2/2
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I walked back to my seat in a calm silence. As I was leaving the tunnel, Nozomi passed by me. "Don't scare the poor boy," I called as she passed by me.
A chuckle escaped her as she waved at me dismissively. "I'll try."
I sank into my seat next to Kirishima, who looked at me with some fear in his eyes. "Dude, you didn't hold back, did you?"
"I will inform you that I was holding back quite a lot so as not to kill him."
"You are one scary dude, you know that?"
Before I could retaliate, a very eager commentator cut through.
"WE ARE NOW WATCHING THE FINAL BATTLE BEFORE THE EXPECTED FINALS." Present mic shouted. "ON ONE SIDE OF THE FIELD, WE HAVE CLASS 1-A'S POWERHOUSE, WHO HAS WON ALL HER MATCHES WITH RELATIVE EASE, KIRIGAYAAAAA NOZOMIIIIIII."
Whatever he was selling, the crowd took it as their shouts rippled through the air.
"AND ON THE OTHER SIDE, WE HAVE ANOTHER POWERHOUSE, ALSO FROM THE FAMOUS CLASS 1-A. THE GREEN LIGHTNING OF SPEED AND POWER, IZUKUUUUU MIDORIYAAAAAAAA."
Another earth-shaking cheer rang out from the crowd as the two fighters took the stage. Izuku's body was already covered with green lightning, clearly ready to go all-out at the start. "Nozomi-san, I ask that you do not hold back on me."
This request caused Nozomi to smirk; her soul-flux leaked out slightly. "Wish granted."
Midnight's whip struck the air. "Begin."
Midoriya dashed forward. Green lightning traced every movement, and the arena shook under the pressure of his speed and enhanced reflexes. His fists struck like pistons, rapid, precise—training and instinct fused into motion.
Nozomi didn't flinch.
She sidestepped one punch, easily predicting his arc. Another strike came, and she caught his wrist. A simple twist—but the force sent Midoriya skidding backward.
'What?' Izuku's mind raced. 'She's reading my movements like… like she's inside my head.'
Nozomi's quirk was subtle but terrifying. She sensed intention, movement, energy—allowing her to react before he even fully committed. Midoriya launched shooting attacks with air pressure—his fingers snapping, sending concussive bursts—but she danced through every strike with zero effort.
The crowd was stunned into silence.
Realizing 10% Full Cowling isn't enough, Izuku's veins began to glow brighter, sparks arcing along his arms. His movements grew faster, more explosive.
'I have to push… I can't afford to be predictable.'
He surged forward again. A combination of uppercuts, spinning kicks, and rapid jabs flowed together like water, each movement a chain calculated for maximum efficiency. The ground under him scorched with the force of his strikes.
Nozomi met him halfway. She dodged just enough to avoid damage, redirecting force with subtle motions—often just a step, a lean, a lift of her shoulder. His attacks clanged harmlessly against the air.
Midoriya's face twisted. 'I… can't touch her.'
Desperation surged. He increased Full Cowling to 15%, aware it was risky. Sparks flew violently across his body, and his muscles screamed under the strain. Every step left craters; every punch released a shockwave.
Now the arena shook violently.
Midoriya's punches connected—but only with the arena, not her.
He slammed the ground, creating a tremor to knock her off balance, but she effortlessly leapt over it.
He fired a full-range airburst combo, aimed at her flanks, but she twisted midair, catching him with a glancing elbow. Not enough to stop him, but enough to make him stagger.
"Your control… is… insane," Midoriya gasped, struggling to maintain his stance under 15% Full Cowling.
Nozomi tilted her head."You're strong. Very strong. But raw force alone won't win this."
She moved like water. A hand flick, a slight shift of weight, and suddenly Midoriya's trajectory was disrupted. His punches landed in empty air, his kicks swiped nothing but wind.
He tried to spin, to land a shooting smash, the green glow of Full Cowling at 15% arcing violently—but she intercepted mid-strike, lightly tapping his shoulder.
