As you can see, an entire month has passed since the last chapter. My fault there. At least I can confidently say I'm finally back.

I ended up getting pretty good grades on my summer classes and started fall classes literally two weeks ago, so I should have some more free time to get some more chapters in before my fall classes start to pick up in October, but let's get to the chapter for now.

Special thanks to Writermakeshift for beta-reading.


XIX. My Storm, Part II

"Hero team! Villain team! Your ten minutes are over! Your battle trial starts...NOW!"

Finally, Subaru thought, as he turned to his left and looked at Hagakure, who simply gave him a floating thumbs-up in return.

"Don't worry! We got this!" she exclaimed, her hand balling up into a fist and punching upwards. "But I just need to do something first."

Subaru watched as his partner's shoes started moving as the girl made her way to the door in front of them, before stopping right next to it. And right as he started to wonder what she was going to do, he saw her gloved hands reach down to take off her shoes, and then the gloves themselves, leaving them neatly packed inside the shoes like someone would do with their socks.

"Okay, ready when you are!"

Subaru, who was trying to make sense of what he just saw, simply continued staring at the bits of clothes Hagakure took off for a few moments, before he finally remembered what he was supposed to be doing, shaking his head and adjusting the sunglasses on his face.

Right...it should've been obvious she'd do that, but he still wasn't getting used to that anytime soon...

Okay, so while he could obviously tell the whole 'being permanently invisible' thing Hagakure had going on meant wonders for recon and general stealth combat, she also basically had zero defensive capability, as in a good majority of the class could beat her in a fight if they had to wear clothes.

(Well, she did say she grew up doing a lot of gymnastics, but was he really going to count that?)

"I think we should go this way," Subaru said, pointing with his thumb towards the right side of the building, and motioned for Hagakure to follow him.

The ten minutes of prep time they were given was largely spent with not only Subaru going over what he could do with his 'Quirk', but also speculating on what exactly would be waiting for them once they actually stepped inside the building. To be honest, he had half-a-mind to just go 'screw it' and just full send it all the way to the top floor with Full Cowl, but that idea went up in flames as fast as it came to him.

Because while he was pretty damn confident he could take on Katsuki without any significant difficulty (based on the amount of spars he won and whatnot), there was just one really big obstacle in the way, and that was Yaoyorozu Momo's entire existence.

From what he had seen of her the day before, she had some kind of creation Quirk that required exposed skin (which mostly explained her getup, thankfully), but when you combine that with Katsuki's genuine borderline genius-level intellect, even an idiot could see what that spelled out.

Traps. Lots and lots of traps. It was probably the safest bet to say the stairs that connected each floor was essentially some kind of minefield, and this wasn't even considering what waited for them at the top—Katsuki wouldn't going to let this get into a simple one-on-one fight between the two of them, so he had to have something planned. Probably some kind of ambush, even.

"I'm in!" he suddenly heard Hagakure exclaim, causing Subaru to look in the direction he heard her voice come from. Wordlessly, he followed along behind her (well, as much as he could, anyway—wasn't like Cor Leonis was working here, or anything).

"This is pretty exciting!" she whispered loudly, as she neared an empty doorway. "It's like one of those popular foreign spy movies, like—"

Whatever she was about to say next was immediately cut off as a very audible, no, pretty damn loud ringing sound went off just ahead of them, and Subaru wasted no time in summoning Invisible Providence and slamming its giant hand palm-flat against the other side of the corner on the right side, and thankfully silencing it.

Unfortunately, however, this meant the other team now knew where they were, and there were definitely going to be more of these.

"You know, I did say something like that was gonna happen," Subaru said, looking at Hagakure's general direction. "At least it just set off a bell this time, but we don't know what else they could've done. We need to stay careful."

His slight irritation towards her must've been clear, because Hagakure at least had the sense to sound remorseful in her reply.

"Right...I shouldn't have gone in like...sorry, Midoriya..."

Ha. This almost felt like scolding a little sister. He had half a mind to pat the top of her head...if he could actually see it, that was.

