Chapter Thirty-Two
Relaxing, the cavalry battle now over, everyone gathered as Present Mic announced the winners. "In first place, once again, is Team Uraraka, soaring to victory once more! Second, with icy determination, is Team Todoroki! Third, shocking no one, or everyone, is Team Kaminari! Fourth, with their explosive performance, is Team Bakugo! And fifth, in an unexpected turn of events, is Team Bradley!"
"Bradley?" Mina asked, looking up at the screen.
"The team the mind controller was on," I told her. "He's calling them by their highest scoring member, like he did for Izuku and Uraraka." That said, given Shinso's tendencies, I very much doubted it was anything other than his team.
Bakugo was having a meltdown over with his teammates, for coming in fourth, while Endeavor's son was glaring at Deku, standing next to us. Oh, he noticed me noticing him, and he glared at me as well. Yes, you're upset, I thought, returning his gaze with a flat one of my own. No one cares.
"Now let's take an hour lunch-break before we start the afternoon festivities! See you soon!" Present Mic announced, then, seemingly forgetting to turn off his microphone, continued in a more subdued voice, "Hey, Eraserhead. Let's grab some food."
Aizawa replied, deadpan, "I'm taking a nap," and Present Mic gave a moue of disappointment.
"We should probably get a bite as well," I told the others, glancing down at Uraraka, who hadn't gotten up. "Um, is she going to be okay?"
"Floooooooor," the girl in question moaned, patting the torn-up arena like it was a friend she hadn't seen in quite a while.
"I'll, um, take her to see Recovery Girl," Deku said, as he reached down to try to help her up, but she pulled away.
" Noooo, don't waaanaaa,"she groaned.
Hesitating, Izuku told her, "Um, Ochaco, they need to clean up. We need to leave."
The girl, considering that, still somewhat out of it, reached for him.
"Princess carry, not what you did before," I suggested, and Deku, nodding, gathered the girl up in his arms.
"Awwww," Mina smiled. "That's adorable!"
Both teens blushed, but Uraraka's burying her head in Midoriya's shirt just made the entire thing cuter.
"Come on," I told the others. "Let's go drop off this gear, and follow Mic's example."
Mei, frowned, holding the metal tendril that Bakugo had damaged, stroking it like a distressed pet. "Do I have to?" she asked. "My Babies need some TLC, s tat!"
"Are you gonna use that in the next event?" I asked, as I considered relenting to her demands. "You've used it in the last two. I think we've displayed its capabilities."
The inventress considered that, making the counter-offer of, "Fine, but you're gonna help me fix it next week!"
Laughing, I turned to join the others heading for the exit. "Mei, I was going to do that anyways."
Walking back onto the field, which had been repaired, no sign of the previous damage we'd inflicted visible, I was recharged and ready to go.
Eating with the others had been a nice relaxing respite from the games. We'd swapped stories with Deku about what we'd done during the Cavalry Battle, the pair having just played a giant game of keep-away from a wide variety of powers.
"Kacchan almost got us, but Ochaco scared him off the first time she, um, lost her lunch," Midoriya had laughed awkwardly, the girl in question, mortified, had hid her face in her hands.
" I THOUGHT IT WAS AN ATTACK!" the explosion user, two tables over, had yelled, obviously eavesdropping, sitting back down and looking away with a "Hmph" when we all looked over at him. To his credit, seeing something unnatural in the middle of the fight and avoiding it was the smart thing to do, as for all he knew it might enhance gravity instead of negating it like her touch did, dropping him to the floor and making him abandon his headbands while he regrouped with his team.
"Right, so, it was hard, but we managed to pull it off!" Izuku had smiled, patting his teammate on the back. "And I never could've done it without my partner!"
What little I could see of the girls face then turned a deep red, and she had started to float, but her legs bounced off the table and she dropped back down.
Then, unfortunately, Minetta had swung by to try to convince the girls that there was going to be a 'cheer competition' that they needed to participate in, motioning to several girls in cheerleading outfits that were walking by.
On one hand, I had to admire the kid's balls, and then immediately hate myself for that horrible, horrible pun, but on the other it was very much not the kind of thing someone who was training to be a Hero should do. If it was just for class, I would've laughed and maybe gone along with it, but this was a nationally televised event.
While I didn't care about stretching the rules a little to win, examples of heroes doing that everywhere in this society, going out of my way to embarrass the girls that I'd be working with for the next several years just because I couldn't control my libido was something else entirely. And given that the girl's superhero outfits were all sexier than cheerleading outfits, being either skintight or just plain showing off skin, it was dumb even from that perspective.