It was enough.
He went flying across the arena floor, skidding into the dirt, the shockwave of his energy leaving the stadium trembling.
Pain flashed across his face. Muscle strain. Sparks of green flicker irregularly along his arms and legs. 'I… can't overdo it, or I'll break myself.'
Nozomi stood ten meters away, not even breathing hard. Her calm demeanor radiated control, dominance.
"You're impressive," she said, voice carrying across the arena. "But you've already hit your limit."
Midoriya groaned, pushing himself up."I can't… give up."
He lunged again, fists ignited with Full Cowling. But every attack she anticipated. He twisted mid-air, trying to catch her off guard—she tilted her head. A flick of her hand redirected his momentum, sending him crashing again.
The crowd was screaming. Some were cheering him on. Most were staring in awe at Nozomi's effortless mastery.
Midoriya tried one last gambit—a spinning, airborne barrage of fists and kicks, shockwaves erupting in every direction. The ground tore apart beneath him.
Nozomi didn't dodge fully this time. She moved just enough. The blows clipped her lightly, but she hardly staggered.
Then she closed the distance. Quick, precise, devastating.
A palm struck his chest.
An elbow to his side twisted him.
A sweeping kick sent him flying headfirst into the arena floor.
Midoriya tried to recover. Every joint burned. Green sparks sputtered, his quirk threatening to backfire.
Nozomi crouched, lightly placing her hand on his shoulder.
"Stop. You've done more than enough," she said calmly.
Midoriya gasped, chest heaving. Sweat, dust, and green sparks coating him. His vision blurred.
He tried to push up. Couldn't.
Midnight cracked her whip."Winner—KIGIGAYA NOZOMI!"
The stadium exploded. Screams, cheers, applause, and stunned silence—all at once.
Midoriya lay there, exhausted, barely able to move, as Nozomi walked away calmly, brushing dirt from her uniform.
"…She's… unbelievable," he muttered, teeth gritted, trying to comprehend the fight.
From the stands, Class 1-A murmured among themselves.
Bakugo muttered, "…that's… ridiculous."
Iida nodded solemnly. "Midoriya… you fought bravely. That was… extraordinary."
"WITH THAT, THE SEMI-FINALS COME TO AN END. WE WILL HAVE A 10-MINUTE BREAK BEFORE CONTINUING WITH THE FINALS."
At the signal, the brackets shifted.
Kirigaya Nozomi vs Kirigaya Hiro
The ten-minute break after the semifinals was a bubble of suspended time. In the sterile quiet of the locker room, the stadium's roar was a distant ocean. I leaned against the wall, focusing on the minute tremors in my hands—not from fear, but from the after-echo of unleashed power. Bakugo's rage had been a wildfire to stamp out. What came next was different.
Across the room, Nozomi sat perfectly still on a bench, eyes closed. Not meditating. Listening. To the hum of the lights, the vibration of the crowd through concrete, the silent rhythm of her own divine core. Her stillness was more unnerving than any pre-fight pacing.
"He asked me not to hold back," she said, her eyes still closed. A statement, not a question.
"He's braver than he looks," I replied.
"He understands respect." Her midnight eyes opened, finding mine. There was no fire in them, only a deep, placid certainty. "Do you?"
I pushed off the wall. "I understand that a draw in the lab simulations means nothing. I understand that you've been holding back a new technique. I felt you weaving it against Tokoyami. The fifth tail's gift?"
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. "Perceptive. And you? The way you phased through Bakugo' final blast… that wasn't just Shadow Slip. You're learning to slip through energy itself."
"We've been holding back for everyone else," I said, rolling my shoulders. A silver shimmer traced the line of my jaw. "Not for each other."
"No," she agreed, standing in one fluid motion. "Not for each other. So. Everything?"
"Everything."