"It's all right," Subaru finally said, after several moments of silence passed. "I don't think that was loud enough to alert them, so I think we can just keep going, but, uh, maybe you should stay behind me this time." He stepped to the side and motioned for Hagakure to stand behind him.

And after a second or so of him just awkwardly standing there, he felt a light tap on his shoulder and a soft 'okay, you can go now', and Subaru took a tentative step forward into the dark hallway ahead of them, wondering what else Katsuki and Yaoyorozu were going to throw at the two of them.


Inhale...

Exhale...

It was...quiet, for the most part. Maybe even a little too quiet, if you asked Katsuki, considering the constant slight ringing sound in his ears, and all. The only sounds he could hear right now consisted of just his own breathing, the low, almost rustling of his costume on the ground on the concrete floor when he moved to sit down, and the occasional scraping of the tips of his gloves against the inside of the giant prop.

He was very quickly losing his patience, and maybe even started feeling just a little bit more nervous as he did nothing but wait, trying to keep track of each second that passed.

And what was more, it was already getting pretty damn warm, after just sitting in this thing for a few minutes.

You'd think something as flimsy as painted cardboard and newspaper wouldn't stand up too well to wind. Not that it bothered him, anyway—the combination of his body heat and the general lack of ventilation inside the thing made it so he was more or less already good to go when it came to building up sweat, since he was getting none of the airflow that came with being near the top floor and surrounded by big-ass open windows.

To be honest, it was pretty surprising Yaoyorozu just went along with this plan like she did—he actually would've liked to take more time to coordinate and make a better plan with her, but this really was the best he could come up with in the time they had. Well, here's hoping she could keep the top floor barricaded enough the whole ten minutes.

Man, if only he was going up against literally anyone else. He'd much rather even take on that one scrub who could talk to animals like some princess out of a fairy tale. Ah, well, hopefully there wouldn't be too many hard feelings if everything went well for him.

Now, where was he?

Inhale...

Exhale...

Inhale...

Exhale...


After several minutes, four floors, and dozens of disarmed tripwire bells (seriously, how many of these did she even make?), Subaru and Hagakure were steadily making their way up through the building. However, any suspicions they had when it came to the enemy team getting the drop on them at some point proved to be more and more unfounded as the rooms in each floor showed themselves to be entirely empty, with the only significant sounds coming from the two of them.

To be honest, it was getting a bit eerie. What, was a ghost about to pop up around the corner?

(Okay, that was only partially a joke. But just in case...)

It wasn't exactly the most common sense-inspired action coming from Subaru, but hey—Invisible Providence looked just like telekinesis to everyone, so it wasn't like he was doing anything counter-productive, anyway.

After impulsively using the Authority to swing out and around the corner before retreating back into him, Subaru kept up the slow and steady climb to the top floor, but it was at the second where things finally started to get interesting, because after disarming yet another tripwire, he walked forward and peered into the large room that was completely identical to the other four before it...

...only to be met with what looked to be a giant, nuke-looking thing, standing innocently on the other side of the room.

Was...was he seeing this right? Surely this was too good to be true, right? Wait, who was he kidding? Of course it was.

This very clearly looked like the thing they were told to capture, but it was just sitting right there. There didn't look to be any obvious traps around the thing, and he could obviously ignore it and check the top floor first, but hey, he was already here—might as well just check it out. Nothing a bit of Full Cowl couldn't deal with, right?

"You go on ahead," he murmured to Hagakure. "I'm gonna check this out. There's obviously something going on here."

"Okay," he heard her reply behind him. "Just be careful."

"Yeah." Subaru waited a few moments, and after he was sure Hagakure was gone, he took a cautious step forward, carefully checking the corners of the doorway, and as he carefully made his way over to the fake bomb that totally wasn't suspicious at all, no sir, a sudden thought occurred to him.

Wait a second...

Clearing his throat, Subaru took a deep breath and called out into the room. "I know you're there, Katsuki."

As he expected, there was nothing but silence coming from the other end of the room, and just to check, he focused and tapped into Cor Leonis, but it obviously didn't work, considering the lack of a bright dot of light.

