1-A Competitor’s Box, Sports Festival Stadium.

By the time the dozens of staff members had finished collecting all of the rubbish that Inasa’s quirk had drawn down into the middle of the stadium, the crowd was outright cheering for the next battle to take place. Cementoss had also rebuilt the entire arena with his quirk, the concrete liquefying and then resetting itself into a pristine and smooth series of interlocking blocks. Both Shoto and Fumikage had long since left the competitor’s box and were waiting down by the staircase for permission to actually ascend as the finishing touches were being made. Neither of the boys were looking at each other now, simply standing by one another in tense silence as the commentators finally began their introductions.

“These are both students of U.A. High School, but you should already know that if you were paying even the minimum amount of attention,” Shota said, into the microphone. “Their names are Shoto Todoroki and Fumikage Tokoyami of Class 1-A—”

“Aizawa sounds exactly like he does in class,” Tsuyu said, “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“He clearly intends on roasting the audience until they allow him to go take a nap,” Toru said in agreement. “As expected of our esteemed teacher.”

“You should hope he doesn’t pay any attention to the recordings of us talking about him,” Mezo said, voice dry. “I can already feel my legs burning from all the running he’s going to make us do.”

“There’s nothing wrong with running, Shoji,” Tenya said, adjusting his glasses. “It’s an entirely healthy hobby.”

Ochaco reached up to place a hand on the class president’s back; her face twisted into an expression of concern.

“Ida, you consider running as a hobby?” Ochaco managed. “That’s so sad.”

“What?” Tenya said, looking flustered. “Of course it’s—”

“Now that the fighters are in place, we can finally start the second match,” Shota said, “You may now begin—”

Ice surged forward, smashing into Dark Shadow—and then it just kept on going. The mass of frozen water washed upwards, spearing into the air above the stadium until it was actually sticking through the hole in the top of the stadium. The sheer bulk of it and the suddenness by which it had appeared had rendered the audience silent in the face of it all. A sprinkling of frost fell from the titanic mass, sparkling in the light as it rained down onto the crowd below. It was a show of force beyond even that of Inasa’s localised hurricane and designed to show that he wasn’t the only one who could perform on that level. But it had left Shoto’s entire right side iced over, the backlash from exerting himself rendering him unable to use his quirk any further.

Fumikage’s face was visible on the monitor, embedded within the bottom of the mass of ice, only his eyes and beak exposed—Dark Shadow was entirely frozen over and sealed away. Even if he could have used it to destroy the surrounding ice, it would have destroyed most of his skin in the process. As it was, being in contact with so much of it must have been beyond painful if it hadn’t robbed him of the ability to feel anything at all within seconds of making contact. Prolonged exposure to that much of his body’s surface area could only leave him unconscious or worse. I doubted that there was a single person in the stadium who had expected Shoto to unleash such an overwhelming attack as an opening move.

The mass of ice now towering above the crowd was actually running a serious risk of collapsing under its own weight and then falling on the spectators—it was an ill-proportioned and inappropriate use of force to contain a single person, no matter how difficult an opponent Shoto must have presumed Fumikage to be.

“That—” Momo managed, head tilted all the way back to look up at it. “That is absurd.”

“Winner, Shoto Todoroki,” Shota said, a genuine edge to his voice. “You better deal with that before it falls over, Todoroki.”

Shoto, standing alone in the middle of the arena before the massive construct he’d created, suddenly looked like he’d rather be anywhere else but where he was. I watched as he stepped forward, eyes on the ground in front of him as he placed his hand against the ice, directly over Fumikage’s chest, apparently unwilling to look the other boy in the face. The ice began to rapidly melt away on contact with his hand, and the tip of the mass, high above the stadium, began to shrink, some combination of ice manipulation and the heat from his fire manipulation working to erode the ice in a controlled manner.

“Between Midoriya destroying the stage, Yoarashi creating a hurricane, and Todoroki doing this—I’m starting to worry about the rest of you,” Mezo said, “Uraraka, are you going to make the entire stadium float during your match?”

“Only a couple of inches,” Ochaco said with a nervous laugh. “Enough to show Todoroki that I’m not messing around, you know?”

#

1-A Competitor’s Box, Sports Festival Stadium.

Shoto’s return to the competitor’s booth was sombre, and he made no attempt to acknowledge the congratulations levied his way. It was obvious that he had been adversely affected by his own actions against Fumikage, although the exact reason for his sudden change eluded me. My mental model of Shoto wouldn’t allow me to consider the possibility that he’d used that much force by accident; he was simply too controlled and too competent for that to be the case. Which meant that the level of force he’d decided to use was rationalised in advance. Considering that the shared goal of everyone participating in the Sports Festival was to generate interest with the Hero Agencies, it was likely something he’d done with that in mind.

If his goal had been to market himself to the world as an overwhelmingly powerful hero-in-training, then he’d succeeded far beyond what was required—but if that was the case, then why did he look so upset? Why were his hands shaking? Why was his posture so tense, and his eyes locked on the floor? Something had caused him to reconsider his choice; either Fumikage’s frozen state had triggered something in him, or the reprimand from Shota Aizawa had caused him to reevaluate the validity of his strategy.

“Kashiko Sekigai is one of our precious first years at Isamu Academy High School and one with a bright future ahead of her,” Sanda said, sniffing a bit. “She was elected as the class representative because of her unwavering commitment to—”

Kashiko stood in the centre of the stage, red-faced and fanning herself with her hand as what could only be her teacher continued to sing her a stream of unending praises. Shota, sitting beside the woman, appeared to be frozen, staring at her like he was watching a train crash.

“—of course, you’ve already seen some of her leadership qualities during the first event,” Sanda said, developing a hiccup that interposed itself through her words. “In a display of solidarity, she formed a team with her classmates, attempting to ensure that many of them managed to make it through the first obstacle.”

I nodded at the words, feeling a kind of second-hand validation at hearing the strategy praised so plainly—it was clear that Kashiko and I had developed a very similar strategy for the Obstacle Race.

“Momo,” Tsuyu said, croaking. “Are you crying?”

“I can’t help it,” Momo managed, wiping at her eyes. “She’s just so sweet.”

“It’s a bit alarming, actually,” Mezo said, “I wonder if Aizawa will cry when he gets a turn to talk about Uraraka?”

Toru cleared her throat at the words, working to draw everyone’s attention to her.

“I simply used my support item—eyedrops—to make it appear as if I was crying,” Toru said, affecting a monotone voice. “A logical ruse designed to elicit sympathy from the audience and help build a stronger connection with them on your behalf. Everyone who didn’t realise it immediately will be summarily expelled—because I totally wasn’t crying.”

Tsuyu gave a snorting laugh at the words and then covered her nose with her hand, looking vaguely embarrassed at the noise.

“Hagakure—” Tenya said before sighing. “Though I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

“Thank you, Sanda,” Shota managed, leaning down to his microphone for a moment. “Ochaco Uraraka is a bit rowdy, but she usually follows the rules—you can fight now.”

“That’s all?” Toru wondered. “He didn’t even pretend to cry.”

“Maybe they don’t allow support items in the announcer’s box,” I offered.

Whether or not Ochaco was disappointed with her introduction, she wasted no time surging across the arena towards her opponent. She kept low to the ground, one hand held in front of her and to the side, her intention clear. Kashiko moved forward to meet her without fear, and Ochaco lunged across the last few feet with her arm outstretched—the taller girl twisted to the side, avoiding the attempt at physical contact, and then pivoted, sending a text-book kick directly at her back. It connected, but the angle was off as Ochaco’s forward momentum carried her away from it. Kashiko didn’t back off. Instead, she attempted a second kick, and this time it was far more accurate, her booted foot crashing into Ochaco’s raised arm as she brought it up to cover her face—then Kashiko was suddenly rising up off the ground, rendered weightless by the fingers wrapped around her ankle.

As visibly surprised as the taller girl was by the sudden change in circumstance, she didn’t hesitate to continue her attack, twisting in the air until she had managed to snag a handful of Ochaco’s hair. Ochaco made a single attempt to push the girl away before she cried out in pain from the resulting hair pull—and then they were hitting one another in earnest. Ochaco fought to destabilise the other girl’s grip, and to send her flying away, while Kashiko did everything she could to inflict as much damage as she could while staying attached to the only thing that was anchoring her to the ground. Kashiko seemed to understand her perilous situation because she worked to wrap her legs around Ochaco’s torso, locking the two of them even closer together.

“How unseemly,” Tenya said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “It’s like watching a bag filled with cats.”

“It’s very suspicious that you know what that looks like, Ida,” Tsuyu wondered, “Should we be worried?”

“I don’t—it’s an expression,” Tenya said, alarmed. “I would never stand by and allow such a thing to happen in front of me.”

“Ouch, that one looked like it hurt,” Toru said, “It looks like she’s trying to get Uraraka into a rear-naked choke.”

That Toru knew the correct term for what Kashiko was overtly attempting meant that the invisible girl likely had some hand-to-hand combat skills of her own or at least the familiarity with identifying it on sight. Something which she hadn’t shown at any previous point in our combat training exercises.

“Submission is probably the only way victory is possible for Kashiko at this point,” I said, speaking up. “Ochaco doesn’t seem to have a good grasp of striking yet; she would benefit from some focused hand-to-hand training.”

“The other girl is taller, has more reach, and appears to have better reflexes,” Mezo said, joining in on the analysis. “But the fact that she’s floating seems to be greatly hindering her.”

“No weight and no contact with the ground means she can’t generate any significant force with her strikes,” I said in agreement. “The two kicks she used at the start are enough to see that she possesses some degree of formal training.”

“Oh no,” Tsuyu said, wincing. “Is Ochaco going to lose?”

Kashiko managed to get her arm around the other girl’s neck, and Ochaco bit down on her hand in an attempt to prevent her from cinching it shut. It failed to stop her, and Ochaco clapped her hands together in front of her, cancelling the effects of her quirk, before throwing herself backwards onto the concrete. Kashiko hit the floor back first, and while it looked painful, it wasn’t nearly enough to dislodge her—and that was the end of it.

“Winner, Kashiko Sekigai,” Sanda said, practically bawling her eyes out. “I’m so proud of you—”

“How unfortunate,” Tenya said.

“Great,” Toru said with a sigh. “Now I have to go fight the guy who was mind-controlling people—any last-minute tips?”

“Don’t respond to anything he says,” Mezo said, “Though I’m sure you already know as much.”

“Perhaps you could use the same technique that Sekigai just used,” Tenya suggested. “Restraining him may be a path to victory.”

“He weighs a lot more than I do,” Toru said, sounding unconvinced. “He’s stronger, as well.”

“Being deliberate with your strikes, sticking to your maximum melee range, and picking him apart would be more successful,” I said, speaking up. “Avoid grappling entirely, and aim to deal the most damage in the smallest number of hits to lower the number of opportunities he has to catch you.”

I glanced down at where she’d just kicked her shoes off under the front row of seats, her intent to leave them behind clear—that she would be making good use of her quirk went entirely unsaid.

“That sounds better,” Toru wondered. “Fine, I’m going now—wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Momo said.

“Bakugo is going to lose his mind if you avenge him before he has a chance to fight him,” Tsuyu said with a croak. “So make sure you win no matter what.”

I tracked her progress out into the hall, then into the elevator that would take her down to the tunnel, watching as she passed by Kashiko on her way back to her own competitor’s box. Hitoshi took a little bit longer to make it down to the arena, but soon, the two of them were ascending the stairs. They came to a stop in the middle of the arena, standing across from one another, and the floating uniform seemed oddly distorted as it hung limply in the air. Hitoshi’s face appeared on the monitor a moment later, his mouth moving as he stared at the invisible girl, but the words weren’t audible.

“Shoji,” Tenya asked, “Can you hear what he is saying?”

“Shinso is taunting her, listing off all of the people that have already been eliminated by him,” Mezo said before tilting his head. “Bakugo, Kirishima, Ashido, Sero, Ojiro, Jiro—Hatsume? I don’t know who that is.”

“The girl from 1-H with all of the support items, she was on the same team as Ojiro and Jiro,” Momo said, leaning forward. “Is Hagakure already under his control?”

“Hagakure hasn’t said anything yet,” Mezo said, “Higawara, I’m starting to think that you were correct because everything he says ends with a question—he’s fishing for a response.”

I just nodded at the words.

“Hitoshi Shinso is a General Studies student in Class 1-C, while Toru Hagakure is a Hero Studies student from Class 1-A,” Shota said, “Both of them have managed to avoid having any tardies on their record—you may begin.”

“Teacher,” Momo managed.

Toru’s uniform dropped to the floor of the stage, and if it hadn’t been obvious that she’d simply been holding it up in front of herself, then it had just become impossible to miss. Hitoshi, now the only person visible on the stage, became the focal point for the monitor feed to follow, and his mouth continued to move soundlessly as he searched the area—I couldn’t help but note that the sense of control he’d worn during the previous event was entirely missing now, replaced by a visible tension and restlessness. Hitoshi lifted his hands up to guard his face, then slowly shifted forward until he was standing dead centre in the middle of the arena, placing himself as far away from the edges of the platform as physically possible.

“He wants to avoid being pushed out of bounds—a decent strategy,” Tenya said with a nod. “If the mind control really is his only form of attack, then so long as it remains ineffective, this will inevitably end with physical combat.”

“A melee battle against a person who is completely invisible,” Momo said, “That will not be an advantage that is easy to overcome.”

“Shinso is quite a large boy, though,” Tsuyu said, “Toru is only about five-foot tall, so maybe it won’t be so uneven—”

Hitoshi went down to his knees without warning or build-up, his hands buried between his legs as he collapsed and a tortured expression on his face—and then his head snapped to one side under some unseen force, his cheek deforming under the impact. It sent him rolling across the concrete, but he managed to catch himself enough to scramble up onto one knee. One of his hands remained tightly clenched between his legs, a protective guard against a second groin attack—the boy struggled up to his feet, pale-faced, and with one eye clenched shut, the entire motion wholly undignified.