The walk to the arena was a silent procession. We didn't look at the crowd, at the cameras, at Midnight. Our world had collapsed to the twenty meters of scarred concrete between us. The noise was a wall we stepped through, leaving it behind.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" Present Mic's voice was a ragged scream of excitement. "THE MOMENT! THE U.A. SPORTS FESTIVAL FINAL! BROTHER VS SISTER! TWIN TITANS! IN THIS CORNER—THE ADAPTIVE APEX, KIRIGAYA HIIIIRO!"
"AND IN THIS CORNER—THE DIVINE WEAVER, KIRIGAYA NOZOOOOOMI!"
Midnight raised her whip, her usual theatricality replaced by wary solemnity. She looked between us, two calm points in the hurricane of sound, and found no pre-fight banter, only focused intent.
The whip cracked.
"BEGIN!"
We didn't rush. The air thickened, charged with the passive bleed of our power—a silver mist from me, a golden haze from her.
I moved first, but not with my body. I focused on the ground beneath her feet. Earth-Step: Quake Genesis. The concrete didn't crack; it liquefied in a precise two-meter circle, attempting to swallow her footing.
Nozomi didn't jump. She simply stopped falling. Celestial Weave: Platform. A disk of solidified golden light formed under her soles the instant the concrete failed. She stood on light as if it were marble, and the disk shot forward, ramming towards me like a sled.
I met it not with evasion, but absorption. Kinetic Mirror: Siphon. I planted my feet and crossed my arms, creating a concave shield of warped space. The golden platform hit and stuck, its momentum draining into the shield until it flickered and died. But the transfer wasn't perfect. The force rattled up my bones, a bright spark of pain in my wrists.
Her counter was a whisper. Harmonic Sever: Pinpoint. No visible blast, just a focused vibration in the air aimed at the center of my chest, designed to shatter bone from the inside.
I exhaled, and with the breath, released the stored kinetic energy from her platform. Kinetic Mirror: Release. The two forces—her destructive vibration and her own platform's momentum—collided in the air between us with a sound like a giant bell being struck. The concussive BOOM deafened the front rows and blew dust in a perfect ring across the arena.
We stood unharmed, gauging each other. A draw.
Nozomi decided to control the space. She raised a hand, fingers splayed. Amaterasu Bloom: Garden. Dozens of fist-sized, petaled orbs of light blossomed into existence around her, then shot towards me in a complex, interlacing pattern. They weren't missiles; they were a net, each orb connected by strands of barely visible light, designed to entrap and constrict.
Brute force wouldn't work. I needed chaos. Primal Oblivion: Ragnarok Drive. Silver soul-flux erupted around me not as armor, but as a frenzied, bestial aura. My movements lost all predictability. I didn't dodge the net; I ripped through it. I became a whirlwind of claws—Fangs of the Soul—slashing, not at Nozomi, but at the connecting strands of light. Each severed strand caused its connected orbs to flare and die.
But for every ten I cut, two got through. One orb grazed my shoulder, and it wasn't heat I felt, but a terrifying nullification. A patch of my soul-flux aura winked out, leaving cold, dead skin beneath.
Enough. I stopped tearing and focused. Crystalline Resonance. I tuned my soul-flux to the resonant frequency of her remaining light orbs. Instead of cutting, I sang them apart. A sharp, silver pulse from my palm made five orbs simultaneously shatter into harmless glitter.
In the instant of their destruction, I Phase-Stepped, not behind her, but above. I fell, a silver meteor, fist aimed downward.
She looked up, utterly calm. Divine Ascension: Inverse Bloom. The golden light around her didn't rise to meet me; it plunged into the ground. A colossal, inverted flower of light erupted from the arena floor, its petals—made of concussive force, not matter—enveloping me mid-descent.
The impact was staggering. It felt less like a punch and more like the sky itself had slapped me aside. I was hurled laterally, crashing and skidding through the dirt, my aura sputtering.
I pushed up, tasting blood. She'd turned my own vertical assault against me. Fine. If she controlled the stage, I would break it.
