Chapter Sixteen

"Here we are, sports fans," crowed Present Mic. "We've got another match between sister classes. Always a great day to see rivalry spur a good match!"

"I hear that, Mic," Kaminari said. "Though I gotta admit, most of Class B from my own days kept in close touch with ours. Good people, great heroes, awesome friends and acquaintances! Here's hoping the newest Classes A and B can be so close."

"We can only hope so," Mic replied warmly. "In one corner, we've got a guy whose power can really take a bite outta life. And pretty much anything else. From Class B, Musha Tamashiro!"

Eri swallowed thickly and kept her hands on her hips as she examined Tamashiro from as close as she had ever been to him. His large, angular eyes were intense, the barest hint of shark-like teeth in his grin. He unfolded his arms long enough to brush a hand through his slicked-back, pale hair before folding them again.

"And in the other corner, we have a powerhouse princess who's blazed her way through the sports fest on skill and the faintest whisper of her Quirk. The heart of Class A, Eri Togata!"

"Just FYI," Tamashiro said, "I don't care about the whole Class A versus Class B thing that pops up sometimes." His grin grew toothier. "When I beat you, Eri Togata, it'll be out of respect for another future hero."

"You know me?" Eri asked, breathing deeply through her nose to soothe her nerves.

"Ah, su-u-ure," he said with a shrug, the word drawn out and over-the-top casual. "The princess of UA, adopted as Lemillion's little sis and trained by the staff and students." He snorted, and somehow it wasn't as annoying as Yayoi would be. "Other people might be jealous," he added seriously, "but I know what I've got. I know I can do good in the world. And I figure you can do some damn good yourself."

"Uh, thanks," Eri said. "I think."

"So nothing personal," Tamashiro said. "Right?"

"Sure," Eri replied. "Nothing personal."

"Fighters ready?" Lady Nagant asked. With each of them nodding, she fired a blank and shouted, "Fight!"

Eri's mind had been working overtime as she neared this match, using every scrap of insight and experience she'd gained from anticipation training with her brother, honed by practice with her friends and more recently with her classmates, to determine what Tamashiro would do as he opened the match. As best she could figure, he was a lot like Kota in that he had a very powerful, versatile Quirk that he tended to heavily rely on. So it stood to reason that he would open up with a barrage of those balls sent at high speed.

It took Tamashiro only a moment to swing his arms and produce the chomping balls from his hands like a farmer casting seeds, the balls swelling in seconds into cannonball-sized balls smaller than he'd used before. With a flick of his finger, he sent one racing toward her head.

But Eri had moved out of the way before he'd even unleashed his Quirk, and the ball flew past her so fast that the wind blew her hair backwards. And she hadn't been idle with her Quirk, either. Like a water spigot, her power was easier to power up after an initial turn of the imaginary dial, and Eri had allowed a trickle of energy to begin flowing from her horn, the excess energy shed like motes of light. With her power flowing at the barest hint like this, she could up the force in an instant.

And for her plan to work, she would need to.

Her Quirk didn't necessarily have to Rewind another power into complete dormancy. It was possible for a quick jolt of its mysterious energy to destabilize a Quirk into something like confusion, fighting itself to stay awake and therein make it unusable for a few precious seconds. All it would take was a brush of her finger or even her hair and she could do that, leaving Tamashiro vulnerable for just long enough for her to take him down while saving as much of her stored power as she could.

As she was thinking this over, her body was in motion. She was juking, bobbing, and weaving between the chomper balls sent soaring her way, even flipping where she had to to avoid them. It seemed he was unwilling to fire off more than one or two at a time, but he wasn't above having them come back at her from behind as a sneak attack. It was only as she drew close that he changed his tactics and caught her dangerously off-guard.

He fired another one towards her, but not at her — at the ground. The cement shattered and sent her stumbling, an easier target. He grinned and sent a final chomper flying for her, and Eri's reflexes kicked in without her consent to try and swat the ball out of the air, her subconscious failing to recognize that it was probably harder than steel and would break her hand.

It was a belated shock, then, that her hand didn't break. The ball did. Or rather, it disappeared.

Both contestants halted in their tracks, processing what they had just seen. "What the hell?" Tamashiro asked aloud.