“Hagakure just—” Tenya said, reeling back in shock. “How dishonourable.”

“As far as morality is concerned, taking control of someone’s mind most likely ranks higher than kicking someone in the groin,” I said, “Either way, it’s an effective tactic given the circumstances.”

“Yes, well, Present Mic did say for us to fight dirty,” Momo managed. “I just wasn’t expecting something so blatant.”

Hitoshi’s calm had entirely vanished now, and a panic seemed to set in as he spun around the arena, trying to locate his opponent—he started to move around, sacrificing proximity to the edge of the platform to transform himself from a stationary target into a mobile one. It was an intelligent move because it would be more difficult to make precise attacks on a moving target—but it also didn’t seem to be working. Hitoshi stumbled forward, and I narrowed my eyes in an attempt to see exactly which part of his body had just been attacked—something had hit him in the back of his right leg from behind. He turned to face the direction the attack had come from, then stepped backwards—his foot caught on something, and he toppled backwards, one hand groping blindly behind him in an attempt to catch himself before he could fall all the way to the floor. Hitoshi scrambled backwards, half sprawled on the concrete, and then turned around—his head snapped backwards again, blood erupting from his nose as something smashed into it.

“Oh no,” Momo said, wincing. “This is rather—shouldn’t he be able to hear her moving?”

“She’s not wearing shoes or clothing,” Mezo said, stooping down to lean his forearms against the railing. “I’m guessing that she’s walking on the balls of her feet to avoid making any noise when she moves as well.”

Considering the function of her quirk, I found it pretty likely that she had spent a significant amount of time practising her stealth, and learning how to walk without making a sound had probably been one of the first things she had mastered.

Hitoshi had his hand pressed against his face now, fingers smeared with blood from his nose—his hand flung out without warning, a series of red droplets scattering across the area in the path of the motion, but they hit nothing, his attempt to mark the invisible girl unsuccessful. He lunged in the complete opposite direction, perhaps working to narrow her possible location down, but once again, he made no contact. The monitor showed him place his hand down on the concrete to help keep him steady before he snatched it back with a soundless cry, and when he stopped moving long enough for the monitor to regain focus, I found that his index and middle finger were now bent at an odd angle—

“I heard that one,” Mezo said with a grimace. “Hagakure just stomped on his hand.”

The entirely one-sided fight continued for several minutes, with Hitoshi getting progressively more damaged and less capable of defending himself. By the end of it all, the boy was a complete wreck, but despite it all, he simply kept on trying to get back up—a second groin attack left the boy on his knees, with his forehead pressed against the concrete, and though he made an effort to rise up once more, it was clear that the winner of the match had long since been determined.

“Winner, Toru Hagakure,” Shota said, sounding completely unbothered by what everyone had just witnessed. “Now we’ll be moving onto the fifth match—”

“Toru can be scary,” Tsuyu said, croaking. “Real scary.”

#

1-A Competitor’s Box, Sports Festival Stadium.

Toru’s return to the competitor’s box involved almost a whole minute of lingering in the hallway directly outside, the girl leaning against the interior door frame and listening in on the discussion that was taking place outside. As she watched us, I watched her from a small pocket of sand in the upper corner of the hallway, wondering exactly what she was hoping to overhear.

“When Hagakure said that she was going to avenge our classmates,” Tenya said, “I had no idea that this was what she meant.”

“Placing two competitors in a ring with no way to defeat one another except through violence can only end in one way,” Momo said, “It’s only magnified when their quirks provide no way to actually subdue each other with minimal injury.”

Considering that all of Japan was listening to our discussion, Toru should have known that the topic of discussion wouldn’t stray far from the Sports Festival—but perhaps she was simply interested in hearing what was said about her while she was absent.

“Midoriya’s injuries were even worse,” Mezo said, “This may just be something that comes with the territory of becoming a hero.”

The words brought to mind a memory of standing atop the main building of Pasana Middle School, a thick bamboo post breaking through my failed defence and then tearing my arm off at the shoulder—Mezo was right; violence was something that was unavoidable in a career like this, but that was also a price I was willing to pay. Toru must have heard enough because she spun around and through the doorway, moving quickly and at a steady enough pace that nobody would have expected that she had actually arrived quite a while ago.

“Hagakure,” Tenya said as soon as he spotted her. “That was—unexpected.”

Toru stepped down out of the aisle in the front row of seats before dropping into the one directly to my right—I glanced over at her, curious as to what had driven her choice, and watched as she kicked one of her legs up onto her lap.

“If they wanted us to handle it differently, then they should have given us capture tape,” Toru said, “God, my feet hurt.”

The leggings of her tracksuit shifted, and I could almost imagine her left heel resting on top of her knee as she rubbed at her invisible foot. Momo gave an awkward laugh at the words as she came to sit beside her.

“I suppose repeatedly kicking someone will do that,” Momo said, squinting down at the girl’s foot as if she might actually be able to detect it. “You’re not injured, are you?”

“They had someone check me out before I went back into the tunnel,” Toru admitted, “I told him I was fine, but the side of my foot is really starting to ache.”

“It must be bruised at least,” Momo said, concerned. “Do you want me to get someone to come look at it for you?”

“No, it will probably stop after a little while anyway, so there isn’t any point,” Toru said, “I’ll just wait until the next round is over.”

“If you’re sure,” Momo said.

“Congratulations, Toru,” I said into the silence. “It was a resounding victory.”

“Thanks,” Toru said, “I guess you’ll need to actually start coming up with a plan to beat me now.”

That was a rather odd thing to say, and I wondered if she seriously thought I would wait this long to come up with a method to defeat her—I’d known she was a participant in the Sports Festival for over a month now.

“There was always a very high probability that you would end up in the tournament phase of the Sports Festival,” I said in answer. “Perhaps I should apologise, but I’ve been planning out how to defeat you for weeks.”

“That—” Toru said before cutting herself off. “Have you really?”

I glanced over at her again—there was an odd flash of vertigo as I caught sight of Momo’s face behind the space where the invisible girl’s head should have been—and I found myself wondering why she seemed so sceptical. I’d had a basic strategy in place for just about every single U.A. High School participant I’d been aware of prior to arriving at the stadium. The two notable exceptions to that had been Jurota Shishida and Hitoshi Shinso. All of the participants from other schools, however, had been something I couldn’t plan out individual counters for, but thankfully, there were only three of them left to account for—Inasa, Kashiko and Habuko—and I’d already come up with countermeasures for all three. The only person left who was still unknown at this point was Jurota Shishida.

“Of course,” I said.

“—Habuko Mongoose is one of the hardest working students at Isamu Academy High School, and she’s always looking out for everyone in her class,” Sanda said, taking the handkerchief that Shota was holding up for her. “She likes to volunteer at the nearby animal shelters on her weekends, so you can be sure that—”

I watched as Tsuyu appeared on the monitor, moving towards the stage; the other girl from Isamu Academy High School already stood in the middle of the platform, hands nervously wringing her wrists. Tsuyu had pointed out several times already that this girl was a friend of hers—presumably from middle school, although I had no real confirmation about that.

“That was the girl on Yoarashi’s team,” Tenya said, glancing over at Shoto. “The one that kept stopping us from catching the headband during the Cavalry Battle.”

“Yes, that’s definitely her,” Momo admitted, “Yoarashi was very dangerous on his own, but her paralysis made the situation completely unworkable.”

Shoto shifted in his seat, awakened from his maintained silence by the attention of his former teammates, and he lifted his gaze to the monitor for a moment.

“Dealing with her in a one-on-one match wouldn’t be a problem for any of us,” Shoto said, speaking up for the first time since he’d returned from his own match. “So long as we avoid making eye contact with her, she isn’t that much of a threat.”

“She acted as one of the horses in the previous event,” I said, “Was it evident whether or not her heteromorphic traits augmented her physical abilities to any degree?”

“I don’t know,” Tenya said in consideration. “But she was keeping up with Yoarashi’s pace well enough.”

The torrent of praise that Sanda Sango was heaping on the girl was finally cut off as Shota managed to find a space to interject.

“Thank you, Sanda,” Shota said, “Tsuyu Asui is enrolled in the Hero Studies course and is a member of Class 1-A; she has developed a reputation amongst her peers for performing very well under pressure—please fight.”

The two girls didn’t move from their positions, and the quiet exchange of words was lost under the cheering from the crowd. Momo, Tenya and Toru all turned towards Mezo, and the boy sighed at the sudden attention—he engaged his quirk again, aiming his limbs in their general direction before tilting his head.

“Mongoose is crying, and she really doesn’t want to fight,” Mezo said, frowning a bit. “It appears that Asui is attempting to convince her that they’ll still be friends, no matter who wins—it seems to be working because Mongoose has just agreed to try her best.”

“That’s so sweet,” Momo said, clasping her hands together in her lap. “Tsuyu is just lovely, isn’t she?”

“It doesn’t make sense to convince her opponent to keep on fighting,” Shoto murmured, “Is she trying to throw away her chance to win?”

“They’re friends,” Toru said, “Tsuyu probably wants to make sure both of them have a chance to show what they can do in front of the audience.”

“If the two competitors would please start fighting now,” Shota said, “The match has already begun, and we still have quite a few to get through after this.”

That seemed to get the two moving, with Habuko rushing forward across the stage in a sprint. Tsuyu crouched down low to the ground, and then her tongue lashed out, flashing across the distance in an instant—though Habuko attempted to avoid it, the tongue still caught her around the ankle. Tsuyu twisted, the muscle tethering the two of them together pulled taut as she dragged her opponent up off the ground and into a wide circle that left Habuko soaring towards the edge of the platform. Tsuyu suddenly collapsed forward onto the ground, her tongue going limp, but Habuko was already in the air. Unable to slow herself down and without anything in her range to grab hold of, she vanished off the edge of the platform.

“Winner, Tsuyu Asui,” Shota said, “Will those from Match Six please start making their way down to the arena.”

If not for the teary-eyed conversation that had preceded the actual fight, it would have been a contender for the fastest match of the day—perhaps tied with Match Two, when Shoto had unleashed the full extent of his quirk on Fumikage. It was a testament to the speed at which Tsuyu’s tongue could be launched and just how strong she actually was to be capable of lifting a person clear off the ground with it. Mezo left the competitor box with a wave of gratitude at the good wishes being sent his way, and I wondered if Jurota Shishida would actually be capable of defeating him. While I knew next to nothing about Jurota, I’d seen more than enough of Mezo to know that the boy was one of the most capable people in our class.

He was far stronger than everyone as well, with the sole exception of Izuku—and Rikido Sato if he’d still been around—and his quirk gave him a multitude of extra options when it came to close combat. Tsuyu stepped back into the competitor’s box with her hands dangling in front of her, and the knowledge that the entire stadium had just spent the last two minutes watching her and Habuko Mongoose hugging it out on the grass had left her in a visible state of embarrassment.

“Well done, Asui, you’ve brought us one step closer to a U.A. High School only finals,” Tenya said, impressed. “Now we just need to find a way to defeat Yoarashi and Sekigai.”

Tsuyu kind of sagged at the boy’s attempt at reassurance, and Momo moved to catch the shorter girl in a comforting hug as she stepped out of the aisle.

“Ida, you do know that pride is a sin, right?” Toru said, “Even if it’s school pride.”

“It’s only a sin when there is too much of it,” Tenya corrected, “It’s a careful balancing act, but one I’m more than capable of maintaining, thank you.”

“I saw you on those cables earlier, you know,” Toru said, sounding amused. “You seemed a bit wobbly to me.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Tenya spluttered.

“Once again, we have two students of U.A. High School competing, and this time they are both from the Hero Studies course,” Shota said, “Jurota Shishida, from Class 1-B, and Mezo Shoji from Class 1-A both perform exceptionally well in the practical classes—please fight when you are ready.”

In response to the official start of the match, Jurota began to grow—the top portion of his tracksuit tore open across his chest as it failed to withstand his sudden increase in size, a few tenacious threads of fabric keeping it dangling there. The bottom portion seemed to fare a bit better, presumably reinforced prior to the Sports Festival in preparation for him activating what was clearly his quirk. The boy’s body seemed to be entirely covered in thick brown fur, with only his face being spared of it.

“Another physical type?” Momo said, her arms still wrapped around the shorter girl. “He’s—quite large.”

Jurota started forward, dropping onto all fours to use both his hands and feet as a point of leverage to carry him across the platform—he moved fast, far faster than I would have expected, even with the increase in size. Mezo was forced to take a few sharp steps to the side as Jurota leapt forward, and when the massive boy crashed down in his previous position, he impacted hard enough to shatter the concrete. Mezo swept forward, using the momentum of his evasion to swerve back in towards the other boy’s back, his three right arms swinging forward. The mass of limbs crashed into Jurota’s raised block—the way the larger boy moved to guard against the attack was oddly languid.

I wasn’t quite sure whether it was his size that allowed for the motion to seem so casual or if he’d simply guessed where it had come from early enough for the motion to be carried out so smoothly. Either way, Jurota seemed visibly taken aback as he was sent sliding backwards across the platform, the force of Mezo’s attack both unexpected and undeniable.

“I’ve seen Shoji tear through a wall with a hit like that,” Tenya said in alarm. “All it managed here was to send him backwards a bit—his strength and durability are phenomenal.”