I slammed both palms onto the arena floor. Not an attack for her, but for the battlefield. Gravitic Lens: Singularity Seed. I focused a point of crushing, multi-directional gravity ten meters to her left. It was a trap, not for her body, but for her environment.
The effect was immediate and grotesque. A sphere of arena concrete, rebar, and dust, five meters across, was violently torn from its foundation and crushed inwards with a scream of shearing metal towards the invisible point. The sudden, violent distortion of matter and space created a whirlwind of debris.
Nozomi's perfect stance finally broke. She was pulled slightly off-balance by the sudden gravitational tide, her golden weave straining to keep her anchored.
That was my opening. I ignored the pain, ignored the draining ache in my core, and used the chaos as cover. Shadow Slip: Refracted Path. I didn't teleport in a line. I split my passage into three staggered, microsecond jumps, appearing as afterimages to her left, right, and finally, directly in front of her as the crushed debris sphere collapsed inward.
My fist, layered with Gravitic Compression and the last of my Ragnarok Drive fury, aimed for her solar plexus. A finishing blow.
She didn't try to dodge. She accepted it. And turned it. Celestial Weave: God's Mirror. A pane of flawless, golden light appeared between my fist and her chest. It didn't block. It reflected. Not the force, but the intent, the very nature of the attack, back onto me.
My own compressed gravity and feral energy rebounded. My arm screamed as the bones threatened to compact. The backlash of my own soul-flux burned my channels. I was thrown back, my attack utterly nullified, my body screaming in protest.
I landed hard, my right arm hanging limp, numb. Across the ruined arena, Nozomi stood within her fading mirror, a single trickle of blood escaping the corner of her mouth. The strain of manifesting such a perfect reflection had cost her.
The deafening crowd was silent now, holding its breath. The arena was a wasteland of craters, geometric light-scars, and a grotesque ball of compressed rubble.
We were both on the brink. Our soul-flux, that deep ocean within us, was now a shallow, turbulent puddle. Our bodies shook with exhaustion. The spiritual toll of such high-concept clashes was a weight on our very souls.
"Tired… brother?" Nozomi panted, the words labored, her usual serenity fractured by effort.
I coughed, a dry, ragged sound. "You first… sister." I forced myself to my knees, then to my feet. My silver aura was a faint, dying flicker. Hers was a guttering candle.
We both knew. The next move would empty the well. There would be no more clever counters, no more adaptive tricks. Just the raw, final expression of what we were.
I planted my feet in the broken earth. This wasn't about winning a tournament. It was an answer to the question we'd carried since the void: What are we, now, together? My soul-flux didn't flare. It retreated, pulling inward from my extremities, condensing into a dense, silent core in my chest, then down my ruined arm into my fist. It became not silver, but the absence of color, a void that warped reality around it. Primal Oblivion: Final Ark. Not an attack, but an end. A point of absolute, adaptive negation.
Nozomi saw it and understood. Her smile was tired, proud, and sad. She raised her hands, not in prayer, but in acceptance. Her flickering gold didn't reach out; it was drawn in, siphoned from the air, from the faint light of the stadium, from her own skin, pooling in her cupped palms. It condensed from light into something liquid and brilliant, then into something solid and impossible—a single, slender, radiant line. Divine Ascension: Kusanagi's Revelation. Not a blade to cut, but a principle to sever. The divine right to untie knots, be they of flesh, fate, or energy.
The air between us didn't crackle; it crystallized. The pressure was immense, silent, and profound. This would erase us both. It felt right.
We drew back for the final, mutual release.
And the universe stilled.
The sound didn't fade; it was deleted. The light didn't dim; it was paused. The dust hung frozen. The collective gasp of 100,000 throats was trapped in time.
Before disorientation could become panic, the world unraveled. The stadium, the sky, the very ground beneath us dissolved like a sandcastle in a tide, not into darkness, but into a profound, silent Grey. An endless, flat plain under a starless, featureless sky of the same non-color. It was not a place. It was the idea of a place between places.