Eri was asking the same thing in the privacy of her mind, and it took a few seconds to reach a conclusion. The chompers all seemed to act on some level of their own accord, gnashing at the air, bobbing up and down, and grinning by themselves. While not independent, they were probably somewhere between alive and not. Kind of like Dark Shadow or Mr. Rody Soul's Pino whom Deku had told her about.

And if they were in any way alive, then Rewind could affect them in some way. Heck, as they were less than a minute old, it wouldn't even take much of her store of power.

God, Quirks were weird.

Eri smiled brightly, the expression almost frightening, and changed her course to charge straight for Tamashiro. When he sent some of his balls at her, she reached out with her Rewind power flowing and they snapped into nothingness at her touch before she had so much as felt the pressure. The wind from their speedy flight left more impact than the balls themselves.

"Shit!" Tamashiro snapped, jerking back out of her way as Eri reached for him, eyes wide with panic. He threw down two of his chompers that swelled to a foot in diameter each, both of them opening their mouths wide for him to step into them and then lifting him high into the air.

Eri skidded to a halt and looked up, mind whirling. Some might have called fleeing a cowardly move, but she called it pragmatic. As he so clearly relied on and held great confidence in his Quirk, the sight of someone's power completely nullifying it was probably a shock that he needed to process. Her thoughts continued to tumble as the rest of his balls rose and joined him in the air, orbiting around him like moons. Eri hummed as she thought about how his Quirk must affect him, as every Quirk had some kind of physical or mental cost for its use.

Did the balls come from his body and physically weaken him the more he made? Was there mental strain in directing them, or even keeping them around? What about making them bigger, did that add more strain? If so, he may have a limit on how long this match could last.

"Okay, okay," Tamashiro called from high above. "First, that Quirk of yours makes zero sense." He said it with a strained grin, clearly trying to break the tension. "So how about this? I set up platforms of my binging balls, facedown so you don't have to worry about chomping, and we take this to the air."

Eri looked blankly up at him. This was obviously a trap. Then he opened his hands and spread them to produce more chompers that floated into a rough set of hovering stairs inching their way up to him, their mouths facing downward as promised. She thought furiously for a few seconds before sighing.

She had little choice in that matter. So she cut off Rewind and mounted the first floating step carefully before lunging up, bounding like a doe into the air. Within seconds she was nearing the range that she could jump at him, and her plan unfolded clearly in her mind. As she drew close, he dropped quickly back to the ground and stepped off his chompers, all of them except for the one she was perched on soaring back to him and returning to his palms to shrink and disappear into the skin.

"Sorry about this, Togata," he said, and he actually did look sorry. "But this is checkmate. You can't use your Quirk or your platform will disappear. Do that or jump and you'll hit the ground hard. Probably break something." He ground his teeth and averted his eyes, running his hand back through his hair in a gesture of self-loathing. "So just surrender. Please."

Eri wanted to be angry. At Tamashiro, at herself, at her own Quirk … at anyone! But she couldn't bring herself to do it. In the words of her beloved Uncle Aizawa, it wouldn't be rational. Tamashiro was being tactical instead of powering his way through it, which was actually quite admirable, especially at their age. She had known it was some kind of trap and had taken the obvious route. And her Quirk had proven more effective in this match than she could have ever expected.

But surrender without some kind of fight was not part of her nature. Such a response had been forced upon her as a child, but the hope that Mirio and Izuku and all of the others in her huge extended family had reignited that facet of her being and long since burned away the learned response that suppressed it.

And then a crazy idea came to mind. It was a risky gamble, but she had a good feeling about it. And it would certainly leave an impression on everyone watching.

With a deep breath, she almost delicately stepped off the platform … and plunged down into open air.

"What the hell?!" Tamashiro shouted in pure, unfiltered shock. He cast chompers up at her with frantic energy, the black spheres matching her speed and swooping under her arms and feet to catch her in the seconds before she could hit the ground. As she slowed to a stop mere inches from the concrete, the balls rotated to press their teeth to her limbs, a silent message that they could take bites out of her in an instant.