I watched with interest as the last unknown in the tournament was revealed in full—Jurota moved in an unusual manner, and though he held a low centre of gravity, his sheer bulk left him towering over even the prodigious height that Mezo Shoji possessed. The combination of using his arms and legs seemed to give him a greater degree of control over his ability to pivot quickly, though it no doubt slowed his acceleration in return. The gait he possessed seemed calculated as well, with the pace of it rising and falling as the distance changed between the two boys, speeding up when distance was granted and becoming a rapid shuffle when they closed in—he was well-practised with movement in this quirk-enhanced form.

“Shoji is struggling,” Tsuyu said with a rumble. “I don’t think I’ve seen that happen in class before.”

Momo’s grip on the girl seemed to have become a permanent fixture, but she’d managed to turn most of the way around to watch. Mezo was struggling. It seemed to be taking him everything he had to drag himself out of the way of the massive boy’s calculated strikes, and all of them were near misses at best—an overhand smash glanced off his shoulder as Mezo threw himself into a tumble, his feet fighting for purchase on the smooth concrete for a moment before he surged straight back into the fight. Mezo struck back with a series of strikes, using his momentarily superior positioning as well as he could manage—but Jurota pushed through the attack, using his shoulder and bicep to weather the attacks without stumbling.

Jurota cut his charge short just as Mezo kicked himself to the side and then flung his massive arm out in a perfectly targeted backhand that caught the boy right at the edge of his evasion—the sheer size of the limb made it outright impossible to avoid in such close proximity, and though Mezo managed to get his guard up in time, it was nowhere near enough to stop the attack. Mezo rocketed backwards from the impact, his feet outright leaving the platform as the upward angle of the strike tore the ground away from him—his dozens of arms snapped outwards, a sheath of skin between each one working to catch the wind, and sharply changing the angle of his flight.

He crashed down onto the platform and rolled twice before he managed to get his feet underneath him. The leftover force of the attack carried him sliding across the stage, all the way to the edge, at least eight points of contact with the ground, barely enough to stop himself in time—it hadn’t been a lucky hit, I knew, because, for that single moment, he’d moved almost twice as fast as he had throughout the entire fight. Jurota had set a false limit to his striking speed and lured Mezo into believing it with near misses and glancing hits before waiting for the perfect moment to exceed it. Jurota Shishida was strong, fast, and patient—what a dangerous combination.

“A glancing hit can do that?” Momo managed, “That would have taken me out of the match entirely.”

Tsuyu gave a rumble of concern as the hug she was still trapped within grew momentarily tighter, and I found myself watching the pair. The normally unshakable confidence that I’d come to expect from Momo had been slowly draining away over the course of the third event. It had started when Inasa and Izuku had revealed just how far into the absurd they could push themselves, but Shoto’s massive display had contributed to it as well. I wondered if she was imagining herself down there, fighting against either Mezo or Jurota and attempting to create a solution with her quirk that might contain either of them for more than a few moments.

“That strike would have defeated me as well,” Tenya said, “It’s not just brute strength either; despite his great size, or perhaps because of it, he’s able to move with deceptive speed.”

“I think that’s the main problem,” Tsuyu said, “He’s so big, and he can turn so quickly that the platform actually looks small; it’s hard to imagine a way to actually deal with him in such an open area.”

Mezo Shoji was probably the only person in our class—with the singular exception of Eijiro—who could outright endure a hit like that and keep on fighting. But even then, I couldn’t imagine any of them being able to actually stop themselves from being thrown out of bounds by it. Jurota didn’t seem like the type to give his opponents time to recover either because he was already bounding forward before Mezo had even managed to catch himself. Mezo found himself cut off and then penned into the far corner of the stage; his attempts at circling around and out were met, then matched by Jurota’s forward movements. It quickly became clear that Mezo wouldn’t be able to get by him until, all at once, the strategy changed.

Mezo set himself in place, planting his feet and lifting up his arms as more and more of them started to emerge from his tentacles—he surged forward before Jurota could reach him and met the boy in the middle of his last step. Mezo gave a cry of effort as he unleashed a series of rapid strikes, utilising as many of his arms as he was capable of bringing to bear to slow his opponent down. Jurota managed to regain his balance and then sent a single massive overhand into the flurry of attacks, meeting it all head-on. Mezo threw all of his arms forward at once to catch the attack, and his stability vanished, the concrete beneath him shattering as he fought to contain the strike. For a single moment, Jurota Shishida was contested in pure strength—then he shifted and dragged his arm back towards himself before his left hand struck out in a sudden second attack. Mezo lost his footing entirely as the hit came from an angle he wasn’t prepared to defend from, and he was sent tumbling backwards off the stage. He crashed into the grass and then rolled to a stop halfway to the stadium wall, already in the process of struggling back up to his feet.

“Winner, Jurota Shishida,” Shota said before clearing his throat. “Will those from Match—”

“To think there was somebody with this much power hiding within Class 1-B,” Momo said, voice quiet. “What a dangerous boy.”

#

1-A Competitor’s Box, Sports Festival Stadium.

With each match, the amount of people in Class 1-A’s competitor box continued to dwindle, and with the departure of both Momo and Tenya for their own match, only four of us remained—that number was reduced to just three as Tsuyu excused herself under the umbrella of taking a bathroom break. Shoto had moved to the corner of the area, leaning against the wall right beside the railing, with his eyes locked on some distant spot in the audience that had caught his attention. He was just as withdrawn as he had been since earlier, and he’d made no further attempts to start up a discussion, although that wasn’t entirely unusual for him. Toru stood with her back resting against the railing, almost directly across from where I was sitting, though not quite enough to block my vision of the stadium beyond with her floating tracksuit.

“You know, I really didn’t expect to make it this far,” Toru said, “But it’s even worse now that I know there are people out here who are capable of conjuring up hurricanes, destroying the entire platform in a single punch, or dropping a glacier on top of my head.”

“It sounds like you are doubting your place here,” I said.

Toru leant further back onto the railing, her tracksuit stretching tight for a moment around her shoulders, and I could almost imagine her hair dangling down underneath her head as she stared up at the sky through the roof of the stadium.

“I guess I am,” Toru said, “If you hadn’t made that bridge during the first event, I might not have even made it through the ice quickly enough to pass.”

Shoto let his head roll to the side until he was looking away from us entirely, his face now shadowed by his hair.

“If I hadn’t done that, then everyone else that also used it would have been right there beside you,” I said, “My interference might have shifted the entire group ahead, but as an individual, you still would have succeeded without it.”

“You don’t know that, though,” Toru said in stubborn disagreement. “Then you even helped me in the second event as well—I must be pretty lucky that you decided to team up with me for that as well.”

It was a comment born of more of that same odd scepticism that she seemed to possess, although this time, it seemed to point more firmly at herself. But the main problem was that she was attributing my decision to choose her as a teammate as something done on a whim, as a way to help her out or perhaps even out of pity.

“That is a strange way of looking at it,” I said, eyes searching the empty air above her collar. “It’s also wrong.”

“It’s not wrong,” Toru insisted before she blew a breath out of her nose. “What’s so strange about it?”

I considered the question for a moment and then let my mind spread outwards, searching out all of the U.A. High School students who had already been eliminated. The network of sand I’d snuck into their clothing at the start of the day was still present, and through it, I could map out their positions across the stadium—below us, and perhaps fifteen meters out, there was a rather large group of them. I couldn’t see them from my position, but I had enough sand nodes placed around the area to locate them from an alternate angle—I spotted Eijiro and Mina almost immediately, the vibrant shades of their hair impossible to miss. The two of them were huddled around Eijiro’s phone, though I didn’t have the angle to see exactly what they were looking at.

“It’s strange because you are suggesting that I made my decision without forethought and that selecting you or Tsuyu out of all of the possible combinations had been the result of chance,” I said, “It also carries an odd implication that there is no valid reason why I would choose you in particular.”

Kyoka, Mashirao and Denki were also present, all three of them sitting close by, talking with one another. Further examination showed that Yuga was also in the area, perhaps a dozen feet away, sitting in an odd cluster with both Hatsume and Hanta.

“It should be obvious that this wasn’t the case, considering that I came to you with a prepared plan of attack, and you both fulfilled a very specific role in it,” I said, “My goal was to win the second event, and I chose you because you were the best candidate available to make that happen—you weren’t lucky, Toru; you were sought after.”

A distant voice rose up above the general noise of the crowd, far too faint to decipher, but it sounded familiar enough that even Shoto turned his head to look down at where it had originated from—I was almost positive it had been Mina, though what exactly she had said, or what had caused it was beyond me.

“You could try reining it in a bit,” Toru managed. “Half the country is listening right now.”

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, so I just nodded and let the topic fade. Momo and Tenya reached the centre of the platform around the same time that Tsuyu returned to the competitor box, and Shota’s voice soon rang out across the stadium.

“Two more students from U.A. High School, both from Class 1-A, Tenya Ida and Momo Yaoyorozu, the Class President and Vice President, respectively,” Shota said, “They are both stellar examples of heroes in training, and they do a good enough job of keeping the rest in line—you may begin.”

Tenya wasted no time at all, shooting forward across the stage from a dead stop and accelerating as he went. Momo swept an arm outwards, fingers cutting through the air as her quirk activated in response to her will—a series of metal ball bearings burst out from her forearm, trailing after the arc of her arm and scattering across the concrete ahead of her. Tenya hit the brakes, stomping one of his feet down and using it to adjust his direction until he was circling wide around the mess. Momo just turned with him, continuing the same motion and sending an unending spread of ball bearings out until she was entirely surrounded by them on all sides. Tenya came to a complete stop, then stepped forward, testing the soles of his shoes against the bearings—the monitor above the stadium showed his grimace as clear as day.

“Tenya’s main advantage is his speed, and now he can’t just overwhelm her,” Tsuyu said as she joined Toru at the railing. “That was a pretty good idea.”

“It also gives her more time to use her quirk,” Toru muttered, “What is she making—is that a net?”

It was a net, and as Tenya began moving forward into the mess of ball bearings, sliding his feet across the concrete to avoid actually stepping on them, Momo swept her hand forward, tossing the net in his direction—the weights at the corners of it made it move far more quickly then the boy had expected, because he barely managed to duck beneath it in time. Tenya ended up with his hands planted on the concrete before he rolled over like some kind of crab, and then he scuttled to the side in an attempt to get past the second net she tossed his way—the third net clipped him, tangling up his arm, and then Tenya decided to stop being so careful. Both of his leg engines lit up at the same time, and then the repulsive force of it sent his lower half sweeping out into a wide arc, one of his hands acting as a steady point to pivot—the sudden, fast motion sent dozens of the ball bearings scattering up into the air and in Momo’s direction.

Momo managed to raise her arms up quickly enough to use her next net as a proto-shield against the wave of projectiles, but Tenya hadn’t stopped moving, the blistering motion ending with him kicking back up onto his feet. The tall boy fell forward into a lean so steep that his chest came within two feet of touching the ground before his leg engines burst to life a second time—he surged forward at a ludicrous pace, blurring on the monitor. Tenya crossed the distance between them in an instant, catching Momo around the stomach with his outstretched arm and lifting her up off the ground as he went, the net a tangled mess pinched between them both.

The ball bearings worked exactly as intended, as his foot came down on a patch of ground that hadn’t been cleared by his prior maneuver, and it turned his vanishingly-fast precision tackle into a sliding stumble before he lost his balance entirely. Tenya gave a cry of effort as he twisted violently and then launched Momo away with what was left of his stability at the same time as he crashed down onto the concrete—the class president rolled across the arena in a furious blur before managing to slam one of his feet down flat on the concrete. Tenya engaged his quirk, and the force of it sent him into a counter spin that started to bleed off some of his forward momentum until he skidded to a stop about a meter away from the edge of the platform.

Momo left a trail of sparks behind her as an iron pole burst forward out of her palm, but it couldn’t find any purchase on the too-smooth concrete, and she skittered off the edge.

“Winner, Tenya Ida,” Shota said, “Will the participants of Match Eight please make their way down to the platform.”

The monitor feed had centred itself on Momo, the girl on her hands and knees on the second, lower tier of the platform, her hair falling around her and brushing against the concrete. There was a complicated expression written across her face; the previously soft features twisted into something painful.

“Momo looks so upset,” Tsuyu managed.

“She made him work for it,” Toru said, voice quiet. “It was a good plan, too—I don’t think she was ready for him to try something so risky.”

I felt distinctly uncomfortable as I watched her carefully push herself back to her feet, and the feeling only grew worse when she appeared unable to put her full weight on her left leg—I rose silently to my feet, unable to watch any longer, and then stepped up into the aisle. Shoto was the only one who had the angle to actually see me leave from his place in the corner, and the boy’s eyes were locked onto my back as I left the competitor’s box. I made it halfway down the corridor before either of the other two even realised I was gone, and though I caught the echo of Tsuyu’s voice, the words were too distorted, rendered indecipherable by the distance. The sand in Ibara Shiozaki’s pocket told me that she had already been waiting down in the tunnel and in the process of passing by another marker that could only be Tenya, returning from his own match. I stepped off the lift around the same time that Tenya reached it, and he raised his head in surprise.

“Congratulations on your victory, Tenya,” I said, “It was a good fight.”

“Thank you, Higawara—I believe it was,” Tenya said, smiling. “I wish you the best of luck with your own match.”

I nodded in acknowledgment as I slipped past him, eyes on the platform beyond the tunnel. Ibara had made it most of the way to the top of the stairs by the time I’d stepped out of the shadow of the tunnel and into the light of the sun. I’d seen my opponent’s quirk in action twice now; the first time had been during the Obstacle Race when she had used it to pull herself across the pit pillars like a great green spider, and from that, I had learned that her vines were capable of extremely fine control, extending to an absurd range, and in carrying her entire body weight without any sign of strain.