And she was there.
She was standing a few paces away, having always been there. Her form was elegance and finality given shape. A gown of black so deep it seemed to fray at the edges into the Grey. Skin of pale, polished stone. Hair like a cascade of liquid silver. Her face was beautiful in a way that held no warmth, only a serene, terrible patience. In her hands, she cradled an hourglass of worn brass and glass. The sands within were frozen, halfway fallen.
But it was her eyes that stopped my heart. They were not voids. They were full. They held the quiet of a forgotten forest, the chill of a deep ocean trench, the absolute peace of a extinguished star. Looking into them was like hearing the final, satisfying note of a cosmic symphony—and knowing nothing comes after.
All my soul-flux, my power, my will—it didn't vanish. It simply… bowed. It receded into the deepest part of me and lay still, like a child hiding from the thunder.
I tried to speak. My voice was a dry rustle in the absolute quiet. "Wha—"
"Be still."
Her voice was not a sound. It was the concept of sound arriving directly in my mind. It was gentle, yet it carried the weight of continents settling. It allowed no interruption.
I was still.
Nozomi was beside me. I felt her through our bond—not thoughts, but pure, undiluted shock. A divine terror that was not fear of harm, but fear of insignificance. The goddess who had created worlds was staring at her own funeral director.
The woman—Death—tilted her head. A strand of silver hair shifted, the movement impossibly slow and significant.
"A fascinating paradox," the concept-voice resonated. "Creation, willfully diminished. Mortality, artificially inflated. Bound. You hum against the pattern."
"Who are you?" Nozomi's voice was a breath, stripped of all its former grace, leaving only raw vulnerability.
The woman's gaze shifted to her. "You know a name for a facet of me. Izanami knew a smaller thing. A local custodian." She extended a hand, not in threat, but in presentation. "I am the Constant. The Conclusion. The Balance to which all stories tend."
It wasn't an explanation. It was a truth, laid bare. Understanding trickled into my mind, cold and clear. This wasn't *a* death god. This was Death, the axis upon which the multiverse turned.
"Why?" I managed to force the word out. "Why us? Why here?"
"The anomaly that shadows your world," Death said, her attention returning to the frozen hourglass. "It is a splinter. A piece of something that seeks to unmake the balance. To create endings without meaning, or worse, deny endings altogether. It festers in the wounds between realities."
She looked up, and her gaze was a physical pressure. "It is drawn to you. To your… dissonance. You are a beacon in the silent places."
"So we're bait?" Nozomi's voice hardened, a flicker of her old defiance sparking.
"You are a solution." Death's correction was gentle but absolute. "The splinter cannot be approached by my usual… instruments. They are pure conclusions. You are… process. You exist in the middle. You can walk the paths that are closed."
"You want us to hunt it," I said, the magnitude of it dawning—a cold, spreading dread.
"I require champions. Shepherds for the lost narratives. Surgeons for the infected realities." She finally moved, taking a single step forward. The Grey seemed to bend around her. "The splinter in your world is a symptom. Your first task would be to travel to a wounded world—a place where the story has been poisoned at the root—and excise the infection."
A mission. Across realities. The thought was so vast it was meaningless. My mind seized on something smaller, sharper. "And if we fail?"
Death's eyes met mine. There was no malice, no cruelty. Only the pure, unblinking truth of a cliff's edge.
"Then you will die there. Truly. Finally. Your unique song will end, and you will come to me. As all things do."
The silence that followed was heavier than the Grey. It was the silence of a verdict.
My mind reeled. This wasn't a villain's plot. This was geology. This was being asked to become a continental plate. I thought of Mom—Akihime's warm hugs, her worried smiles. Of Momo's determined eyes in the lab. Of Kirishima's loud friendship. A fragile, human life I'd only just reclaimed.
To protect your mother, your friends, your world, Death's voice echoed in the stillness, not as a spoken word, but as if she'd plucked the thought from my head. "This is the way."
