Chapter Eighteen: Acceleration
Itsuka looked on as Todoroki was hauled off the field in a stretcher. Midoriya followed sedately, unbothered by the commotion left by the match's conclusion, though that little tidbit was largely unimportant compared to the fact that all of her plans for her clash with Todoroki had officially gone out the window in a ball of flames.
Setsuna patted her on the back. "Good luck, Prez."
[IB]
It takes a titanic force of will for Ochako to keep her nerves as each match passes, inching closer to her next time on the field. Her earlier success should have helped inure her to the anxiety threatening to swallow her, but the rest of the bracket was going to be brutal no matter what.
Speaking of which, wind buffeted the stands, sweeping well up to the highest risers according to Present Mic. Yoarashi was a beast with his Quirk. He was supposed to have been the leading recommended student. As much as everyone said a Quirk wasn't everything, Ochako could believe that Yoarashi was at least on par Izuku, Todoroki, and Kendo in force. Loud as he is, he's not an idiot.
In some ways, his movements and postures resemble Izuku's, though that might just be Ochako's inexperience speaking.
Mei does a fantastic job against. but the forces Yoarashi is able to bring to the field, all the gadgets, tactics, and clever maneuvers in not enough. Exactly one minute after the match began, Mei is down half her gear and forced to make a rough landing out of the ring. Still smiling, she bows to the audience and the struts off the field, head held high.
Ochako gripped the fabric of her sports uniform, knuckles turning white. That means if she wins this match, that's what she is going to be facing.
Before long, she's called out, and Ochako gulps down whatever anxieties she can and focuses on the fight in front of her.
"Representing class 1-A, the adorable gravity girl from the Heroics department, Ochako Uraraka! And facing against her is the Support Department's last stand, the eagle-eyed sharpshooter, 1-H's Sho Hajime! Will engineering conquer the stars? Or will gravity prevail in this battle?"
Ochako and Sho nod to each other, and that was reassuring. No hard feelings, whoever moved on.
The gravity girl set her jaw, sinking to a crouch, smirking at her opponent. That doesn't mean I make it easy!
"Begin!" Midnight shouted.
Clenching her hand, Ochako released herself from Earth's gravity well, then pushed off.
Unsurprisingly, he saw her coming a mile off and Blinked out of the way. Gravity reasserted, and Ochako skidded to a stop and dodged the rubber round he fired her way. The projectile skipped across the back end of the ring and onto the grass, denying her a potential weapon.
Again, she threw herself across the ring, and predictably, Sho Blinked out of the way, beginning a game of high-speed, high-intensity tag.
Ochako would be the first to admit she wasn't the brightest of students. But with her Quirk, she had developed an interest in space and the forces that governed the movements of the stars. Being around smart, well-red folks like those that made up the bulk of the study group, it gave her a fresh perspective and appreciation for the cosmos and reinforced the desire for the space theme.
Point was, she learned a quite a bit in just the past month. And she hadn't even finished the first semester!
Trouble was, on one hand, she had been quite pointedly advised to refrain from using some of her new techniques until she was able to condition herself for that kind of stress. On the other, Sho was one of the sorts who wouldn't go down easily, and he had a good estimate of where Ochako's limits were. If Ojirou was bad enough, the Support student was twice as bad a matchup.
Welp. No helping it. Not like she could always count on the odds being in her favor.
When it becomes apparent that Ochako isn't going to keel over from nausea, Sho turns around to go on the offensive, leveling the launcher again, when she decided to play her next trick, and hoped that he hadn't been paying attention during this particular day of training.
Down stopped being directed towards the ground and pointed to one of Sho's gauntlets. The sudden shift made his shot go wide, and the boy's eyes widened as he Blinked out of the way. Her target displaced, Ochako used the gravitational shift to brake, bile threatening to bubble up her throat as she landed, sweat beading heavily along her brow.
The G-forces were greater with this technique, but it was a lower risk of flying out of the ring. It also required her to have already "marked" her target. While she didn't use her Quirk on Sho at any point, she had used it on the gauntlet he was using. She hoped he would forgive her for exploiting this.