The second time was during the Cavalry Battle, both when she had used it to break through Shoto’s ice wall and then again when she’d sent out multiple vines quickly enough to catch Hanta’s tape while it was already in flight. Her quirk was fast, strong, worked at significant range, and was capable of multiple points of simultaneous attack. It was easily one of the most versatile quirks that was still present in the Sports Festival, and she had clearly worked hard to develop the kind of control needed to use it safely. Ibara Shiozaki had a very powerful quirk, but while her vines were likely capable of causing and enduring vast amounts of direct damage—the rest of her body wasn’t.

“This is the final match of the first round,” Shota said, “So we will be taking a short break afterwards to allow everyone to recover enough for the second round to start.”

I stepped up onto the platform, leaving the stairs behind and moving to take my place. Ibara was already in place, eyes closed, and her hands linked together in front of her chest in what appeared to be some kind of prayer. I came to a stop at the designated starting position, and Ibara remained where she was, seemingly unaware of the world around her.

“Our competitors are both U.A. High School students in the Hero Studies course: Ibara Shiozaki of Class 1-B and Hisoka Higawara of Class 1-A,” Shota said, “They don’t really have anything in common at all—you can go ahead and fight now.”

I didn’t know enough about Ibara to know whether or not that was accurate, but Shota Aizawa had interacted with both of us, so it was probably best to just accept that at face value. Ibara lifted her head, opened her eyes, and smiled—the concrete shattered beneath her as her vines tore through in an instant, and if there had been any kind of resistance present in the material, it hadn’t been enough to slow her down at all. The vines burrowed through the material—that should have, by its very nature, been far more durable than the plant fibre—and kept on going, branching out across the entirety of the platform, its web of progress traceable by the evergrowing series of cracks that split apart the surface.

Less than a second after she had started, they had threaded their way to all four corners, and then they broke free of the concrete entirely, surging back inwards towards my position. Dozens of vines reached me at the same time, crisscrossing over one another as they passed by, inches from my skin to form an inescapable, interlocking cage of thorns that took up every inch of the platform directly in front of Ibara. The sunlight began to fade as the vines crept inwards, the gaps between each growing smaller as she tightened her grip on the arena—I fell apart, dissolving into a million grains of sand, and washed away through the shrinking gaps in a dozen different directions. I stepped out of thin air directly behind her, restructuring myself and then taking a single step forward to place my hand on her shoulder—sand erupted from the point of contact, coiling around her shoulders, neck and head, slipping through the still writhing mass of vines and washing downwards over her body until she was completely trapped within a complex pattern of interlocking hands.

I wrenched my hand sideways, dragging her up off the platform and tearing the vines free of the already destroyed platform—her hair went wild, retracting, twisting, and stabbing outwards all at once in an attempt to get the sand away from her face, but the loose material simply flowed around it all. I pressed her down onto the grass, the hundreds of shifting hands transforming into a single massive one that kept her pinned there between the index and middle finger, just long enough for her startled, wide-eyed face to become the focus of the monitor.

“Winner, Hisoka Higawara,” Shota said. “As I said, this is the final match of the first round; all remaining participants are free to roam around, but please make sure you return to your assigned box within fifteen minutes.”

I stood amongst the shattered remains of the stage, studying the sheer amount of damage Ibara had managed to create in such a short amount of time—her strategy was clear; she had intended to reduce the area in which I could safely maneuver down to nothing, and then when I was unable to evade, she sought to lock me inside of a cage that I couldn’t escape. I’d already showcased my ability to split into a cloud during the Obstacle Race, so either she hadn’t actually seen me do that, or she’d believed that she could lock the cage down quickly and tightly enough to prevent me from escaping. I turned and left the stage from the only remaining staircase—and for the first time since the Sports Festival had begun, I could state with confidence that the audience was cheering for me.

#

1-A Competitor’s Box, Sports Festival Stadium.

I returned to our assigned section of the stands just as the break officially ended and wondered at just how few people actually remained. Toru and Tenya were standing beside the railing, talking to one another, while Tsuyu was leaning most of the way over the railing and waving down at someone in the audience below. Shoto was sitting by himself at the row of seats furthest to the back and closest to the entrance—considering he would be the first one to fight in the next round; he must have chosen his seat with that in mind. The boy looked up only for a moment as I stepped out of the hallway before he returned to staring down at his lap, and after a moment of thought, I took the seat directly beside him—the choice earned me another glance, but this time, I spoke up.

“Inasa’s wind defence seems to grow stronger the longer he uses it, and his flight speed seemed to increase as well,” I said, voice quiet. “A single impact won’t be enough to break through it once it’s had time to build up speed.”

“I already know that,” Shoto said, “Sustained interference with any part of the loop should be enough to destabilise it.”

“Then we came to the same conclusion, and you have probably already realised that the optimal moment to stage an attack is before he’s had time to bring it up,” I said, undeterred by the undercurrent of frustration in his voice. “It’s probably unhelpful to state it at this point, but the attack you used against Fumikage would have been ideal here—you can’t do it a second time.”

The uneasy shift in his posture may as well have been a thunderclap for how pronounced it was against the backdrop of his usual aloofness. Shoto reached up and pinched his thumb and index finger around the bridge of his nose, the tips of each digging into the corners of his now-closed eyes.

“I thought I could,” Shoto murmured, “I’ve never had a reason to make something with so much mass before, so I didn’t realise just how much it would take out of me—I should have saved it for Yoarashi.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

But he hadn’t, and so there was no point in dwelling on that now when there wasn’t enough time left for a full recovery of his stamina to take place. If an ice attack of that scale was unreachable now, then perhaps he could use something else in its place.

“I know you’re capable of generating fire as well, but it seems that you don’t use it very often,” I said in consideration. “Is that to prevent inflicting grievous injury on your opponents, or is it simply more difficult to control?”

Some of the sharp edges I’d observed at the very start of the day bled back into his posture at the mention of it, but it faded almost as quickly as Shoto gave a sullen shake of his head.

“It’s neither, but it doesn’t matter,” Shoto said, “I’ll win without it.”

For words of such clear intent, they felt hollow and unbacked by the casual confidence that had permeated everything else I’d ever heard him say. I nodded in agreement, mind turning over the problem and seeking ways to further prompt him into refining his strategy, but I never had the chance to say anything more. Present Mic’s voice rang out across the stadium in a message aimed to put a pin in exactly which part of the Sports Festival the viewers had found themselves watching. The interruption seemed to startle Tsuyu, Toru and Tenya as if they’d somehow forgotten that our break had been on a time limit—Tsuyu actually turned to look over her shoulder, eye seeking out the door to the box and then pausing as she spotted me sitting next to Shoto.

“You’re back,” Tsuyu said, “I didn’t hear you—”

The words were partially lost in Present Mic’s booming voice, and the others turned, alerted to my presence.

“Higawara, congratulations on defeating Shiozaki,” Tenya said, looking oddly pleased. “That girl had even less respect for the arena than Midoriya did.”

“Oh, give it up already, Ida,” Toru said, “Cementoss fixed it in about five minutes.”

Tenya adjusted his glasses with a rigid finger, and they glinted in a way that said the boy had no intention of relenting.

“Thank you,” I said belatedly. “I thought I had an accurate measure of her ability, but Ibara ended up being far more powerful than expected.”

“I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact that she tore the entire stage apart without taking a single step from her starting position or that you beat her in under ten seconds,” Toru said, “I’m starting to think that there is no one left in this tournament that I can actually beat under these conditions—except Sekigai, probably.”

Considering that was her next opponent, it wouldn’t be long before the strength of that probably would be tested.

“You’re stronger than you think, Toru,” Tsuyu said with a concerned rumble. “But, if we do fight, I’m requesting that you do not kick me in the groin.”

“I second this request,” Tenya agreed.

“I’m going to be hearing about this for the rest of my life, aren’t I?” Toru said with a tortured huff. “Don’t worry, Tsuyu; it wouldn’t work as well on you—no promises in your case, Class Pres.”

“This is disturbing news,” Tenya admitted.

“—had some intense, quick and outright insane matches so far, but it’s only going to get crazier from here on out,” Present Mic said, “That’s right, folks, we’re moving straight on to the second round—are you all ready?”

Given the level of noise in response to the man’s question, the audience certainly seemed ready.

“We’ve got four matches in round two, and because you’ve already met all of the competitors, let’s keep this short and sweet,” Present Mic said before clearing his throat. “Match One, Inasa Yoarashi vs Shoto Todoroki. Match Two, Kashiko Sekigai vs Toru Hagakure. Match Three, Tsuyu Asui vs Jurota Shishida. Match Four, Tenya Ida vs Hisoka Higawara.”

All four of us had been well aware of who our next opponent was because it had been posted on the tournament bracket ever since the end of the first round—but hearing it said out loud seemed to change something amongst the group, the almost casual air shifting into something far more charged. Shoto sat forward an inch and then paused on the very edge of his seat, hands fisted in the material of his tracksuit.

“Now I’m going to hand things back over to our trusty commentators, and then we can kick things off for real,” Present Mic said, “Match One competitors, go ahead and come on down—we’re going to get this party started.”

Shoto rose up from his seat and turned towards the door. Whether it was the tension in the air or the fact that the others were still dealing with the pressure that was bearing down on them, nobody seemed inclined to offer up anything positive to see him off—I spoke up before he could pass through the threshold.

“Shoto,” I said, “Fight well.”

“Right,” Shoto murmured.

The volume of the crowd ratcheted up a notch in response to the two boy’s names appearing on the monitor, rising to an almost deafening level. With Shoto gone, there was no longer a reason to remain by the entrance, and so I stepped down into the aisle to join the others at the railing.

“Just listen to them,” Tsuyu said, raising her voice to be heard. “It’s like we’re at a concert.”

“The son of Endeavor is about to throw down with the crowd favourite,” Toru said, “This is about as big as it gets.”

“Do you think that the other years had something as exciting as this?” Tsuyu wondered.

“There must be many students from all of the present schools that have famous relatives,” Tenya said in consideration. “My own brother, the hero Ingenium, is one such example.”

“Family pride, too?” Toru teased. “You’re collecting them all at this point.”

Tenya gave a squawk of protest at the continued needling. The topic was something I was actually interested in—almost the entirety of the break was spent doing reconnaissance on the second and third years. There were dozens and dozens of people in the audience reviewing the highlights of the previous tournament matches on their phones, so I’d seen quite a few of them at this point.

“Though I’m unsure whether or not they have famous relatives, I have been hearing several names repeated ubiquitously throughout the break,” I said, speaking up. “A boy named Tamaki Amajiki seems to have made a very good impression, though he lost the final match against a boy who was completely naked for some reason.”

Oddly enough, I’d seen all three of the third-year finalists several times before, both on and off campus—and once, they had even been standing in a group together on the train. Mirio Togata, the winner of the third year—and the one who inevitably ended up fighting all of his matches without clothing—was also the boy I’d seen sticking his upper half into the bus this morning. Tamaki Amajiki—the second-place finalist—was, in fact, the tall, blue-haired boy with whom I sometimes shared a train car and who dwelled in corners to avoid directly meeting anyone’s gaze. Nejire Hado—the third-place finalist—was the indigo-haired girl who had started cooing at Tsuyu and me back during the first week of school.

“Seems like I’ve got some competition,” Toru said, “He’s not invisible too, is he?”

“No, that doesn’t seem to be the case,” I said in answer. “A girl called Mawata Fuwa won the second-year tournament as well after defeating a boy from Shiketsu High School who could manipulate hair.”

“Tamaki Amajiki,” Tenya said, glancing up at the sky for a moment in thought. “I believe I’ve heard that name before.”

“We don’t really have much interaction with the upper years,” Tsuyu said, “It would be nice to meet them.”

“They’ll be graduating at the end of the year and becoming full-fledged heroes, but once we graduate, they will have already become established,” Toru said with audible interest. “Maybe we should try and build some connections with them now while we have the chance—what do you think, Class Pres?”

“I think that is a fantastic idea, Hagakure,” Tenya said, chopping his hand down onto his palm. “I’ll make sure to ask Aizawa about that during our next homeroom class.”

“That sounds more like a question for Midnight,” Tsuyu said, “Her lessons are more closely related to communication and building connections—it’s also the only class we’ve had that lets us interact with other classes.”

“A good point, Asui,” Tenya declared, “I’ll make certain to ask all of our teachers.”

The monitor had shifted to a different camera feed, and it caught the moment the two boys approached their starting positions on the platform, their visible moods an inverted reflection of one another—where Inasa was standing tall, beaming out at the crowd, Shoto’s posture was slouched, sullen, and his face was turned downward.

“On the side of U.A. High School, we have Shoto Todoroki, from Class 1-A, in the Hero Studies course,” Shota said, “He does well in both practical and written coursework.”

Shota sat back, passing the airtime over to the Shiketsu High School commentator, Nyoko Nori, and the woman’s faint voice came across the speakers a moment later.

“Please welcome Inasa Yoarashi back to the stage; he is a first-year from Shiketsu High School who is currently enrolled in the Hero Studies course,” Nyoko said, “He performs very well in teamwork exercises with his classmates; it seems very evident that he will go on to become a wonderful hero.”

“This is the first match of the second round,” Shota said, speaking up again. “Please begin—”

A paper-thin layer of ice washed outwards, spreading so quickly that it reached the edges of the platform and fell upon the grass in less than a second—it crept up the legs of Inasa’s tracksuit, as the massive boy bent low, coiled in a sudden crouch. The frost reached his knees just as the boy leapt upwards, and wind erupted around him, shredding the fragile layer of ice before it could fully take hold—columns of ice were already emerging from the layer of frost, reaching upwards for the ascending boy’s feet, but it was too slow to reach him, and so Inasa rose skyward. The ice kept on rising with him, a dozen new spires emerging from different angles, all aiming to collapse in on the boy, but Inasa’s hands came forward, and a massive spiral of visible wind burst forth, distorting the air along its path.

