onwards around them.

"I stand corrected," Kaminari said.

Bakugo gave the order. Sticky spheres and explosive ordinance arced high over the sandy walls and plummeted amidst the ranks of Dekus. Metallic limbs went flying, and massive geysers of sand burst into the air with each explosion, yet the Dekus marched on. The first of them tumbled into the moat, but as more jumped in, their bodies eventually filled the moat. Those behind them clambered over the bodies of their brethren, forming a robotic dogpile reaching up the walls.

"Man the battlements!" Bakugo roared. "Here we make our last stand for mankind!"

1-A shouted a battlecry as they took positions on the walls. They watched as robotic hands grasped closer and closer to the top.

"Today, we celebrate our independence day!" Bakugo roared.

Kaminari gave him a look. "Dude, really?"

The wall quivered. Bakugo looked down just in time to see the bottom of the battlements turn into soup from all the water in the moat sloshing on it. As the fortifications collapsed, Bakugo shouted, "I told you we should've dug it deeper!"

500

As Bakugo fumes over his sandcastle collapsing and all his miniatures getting swept away by the ocean, Kirishima says, "Calm down, dude, it's just a sandcastle."