Well, I supposed Jiro and Toru weren't wearing sexy outfits, as neither of them showed off much for opposite reasons, but I doubted Minetta was crushing on either of them.
"Those girls don't look like students," I'd pointed out, looking to Momo. "And you can check with any of our teachers if you want."
Minetta's scandalized reaction of "Dude, who's side are you on!" had given him away, causing him to turn and run as the girls at our table had glared at him, death in their eyes.
Well, except for Mei, who was tweaking her kinetic beam pistol, and hadn't noticed.
Now, though, we were congregating, getting ready for the fights to come.
"Get those foam fingers in the air, It's almost time for the next round!" Present Mic announced, whipping the crowd up. "But before that, good news to everyone who didn't make the finals! Since this is a Sports Festival, we've prepared some super fun side games everyone can participate in! We've even brought in cheerleaders from America to get your blood pumping!"
Why does it sound perverse when he says it like that? I wondered, glancing over at the cheerleaders in question. They were. . . okay, though as I looked I felt something brush against my Defenses, something about them trying to pull my attention.
Looking away, it dropped off, confirming my suspicious. There was some kind of Quirk at work. "Not your thing?" Mina, standing next to me, asked, curious.
I shrugged, glancing down her with a smirk, "I've seen better."
She blinked, processing the statement, before blushing a deep purple, and giving me a salacious wink. "How 'bout I give you a cheer of my own later!"
"Mina!" Momo, standing on her other side, gasped, scandalized.
My girlfriend froze, having, for a moment, forgotten where she was. She rallied though, turning around and slinging an arm around her ebony-haired friend, and smiled. "Oh, don't be like that," she told Yaoyorozu, though much quieter. "You can give him a cheer too? Or I could give you one. Oh! We both could! Or he could give you one of his own! Maybe in just short shorts and a vest? I'm sure he'd look absolutely delish!"
Thankfully we weren't grouped that tightly together, and almost everyone's attention was on the cheerleaders, so no-one else overheard her, or saw as Momo's face turned a brilliant scarlet, but she bit her lip, not saying a word.
That's my Mina, I thought, shaking my head and holding back a laugh. Charges into everything.
"Have fun with the side games, everyone," Present Mic continued, a tournament bracket appearing on the screens around the stadium. "After they're over, the sixteen students who are moving forward will be duking it out in a tournament style fighting competition!"
"Sixteen?" Yaoyorozu asked, not pulling away from Mina. "There should be eighteen!"
Her confusion was voiced by a good portion of the students, Miss Midnight taking up the explanation. "Due to the irregular teams, the lowest scoring team can only send two of theirs into the finals. I'd say the more the merrier, as I'd love to see more of your youthful spirit, but the others think you can have too much of a good thing. As such, you'll draw lots to see who progresses!"
"Don't bother," a grey-haired boy with odd markings around his eyes said. The one who could turn into steel, if I recalled correctly. "I shouldn't go on. I don't even remember the event, so I couldn't call myself a man if I did."
"Tetsu," the big-handed girl said, expression sorrowful, but he shook his head.
"I don't remember either, but that just means I'm gonna work twice as hard to kill it in the finals!" Toru argued, but the man shook his head once more, making his decision clear.
Looking to the other two, the business student, who had square features, possible half European, and wearing an eyepatch, just raised an eyebrow. "I'm of the same mind as the invisible girl."
Shinso started to say something, realized all eyes were on him, and remained silent.
Midnight looked disdainfully down at the man of steel. "That kind of talk is incredibly naïve. It turns me on!" she declared, with a whip of her flog, and I blinked at that. "You three, come here and stick your hands in my box!"
. . . she's not even trying now, is she? Shooting a look around, the others were similarly nonplussed, none of us sure how to respond to that.
The remaining members of Shinso's team stepped forward, drawing lots, Toru unfortunately not progressing. It would've been the height of irony if the mind-controller, after having effectively cheated to win, was eliminated by random chance, but that, sadly, didn't happen.
"Very good!" Miss Midnight stated, pointing her leather flog at the holographic screen that appeared beside her. "Take a look at the graphic, my dears. These are your opponents!"