It smashed into the spires, shattering them like glass and then kept on going, the fragile constructs having sacrificed mass and durability for speed—Shoto stomped on the platform, and a thick array of hexagonal pillars rose up out of the frost, meeting the spiral of wind and contesting it. Both attacks held out for only a little while longer, the ice eroding even as the force of the spiral bled away. Inasa lifted his hand up, palm facing the sky, and a furious ball of wind twisted into existence, three distinct spirals striking out from it and falling upon the stage, already moving forward. The three vortexes tore around the stage in wide arcs, ripping the layer of frost apart and drawing it all up into the air, trapped in the tempest.

“These guys don’t know how to hold back at all,” Toru said, her voice barely audible over the wind. “I think this just about settles it—I’m fighting one more round, then I’m dropping out.”

“You can’t just give up,” Tenya cried out.

Shoto raised a cage of interlocking pillars around himself a moment before the three streams of twisting wind reached his position—but instead of crashing into it, like before, the three cords spun into a circle around the outside of the cage. They moved faster, rushing around it until the three spirals were so tangled up that they’d become a singular cohesive force. The massive column started to constrict, and the edge of the cage started to erode beneath the onrushing wind. The mass of ice regenerated in response, fueled by the boy inside and growing larger even as the wind sought to tear away the outer layer—like the very first time Inasa had stood in the arena, the wind began to pull at the audience and draw in loose items. The hurricane of force grew stronger by the second, just as powerful as it had been the first time, only now, it was centred entirely on his opponent’s position.

“Why doesn’t he attack with something larger,” Tsuyu tried, “Like he did with Tokoyami?”

I studied Inasa as he floated above the stage, eyes on his clothing and the defensive field of wind he’d cloaked himself within. There was a visible pathway to it, and it only became more distinct as it grew stronger. The wind rotated over his shoulder, down his chest, around his leg, before working its way back up the other side again—just as I had observed earlier in the day, it was a single long loop of continuous air. The defensive loop carried significant destructive force with it, more than enough to tear apart the ice on contact, yet somehow, his clothing remained undamaged, his skin untouched, and his breathing unhindered.

The answer was obvious enough after seeing it so many times and after witnessing the different situations in which he had chosen not to use it. He hadn’t used it during the Cavalry Battle because Kashiko had been riding on his shoulders at the time, and she wouldn’t have been able to withstand the contact. It was also the most likely reason that his tracksuit was so tightly fit to his form and why he kept his hair cut so close to his scalp: because anything beyond an inch or two would be caught in the field and torn apart. All of which pointed me towards a singular, unmistakable conclusion—there existed a gap between Inasa Yoarashi’s skin and his too-potent shield.

“He might not be able to,” Tenya managed, struggling to hold his glasses in place. “The attack he brought against Tokoyami may have used up too much of his stamina, and there hasn’t been enough time for him to recover from the expenditure.”

The column of spinning air was self-sustaining now and no longer tethered to the fading ball of wind that had once sat in Inasa’s palm—the bright smile on the boy’s face hadn’t changed at all, and if it was costing him anything to keep that in place, then I couldn’t see it. The cage was dwindling now, no longer regenerating at all, as large chunks were torn free to join the hurricane—twin lines of ice punctured the wall of shifting wind, angled towards one another in an interlocking triangle formation that reached most of the way to the other side of the platform—a tunnel, to provide safe travel out of the confines of the hurricane. The cage lost cohesion within seconds, abandoned to the wind, and then the hurricane began to creep forward, tearing away sections of the newly formed construct. Inasa moved for the first time, circling the stage and vanishing into the hurricane—a wave of air passed through the entirety of the ice tunnel, shattering it from the inside out and sending Shoto tumbling out of the end onto the grass outside of the arena.

“Winner, Inasa Yoarashi,” Nyoko said, her faint voice distorted oddly through the speakers as she tried for volume. “If you could, please work to safely dispel the calamity you have created before the entire stadium falls apart.”

Inasa, laughing at the top of his lungs—somehow almost as loud as the announcer’s boosted voice—touched down in the centre of the stage and all at once, the hurricane winds shifted into a degenerating, shrinking ring of distortion. The massive chunks of ice began a controlled fall around him, shattering on impact with the concrete.

“That’s why I’m giving up after this round, Class Pres,” Toru said as she pushed off the railing. “An invisible girl has no place in a tournament filled with monsters.”

#

1-A Competitor’s Box, Sports Festival Stadium.

“—Kashiko Sekigai placed first on the written portion of our entrance exam, but rather than sit at the top alone, she’s taken to running a study group that encourages members of every class to join,” Sanda said before taking a moment to blow her nose. “She wants nothing more than to help her classmates reach the potential that I know they are all capable of—”

Tenya was practically vibrating now, his hands locked tight around the railing as he fought to find some kind of meaning in the outcome of the previous bout—and what it meant for the U.A. Sports Festival. Kashiko, squirming down in her place on the platform, seemed to be trying to find a way to survive the overwhelming care that her teacher seemed to have for her and her fellow students.

“I can’t believe that Todoroki lost,” Tenya managed, “At the rate at which things are progressing, U.A. High School may well be eliminated.”

“If that happens, they will probably start calling it the Shiketsu Sports Festival,” Tsuyu said with a croak. “Then we’ll be forced to give them the stadium, as well.”

“U.A. High School is an institution that stands above all others—we can’t just start handing over large swathes of the school’s infrastructure to our rival academies,” Tenya said, alarmed. “I will never allow such a horrible thing to happen.”

“—at the end of the first week, Kashiko noticed that one of her classmates was having some difficulty with—” Sanda said, with an audible sniff. “Oh, I’m so sorry, of course—please go ahead.”

“U.A. High School, Hero Studies course, Toru Hagakure—she takes detailed notes and has a very refined attention to detail,” Shota managed, “Please fight now.”

Midnight appeared near the very end of the hallway outside of our competitor’s box, moving in our direction at a steady but unrushed pace. She hadn’t attempted to make contact with us at any other point during the Sports Festival, most likely because she was acting in an official capacity as a member of the staff, and it would likely be seen, at the very least, as unfavourable interference.

“I’ve never seen her notes,” Tsuyu said, “Are they really that good?”

“I’m afraid I’ve never had the chance to see them,” Tenya said, fiddling with his glasses. “They must be quite good if Aizawa is making a point to mention them.”

The initial strategy remained unchanged from the first battle, as Toru dropped her uniform in a heap at her feet and removed herself entirely from view in the process. Kashiko raised her arm in response, a bright blue array appearing directly above it, the details too fine and shifting around too quickly to make out, even through the monitor. The feed attempted to zoom all the way in on it, but she started moving before it could find focus, and she dashed out of frame, the camera unable to keep up without pulling back first.

“According to Hagakure, Sekigai’s quirk was able to locate her,” Tenya said, furrowing his brow. “This is such an unfortunate match-up, although that too is part of being a hero, I suppose.”

Kashiko’s head snapped back and forth, eyes darting from the holographic interface above her arm and the platform around her—but in a fight like this, the girl couldn’t afford to keep looking at her chart. Kashiko clearly had no method of discerning if an incoming attack was aimed high, low, or at which part of the body it would be directed.

“The position of her limbs remains completely unknown, and knowing the general location isn’t enough to accurately gauge distance,” I said, “Kashiko is also unable to sustain a full guard when she’s checking her interface.”

I glanced back over my shoulder towards the door, where Midnight was now standing just outside of view, watching the three of us with a face that seemed far more serious than her usual carefree self. Though we made eye contact for a moment, she made no attempt to speak or further draw our attention away from the fight.

“Kashiko keeps backing away,” Tsuyu said, “It’s hard to—she’s under attack, but it looked like she managed to block it.”

Sekigai was indeed under attack, and her defence was holding up about as well as Hitoshi’s had—which was to say that it wasn’t holding up at all. Whether or not that first block had been a fluke or had actually been informed by sense data was impossible to know, but she was already falling apart. There didn’t appear to be any groin attacks occurring, but Sekigai didn’t have the size or weight advantage that Hitoshi had, and each unseen strike was doing far more damage because of it. Sekigai, arms raised up to completely cover her face, seemed to pause for a moment, but the very second she attempted to bring her quirk back online, her left leg folded beneath her, and her knee struck the concrete hard.

Sekigai flung her hands forward to catch herself as she collapsed, and then she seemed to sink forward underneath some unseen weight, her arms shaking to hold herself up—it became clear that Toru was standing on the back of her knee because it remained pinned in place while she kicked the other one in an attempt to push the other girl off. An indentation appeared along the back of Sekigai’s tracksuit, and she collapsed all the way to the ground before one of her arms was dragged up and behind her back. The girl writhed for a moment, bucking in an attempt to throw the invisible girl off her back, but she seemed unable to generate enough force with her trapped limbs to manage it—the monitor, centred on Sekigai’s face, caught the moment where she said something, but the words were inaudible.

“Winner, Toru Hagakure,” Shota said, “Will the participants of Match Three please make their way down to the platform.”

“Well done, Hagakure,” Tsuyu called out, hands cupped in front of her face. “You did it.”

“One step closer,” Tenya said, hand-fisted in his excitement. “We’ll get through this as a—”

“Ida,” Midnight said, interjecting. “Your family is attempting to get in contact with you, and I’m afraid I’ll need you to come with me.”

Tenya, startled at the sudden address, turned to spot the hero standing in the hallway.

“At a time like this?” Tenya said, sounding confused. “I—very well.”

I watched them both vanish into the hallway and wondered at what kind of situation could have occurred for a call like that to happen during a space of time we’d been specifically asked to forfeit our phones during—I couldn’t imagine that Tenya’s family was ignoring the school’s request without a valid reason. Tsuyu seemed outright uneasy about the sharp shift in atmosphere that seemed to have been left in their wake.

“It must be something important,” Tsuyu said, sounding hesitant. “Do you think everything is alright?”

“I suppose we will need to wait for Tenya to return before we can determine that,” I said, “Tsuyu, you should focus on your own match because it’s about to begin.”

Tsuyu glanced down at the platform for a moment as if to check whether or not Jurota had already appeared before she stepped away from the railing entirely.

“Wish me luck?” Tsuyu said.

“Good luck, Tsuyu,” I said in agreement. “Though I doubt you will need it.”

Tsuyu vanished into the hallway, and I turned back to the railing, eyes shifting across the mass of people beneath me. With Tsuyu gone, Tenya drawn away by his family’s attempt to contact him, and with Toru lingering down in the tunnel, speaking with one of the members of staff, I was entirely alone and my mind completely unoccupied—and then, at some point, I came to the realisation that I had already begun searching the crowd for blue-skinned men and pink-haired women with shark-like teeth. It made little sense for either of them—or any of the other people who had been involved in Nanami’s abduction—to be present in the stadium.

The U.A. Sports Festival could perhaps be considered a browser catalogue for an organisation that trafficked in quirks, but it was also one they could view from anywhere on the planet with an Internet connection. The probability of locating Kaito Habiki or Susumu Hoshi among these people had to be astronomically low, but I couldn’t stop myself from being thorough. It was something I found far too easy to rationalise myself into—that entire group had placed themselves within earshot of our table all that time ago, so what was to say that whoever led that group didn’t possess an unsettling drive to be physically close to their victim? But it was speculation at best and something that I could puncture a dozen holes in within the same breath. I had no way to determine whether or not they had come to that restaurant with the specific goal of observing their victim or if they’d simply chanced upon Nanami’s existence during a moment of horrific and unfortunate timing.

“Congratulations on your victory, Toru,” I said.

I felt her shift, her uncovered foot twisting against the few scattered grains of sand I’d left in the hallway, though I’d been tracking her progress long before that—she was developing a habit of lingering out there, though if she had intended to listen in again, the lack of a conversational partner had stymied her.

“Now all of Japan knows I’m here,” Toru muttered as she slipped through the doorway. “You’re the only one here?”

If she cared about my method of detecting her, she made no indication of it, though she had long since figured out the way I’d done it.

“Tenya left to take a phone call from his family, though I’m not sure what it was about,” I said as she joined me at the railing. “Were you attempting to discover my weakness before we inevitably met during the finals? That must mean you already have a strategy prepared to deal with Inasa—how diligent.”

It was a question that I already knew her expected response to; I had just overheard her officially resigning from the tournament down in the tunnel, after all.

“I think it’s pretty clear that I’m not getting past Yoarashi,” Toru said, “Hisoka, do you know what happens to an invisible girl when she gets caught inside of a hurricane?”

“The same thing that happens to everything else, I would imagine,” I said, taking a guess. “Though, perhaps you could try leaving the stadium and returning to finish him off once he runs out of breath.”

“Funny,” Toru said. “Tsuyu took off her shoes?”

It was something she had done right at the entrance to the tunnel, the pair set against the wall with her socks tucked neatly inside—I’d seen her use her hands and feet to stick to walls during practicals, though if that was the reason, it had less bearing on such a flat and open area.

“—competitors are from U.A. High School and the Hero Studies course; Tsuyu Asui from Class 1-A, and Jurota Shishida from Class 1-B,” Shota said, “Asui has never failed to complete her assigned homework, and Shishida’s bookwork is always at the top of his class—you may begin when ready.”

Jurota’s tracksuit was already a ragged mess after his previous match, and the second transformation ended with one of the sleeves falling off entirely. Tsuyu accelerated from a complete stop to a full-on sprint the very moment the match began, and the reason she had removed her shoes became immediately clear as she began to circle around her opponent without slowing down at all. Jurota’s initial loping charge met nothing as Tsuyu cleared the trajectory, but the boy simply pivoted using his hands, then started forward at an angle to cut her off—she came to a dead stop without warning, and her hair swept forward, carried along by her momentum as the boy’s massive hand swung outwards, the tips of his fingers barely missing her.