Eri lifted her gaze from the ground to Tamashiro, who was still trembling with shock. "What the hell?" he asked, his voice strained as he clutched at his hair, ruffling the style. "You crazy bitch, what the hell?"

"I surrender," Eri said, clearly and calmly, her eyes bright.

"Eri Togata has surrendered," Lady Nagant called, her voice tight with her own shock at Eri's maneuver. "Tamashiro moves on to the semi-finals!"

Eri shifted and slipped from the hold of the chompers to settle upon the concrete ground, brushing her hair back from her face. The spheres returned to Tamashiro and he took hold of them as they shrunk, presumably reabsorbing into him. "Seriously, Togata," he said, "what the freakin' hell?"

"I wanted to test your spirit," Eri explained. "It's a controlled match and Recovery Girl would have fixed me up." Her eyes were twinkling with mischief. "I wanted to see how you would react to someone who was a schoolmate, from a rival class, and an in-the-moment enemy when they put themselves in danger." Feeling cheeky, she ruffled his hair further. "You're going to be a great hero one day, Tamashiro," she said sweetly and then walked away.

Tamashiro blinked a few times, placing his hand on his hair where her phantom touch lingered. A blush rose high on his cheeks from the touch of a beautiful girl, but his mind was still turning over what she had done at the end of their match. Her back had been to the wall … and she'd decided to test his heroism?

"What … the … hell?" he wheezed.

The rumors were true. Class A was crazy!

"Eri," Katsuma said as she rejoined them from her match, his eyes shining with admiration, "that was amazing."

"The fighting or the test of character?" Eri asked.

"Both," Katsuma said, smiling widely, and Eri felt pink bloom across her cheeks.

"Nice work," Kota said blandly, his head tilted down to hide his expression under his cap. He was blushing, too. Eri smiled at his familiar attitude and knew he meant it just as much as Katsuma had.

"Satsuki's up next, right?" she asked, looking up at one of the screens to check.

"It looks like they're just coming out," Kota said, nodding down into the arena.

"And we're back, ladies and gents, with the last of the quarter finals," Kaminari declared over the intercom. "Gotta ask, Mic, does it ever get old?"

"Seeing these kids give it their all for honor and admiration?" Mic asked rhetorically, his tone wistful. "Nah, kid, it doesn't."

"Hey! I'm twenty-four, dude!"

"And we've got two lovely ladies from Class A in the corners," Mic said. "In one corner, the girl who's made leaps and bounds through this tournament. And she's given a taste how dangerous frogs can be. Satsuki Asui!" Down in the ring, Satsuki lifted a hand in a wave to the crowd.

"And in the other corner," Kaminari said, "we've got the spider girl with plenty of tricks up her silky sleeve. She'll definitely be ready for any sticky situations, 'cause she'll probably be making them. Kashikoi Joren!"

Joren blinked all eight of her eyes as she settled her spider legs in a wide stance, the chitinous joints faintly clicking. Satsuki glanced over the shining black limbs, the front legs larger than the rest and all of them ending in vicious points. Joren balanced easily on them and gave a confident smile.

"Before we begin, can I ask you something?" Joren said.

"Sure," Satsuki replied, loosening her own limbs in preparation.

"Could you give my regards to your sister?" she asked, the smile fading into something more muted and serious. "I have nothing but respect for a hero who could so inspire a younger sibling."

Satsuki blinked and tilted her head at such an unexpected comment. Joren shook her head lightly and smiled again, this time bearing her pointed teeth.

"Fighters ready?" Lady Nagant asked. "Fight!"

In perfect unison, both girls curled their legs and leapt with all of the power of their animal-like Quirks. Joren's leap was low, but carried her far. Satsuki's was a higher arc that brought her above Joren, and she lashed out with her tongue to snag onto Joren's spider abdomen, then hauled herself down feet-first. Joren gasped at the force of Satsuki's kick that drove her into the ground before Satsuki kicked off of her and landed several feet away.

"Nice one," Joren groaned and straightened up. She reared onto her back six legs and her longer front legs began shifting. Satsuki looked closer and saw silvery flashes of webbing between them, and in a matter of moments Joren was holding a large net of sticky webbing. Passing the net to her human hands, she raced forward with that surprising spidery speed and swung the outstretched net at her.