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Looking over the matchups they. . . weren't bad. I could see some problems, but at least the first round should be doable. Mei vs Kirishima was a good matchup for her, though Midoriya was probably going to win whoever progressed. Mina would likely defeat Uraraka, and could defeat Sato, but I wasn't as confident of her chances against Todoroki, though I wouldn't count her out. Momo versus Ida was a bit worrying, but we'd see. I was against. . . yeah, I had no idea who that was. Given she was the only female name I didn't know, she was probably pull-apart girl, and that could get. . . tricky. However, from dealing with copy-boy, I knew what I did to one part, even removed, affected the others, or at least could be felt. Past that, I had no idea.
"All of you enjoy the pleasure of the recreational games before we start, if you wish," Miss Midnight invited us. "The sixteen finalists have the option of participating in those activities or sitting out to prepare for battle. I'm sure you all want to conserve your stamina."
"Who's Kirishima?" Mei asked, on my other side, and I pointed out the boy. "Oh! Ohhhh!" she giggled, evilly. "Oh he'll be perfect to show off some of our more. . . Energetic Babies!"
"After that you'll fight him," I directed, pointing to Izuku, who was staring at the bracket, deep in thought, "And then possibly me."
That made her pause, manic grin fading a little. "If. . . if that does happen, do you want me to give up?" The inventress asked. "I should've showed off everything I want to by then, and all the Hero types want to win it."
Her question was unexpected, and I considered it. That would make things easier on me but. . . "No," I said, shaking my head. "No, let's fight. I am still going to do my best to take you down, and want you to do the same. I'll either win, or lose, but no matter what we'll show off what we made."
Her grin came back, even wider. "You got it Partner! Now, I'm gonna go do some last minute adjustments!" I started to warn her, but she waved it away, "I know, Power Loader's limits, I won't go past them, but I'm gonna get really close now that I'm fighting people that can take a hit and keep on truckin'!"
"Have fun," I smiled. "You need a hand? I was going to look into the other things, but if you need-"
"Nah, I got this, partner," she laughed, patting me on the shoulder before turning and rushing off for the exit.
Shaking my head, I turned to my other two friends. "So, what are you doing? I've got the stamina to spare, you guys know that from our spars, but your fights aren't going to be easy. I can talk strategy with you if you want to," I offered.
The girls exchanged looks. "Um," Mina said. "We were thinking we might do that, but, just us."
" What?" I asked, not understanding.
"Well, we're gonna plan, but you go and have fun with the events," my girlfriend directed. "We'll be fine."
I froze. For a moment, just a moment, I didn't see her, I saw the other people I'd cared about. The ones I'd called friend. The ones who had, without rhyme or reason, decided they no longer cared about me. Some had just disappeared, not talking to me anymore, but quite a few had given statements all too similar to what my girlfriend had just voiced.
"Why?" I asked, suddenly feeling like previously steady ground had turned shaky underneath my feet. "I can help. I really can," I insisted.
Mina winced. "It's not like that," she told me, not elaborating.
"Not like what?" I questioned, confused and hurt, not understanding. "What's going on?"
"Just, just trust me," she requested, and I twitched, having heard those exact words far too many times. "I'll tell you after."
I felt anger start to burn, hating being kept in the dark like this, knowing that 'we'll talk later' always turned into 'we'll talk never', the suddenness of it taking me completely off guard. I'd trusted her with everything, what couldn't she trust me with? It was like a knife in the gut I'd never expected, from someone I'd never thought would do so. However, two things tamped that flame of possible betrayal down, and let me think.
The first were All Might's words. About the two of them needing to prove, if only to themselves, that they deserved to be heroes. That it wasn't as obvious to them as it was to me, the fact that they already were. I'd trained them, I'd worked with them, and, thinking about it, a majority of the last event had been them following my lead, so they might believe they were just riding my coattails. It was dumb, but then again I sometimes did less than intelligent things as well. Since the false belief involved me, however, I knew, intellectually, there wasn't anything I could do about it.
The second was much simpler.
Mina loved me.
That. . . I had to believe that it wouldn't fade, at least not in the sudden way my relationships always seemed fall apart, where things went from 'everything fine' to 'I'm gone', or worse, in a week or two. Where friends I'd had for months, or even years suddenly wanted nothing to do with me, and wouldn't even tell me why. She had the same Defenses I did, so she wasn't being controlled, but that didn't help my fears that I'd, once again, done something wrong, and ruined everything. That something had happened, and while she'd honestly loved me in the moment, she might not in the future. She wasn't forced to love me, she wasn't Stamped, so it was possible but. . . I had to trust her, or else what was the point of any of this?