Tsuyu crouched down, leapt forward into a tumble, and attempted to bury both of her uncovered feet in the boy’s chest—and despite the fact that she looked absolutely tiny beneath the boy’s massive bulk, the strike was enough to send him stumbling two steps backwards. Jurota twisted with the hit, using his hands and feet to regain his balance, then came straight back towards her, hindered but entirely unharmed. Tsuyu took off again, cutting to the right as one of the boy’s hands smashed down onto the concrete a few feet to the right of where she had initially been standing—

“He’s aiming for where she’s moving to,” Toru said in realisation. “How did he know which direction she was going to go?”

If that had been the first time he had done something like that, I might have said that it had been a guess, informed by the fact that she had already chosen to move around him in a clockwise direction—but he had already shown during the match with Mezo that the boy was capable of targeting someone during an evasion. Tsuyu had faster acceleration and a higher top speed than Mezo, but she lacked the ability to keep it up for anywhere near as long, her short legs needing to expend far more energy to match the larger boy’s impressive strides.

“It’s a combination of guesswork and paying careful attention to her posture before she moves,” I said, “Tsuyu is fast, and she has very strong reflexes, but this isn’t a way of fighting that she seems to have practised—it’s something new she’s trying out.”

Tsuyu cut in again, but this time, she was forced to flatten herself against the concrete as Jurota’s strike passed through the exact space she had just been occupying. Jurota smashed his other hand down towards her, aiming to catch her before she could get back up, but she managed to roll to the side—the attack stopped an inch above the ground, the edge of his palm not quite making contact with the ground before he clapped both of his hands together at a downward angle that cut off any avenue of escape. Tsuyu, flat on her back and with nowhere to go, kicked upwards with both legs—she strained there for a long while, back braced against the unyielding concrete, and her legs slowly bending beneath the boy’s relentless strength pressing down on her. Jurota’s head snapped backwards as a long, thick tongue whipped out, wrapping itself around the boy’s head in a tangled mess of flesh—and then he drew one of his hands away from the struggle and caught hold of it.

“Damn,” Toru muttered. “He got her.”

Jurota took a few rapid steps backwards as he reached up and began unwinding the tongue from around his face. Tsuyu stumbled forward after him, forced to follow from the unbreakable grip he had on her tongue, and then he turned, pulling her up and off the ground. Tsuyu caught hold of her own tongue in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure, but she was already in the air now, her body functionally acting as a weight at the end of a cable. Jurota let go, and Tsuyu was sent tumbling off the edge of the platform. Her tongue snapped back into her mouth the moment it was free to do so and then shot back out again, aiming for the only object she could possibly hope to use to catch herself—Jurota was already shrinking, and the tongue passed directly above his head, hitting nothing but air.

“Winner, Jurota Shishida,” Shota said.

“That guy is a menace,” Toru said.

“He’s calculated, powerful and well rounded, along with holding no obvious weaknesses, other than presenting as a larger than normal target,” I said, watching the boy trying to twist his ragged tracksuit into something more concealing. “But even then, he seems to have a good enough grasp on his quirk to minimise that by dropping in and out of it to avoid attacks.”

The fact that he’d started shrinking before the tongue had even left her mouth was just another point of data towards the boy having a rather refined gift in accurately predicting his opponent’s actions.

“Hisoka,” Toru said, “Shouldn’t you be heading down there?”

I considered the sand in Tenya’s clothing and the fact that he was currently in the process of leaving the stadium entirely. The personal issue that had arisen evidently carried enough significance to outweigh his desire to remain in the U.A. Sports Festival—Tenya had been the most vocal of our remaining class about sticking it out to the very end, so to see him leaving before our match was a rather startling change.

“I suppose you are correct,” I said.

Rather than reveal that I was tracking every single U.A. Student present in the stadium to everyone in Japan, I turned away from the railing, resigning myself to an unnecessary trip down to the platform to wait for an opponent who would not be coming—I made it less than three steps away from the railing before Present Mic’s voice washed over the stadium.

“Due to an unforeseen personal emergency, U.A. High School student Tenya Ida will be withdrawing from the third event.” Present Mic said, “Match Four is toast, folks, so Hisoka Higawara will be moving onto the next round entirely uncontested—how’s that for luck?”

I came to a stop and then turned around once again—though I couldn’t see her face or the placement of her eyes, I had the distinct feeling that she was staring at me and that my reticence to leave the competitor’s box had been noted down as suspicious.

“Either way, that concludes the second round of the first-year tournament, so we might as well rock straight on through to the semi-finals,” Present Mic said, trying to regain some of his lost excitement. “Match One will be Inasa Yoarashi vs Toru Hagakure. Match Two will be Hisoka Higawara vs Jurota Shishida—”

Present Mic seemed to cut himself off, and his image on the monitor glanced off-screen at someone who wasn’t in the frame—there was a burst of feedback as the man yanked the microphone to the side in a sudden jerking movement.

“—hold on, what? You—why are you only telling me this now?” Present Mic squawked, “Come on guys, you can’t do this to me—fine—Toru Hagakure has resigned from her own match, citing that she is content with her current placement.”

“That’s totally not my fault,” Toru said, “I told that guy like ten minutes ago.”

I just tilted my head in agreement, unwilling to comment.

“Inasa Yoarashi wins by default, so he is in the finals, which leaves us with only one match left in the semi-finals—Jurota Shishida and Hisoka Higawara,” Present Mic said, sounding pressed by it all. “But one of those guys hasn’t even had a chance to rest yet, so we’re taking a fifteen-minute break first—if either of you even thinks about giving up, I’m going to lose it.”

#

Stadium, Sports Festival Stadium.

It hadn’t taken long for a member of staff to eject Toru from the competitor’s box in the wake of her resignation, and after that, there seemed little point in remaining there myself. The break was spent lingering at the mouth of the tunnel, mind set on refining my strategy for dealing with Jurota Shishida—what I knew of him told me that he worked by reducing his opponent’s options until he had secured a situational advantage, which he then used as a foundation to defeat them. Against Mezo, he’d done that by establishing a false upper limit of speed and then using it to maneuver him into the corner of the platform, a place where evading became impossible due to the space constraints and where a battle of strength was the only real outcome.

With Tsuyu, he’d waited until she had come close enough to start her attempt to push him out of bounds, then created a situation where she was forced to use her tongue, something he’d then used to great effect. The boy was calculated, and he followed the steps of a prepared plan, but he was also capable of making rapid adjustments when unexpected situations arose—as when Mezo had managed to recover before he’d fallen out of bounds by using his arms. That meant that he would already have a plan in mind for me based on the capability I had shown throughout the three events of the day. Attempting to use the platform against me would be something he probably couldn’t manage to the same level as Ibara had.

It was also unlikely that he would attempt to trap or restrain me because he’d seen that I was capable of slipping through even the tiniest of gaps. Jurota’s primary method of attack would be to bear down on me as quickly as possible, then strike me hard enough to remove me from the platform in a single attack before I could generate enough sand to contain him as I had with Ibara—which meant that I knew both of our starting positions, his target, and just how quickly he would attempt to move to reach it.

“This is the last round of the first-year semi-finals, and the two competitors should now take their places on the platform,” Shota said, “You will recognise both of the participants are from U.A. High School and are members of the Hero Studies course.”

I stepped out of the tunnel and into the sun before starting up the stairs. The sand in Jurota’s remaining clothing moved in a mirror of my own position on the other side of the stadium. He reached the top a few moments before I did, and as I crested the top stair, I found that the boy’s tracksuit top had become little more than scraps at this point—though he had made an attempt to loop it all together around his neck, forming a ragged blue and white strip of a tie.

“Match Two is comprised of Hisoka Higawara of Class 1-A and Jurota Shishida of Class 1-B—and they are both quite rational,” Shota said, “You may begin when ready.”

Jurota surged forward as he had during the last two matches, growing in size as he did and descending to all fours. I lifted my hand, and five pellets of sand burst forward, striking the ground ahead of me and drawing out a dotted line between us—a series of thick columns began to rise up out of the ground as I expanded the pellets, and I made eye contact with Jurota over the top of them for only a moment before they grew tall enough to shield me from view. My goal here was a simple one, and from an outside perspective, it most likely looked as if I was attempting to raise a barrier between us in order to keep the massive boy away from me, but proximity had little to nothing to do with my strategy.

With his goal of trampling me underfoot properly established and the obstruction in place, Jurota had exactly three options available to him here: he could sacrifice his central position on the platform by going around the width of it, he could leap over the top of it, or he could go straight through it. Jurota threw himself upwards, easily clearing the horizontal spread of six-foot columns and aiming to crash down on top of me with his entire body—I smiled. A pillar of sand erupted from directly in front of me, rising at an angle and smashing into his raised right arm. It robbed him of the majority of his forward momentum, but Jurota managed to regain some of it by using it as a point of leverage to throw himself up and over the top of it.

The rolling tumble had him coming back to his feet directly on top of the still-extending pillar, and he dug his foot into the top of it before bracing himself to lunge down the length of it—the section of the pillar directly beneath his foot pulled away as he stepped into it, splitting it into two pieces and leaving him falling straight downwards without any of the speed he’d sought to generate. The two pillars slammed inwards, catching him between them and washing over his body. Jurota twisted violently in the air, shredding the cage through sheer force and then shrunk down, aiming to fall through the large hole he’d made in the trap—two massive hands built from the original barrier that I had no more reason to retain clapped shut around him, fingers interlocking together to seal him in a new cage of sand.

One of Jurota’s massive arms burst out of the back of one of the hands as he re-engaged his quirk, and I wrenched the entire mass of sand to the side, gathering momentum before vanishing it all at once—it left him tumbling through the air, without anything nearby to catch himself. Jurota twisted in mid-air just as he crashed into the top of the stadium wall, his hand clamped around the railing a few short feet away from the front row of the audience to keep himself in place.

“Winner, Hisoka Higawara,” Shota said.

Jurota let go of the shattered wall and dropped down the dozens of meters to the grass without any signs of injury, defeated but entirely unharmed. He shrank back down to his normal size and then spent a few moments tidying himself up. I watched the boy reset the position of his ragged tie and then shift his glasses on his nose so they were sitting straight, curious at how the fragile glass had survived the exchange entirely untouched.

“We’ll be taking another short break to give our finalists time to rest,” Present Mic said, “Once we return, the final match of the first years will be taking place, after which the award ceremony will occur, so make sure you stick around.”

I turned and left the platform the same way I’d come, retaking my position in the tunnel to wait out the last match of the day. There was no point in returning to the empty competitor’s box when there was nobody present to discuss strategy with, and the audience would gain nothing further from my silent presence. As far as drawing attention to myself went, I’d performed well enough throughout each of the events to make certain I had stood out from the mass of students. The real issue here was that despite my research and Uncle Sajin’s anecdotal meeting with the man, I still didn’t have a good enough read on Hawks to know what array of traits would draw his attention.

Hawks had no school, academy, mentor or training facility listed, which suggested that he was a self-trained hero who had applied for a license independently and had actually succeeded—a process that was both unusual and something that rarely worked out as smoothly as it had appeared to have done. At twenty-two years of age, he was the youngest hero in Japan’s top ten, which spoke of an exceptional level of competence. All of the accumulated footage that existed online presented him as outwardly unconcerned by just about everything around him. There were no indications of visible stress, fatigue, or discomfort at any point during his career. He was possessed of a laid-back demeanour, while his interactions with both the media and his fellow heroes were entirely irreverent. He was seen in public almost every single day, but his actual engagement with the citizens was low.

The times when he did interact with them, the candid footage showed him as quite friendly, and it was clear that he was regarded highly by almost everyone. Hawk’s did have several vocal detractors, but they were ubiquitously other heroes, and the majority of them seemed to be one-sided rivalries that were most likely fabricated for the increased marketing value that compelling narratives added. Recruitment for internships was built on perceived compatibility, but that was something that rested far more upon the man’s personal outlook and his internal process for decision-making. Whether or not I appealed to him could depend on a multitude of things: if he was the type to develop interest based on effectiveness, if he made choices based on shared personality traits, or if it was something more nebulous. I believed that we shared some surface-level similarities, maintaining an even disposition in public and generally avoiding any strong displays of emotion.

My flat affect was even a close enough approximation to Hawk’s laid-back indifference that it might register as the same thing—but all of that would mean nothing if he wasn’t the one in his agency who actually handled the internships.

“—hope you’re all back in your seats because we’re racing towards an explosive finish for the twenty-one-forty-one U.A. Sports Festival,” Present Mic said, his voice reverberating around the stadium. “The second-years showed us that big power can come in small pink packages, and the third-years showed us that sometimes you just can’t hide your package at all—I’m still reeling from that one, folks.”

I pushed off the wall of the tunnel and came to stand at the entrance, eyes on the stairs ahead.

“You’ve seen them blasting through the competition and making waves all day long, from the Obstacle Race to the Cavalry Battle to the Elimination Tournament,” Present Mic said, “Now we get to see them go head to head in what might be the biggest spectacle of the entire day.”

I considered if there was anything left that I could do with my remaining time to incentivise the Hawk’s Agency towards requesting me for an internship, but short of making a direct request in the middle of the stage—something that had just a great of a chance to damage my chances—I couldn’t think of anything else.

“Please welcome our two first-year finalists with a round of applause,” Present Mic said, “Both competitors, you can go ahead and make your way to the platform.”

Inasa was already at his starting position by the time I reached the top of the stairs, his exuberance and stride length carrying him forward at a far greater pace than I was willing to approach. The massive smile that had been present on his face throughout the entire day was unmoved, and as I came to a stop across from him, the boy planted his hands at his waist and began laughing.

