Chapter 44: The Battle of Gods, Deer, and the Poor Bastard in the Monitoring Room
[All Might POV]
I have faced All For One. I have stared into the abyss of a collapsing skyscraper. I have held back the tide of human extinction with nothing but a smile and a clenched fist.
But as I stood in the darkened monitoring room of Ground Beta, looking at the forty-eight screens flickering with the movements of Class 1-A, I realized I was finally facing a foe I could not defeat with a Detroit Smash.
Logic. Or rather, the complete and total assassination of it.
"Young… Young Midoriya," I whispered, my hand trembling as I reached for my water bottle, only to find it had been replaced by a small, wooden birdhouse. When did he even do that? He's on screen! He's three blocks away!
The class was divided into pairs. A standard exercise, Nezu had said. A way to test teamwork and combat prowess, Aizawa had suggested. But Aizawa wasn't here. He was currently in the faculty lounge with a damp towel over his eyes, having claimed he 'needed to hibernate until the laws of physics returned from their vacation.'
I looked at the primary screen. Team A (The Heroes: Izuku Midoriya and Ochaco Uraraka) was moving toward the bomb held by Team D (The Villains: Katsuki Bakugo and Tenya Iida). That, at least, looked normal. Intense, but normal.
Then I looked at the screen next to it.
The "Chaos Special."
Team S (The Heroes: Sunny Midoriya and Aqua) vs. Team V (The Villains: Himiko Toga and Noko Shikanoko).
"Nezu-san," I muttered to the empty room. "I think the script is bleeding."
[Momo Yaoyorozu POV]
"Don't look at the screen directly, Kaminari-san," I said, my voice steady despite the fact that I was currently creating a pair of high-grade, anti-migraine goggles for myself. "If you try to track his movements with a linear mind, your brain will attempt to exit through your ears."
"It's just a mock battle, Momo!" Denki laughed, though he was leaning in close. "How bad can Sunny be? He's just a gag-character, right?"
I turned to him, my expression one of profound, aristocratic pity. "I spent three days in a virtual reality Mario Kart simulation with that boy. I have seen things, Kaminari-san. I have seen a man win a race by jumping over the finish line from the previous lap. I have seen him turn a Blue Shell into a sentient life form that filed for custody of my kart. To Sunny Midoriya, a 'mock battle' is not an exam. It is an opportunity for a budget increase."
On the screen, Sunny was currently standing in the middle of a street. He wasn't looking for the bomb. He was currently using a giant, oversized pencil to draw a door on a solid brick wall.
"See?" I pointed. "He's currently bypassing the structural integrity of the building because he finds hallways 'pacing-killers.' He doesn't move through space; he edits the destination closer to him."
[Izuku Midoriya POV]
The air on the rooftop of the central building didn't just smell like ozone—it smelled like respect.
I stood at the edge of the roof, green sparks of One For All: Full Cowl dancing across my skin. Across from me, Kacchan didn't look like the snarling, explosive bully of our childhood. He looked like a warrior. His posture was lower, more controlled. Ever since the Sludge Incident—and ever since Sunny started 'correcting' Kacchan's ego by turning his hair into a bouquet of flowers every time he got too loud—Kacchan had changed.
"Ten percent, huh?" Bakugo grunted, his palms crackling with a rhythmic, orange heat. "You've been holding out on me, Deku."
"I didn't want to break the floor, Kacchan," I said, sliding into a combat stance. "Sunny said if I break too much of the set, the 'Director' will cut my screen time."
Bakugo let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh. "Typical. That damn nerd has everyone thinking they're in a show. But this? This is real."
He lunged.
He didn't scream. He didn't waste breath. He moved like a blur of orange and black. I met him halfway, my foot connecting with his forearm in a spray of sparks. The impact sent a shockwave through the rooftop, cracking the concrete.
In the old days, Kacchan would have tried to blast my face off. Now? He used the explosion from his left hand to pivot in mid-air, swinging a heavy kick toward my ribs. I blocked, the force sliding me back five feet.
"Good!" Bakugo yelled, his eyes burning with a competitive fire that felt clean. "Don't you dare go down easy! I didn't spend ten years being your 'rival' just for you to be a mid-season filler!"
"I won't!" I shouted back, charging forward.
We weren't just fighting for a grade. We were fighting to prove that we could exist in the same world as Sunny without being overshadowed by the chaos. It was a beautiful, high-octane dance of power—until, about three blocks away, a giant, 50-ton weight fell from the sky with a loud [WHISTLE-BOOM].
Kacchan paused, a vein throbbing in his forehead. "If that gag-boy ruins this climax, I am going to kill him."
"Focus, Kacchan!" I yelled, throwing a smash.
[The Main Event: Sunny POV]
"Himiko! Shika-chan! Come out, come out, wherever you are!" I sang, skipping down the hallway of the 'Villain' hideout.
Behind me, Aqua was currently trying to use her divine powers to 'bless' the fire sprinklers. "Sunny! Why is this building so cheap?! I demand a palace! I cannot be expected to perform heroics in a place that has fluorescent lighting! It's bad for my complexion!"
"Hush, Goddess of Debt," I chirped, snapping my gloves. "We have a scene to film! The villains are waiting!"
Suddenly, the floor beneath us turned into a literal puddle of blood. Not real blood—Toga blood. It was sparkly, strawberry-scented, and highly suspicious.
"Found you, Sunny-kun!"