With the red flags waving in my face, my instincts telling me something is wrong, I set them aside, and hesitantly nodded. "I am going to want an explanation," I warned her, the words coming slowly. "But. . . fine."
Sighing, she gave me a hug. "Kay, thanks, bye!" she said, dragging a conflicted looking Yaoyorozu away.
Turning towards the students that were starting to gather for the first recreational event, I let out a long breath. As long as I didn't use my electricity, I could bounce back from running myself ragged in fifteen minutes, and given I was the fourth fight, there was no need to hold back.
Striding over to them with purposeful steps, I turned my attention to the games instead. I already had a couple ideas for my fight, and anything more would have to wait until I saw who else I was fighting.
"Joining in on the fun, Kaminari?" Miss Midnight commented as I walked over. "Not worried about tiring yourself out?"
I just snorted, "I could go all night." Giving her a measuring look, her stance was sultry, but the look in her eyes was. . . concerned? "Low level regen," I offered. "I could probably outlast everyone here. You included."
"Is that so?" she smiled, though, again, it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Well then, I'll have to see if you make an. . . impression. I do so love watching the. . . vigor of youth. "
"Then keep your eyes on me, and you'll get all you want," I shot back, ready to go and do something so I wouldn't have time to worry that I'd just made a terrible mistake.
I . . . might have overdone it, I thought, with a bit of chagrin. Turns out, being able to turn into a super-strong mass of malleable energy was surprisingly versatile. Muscles twitching, I massaged my over-stressed arms as the last event, a king of the hill game, wrapped up. After the third event where I'd plowed over the competition, getting more than a few glares, I'd found. . . alternate challenges.
While I hadn't held any hill for that long I'd dethroned a dozen other people, dodging attacks and jumping into the pell-mell of mass combat with abandon, getting that much better every time I did so, my Martial Talent practically drinking in the experience I was getting in the not-war. Some of the other students had similarly decided to eschew the nominal game to try to focus on beating me, which I'd been just fine with, as it provided more of a challenge.
Now, though, it was over, and the students were slowly making their way off the field, a few limping as they did so. I only felt guilty over a couple of them. "And that brings an end to our last recreational activity! Let's all congratulate the winner, Ami Mizuno from class 1-D!"
The hydrokinetic had shrouded the top of her hill with thick mist, and pushed off any that got close. Her main weakness, as far as I could tell, was that she couldn't create water, only control it, and not fine enough to extract it from the air or the like. However, she'd picked a hill with a water hazard, and had been a cast iron bitch to dislodge. I had managed to do so, before moving to another target, and she'd turned around and retaken her position in seconds, pre-emptively throwing up defenses whenever I got close. Even if I'd been willing to use my stores of electricity to take her down, she didn't need to physically touch the water, so she could've just absorbed anything I threw her way.
I nodded to the blue haired girl as she exhaustedly headed for the exit. She deserved that win.
"So," I said, meandering over to Miss Midnight my breathing already back to its normal, steady pattern. "How do I rate?"
"Hmmm," the R-rated Heroine hummed in appreciation, giving me a long look over. "I'd say you need a much more personal and in-depth assessment of just where your limits lie."
"I'd take you up on that offer, but I feel my girlfriend might object," I smiled, enjoying the meaningless banter. It was something I'd been sorely lacking before I got here, everyone either mistaking what I said as me being serious, or my being in a position where I was serious, and no one believed me.
" Pity," she purred, reaching out to run a hand down my arm, nails digging into my skin as she pushed me for the door, "Now go head up to your seat. The real show is about to start. Don't disappoint me."
Smiling, I shook my head, and started to walk away, "I very much doubt I'll do so."
From the other end of the field, Thirteen was already starting to suck up the 'hills' with her Quirk to clear the field. Part of me wanted to stay and watch, hoping to even get a tiny fraction of that ability, but from what I could tell the time it took me to start manifesting powers ways measured in hours if not days of constant exposure. Even with the work I'd done with Momo, I hadn't gotten that odd feeling of potential that indicated a new, untapped ability.
Hitting up a vending machine for a quick snack and a drink, I meandered up to the box reserved for our class, getting a few stares as I entered. "Dude. What the hell," Jiro asked, deadpan. Shooting her a questioning look she added, "You beat a dude with another dude. Who does that?"