Satsuki had only a second to react and bent backward at the knees to let the silken net pass over her — and then Joren, too — shifting to her back and kicking out from below at Joren's unprotected midsection with both feet in another devastating impact. Joren grunted as the force of it knocked the wind from her and sent her sprawling. In a motion almost too quick to see, she was back on her feet, but looking a little green.

"Your sister's move?" she grunted, holding her belly.

"Something like that," Satsuki replied with a shrug. Joren nodded sagely before hissing through her teeth and rushing forward, her two front legs slashing like blades. Satsuki leapt back, again caught off guard by how fast Joren could be, and thought over how to proceed.

Her cheeks swelled and she fired her tongue, which Joren caught with her bare hand in an impressive display of reflexes. Satsuki gagged as she tasted something slick and realized that, while her front legs had been busy, Joren had coated her hand in a cocoon of webbing like a glove. She tugged and Satsuki barely had time to adhere to the ground to keep from losing her feet. She grunted as Joren pulled harder … and then chirped a froggy croak and let herself loose to be pulled bodily towards Joren.

Joren narrowed her eyes and reared on her back six legs to once more slash with her front two, but Satsuki spun her body and swung her hands to intercept the slashes … with slashes of her own. Joren yelped in surprise as she actually felt pain from the contact and she let go of Satsuki's tongue, crouching to avoid Satsuki's flying kick.

Flowing backward, Joren examined her legs and found shallow grooves in the exoskeleton. She blinked at that and looked up to find Satsuki crouched low, her arms spread and hands flexed like claws … and her fingers bleeding and tipped with actual claws.

Wait, what?

Up in the stands, Eri was watching with a mix of delight and concern. "Suki's finally shown her secret weapon," she said.

"She has claws?" Katsuma gasped, eyes wide. "How?"

"Ever heard of the hairy frog?" Kota asked. "Also known as the wolverine frog?" Katsuma shook his head without taking his eyes from the match, which had resumed with melee fighting between Satsuki and her clawed hands against Joren's legs.

"They live in Central Africa," Kota said. "They can break their finger bones to produce claws from their fingertips as weapons." He swallowed thickly. "Satsuki can do something a lot like that, except her bone claws are an inch long and razor sharp."

"Wait, so if they come from her bones-?" Katsuma began to ask.

"Yes," Eri cut him off. "It hurts every time she brings them out. And it takes a while for them to retract as she relaxes and the skin heals back over them. It's kind of a last resort."

Back in the ring, Satsuki slipped under Joren's slash and bound high to get some space, mind whirling. Joren was a good short-range fighter with those pointed arachnid legs, and Satsuki had a sinking feeling that she had more stamina than she'd let on. Not to mention she was very strong, her lower body's exoskeleton providing exceptional support bolstered by her eight legs, while her upper body was quite fit, too. It was even possible that her upper body was outright superhuman. There had been weirder Quirk effects, after all.

While she had been thinking, Joren revealed her next gambit. From her spinneret, she produced a length of silk cord that she looped into a lariat and sent lashing at Satsuki while the froggy girl was still somewhat vulnerable in the air. Satsuki curled herself into a ball to avoid the lasso, knowing full-well that spider silk was proportionately stronger than steel cable and that Joren's would likely be sticky as well.

She landed lightly on all fours, perched on her fingers and toes, and bound forward at an angle before leaping in another direction as she landed, forming a zigzag pattern that made it difficult to pin her down.

"Tricky little toad, aren't you?" Joren asked sardonically, preparing herself for another melee skirmish.

"That's not nice calling me a toad," Satsuki replied with a tiny grin, then jumping into a spinning kick at Joren's upper body that she had to block with her arms. So distracted, she was open to Satsuki lashing out with a straight shot of her tongue, the strike connecting with more force than a full-body punch. As Joren reeled from the hit, Satsuki made one last jump, flipping over her and landing on Joren's spider back. Secured with her natural adhesion, Satsuki wrapped one arm from behind around Joren's belly and the other across her neck in a choke hold.

Joren struggled, clawing with her human hands at Satsuki's grip, but she couldn't hold out for long as her oxygen ran out and, in a matter of seconds, she was left to collapse to her spidery knees and then flat to the ground, unconscious.

