"You think she's more worried about fighting Bakugou than she let's on?"
"...Yes."
They began moving to the stands.
...
"Hmmm… Should she be? Like, I know he's pretty good, but, frankly, from what I've seen, he's nowhere near the level of us three."
"I… I don't think Katsuki will win, but he… Well, he's not the kind of guy who does the same kind of blatant mistakes a second time."
Izuku thought about it. Whenever he thought about Katsuki these days, a seething layer of rage began to bubble in him, but he forced it down. He wanted to be objective about Mina's question.
"Like… I know I crushed him easily during the training exercise, but that really wasn't a good showcase of Katsuki. His big weakness is that he's a Glass Cannon. One real hit and you can bring him down. But you actually have to land that hit to make it happen, which isn't as easy as I made it seem."
He fumbled a bit before continuing, trying to explain it.
"Like… I know Katsuki, I know how he thinks, how he moves, what kind of patterns he has. Like, when he hits someone, he almost always uses a strong right. And when he moves using his legs, he also almost always starts with his right foot.
Also, it's not as obvious now, as it was back during middle school, but when he gets up from sitting, he always does it to the right, unless he has to do it otherwise. That's how he moves, and when you see the pattern, it's easy to figure out, then there's the way he thinks. Like you probably figured it out by now, but he's a real sadist, who loves using his powers on those weaker than him.
He doesn't really care about anyone else, as his incredibly aggressive personality has pretty much wrecked his relationship with his parents, and from what I've seen, he doesn't seem to have any contact with any of his "Friends" from middle school anymore, as, without any reason to hang out with anyone, he couldn't care less about socializing.
And he loves spicy food, like, every single day his parents aren't home, he'll order the exact same thing to eat, crispy chicken topped Curry from Coco Ichiban, and it is always level 5, which is the spiciest curry they have. And when he cleans himself in the shower after physical classes he always begins cleaning himself with his left armpit, using the No More Tears shampoo brand.
And before he goes to sleep he always watches super scary R-Rated horror films to help him sleep, and his main hobby outside of school is mountain climbing, though he might have dropped that when he enrolled at Yuei.
He's also way, way smarter than he looks, he always scored near the top of our old school. Aggressive, intelligent, arrogant, and brash. Uraraka probably has figured out a lot of this stuff seeing him here at Yuei, but frankly, I really much doubt she has a full understanding of him yet. That might be a problem for her during the match."
After he was done, it took a moment of quiet walking through the corridor, before he realized no one was talking, and he turned to look at Mina.
The pink girl(And Venom, though Izuku couldn't see him where he had manifested his head from his back.) stared at him with a completely dumbfounded expression, completely lost for words.
"What?"
Mina kept staring at him, her jaw wide open before she closed it, and finally replied, her voice as dumbfounded as her expression.
"How… How do… How do you know all that stuff?!"
"We… Used to be friends back in midd-... back in the day. I learned a lot watching him at his home and at school. And… Well, he hasn't really changed much. He's still the same prick he's always been, only now he's taller."
Mina kept staring at him with that same dumbfounded expression, and Izuku suddenly felt… Very self-conscious. Why should he be? This was all obvious stuff anyone who saw Katsuki all the time could pick up on.
"...And you picked up on and remembered all of this stuff… Just by watching him?"
"...Yes?" Izuku's voice came out a lot weaker than he would have liked. Mina's reaction had shaken him more than he would have expected. The idea she was creeped out by him… Well, it hurt, way more than he would have expected.
"WOW, man… I don't know if I should be impressed, or terrified by your attention to detail."
Her voice did actually sound sorta impressed as she said it, but Izuku shrank down from the admission.
"Sorry…"
"For what? Being attentive to detail? I wish I could remember minor clearly stuff like that."
She was quiet for a moment before adding. "It would help with my grades at least."
Despite her trying to make light of it all, Izuku could tell from her tone that she wasn't comfortable with the level of detail Izuku had just revealed he knew about Katsuki.
Suddenly Izuku felt incredibly… Guilty? No, that wasn't quite it. It was more like… A mixture of the old familiar feeling of self-loathing, mixed with fear. Self-loathing that he made her feel uneasy because of him being the way he was, and Fear she would leave him due to that.
It was a stupid, stupid feeling, something he realized as he recognized it, but he felt it, nonetheless.
---
The match between Momo and her opponent, Tokage from 1-B, was so short that it was over before Izuku and Mina got back to their seats.
"Huh. I was kinda hoping to see Tokage in action before we fight."
If she was disappointed for real, she didn't show it, as she sat down, Izuku taking his place beside her.
The battle between the two Iron Men of 1-A and 1-B might have been an interesting sight in different circumstances, but at the moment, Izuku could only focus on the match that would follow it, and as Kirishima won a less orthodox victory than others had today, it was finally time.
Down below, the two contenders for the final match of the tournament stepped up into the ring.
"IN ONE CORNER WE HAVE KATSUKI BAKUGOU! A CELEBRITY SINCE HIS SCHOOL DAYS, WITH A FACE THAT ONLY A MOTHER, COULD LOVE!!!... IT IS KATSUKI BAKUGOU OF THE HERO COURSE!"
-Did Mic seriously just call Bakugou ugly as sin?-
He had, but Izuku was too focused on the other person in the ring at the moment to take any joy from it.
He felt real, genuine worry for Uraraka. Worry that she would get hurt, that she'd lose and have her hopes of winning this tournament crushed here, by Bakugou.
'VERSUS MY PERSONAL FAVORITE!!! URARAKA OCHAKO, ALSO OF THE HERO COURSE!!!"
The two students spoke something to each other down there below, but whatever his former friend and his current one said, he was not privy to hear.
Whatever it was, they now stared at each other as they waited for the signal to start.
"START!!!"
Then they began their dance.
With bolts of pink lightning around her, Uraraka moved forward with a speed that made the kind of movement she showed when fighting him seem, if not slow, far less crisp and unpolished.
...
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