"Me, apparently," I commented, taking a seat. Looking around, neither Momo nor Mina were anywhere to be seen. Down in the arena, Thirteen was already done, Power Loader using some machine to replant the grass on the field, and Cementoss, dragging a large plastic hose, set it up near the middle and started controlling the concrete slurry it spewed, forming it into the arena we'd eventually fight on.
"Besides," I added after a moment, "The first guy wasn't that big, and they shouldn't've tried to jump me if they didn't want me to respond in kind."
"Um, dude, you okay?" Kirishima asked after a quiet moment. "It's just. . . you were kinda intense. It was manly, but, like, yeah."
Looking up, I noticed several of my classmates staring at me. "Just keeping busy before the fights that count," I shrugged. It wasn't exactly a lie.
Before anyone else could pry, Mina and Momo walked in, the former giving me a smile as she cheered "Denki!", quickly moving over to sit down next to me. Handing me a canned coffee, almost as a peace offering, she asked, "How were the games?"
"He got really into them, ribbit," Asui offered sarcastically, as Yaoyorozu joined us, dithering for a moment before taking the seat on my other side.
"Glad to hear it," the creationist smiled, missing the subtext.
I looked between the two of them. "And was your time. . . productive?"
"It was," Momo nodded, but said no more.
Present Mic's voice broke the awkward silence between the three of us, as our classmates chatted. "Thank you Cementoss! Hey sports fans, are ya ready!?"
The crowd cheered in response, starting to get hyped up once more.
"After all the action you've already witnessed, it's time for the real battles to begin! Can ya feel the excitement!?" the pro hero continued, setting the stage. "Our competitors are on their own now. Sometimes heroes have only themselves to rely on. Heart. Skill. Strength. Wisdom. Courage. They'll have to use all of these things to rise to the top!"
I tuned him out a little as I took a deep breath, considering his words. On one hand, they were superficially true, heroes were very individualistic, on the other, they couldn't be more wrong. Yes, on the surface there were going to be times we had no backup, but, on a deeper level, we were all the experiences we've had up to that point. Not quite 'no man is an island', but also not quite 'I stand on the shoulders of giants'. I was strong on my own, but without Mina, Momo, Mei, All Might, and especially my father to help me, I likely wouldn't be half as good as I was now.
Yes, I had my previous lifetime's experience, but the longer I spent here, in this bright, optimistic, and over-the-top world, the more my previous life felt like a dream, a nightmare, still fresh, giving me reactions that didn't quite fit the waking world. Or, some unpleasant part of me thought, as I glanced at Mina, this place is exactly the same, and you're just deluding yourself.
I shoved that thought to the back of my mind. I had Mina, I did, and that was more then I ever had back home. And, if something happened. . . and once again the people I trusted turned on me, no Stamp to enforce their loyalty, I could leave. I didn't want to. This place was. . . good in a way that was hard to put into words, but I was a mere handful of points away from jumping dimensions.
Old fears warred with new experiences, and I let them, not weighing in. It would be easy, so easy, to assume that the patterns of the past would repeat here, but they hadn't, not once, not really. That said, I still remembered, only a few years ago, coming home, after a bad breakup, to discover the room I was promised I could always return to had been given to another, and instead I was provided a leaky air mattress, in the basement, in the middle of winter, with the mice and the spiders, not that that either group of pests lasted very long once I started cleaning things up and dealing with the things that bit me while I tried to sleep.
It was borderline Dickensian, but it was par for the course with what my life was, which was what, in a way, made this entire place so. . . different. People didn't act the way they did here, but I wasn't at home, I was in a world of superheroes. And more than that, they actually acted like it. Yes, there was ugliness, like pretty much everything about Endeavor, and the way that Deku had been treated before All Might took him under his wing, but, on the other hand, there were people like All Might.
My parents, Denki's parents, were two of those people, and a decade and a half of memories, even if they still had the mental separation of not mine to prevent personality bleed, were still a decade and a half worth of evidence that things were better here.
I wondered, as I sometimes did, what would've happened if I'd gone with that instinctual need for power with which to control my life, to keep myself from being hurt again. That desire had almost pushed me into going to a more dangerous world, just to get the abilities and defenses I craved, all to avoid feeling weak, but. . . I was alright here. Assuming my fears were unfounded, of course, but the mere fact that I had someone, at least one person that actually loved me, suggested they were.
As Present Mic announced the two first competitors, Izuku and the boy with the dragon scales, I subtly reached over and grabbed Mina's hand. She glanced at me, smiled, and held mine back.
Together, we both turned to watch the first match.
AN: As usual, the next three chapters are up on !