"Joren has been knocked out," Lady Nagant declared. "Asui moves on to the semi finals."

As before, there would be a twenty minute break between the end of the quarter finals and the start of the semi-finals. This left plenty of time for the four friends, with Kota and Katsuma healed up and back on their feet, to find a somewhat secluded hallway within the arena close to the participant's seating.

"So, how are you feeling about facing Tategami, Kota?" Eri asked brightly.

"Meh," he shrugged, "I'll be fine." He grinned toothily in the Bakugo-like way meant to disturb others if his scowl didn't work. "I'm gonna win this thing."

"Yep, he's nervous," Satsuki said casually.

"What?" Kota asked. "No, I'm not!"

"Hey, it's okay," Katsuma said with a smile. "She's a tough opponent. Powerful Quirk, good tactical mind." He looked out toward the inner ring. "I wouldn't be surprised if she wins this thing."

"Dude, the hell?" Kota demanded. "What happened to 'bros before hoes'?"

It got really quiet as Eri and Satsuki fixed him with level, unimpressed stares. Katsuma was looking at him, too, though his eyes were shining.

"…You consider me a bro?" he asked, his throat tight.

"Yeah, sure," he replied, his usual grump facade returning and he crossed his arms, lowering his head to hide his eyes beneath the bill of his horned cap. "Whatever."

"Like I said when we first went to the USJ," Satsuki commented. "Don't let him fool you, Katsuma."

"What about you, Suki?" Eri asked. "You're up against Tamashiro. Any ideas on how you'll take him down?"

"A few," Satsuki said evasively. "A lot of it depends on how willing he is to cause harm."

"You mean Eri's little stunt wasn't evidence enough?" Kota commented, not looking up. "The dude's a softie and a blowhard."

"Kind of like you," Eri giggled. Katsuma and Satsuki laughed at that, and Kota lifted his head enough to glare hard at them to shut them up. Though he noticeably did not do so towards Eri, who had made the actual comment.

"Any idea who's watching this thing?" Katsuma said, trying to redirect the conversation.

"My sister and family are, with Uncle Fumi," Satsuki said.

"You have an uncle?" Katsuma said with interest.

"More like a future brother-in-law," Eri chimed in. "Fumi as in Fumikage Tokoyami."

"Oh! Tsukuyomi!" Katsuma said, eyes bright. "Now I remember! They've been dating for a long time, huh?"

"Pretty sure the Pussycats are part of security," Kota said. Then he scoffed and added, "If Aunt Shino and Aizawa aren't in a closet somewhere."

"Kota!" Eri said scoldingly, blushing pink. "Ms. Shino and Uncle Aizawa are more professional than that!"

"So they're saving it for tonight?" Satsuki asked wryly. Eri blanched at the thought.

"Wait, hold on," Katsuma said, brows furrowed in thought as he looked between Eri and Kota. "If your aunt," he pointed at Kota, "is married to your uncle," he then pointed to Eri, "does that make you guys cousins?"

"No!" Kota thundered, eyes blazing, and everyone jumped at the sudden volume. Katsuma looked a bit shaken, while Eri and Satsuki were looking at him with mixes of confusion and concern. "No way in hell," Kota said, more quietly, his cheeks burning. "Aizawa's an honorary uncle, at best. Eri and I are unrelated friends."

Satsuki sighed through her nose and looked at Eri, who looked away from her best friend, cheeks pink.

"Yeah," she said, mustering up some good cheer and bumping Kota's shoulder. "He's my horn-buddy."

Katsuma chuckled, glancing between Eri's natural horn and Kota's cap. "That's really cute," he commented.

"It's not cute, it's metal," Kota said.

"And Suki's my girl-buddy," Eri said, eliciting a happy chirp-croak from Satsuki.

"That's really nice," Katsuma said, though he seemed a little crestfallen.

"You okay?" Eri asked.

"Just thinking," Katsuma said. All three of them were looking at him now and he blushed with a wince. "I, uh, never took the time to have friends growing up." He shifted in place. "Kinda wishing I'd had someone to share a fun nickname with."

"It's not too late," Eri said, taking his hand in hers and lifting it to eye level. "Right …?" Her eyes were sparkling. "Healing buddy?"