"That's a new trick," Sho said, more than a little shocked.
"Sure is!" Ochako shot back. "Haven't even named it yet."
The Support student seemed to be evaluating his options, but Ochako decided not to leave him time to think of a counter-strategy, and "fell" again.
Rather than immediately evade, Sho brought up his launcher and fired again. As she was still flying towards her artificial gravity well, Ochako raised a hand to deflect, but instead caught a paint round. The impact hurt like few other things she could remember, and the rapidly inflating, hardening ball of resin enveloped her hand and forearm, spinning her around as she skidded across the field.
Ochako checked her feet and exhaled sharply. Not out of bounds yet.
Trouble was, no she had a massive weight attached to her, which would slow her down considerably.
Or…?
Her hand had been open on impact, and a simple test of flexing her hand confirmed that it remained so.
Giving her Quirk a try, she smiled as the mass lightened, evidently counted as a complete, singular entity. A simple matter of letting her Quirk impart into the resin took a weight off of her shoulder, allowing her to resume her balance.
Now she had a bludgeon and shield, and it was practically weightless.
Sho blinked, sweating a little as she started coming his way. "Oh. Errors have been made."
Pointing her "down" to Sho, she fell again, swinging her encased arm.
Instead of running, Sho stood his ground and braced, catching the bludgeon and stopping it cold. The stop jolted Ochako from her focus, and Sho began pushing back, digging his heels for traction.
Nausea surged as Ochako refocused and tried pushing back, to no avail. She needed to break the deadlock and fast. Sho adjusted to motions from the side, and if she went up, that would throw her balance off long enough for him to hammer her out of the ring.
Or she could go straight back.
Engaging her Quirk on herself, Ochako jumped and pushed off, swinging her hammer around and picking Sho's gauntlet as the anchor again. Blood pounded in her ears as she swung around with the centrifugal motion, then rolled out of the spin, slamming the ball against the ground, shattering the construct entirely.
Arm rattling, Ochako searched through the fragments of the hardened paint bouncing around her, still under the effects of the Quirk, when Sho Blinked back into range, arm cocked back, gauntlet humming and primed to fire.
Ochako lunged in to meet him. Only, between negating gravity on herself and anchoring herself to the coming blow, there was far less resistance to her movements than before. She flew forward, slamming the wind out of both of their lungs.
Likely on instinct, Sho Blinked upward, Quirk fizzling from hauling two people along, and the sudden corkscrew from the thrusters firing didn't help matters, but Ochako held fast onto Sho's arm. No time to think about what his gadget did, she slapped him upside the head, activating her Quirk, and then kicking off for a landing. Sho flew out of the ring in the process, scrambling to correct his trajectory and intent on returning to the arena.
A haze of gray clouded the sides of Ochako's vision as she brought her fingers together, rasping through gritted teeth, "Release."
Gravity reasserted itself, and Sho's trajectory dropped with it. Ochako tensed as he made last second Blink, but fell shy of the ring, stumbling into the concrete and pushing off to fall gracelessly onto the grass.
"Hajime is out of bounds!" Midnight declared. "Uraraka wins!"
Tension bled away, and the sense of vertigo faded to a background level. But no more tension meant nothing holding back the tide. Ochako ran to the other side of the ring and heaved over the side.
Through the awful flavor of bile, she savored the sweet taste of victory.
[IB]
Sorahiko, better known as Gran Torino – though that's hardly saying much these days – is enjoying a fine afternoon, chewing on taiyaki and keeping a halfhearted eye on the Sports Festival. Which is more than he typically does every year. But this year, Toshi finally buckled down and picked a successor and the best way to get a look on her progress on the same internationally televised every two-bit thug with a couple of brain cells to rub together would be watching.
Call him an old fart, but he still remembered the days where keeping your identity hidden was the bread and butter of heroics. With the likes of All for One running around, you never knew who might be watching or listening in, and an inconvenient eavesdropper could mean thugs kicking down the door to your house in the middle of the night.
"Hrmph?"