“To the Hero Agencies that are watching, please make sure you reach out to the staff of Shiketsu High School as soon as possible, we welcome all inquiries and internment requests, and those of you who are looking forward to receiving a hero education in the new year, we encourage you all to apply to our fine institution,” Nyoko said, “Inasa Yoarashi, a first-year student of Shiketsu High School now takes the stage as one of our two finalists, please welcome him.”

Inasa’s good cheer only brightened at the positive response of the audience, and his laughter rose in turn.

“U.A. High School is also accepting all inquiries and internment requests—you better make sure you send them in promptly because I don’t like dealing with things at the last minute,” Shota said, eyeing the camera through the slit in his bandages. “Hisoka Higawara is the other first-year finalist, and this is the final match—begin.”

Wind erupted around the boy as the defensive loop washed into existence around him, strong enough that I could already feel it pulling at my clothes, and I watched as he rose up off the ground, his hands still planted firmly at his hips—Inasa Yoarashi reminded me of All Might in a lot of ways. He was large physically, always smiling, and possessed a good, honest nature that couldn’t be ignored. He was someone whose place in the world had never been in dispute, one who must have been born to become a hero, and he fit the role with far more compatibility than I ever could have—but he was also someone who was standing between me and my goal.

“Sorry, Inasa,” I murmured.

Hours ago, right at the end of the Cavalry Battle, when Toru had stolen the ten-million point headband from Kashiko Sekigai, I’d buried their entire team in sand under the guise of preventing a counterattack from Inasa, but that hadn’t been the only thing I had done at that moment. Every stitch of clothing he wore now held grains of my sand lodged between the seams, the gaps, and inside the depths of his pockets—all of it now nestled safely beneath the impassible loop of wind that was surging around his body.

Sand erupted from his tracksuit, expanding outwards and multiplying until he was covered from head to toe in it. Large, flat protrusions burst outwards, aiming to interfere with every section of the continuous loop and destroying his ability to fly in the process. Inasa opened his mouth, his bright laughter turning to shock—and I filled it full of sand, unwilling to test whether or not he could use his breath to break free of my grip. The force of the wind surrounding his body crashed into those flat protrusions, shredding them in an attempt to maintain his flight, but my ability to create more of it turned the situation into an unending struggle beneath our quirks. His inability to take a breath was an inevitable timer ticking down on the match, but even then, there was too much sand and too many blocks getting in the way of his loop—Inasa dropped out of the air, barely managing to mitigate the fall as he collapsed on the platform, the shield of wind vanishing.

The sand covering his hands was sent scattering away as wind burst out of his palms, but it was an attack that was aimed at nothing. The boy’s massive arms fought against the sand to turn back inwards, perhaps to turn that same attack on himself to scatter the sand constricting him, but even with his prodigal musculature, he couldn’t hope to overpower me—unwilling to starve him of oxygen all the way to the point of unconsciousness, I dragged him off the edge of the platform.

“Winner, Hisoka Higawara,” Shota said.

I vanished the sand surrounding him, starting with what I’d forced into his mouth until he was left on his hands and knees on the grass. Inasa pushed himself back to his feet, and though he was still fighting to get air back into his lungs, he came up laughing—the boy raised a single fist up into the air above his head in a tribute that nobody in Japan could have possibly missed. The crowd came to their feet at the sight of it, their cheers rising to a crescendo of overlapping noise that couldn’t be denied—and though I had been the victor, I was left with the distinct feeling that there had only ever been one real hero in this match.

“With that, the third event is officially over, and what a shocking finale it was,” Present Mic said, fighting to be heard above the crowd. “The first-year champion of the U.A. Sports Festival is U.A. High School’s—Hisoka Higawara from Class 1-A.”

If none of this was enough to gain the attention of the Hawk’s Agency—well, it wasn’t the only agency in Fukuoka.

#

Interview Room, Sports Festival Stadium.

“It’s more or less a fancy dinner event for the big-wig sponsors and pro-heroes to get a chance to meet you all; you’re more than welcome to bring your parents, but I’d leave any younger siblings behind—it’s not really the scene for young children,” Midnight said, leaning in a bit. “Amajiki, you went to one of these last year, didn’t you?”

Tamaki spun on his heel to face the wall, apparently unwilling to tolerate even a few inches of lost distance between them.

“Oh no,” Tamaki managed, “Please don’t ask me to speak up in front of all these people.”

Midnight folded her arms across her chest, visibly amused at the reaction, and the tall blonde boy reached out to clap a hand on the boy’s shoulder in solidarity.

“He definitely went to that,” Mirio said, “I remember him teasing us about how cool it was afterwards.”

“That’s not accurate at all,” Tamaki managed, “Nejire forced me to answer all of her questions, and neither of you let me go for over an hour.”

“I totally did that,” Nejire said, beaming. “It was great.”

Mirio Togata, Tamaki Amajiki and Nejiro Hado were the first, second and third-place finalists, respectively. I found myself studying them with some interest—each one was a student of U.A. High School and extraordinarily different from one another. I’d seen some of the footage regarding them, and it was clear that as heroes-in-training, the three of them were far more refined. They made decisions quicker, even when faced with unusual or unfortunate situations, and held a striking decisiveness in how they approached obstacles or opponents.

“Miss Nori,” Camie said, “Is this dinner-thing mandatory?”

“It isn’t, but I would like to make the suggestion that all three of you should come along anyway,” Nyoko said, “It’s a chance to make a good impression on some very important people, and you’re only expected to be present for an hour at most.”

“If you believe it is in our best interest,” Nagamasa said, his voice muffled by the mass of hair covering his face. “Then we will, of course, attend.”

“You’re deciding for us, Nagamasa?” Camie said, “So uncool—right, Inasa?”

Nagamasa Mora and Camie Utsushimi, students of Shiketsu High School who had placed second and third as the second-year finalists. I’d seen them interact with Inasa only a little since we had first arrived, but they seemed to get along quite well with the younger boy.

“Wrong,” Inasa said without any sort of hesitation. “Nagamasa is super cool.”

Nagamasa straightened, visibly touched by the words, a reaction that left Camie rolling her eyes at the sight of it.

“If we’re trying to make a good impression, then we should probably start preparing now,” Mawata said, brushing some hair over her ear. “Who is going to be there?”

Mawata Fuwa, the first-place finalist of the second-years and a student of U.A. High School from Class 2-A—she had drawn my eye the very moment I’d stepped into the room, the bright pink hair she possessed the exact same shade as Susumu Hoshi. Present Mic had mentioned a second-year with ‘big power coming in small pink packages’, so I had a feeling this was who he had been referring to at the time.

“There will be dozens of pro-heroes in attendance, but I can’t say that I know the full list of who will be present,” Midnight said, tapping a finger against her chin. “Best Jeanist, Edgeshot, Sir Nighteye, Mirko, Crust, Ryukyu, Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, Shishido, Uwabami will all be there—I’m obviously going to be there as well, as will All Might, Present Mic and Eraserhead.”

“Oh, maybe we should go,” Camie said, impressed. “Do you think Ryukyu will be down to give me an autograph?”

“That’s for you to discover,” Nyoko said, eyes on the door. “It looks like they’re just about ready for you; please keep in mind our discussions.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Inasa said, hand smacking into his forehead in a sudden salute. “We’ll be on our best behaviour.”

“Midnight, may I borrow you for a moment?” Nyoko asked, “I’d like to discuss the chaperone situation for the dinner in question.”

Midnight waved her over to the side of the room, the two of them leaving us behind—the exact moment they were out of direct supervision, Nejire leaned forward with a grin.

“Nagamasa, right? What’s under all this hair?” Nejire said, reaching out to touch it. “I bet it’s something crazy—you can control this with your quirk, can’t you? Why don’t you shave your face? Do you look funny? What’s the reason, huh?”

The boy seemed entirely taken aback by the sudden stream of questions and the fact that she was now tugging on a clump of hair that was attached to his face.

“I—I’ve carefully cultivated the length and volume to provide maximum body coverage.” Nagamasa started, sounding offbeat. “I’m able to harden each strand, and having it already in place to protect my vitals areas ensures I don’t have to waste time or focus moving it around.”

Nejire looked entirely captivated by the answer and moved on to an overt attempt at braiding the boy’s facial hair together.

“What about your face, though?” Nejire insisted, “Do you have big lips?”

“My lips are remarkably average,” Nagamasa managed, “As is the rest of my appearance, I possess no heteromorphic features at all—would you like to see a picture?”

Nejire snapped a hair tie shut around her creation, leaving the boy with a mass of hair clumped together in the middle of his face like an oddly braided beard.

“No way, that totally dispels the mystery,” Nejire said, planting her hands on her hips to study her work. “Just know that I’m totally picturing you with big lips.”

“I—I see,” Nagamasa tried.

“What about you—uh—Shishida? You’re from U.A. High School, aren’t you? You’re hairy too—you’ve even got a beard.” Nejire said, leaning in. “What’s that about? Aren’t you younger than me? Why isn’t there any hair on your face? Are those fangs?”

Jurota reached up and adjusted his glasses for a moment, entirely composed in the face of her curiosity.

“I am a first-year in Class 1-B, and I am from U.A. High School. I am hairy, and I do have a beard; it’s caused by an increase in keratin production brought on as a result of my quirk.” Jurota said, “I am younger than you. I shave my face every single day. They aren’t fangs; they are incisors. The increase in size is also a result of my quirk.”

Nejire gave a series of rapid nods, egging the boy on to answer all of her questions.

“Whoa,” Mirio said, impressed. “Did you hear that, Tamaki? He answered them all.”

“I heard,” Tamaki mumbled.

“Why are you facing the wall like that?” Mawata asked, stepping up to the boy. “You’re not feeling sick, are you—do you want me to check your temperature?”

“Oh god,” Tamaki managed. “Mirio—please.”

Mirio waved his hand about in front of his face, laughing at the request, but made no attempt to assist him—Tamaki seemed to sag, boneless against the wall, as the shorter girl stood up on her tiptoes to press her uncovered wrist to his forehead. Nejire stepped in front of me, and I glanced over at her, curious if she had more questions bubbling up inside of her.

“What about you—have you started shaving your face yet? Wait, first-years normally don’t do that—never mind, just make sure you tell me when it finally happens,” Nejire said, setting her sights on me. “You look familiar, actually; where have I seen you?”

“I’ll make sure to keep you updated,” I said in agreement. “It was on the train; I was speaking with a girl called Tsuyu Asui, and you started making odd noises at us.”

“I remember that—it was like watching a TV drama,” Nejire said, sucking in a breath. “What happened in season two—did the two of you end up being friends after all? No, don’t spoil it for me; I’ll find out myself.”

“That almost sounds like you’re going to stalk him,” Mirio said, “Alright, Tamaki?”

“Mirio,” Tamaki managed. “Mirio—she’s touching me.”

“Wow, your skin feels hot, and you’ve gone all red now,” Mawata said in concern. “Come on, let’s find you some water.”

Tamaki made a grab for the wall, but his fingers found no purchase against the smooth material, and so, unable to find the willpower to protest, he was led away towards the table on the other side of the room. Mirio beamed at the sight of the other boy’s departure—I glanced back at the girl who was still looming large in my vision.

“Despite the misunderstanding, we have become friends now,” I said, considering the two remaining third-years. “Several of my classmates have expressed the desire to learn more about the third-year students before you all graduate at the end of this year, do you think that would be possible?”

“That sounds like a lot of fun,” Mirio said, clapping his fist down onto his other palm. “Nejire—can we do something like that?”

“You bet we can,” Nejire decided. “I’ll talk to Midnight when she gets back, and we can do a thing—it’ll be great.”

“I believe a meeting like that would be something my own class would benefit from,” Jurota said, adjusting his glasses. “Please consider us as well.”

“We’ll ask all the classes and see who wants to get involved,” Nejire said, beaming. “Then I can find out exactly how many of the first years have started to shave their faces.”

“You seem really stuck on that today,” Mirio said with odd cheer. “It’s totally strange.”

“I know—hey, Yoarashi, how’d you get so tall anyway?” Nejire accused, turning on the boy. “You’re even bigger than Mirio—just how much did you fiddle with the character slider?”

“That makes it sound like he’s a video game character,” Camie said, shaking her head. “So uncool.”

Inasa just laughed out loud at all of the attention, but before he had a chance to actually come up with an answer, Midnight and Nyoko returned from their private discussion. The door was then unlocked, and a dozen different men and women were led into the room, each of them decked out with cameras, microphones and other equipment.

“You’ve got fifteen minutes with them, and you better stick to questions related to the U.A. Sports Festival, the individual, or hero-related topics,” Midnight said in warning. “I’ll be listening for anything inappropriate, so you best behave—or I’ll have to punish you.”

There was a general agreement from the mass of people before she actually stepped back and allowed them all to proceed. Within seconds, I found myself standing in front of a very familiar pair—Yui Sado and her cameraman.

“Hello again, Yui,” I said in greeting. “Did you have some more questions for me?”

“You should have told me you were going to win, Hisoka,” Yui said, directing her cameraman to get ready. “I’m going to have to completely redo my write-up—”

#

Reception Room, Sports Festival Stadium.

I stood alone in the reception room, eyes shifting from person to person, almost every one of them an oddity or perhaps a marvel to look upon—at least seventy percent of those present were pro-heroes and in full costume. There was also another smaller portion who was sharply dressed but were neither fit enough nor carried themselves in a way that identified them as having active combat training—Minato and Ume Yaoyorozu were part of that group, as was the President of the Hero Public Safety Commission. I’d already spoken to several of the heroes present, including Crust—I’d even managed to make mention of Eijiro and then ask the man about the outcome of a battle between him and Crimson Riot, though he had declined to give a decisive answer.