Eh, it was worth a shot. Would've been real helpful if it worked on Hagakure...

Subaru kept his gaze on the bomb, watching it for any sort of shifting or any other kind of movement, but it really didn't look like anything suspicious was going on, so why couldn't he just...walk up to it and try to capture it?

Eh, why not?

Subaru rushed towards his objective with Full Cowl, stopping right ahead of it. Tentatively, he reached a hand out, before finally placing it palm-flat against the large object's side, waiting to see if anything happened from this.

"That's, uh...not the right objective you're supposed to capture, Midoriya-shōnen," All Might's loud voice suddenly called out, causing Subaru to look at the speaker as he grew increasingly confused, because what else could he be touching? It wasn't as if Yaoyorozu...

Hold on...was he saying Yaoyorozu made this? The whole thing?! And coming out of her body?!

Subaru turned his attention back to what he was touching, and started eyeing it incredulously.

This had to be a trap, then—it couldn't possibly be anything else, he was sure. Did that mean she put some kind of glue on the thing to keep whoever touched it stuck? Wait, no, he just moved his hand, so that couldn't be it...

However, there really didn't look to be anything at all that seemed off to Subaru—nothing like any weird markings, holes, or anything that looked or felt out of place as he ran his all over the fake bomb, even knocking on it a couple times and getting the impression it extremely flimsy, like he could punch a hole right through if he wanted.

It really did look like nothing was out of place from the top and the sides, but what about the bottom?

Subaru crouched down until his face was close to what was the exhaust-looking part of a nuclear rocket, and wait, yeah—it was stretching down all the way down, but it was the hand-sized rectangular window that was probably not a design gimmick that started piquing his curiosity.

He leaned in to get a closer look to try to find out more, but it was when he noticed the sight of a gloved orange hand suddenly shooting out and facing towards him, and then—

"Flashbang."

—a bright light, his eyes closing on reflex, and then white, hot, burning, BURNING—!

(He couldn't see.)

Subaru let out a raw gasp of air as he quickly closed his eyes shut and his hands immediately moved, snaking their way under his sunglasses and pressing desperately against his eyelids, but while he could feel the base of his palms almost digging into them, it still didn't do much of anything to lessen the effect whatever just happened to him.

His immediate reaction was to take a step back. Then another. And another. And another. All he knew right now was that he needed to get away. Now. And so all he did was continue to move back and try to escape the danger that was in front of him.

Each step he took was taken faster than the one before it, and with the feeling of his boots erratically dragging along the floor, as if his feet were skipping on it like flat rocks on water, he soon stumbled over his feet colliding with each other. Before his body actually made contact with the ground, the suddenness of something slamming into his back knocked the wind out of him, and Subaru finally dropped unceremoniously, with his back sliding against the wall.

But where one would expect the sound of their own voice going hoarse, there was no other sound but endless ringing, drowning out everything else in the world.

(He couldn't hear.)

With the sudden sensation of his jaw moving downwards and a buzzing in his throat among all the PAIN, PAIN, PAIN—! in his eyes, he realized at some point that he had been, and was still trying to speak.

What the fuck was this...?! was probably what Subaru had probably been trying to say in those agonizing seconds, but beyond that, he just couldn't think right now. He had no ability to do anything beyond flailing about like a helpless animal caught in a trap.

(Which he essentially was, right about now.)

At some point, he was made aware of a foreign pair of hands placing themselves on his body, then his face, and Subaru just...reacted, for lack of a better word.

He sent Invisible Providence flying out in front of him and towards his assailant, and with the foreign contact being abruptly pulled away, Subaru knew his Authority made contact. He quickly moved to stand up while keeping one of his hands on the wall behind him as a crutch, but it didn't change the fact that he was still blinded and deafened.

Was that Katsuki just now? That had to be, right? Surely he didn't just send Hagakure flying across the room.