Katsuma seemed frozen in muted shock for a moment before lip began to tremble. He brushed the back of his arm against his eyes to get rid of the tears. "R-Right," he said tightly.

Up in the faculty seating, Ippan was having the time of her life.

In keeping with her demure demeanor, Ippan had never been a particularly invested fan of the UA sports festival. Sure, she followed it casually as she grew up along with the rest of the nation, but she had not been as die-hard a fan as many of her peers.

Becoming an employee of UA and getting to know many of the students had started a change in her as she rooted for each and every one of them. This change had only accelerated as she fell in love with a hero, the man sitting next to her with their fingers woven.

Nowadays, you couldn't find someone more invested in the sports festival unless you dug into obsessive fans.

"Having fun?" Mezo asked amusedly.

"Yes," Ippan giggled, her cheeks flushed and voice hoarse from all of her shouting and cheering. She'd been cheering as loudly as any of the spectators today and was proud of it. But she knew her throat would be killing her tomorrow. Maybe she'd ask Recovery Girl for a small favor after everything wrapped up.

Mezo Shoji — the famed hero Tentacole — smiled underneath his mask. Though not a full-time instructor at UA or even a part-timer like All Might or Midoriya, he was a frequent enough guest instructor on intelligence gathering and heteromorph relations that Nezu had offered him a spot in the faculty seating. Dressed in a leather poncho over a sleeveless shirt, with cargo pants and sturdy boots, as well as his favored sky-blue face mask, he blended in as much as someone who looked like him could. Next to his longtime girlfriend, a seven-foot-tall teal fox woman dressed in a flannel shirt and denim pants that somehow perfectly hugged her curves, he always felt wonderfully normal.

Mezo couldn't help but think of little Eri, who was not so little anymore, as well as Kota and Satsuki. He smiled again under his mask at the thought that these kids had such a strong support network, even here at the festival. He formed an eye on one of his tentacle tips and glanced backward and up at Midoriya, who was scribbling away in one on his trademark notebooks — as it happened, these had unwittingly made him an official endorser of the Campos brand — and thought of how he was their biggest supporter. As he was to all of the students.

Then his thoughts turned to Katsuma. Oh yes, he remembered the Shimano siblings quite well. He'd taken laser blasts to the back and limbs hurrying them to safety from Nine, and Katsuma's healing Quirk had served well to save his life in return.

"This batch of kids has a lot of potential," he said thoughtfully.

"They'll do amazing things," Ippan said happily.

"You say that every year," Mezo commented. "The same words, verbatim."

"And I haven't been wrong yet," Ippan said, eyes glittering.

The quarter-finals are over, and on to the semi-finals!

*I've begun using the term "chomper" to refer to Tamashiro's binging balls out of convenience, mostly because I would feel uncomfortable writing "balls" so many times. Besides, chompers is a real term meaning teeth, so it works out.

*The idea of Eri's Quirk working on semi-living creations from Quirks hit me weeks ago and I couldn't *not* put it in the match between her and Tamashiro. It just changed the game too well. Plus, Rewind is weird enough in canon that I figure it kind of makes sense.

*The short running gag of Tamashiro shouting "What the hell?" happened almost by accident. I was editing and saw I had done that by accident, and decided to add to it because I thought it was funny.

*Satsuki's claws are what I have been building up to as a unique trait from her family's Quirks. Hairy frogs are very much real, and they are actually called "Wolverine" frogs because of their bone claws in clear homage to the Marvel Comics character.

*As I was writing the kids' dialogue, I just kind of let my mind wander. Any thought, no matter how strange, went in. Kind of like an actual conversation with myself. It was really fun and I hope it offered some laughs.

*Ippan and Shoji were not exactly planned to appear here, but I wanted some padding and Shojippan is a ship that I have essentially made up, one close to my heart. (I've got a series about them if anyone is interested.) It also allowed me to reference "Heroes Rising" and Shoji's unsung heroism in being the last line of defense for the Shimano kids. I am really hoping to have a chance to have him and Katsuma reunite soon.

As always, I hope it was a fun read! Leave a review if you liked it! And may your own inspirations flow freely!