His phone lights up, and it's only chance that he's even looking the right way when it does. Sorahiko snags his phone, flipping it around to check the caller ID. He's not on duty and most of his calls these days are robots trying to scam him and the occasional wrong number to mix things up.
But he knows this number. Hasn't seen it in a long while, mostly because the young whippersnapper had made it pretty damn clear what his thoughts were on the old man, not that Sorahiko faults him for it; he's said many of the same things to himself on bad nights. After All for One's fall and the parting of ways between All Might and Nighteye, he figured the boy had cut all ties and vowed never to speak to him again.
So, it's a surprise, both that he's reaching out and that he's panicking this much, because good, golly hell, the last time he called this much was immediately after that last clash with All for One. There's so many messages and missed calls, he would have thought a toddler had swiped Nighteye's phone and started messaging random numbers in his contacts.
All Might's already been seen at the Sports Festival, so it's nothing to do with whatever visions or prophecies hitting the little brat. And there are few things that could get Nighteye to drop all pretenses, and probably everything else he was doing if he's hanging on the phone like this.
So, the next time Nighteye inevitably calls again, Sorahiko answers. And the boy doesn't disappoint, rambling before letting Sorahiko so much as breathe.
"Gran Torino, it's Nighteye. Have you been watching the Sports Festival?"
Whatever crawled up Nighteye's backside has got him in a tizzy, so Sorahiko takes a large bite of the last taiyaki on his plate, chewing slowly. Throw the kid a bone so he can get his thoughts together.
"And a fine day to you, too, Nighteye," Sorahiko finally replies, "And yes, I've been watching. Now what's this about? I'm sure you didn't call to ask 'bout my health."
"I've been calling for most of the last hour! I even tried the landline."
"Haven't heard it all day." And for good reason. The landline was off the cradle to avoid interruptions, and he had completely forgotten about it. Not that he's going to say it, nor was Nighteye letting him explain.
"Never mind that. I already sent you some footage." The brat finally takes a breath, and then two. "I think it might be better if you see it for yourself."
Sorahiko takes some pity on Nighteye and opens the first link, and narrows his eyes at the TV again as the next highlights run on screen in preparation for the next match. Itsuka Kendo – and by god, ain't that a kick in the pants, Shinutsu's old enough to have a kid attending U.A. – is warming up for the fight ahead of her. And by the looks of things, it's going to be an uphill battle, because the same boy who had covered the south end of the stadium in ice got clobbered.
Where was I for that one? He wondered. Must have been on the crapper.
But Itsuka Kendo is not the one Nighteye is dancing around with glowsticks. No. That falls to her next opponent, one Izuku Midoriya, and when their profiles get plastered on the screen, everything clicks together in Sorahiko's mind. The sort of face that left him with many a sleepless night. A cruel trick of the imagination and bad memories that he knows he hasn't buried half as well as he might have liked.
It should be impossible. Maybe it is.
But the hows and whys can wait. It's all he can do not to drop the phone, but his nerves hold up and he answers, "I see him."
"I have a proposal, if you are inclined in stepping up to the investigation again."
This is as close as Nighteye has come to flat out begging for help from him. Mirai always wore his heart on his sleeve, as much as he liked to hide it, but with a Quirk like his, it tends drives even rational mind to the breaking point. And in this instance, Sorahiko is willing to oblige without raking him over coals.
"What'd'ya need from me, Nighteye?"
Nighteye tells him his plan. And by the end of the call, Gran Torino has a few of his own.
Question was: how to go about getting a couple of recommendation forms?
A/N: Happy Birthday to Itsuka Kendo! You can thank my remembering that for getting this chapter finished when I did. A bit of a shorter chapter than last, but I've been working (or sitting) on this arc for close to a year now, and I am starting to feel the drag.
But let us not dwell on this.
Anyway, the next match is something that I have yet to see in any MHA fic: One for All and All for One clashing in a televised sporting event for children (if you have seen something like this anywhere else, I will happily revise or retract that statement).
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Did I leave off a chunk or paragraph again? Let me know with a review or PM. Constructive criticism is always appreciated.
Until next time!
Winterman, out.