He clenched a fist for a few moments, before releasing it and taking a deep breath. Calm down, Subaru. It couldn't have been her—the hands had felt very rough, like they were covered with thick gloves, so it had to be Katsuki. Okay, so now, he just needed to figure out—

He was suddenly interrupted by the sensation of his body picking up what felt like a vibration from the floor (like a tremor, almost), and Subaru's breath hitched as he realized what was about to happen. Without immediately dove to the side with Full Cowl, letting out a grunt as he landed on the concrete.

How the hell was he supposed to fight when he couldn't even see or hear?!

As he scrambled to stand back up, another tremor made itself known to him, showing Katsuki had launched himself towards him again, and Subaru wasn't in any position to do anything else but dodge it again. He dove to the side once more with Full Cowl, but moving in the same direction quickly showed that wasn't the right decision, because he ended up colliding with something when he tried to land correctly.

He cried out in pain as the entire left side of his body came into contact with what was most likely the wall. It wasn't enough to hurt him significantly, but with half of him now aching, combined with almost half of his senses just failing to come back to him, a small part of himself started developing the urge to just give up.

(Surely he could just give Katsuki the win here, right? It wouldn't be the end of the world. There were other battles to win, other chances to show the class what he could do.)

(But Hagakure was relying on him to see this through, right? It wasn't just him versus Katsuki—he was part of a team, and he just couldn't disappoint his partner. He had to maintain his standing in All Might's eyes as his successor, and as the guy Uraraka Ochako could keep relying on.)

He really didn't want to disappoint even one of them, let alone both of them.

Subaru stood back up, and with a wince at the aching coming from his side, took a deep breath and activated Full Cowl once again. Just to check, he opened his eyes, but while the white-hot blindness was finally starting to subside, he was only able to make out the vaguest of blurry shapes, like the many gray pillars that made up the ceiling's support.

Dropping into a stance, he started to move forward, but because he could only rely on three out of five senses right now (one of which was absolutely useless here), he stuck his left hand out and let it drag against the wall, using it to try to guide his way through the room.

As he neared the end of the room, he turned the corner and kept running, and turned his head when he saw a giant blob of black flash by, straining his eyes as he tried to scan the room for any recognizable blond hair when he realized he couldn't tell where his opponent was.

Wait, where was Katsuki? He knew he sent him across the room, but where exactly? He still needed to figure what exactly he was—

In his growing confusion as he continued running, Subaru started to slow down, to get a better look at the area, but the sudden interruption of something slamming into his gut. He let out a cry as he was sent flying back the opposite way, and all he could do in that moment was tuck in his head as he landed and bounced across the ground.

Did he...predict where he was going...?

"Oh, come on..." Subaru groaned as he tried to sit up, letting out an involuntary hiss as he put a hand on his now-aching stomach. He opened his eyes, and by this point, his vision was mostly cleared up, but he didn't need it to be twenty-twenty to recognize the figure quickly running up to him.

When Katsuki stopped in front of him and crouched down, Subaru fully expected him to start gloating or something, but it wasn't until he saw a flash of white in his hand, that he realized he was about to get captured.

Shit—!

Time seemed to slow down as Katsuki unmistakably reached an arm out towards Subaru, who immediately started scrambling to get away. In less than a second, he was already cloaked in that familiar green lightning of Full Cowl, turning around and running towards the entrance of the room. He looked back and saw Katsuki rocketing towards him once again, and he crouched into a stance as he ran back towards him, rearing his fist back as he watched the other boy do the same.

Nah. You're still not winning this.

As much as the adults around him kept parading Subaru around as this child prodigy, he knew Katsuki was the real genius of the two of them. It was probably safe to say this was all one big distraction in order to keep him from getting to the real objective, but there was also one thing Katsuki didn't know about him: if he thought he was dealing with a Quirk, then the logical step forward was to use something entirely different, right?

As he closed in on Katsuki, Subaru immediately retracted his arm and dove left, narrowly dodging an Explosion-powered palm-strike. As he watched his friend's face look back at him, his eyes immediately hardened as he sent Invisible Providence out, its large fist catching under Katsuki's chin and uppercutting him a good distance away.