Kamui Woods and Mt. Lady were the latest pair to approach me, but it became clear that they were both far more interested in navigating the room and making connections with the other heroes who were present. I couldn’t blame them for doing so, seeing as I was nothing more than a high school student, and we were currently surrounded by some of the most famous people in Japan. Hayami and Sajin had yet to arrive, the late notice causing a rapid return to the Higawara manor in search of more fitting attire to wear, but it wouldn’t be long before they would appear—

“Why are you standing around all by yourself?” A woman said, “You won first place, so you should be causing a ruckus right now.”

I turned and found myself face to face with a hero whom I wasn’t very familiar with—and whose name I was pretty sure was the Rabbit Hero, Mirko. I knew from my recent research into the hero rankings that she was currently somewhere in the top one hundred, though the exact number escaped me.

“I usually avoid causing a ruckus whenever possible,” I said.

“That right?” Mirko said, “Don’t tell me you’re a shy one—that would be just too funny.”

Would it be funny? If it was, I wasn’t quite sure as to why.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mirko,” I said in a belated greeting. “Did you enjoy the U.A. Sports Festival?”

“The third event was the only one worth the time,” Mirko said without care. “But I’d rather be down there fighting myself than watching someone else do it.”

“Oh?” I wondered. “Was there someone you wanted to fight in particular?”

Mirko glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, apparently genuinely considering the question.

“That naked third-year looks like fun, and that kid from your class who dropped out looked pretty fast,” Mirko said with a nod. “That frog girl had some good legs on her too—though she didn’t know what the hell she was doing with them.”

“Mirio Togata, Tenya Ida, and Tsuyu Asui,” I said in answer. “If I may ask, will your Hero Agency be sending in Internship requests for them?”

Mirko stepped forward into my personal space and then squinted her eye at me—I got the odd impression that she was attempting to loom over me despite the fact that I was, in fact, taller than her. It was also oddly intimidating, though I couldn’t say why, as it seemed unlikely that she would attempt anything in a room like this.

“I don’t work for any agency because teaming up is for weaklings,” Mirko said, stabbing her finger at my face to punctuate the point. “You’re the winner of the first-years, so you better say it out loud so I know that you get it.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to make it to the final event if I hadn’t teamed up with someone in the second one,” I said, “But if it satisfies you, I don’t mind saying it out loud.”

“No point in saying it if you don’t believe it,” Mirko said with a disappointed grunt. “What are these hero internship things all about, anyway? We didn’t have them back when I was at school.”

I wondered how it was that I could be at an event like this and that I was now the one explaining its purpose to one of the heroes who had actually come to it—what an odd situation.

“You spend one week in the company of a pro-hero, and they use that time to train you in how to act in the way that they believe a hero should act, providing experience, guidance, and direction,” I said, “I imagine that the form the training takes changes depending on who the hero is, and where their strengths are.”

“And they’d have to listen to me the entire time?” Mirko wondered.

“There are some rules, but yes, you could spend that week teaching them whatever you wanted so long as it pertained to being a hero,” I said, “I believe we are also asked to shadow you while on patrols or in the course of their daily activities to learn how a hero should behave during different situations.”

“So they’d have to watch me fight villains,” Mirko said, sounding interested. “Then when I ran out of bad guys to beat up, I could make them fight me until bedtime?”

“You would need to make that fighting instructional to some degree, but yes, I imagine you could do that,” I said, “However, that does seem like an awful lot of fighting.”

“How do I send in internships?” Mirko demanded.

The fact that I was a first-year student seemed to have escaped her for the moment.

“I imagine you would need to start a Hero Agency, or at the very least, submit a form indicating you wish to participate in some kind of mentorship.” I said, “Perhaps you could ask Eraserhead or Midnight; I believe they are the ones who handle the internship requests.”

“Don’t go anywhere until I get back,” Mirko said in warning. “I’ve already forgotten all the names you told me, and I’ll need them in a minute.”

Mirko didn’t bother waiting around for a reply, and so I saved myself the effort of giving her one. I felt that if she did manage to figure out how to send an internship request, and someone actually did accept it, I was almost certainly going to owe someone an apology. I caught sight of Hayami’s hair before anything else, twisted up into an elaborate knot that I’d sometimes seen her wear at social gatherings. Sajin stood beside her, now dressed in his costume and in the cover of his heroic identity—the Sand Hero, Snatch. It was the first time I’d seen either of them since last night, and though I’d spoken with them both over the phone about an hour ago, it had only been a brief conversation regarding the invitation to this very event. They spotted me a moment later, angling away from the doorway and crossing the room towards me. I stepped away from the wall to meet them and was startled when Hayami threw her arms around my neck in a sudden, uncharacteristic hug.

“Hisoka, you were incredible,” Hayami said, pressing my head into her shoulder as she attempted to crush me. “You said you were going to make it to the final event and to think I tried to caution you—I’m such a fool.”

“You should have seen her up in the stands,” Sajin said, amused. “She was a total wreck the entire time.”

“Don’t tell him that,” Hayami said as she finally pulled back. “I was just—I don’t know how you two can just throw yourselves into situations like that without being worried.”

“Thank you for coming to watch me, Aunt Hayami,” I said, finding the space to speak. “I’m sorry that I didn’t give you more time to prepare for this; Midnight only revealed it to us after the award ceremony had taken place.”

“That’s quite alright,” Hayami said, glancing around the room. “Oh my, there are some very interesting people present, aren’t there?”

“Minato and Ume are both here,” I said, overtly glancing over to the far corner of the room. “I believe they are actually one of the main sponsors of the U.A. Sports Festival.”

“Oh, they are? How lovely,” Hayami said, voice bright. “I almost called them earlier.”

“It might be best if we all use this opportunity to speak with those here while we have it,” I said, “We are only here for a short time, after all.”

“The kid is probably right,” Sajin said in agreement. “There are a few people here I’d like to talk to as well.”

“Hisoka,” Hayami said, “Are you sure you won’t mind if I dash away for a moment?”

“Not at all,” I said, “Please go ahead and take your time, Aunt Hayami.”

Hayami patted me on the cheek in another odd display of affection before she swept away into the crowd, picking her way across the room with far more skill than anything I could manage—I suspected that a place like this would be somewhere she would always be more comfortable at than I could hope to match.

“A good chance of making it to the final event, huh?” Sajin said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve come such a long way, Hisoka.”

“Thank you for coming, Uncle Sajin,” I said, “It was nice knowing that you were both nearby.”

“Seeing you out there today was just—I suppose it’s got me thinking about how much you’ve grown over the years,” Sajin said with another squeeze of his hand. “I still remember when you’d come tugging at my sleeve, asking all these questions about something I’d never even stopped to think about, and now look at you.”

I studied his face through his mask and the smile that seemed etched into it—considering all of the mistakes I’d made when I was younger, I couldn’t help but think that he was right. Everything I’d done back then had always seemed to spiral into a mess of confusion and an ever-growing list of new questions. I’d spent so much time feeling lost and struggling with the basic facets of communication that everyone else just seemed to naturally understand. The idea that I could have stood in a room like this, with people of this calibre, and find myself capable of sharing a conversation on equal footing would have seemed impossible back then. Though I still made mistakes from time to time, and my understanding wasn’t without errors—there was only one reason that I’d managed to get this far.

“Strength and perseverance,” I said.

“I’m glad you remember, Hisoka,” Sajin said, smiling. “Listen, the place you started and the one you’ve just arrived at—they’re worlds apart, and I can’t tell you how lucky I’ve been to witness it.”

#

Hisoka’s Apartment, Musutafu.

Mina gave an exaggerated flick of her head in an attempt to send some of her messy hair back over her shoulder while one of her hands rose up to delicately cup her own cheek as if to protect her face from an unseen wind.

“You weren’t lucky, Toru; you were sought after,” Mina said, with an affected voice far smoother than her own. “Like geez, Hisoka—I’m pretty sure my heart skipped a beat.”

“Mina,” Momo managed, “Don’t tease him.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what either of you are trying to say,” I said, “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, and all of it applied equally to Tsuyu.”

Tsuyu gave a startled rumble at being dragged back into the conversation.

“Are you sure you’re not doing it on purpose?” Mina said, “Even if you say you aren’t, I’m not going to believe you.”

“Then why ask him at all?” Momo insisted.

“I say we bring Hagakure in here and get to the bottom of this,” Mina decided, “Who has her number—Tsuyu? You need to add her to the call.”

“It’s late, and she is probably already asleep,” Momo said, waving her hands around in front of the camera. “Let’s just go back to talking about the tournament.”

Eijiro gave a mournful groan at the word; his head slumped on his crossed arms in front of the camera.

“Tournament? What’s that? I bet it’s nice,” Eijiro said, smacking his forehead against his arms in time with the words. “I can’t believe we were knocked out before we even got that far.”

“It is pretty disappointing,” Mina said, folding her hands behind her head. “You guys should have seen Bakugo—I mean, I seriously thought he was going to lose it.”

“He did lose it,” Eijiro said with a tortured moan. “The only reason he didn’t rush back in and fight that Shinso guy was that we all dog-piled him.”

“It’s unfortunate that your team started so close to Team Shinso,” I said, speaking up. “Without forewarning of his quirk, there probably wasn’t a single person in the Cavalry Battle that could have encountered him without being eliminated.”

“That’s exactly what I said to Bakugo,” Mina huffed, “He told me to take my coping elsewhere.”

“Aizawa warned us that we wouldn’t always have knowledge of our opponent’s quirks,” Momo said, the brush in her hand fighting through her thick hair. “I’m far more disappointed in my own performance—I thought I was prepared to fight Ida, but the very moment my plan started to go awry, I lost my composure.”

“I panicked too,” Tsuyu admitted, her own hair tied up in an odd loop above her head. “But even under better conditions, I’m not sure I could have defeated Shishida.”

“I think that applies to most of the people in the festival,” Eijiro said, “I’ve sparred with Shoji before, and he’s hard enough to deal with—Shishida was manhandling him like it was nothing.”

I considered the envelope that sat on my desk and how best to use the contents of it—the fact was that Hayami had already confirmed our reservation, and so, even in the very unlikely event that something caused her to decide she wasn’t going to attend, I would still possess the authorisation to enter I-Island during the Expo. I tucked the edge of my thumb into the corner of the envelope, partially opening it—saving it as a backup served no purpose. Minato and Ume Yaoyorozu would be present on I-Island, and they would be accompanied by Momo.

That alone was enough to split the two groups into two segments, with Hayami spending her time with the adults while I took on the task of escorting Momo. But if there were more people present, then my ability to move freely would increase, and splitting her attention between the others would also allow me to fade into the background or even just excuse myself without drawing as much suspicion.

“Hisoka,” Eijiro said, “You didn’t fall asleep with your eyes open, did you?”

While being surrounded by the smiling faces of people who, for some odd reason, seemed to actively seek out my presence was, in fact, dream-like for a boy who’d spent a long time with nobody at all, I was relatively sure that wasn’t the case—I lifted the envelop up into the frame of my own camera, and flipped it open, sliding the three plastic slips out into view.

“I am currently awake,” I said before pausing for a moment. “Eijiro.”

Eijiro leaned forward to squint at his monitor, his forehead growing bulbous in the video feed from the proximity as he attempted to read the writing in the low light of my bedroom.

“Me,” Eijiro said, squinting one eye shut. “Uh—what am I looking at?”

“There was an auxiliary reward for coming first in the U.A. Sports Festival, and the first place winners of each year group received a ticket to the I-Island I-Expo, with a plus two included,” I said, “As it happens, my Aunt Hayami and I have already made existing plans to visit the expo—thus, we already possess a ticket.”

I twisted the tickets, allowing them to fan out slightly until it became more apparent that there were three of them in my hand.

“I would like to offer you these tickets, though they come with a suggestion for their use,” I said, “That is, it would work out quite well if you were to invite Tsuyu and Mina along as your plus two.”

“Whoa, seriously—” Eijiro said, startled. “Aren’t those things super expensive?”

“Yes,” I said.

Eijiro looked entirely lost with how to proceed in the face of such a matter-of-fact answer, and the sound of rapid typing started up, caught by the sensitivity setting of the microphone connected to Mina’s laptop.

“What about Momo?” Tsuyu said, sounding hesitant. “I don’t like the idea of leaving her out.”

Momo reached up to cover her mouth, looking visibly touched at the immediate response to my offer, and she quickly spoke up to address it.

“My parents have already received a ticket of their own, and I will be attending the expo alongside them,” Momo said, “Hisoka, am I right in assuming that you were already aware of this?”

“I was,” I said in confirmation. “My aunt revealed it to me several days ago, although I wasn’t sure if your parents had spoken to you about it yet.”

“They brought it up at dinner last night,” Momo said, smiling now. “Thank you for your concern, Tsuyu—that was very sweet of you.”

Tsuyu flushed at the words, caught off guard, and seemed to squirm in her seat for a moment, visibly unsure of how to deal with the gratitude.

“How have I never heard of this thing before?” Mina said, alarmed. “It’s stupid big.”

“Hey, thanks, man, this is really cool,” Eijiro said once he’d found the space to speak up. “I’m totally down to check this place out with you guys.”

“I’m glad,” I said, “Tsuyu, do you think you can organise this to work with your parent’s schedule?”

“I’ll call them now and find out,” Tsuyu said, biting at the tip of her thumb for a moment. “Thank you for including me, Hisoka.”

“Mina—either turn your microphone down or stop typing so much,” Eijiro complained. “Are you coming or not?”

“Of course I’m coming,” Mina decided, “You’re the best, Hisoka; thanks for thinking of us.”

“Now apologise for telling that reporter that he’s actually the protagonist in a romantic comedy,” Eijiro insisted, “People are going to get the wrong idea if you keep making things up.”

“I’m not making things up,” Mina squawked. “I’m warning them.”