Next to me, Nozomi was trembling. Not with fear, but with a devastating realization. I felt it through our bond—the crushing weight of scale. She had been a goddess of a single world's cycle. This was the cycle of everything. To accept was to admit her former domain was a grain of sand on an endless beach. Her pride, the very core of her divine identity, shattered under that gaze.
"What choice do we have?" Nozomi whispered, the question aimed at the void, at herself, at me. "If that thing is drawn to us… It will come. For us. And for everyone near us."
A memory flashed, unbidden, sharper than any technique: the sterile smell of the hospital room after the USJ, Mom's tear-streaked face illuminated by the monitor's glow, her hand gripping mine so tightly it hurt. The fear in her eyes had been for us. Not for villains or monsters, but for the danger that followed her children.
This offer wasn't powerful. It was a quarantine. A chance to take the target on our backs and turn it into a shield, not just for one world, but for the integrity of the story itself. To be the ones who stood in the bleeding spaces so others didn't have to.
It wasn't a hero's choice. It was a soldier's. A shepherd's.
I looked at Nozomi. Our eyes met. No bond-link was needed. I saw the same arc of thought in her midnight gaze—the shattered pride, the terrifying scale, and beneath it, a stubborn, resilient ember of the same protective instinct that had made her grant a mortal boy three wishes in a void.
There was no grand speech, no sudden burst of courage. There was only the heavy, inevitable click of a lock turning.
"How?" I asked Death, my voice flat with exhaustion and acceptance.
"You have three days in your timeline," she said. The sands in the hourglass began to fall, one grain at a time, impossibly slow. "Cherish them. The call will come. You will be taken, you will do what must be done, and you will be returned to this exact moment. No time will pass for your world."
She considered us, a last, measuring look. "You are not my servants. You are my intervention. Remember the weight of that."
The Grey began to fold. The featureless plain receded. Death's form became indistinct, blending back into the eternal quiet.
"We will meet again, my champions."
The void rushed inwards. The obsidian floor, the form of Death, everything dissolved into a vortex of silent grey.
Time snapped back into place with a deafening roar.
The stadium crowd was on its feet, screaming, as the two finalists stood frozen in their climactic poses. Then, as one, our eyes rolled back. The last dregs of soul-flux, already spent, evaporated. The magnificent techniques we'd prepared winked out of existence without a sound.
Hiro and Nozomi collapsed, unconscious, hitting the ravaged arena floor simultaneously.
A wave of shock and confusion silenced the crowd. Midnight stared, her whip falling limp. Present Mic stammered into his microphone.
"Uh… they're both down! The strain… the incredible output… they've pushed themselves beyond their limits!"
In the stands, Akihime shot to her feet, hands over her mouth. Momo gasped. Aizawa's eyes widened marginally behind his bandages.
After a moment of frantic consultation, Midnight raised her arms.
"By simultaneous incapacitation… the result is a draw! The U.A. Sports Festival ends with joint first-place victors: Kirigaya Hiro and Kirigaya Nozomi!"
The announcement was met with stunned applause, but the spectacle was overshadowed by concern as medical robots rushed onto the field. The twins were carried away on stretchers, out cold, their bodies bearing the marks of a battle that had, for reasons no one could fathom, ended not with a bang, but with a mysterious, synchronized whisper.
Only the two of them, lost to exhausted unconsciousness, knew the truth. Their fight was over. Their real work was about to begin.
They had three days.
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*Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiifffffffffffffffffffffffffff*
"Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggghhhhhhh"
I just like the smell of plot twists.
Did I get you? How was that?
Wow
or
Too much(to this I say. Screw you.)
I went a little bit over the word count and wrote 4k. So bear with it, it is the last I swear.
Death has now been introduced, and something about the entity's origins. As you should have expected, this will be a multiversal travel fanfic. So, guess the next world.
You have roughly 24 hours before the next release.
Leave a review to help me write my book better, and don't forget to drop the power stones.
Peace out.