His hand moved towards the small black compartment attached to the side of his right thigh, but when his fingers came in contact with nothing but the empty space inside the hard polymer, his gaze snapped towards the area in alarm, and turned his attention to the one on his left, only to be met with the same result.

He didn't have the capture tape on him. He could've sworn he physically had it with him when he went in, so how could it have

"...been eliminated! Hero team, you have thirty seconds remaining!"

...

(Sorry, could you repeat that, All Might?)

The ringing must've finally gone away, he noted, but that paled in comparison to when he looked back towards Katsuki and was met with a very noticeable strip of white now wrapped around his neck.

"De kita! I got him, I got him, Midoriya-kun!"

Hagakure...?! But wasn't she...oh. She had to have been waiting to step in, then.

"Good job," he said quickly, jogging up to Katsuki and looking at the area behind him. "But we're almost out of time. Did you get to the top?"

"Yeah, and I disabled all the traps, but I can't get inside! There's something blocking the door!"

Shit. That'd be Yaoyorozu's doing, wasn't it? He didn't have the time to brute-force his way through this.

He looked up and started staring at the ceiling, and then the large window closest to where he was.

What if...?

"You won't make it in time. It'll take you too long to get through the concrete," Katsuki suddenly spoke up, but while that got Subaru to look at him, he ignored the other boy and neatly stepped around him, turning his attention back towards his partner.

"Hagakure. Take my hand," he said, holding it out to her.

"Eh? Why?"

"We're almost out of time!" he yelled, almost snapping at her. "Just do it!"

Without another word, Hagakure finally put her hand on top of Subaru's, and he immediately pulled her in until she was almost right up against him, then reached down to pick her up bridal-style.

"I'm gonna jump out the window and throw you to the top floor," he said to her. "You can yell at me later."

"Wait, whaAAAAAAA—!"

Subaru ran for the window at full speed with One for All: Full Cowl, and jumped as he neared the end of the wall, using the ledge as a jumping platform to gain a bit of height, before immediately turning around and throwing Hagakure with all his strength towards the window right above them.

With his partner still screaming at the top of her lungs, Subaru kept his gaze trained on the building for any sign of him missing and her hitting the wall, but with the rushing of wind behind him and the top floor's window getting smaller and smaller, he had to turn back around and focus on the fact he was now in free-fall and very quickly plummeting towards the ground.

Huh. This was just like during the entrance exams, too.

With Full Cowl still active, he kept his arms and legs pressed against his body, and continued leaning his body downwards until he was gliding towards the wall just in front of him. And just as he was about to collide with the concrete, he reached out a hand, but unlike what happened after he shut down the Zero-Pointer, he used Invisible Providence as a barrier between himself and the wall, eliminating any chance for scraping his arm that would've otherwise happened.

When he was just right above the ground, he pushed himself off the wall and landed feet first, then immediately tucking his body in and performing a shoulder roll to absorb the impact. Immediately after, he looked back up and stretched his arms out, in case he actually did miss and Hagakure was about to fall towards her death.

"Five...four...three...two—!"

All Might's countdown was suddenly cut off before it finished, and for a brief second, Subaru wondered why the man stopped, but then...

"Objective has been captured! THE HERO TEAM HAS WON!"


De kita (できた!) - roughly translates to "I did it!"

I forgot to include this last chapter, but Bakugō's costume is just the canon one minus the 'grenade gauntlets' and the mask, to reflect his 'more of a normal teenager' personality.

I was actually on the fence for weeks about whether or not Izuku!Subaru should win here, but him losing would've been like a weird hiccup that'd get in the way of how I want his character development to go.

I also might be incorrect about the way Cor Leonis works since I last read the web novel months ago, but it essentially requires consent from both sides to actually work (as in the recipient needs to actively consider themselves Subaru's ally). I'm not sure if this means in an objective sense since this MHA arc was just a training exercise, but I have plans to actually involve Subaru's Authorities in a way beyond just being a separate power system.

Anyway, get ready for USJ next chapter!