Himiko Toga dropped from the ceiling, her knife gleaming. She didn't look like a serial killer; she looked like an excited fan who had finally caught her favorite idol. She swung at me, but I didn't dodge. I simply leaned back at a 90-degree angle, my heels staying glued to the floor. [CREAK-BOING].
"Missed me by a frame, Himiko!" I laughed, snapping back upright and poking her nose. [HONK].
"Hey!" Aqua shrieked, water swirling around her hands. "Don't ignore the Goddess! You messy blonde brat!"
Aqua lunged at Toga. Toga dodged, her movements fluid and chaotic, fueled by the drop of my 'Toon-Blood' she'd taken earlier. For exactly sixty seconds, it was a whirlwind of divine water and flashing steel.
Clang! Splash! Boing!
Then, they both stopped.
Toga looked at Aqua. Aqua looked at Toga.
"You're actually really annoying to fight," Toga panted, wiping a smudge of glitter from her cheek. "It's like fighting a very loud, very wet pigeon."
"And you," Aqua huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "You have no appreciation for the divine arts! My hair is a mess!"
"Wanna just watch?" Toga asked, pointing over to where a deer-girl was currently staring at me.
"...Is there popcorn?" Aqua asked.
I reached into the air, pulled out two theater-sized buckets of buttery popcorn, and handed them over. The Villain and the Hero sat down side-by-side on a crate labeled 'TNT' (which I had edited to be filled with marshmallows) and looked at us.
"Go for it, Sunny-kun!" Toga cheered, stuffing a handful of popcorn into her mouth.
I turned my attention to the real threat.
Noko Shikanoko. The Deer. The Brain-Rot incarnate.
She was standing at the end of the hallway, her antlers glowing with an ethereal, brown light. She was chewing on a cracker. [CRUNCH].
"Nunn," Noko said, her voice echoing with the weight of a thousand nature documentaries. "Sunny-boy. You think your Toon Force is the peak of absurdity? You are but a child playing with ink. I am the forest. I am the antlers. I am the reason people find YouTube shorts at 3 AM."
I smirked, reaching into my vest and pulling out two six-shooters that looked suspiciously like carrots. I blew on the barrels.
"Well then, Shika-chan," I said, my voice dropping into a gravelly, Clint Eastwood rasp. "This hallway ain't big enough for the both of us."
[BGM: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY – BASS REMIX]
The hallway shifted to sepia. I fired. [BANG-BANG!]
The carrots flew, but Noko didn't dodge. Her antlers grew into a satellite dish, catching the carrots. She tilted her head, and the carrots fell into her mouth. [GULP].
"Vitamin-rich," she whispered.
"Cute," I said, my voice returning to its Brooklyn bop. "But can you handle the classics?!"
I pulled a giant, 50-ton mallet from my back pocket and swung. Noko didn't move—she just 'Deer-Slided,' her body staying perfectly rigid as she glided two inches off the floor, passing through the mallet as if her hitbox had glitched out.
"What?!" I yelled. "That hit was frame-perfect!"
"Frame-data is for people who believe in physics," Noko countered.
She lunged. I responded by painting a fake tunnel on the wall. Usually, I'd run through it and the villain would hit the wall. But Noko didn't hit the wall. She stopped, reached into the painting, and pulled out the train I was planning to hit her with.
"MINE!" she cheered, swinging the locomotive like a baseball bat.
[CLANG!]
I turned into a literal accordion, let out a long [WHEEZE], then snapped back into shape. "Okay! No more Mr. Nice-Toon!"
For the next five minutes, it was absolute carnage.
I dropped an anvil; she turned it into a giant, falling cracker.
I tried to 'erase' her with a giant pencil; she 'copy-pasted' herself until there were twenty Noko Shikanokos doing a synchronized dance.
I turned the hallway into a high-speed chase, but she kept 'clipping' through the walls to stay right next to me.
We were perfectly matched. For every Toon gag I threw, she had a piece of Brain-Rot logic to counter it. It wasn't a fight; it was an escalating war of absurdity that was rapidly dismantling the structural integrity of UA.
I was inches away from the 'Nuclear Weapon' (a giant paper-mache bomb). I dived for it, my arm stretching out like a rubber band.
"Almost... there...!"
Noko didn't tackle me. She just stood by the bomb and placed a pair of antlers on it.
Suddenly, the bomb didn't want to be a bomb anymore. It grew legs and started grazing on the carpet.
"Hey! Get back here!" I yelled, chasing the sentient bomb.
I finally cornered the bomb, my hand hovering just an inch from the sensor—
[BZZZZZZZZZZZT!]
The buzzer rang. The lights in the hall returned to normal.
I froze, my hand trembling just centimeters away from the victory condition. I looked up. The timer on the wall hit 00:00.
"Time is up!" Aizawa's voice crackled over the intercom, sounding like he'd aged ten years. "The Hero team failed to secure the weapon within the ten-minute limit. The Villains win by technicality."
I collapsed onto the floor, my body turning into a puddle of defeated ink. "No... the pacing... the climax... I was one frame away!"
Noko walked over, looking perfectly calm, and took a bite of a cracker. [CRUNCH].
"Efficiency is the enemy of the vibe, Sunny-boy," she said, offering me a piece of the cracker. "You were too busy making it a show. I was just being a deer."
[All Might POV]
I sat in the monitoring room, staring at the screen.
Sunny and Noko had literally rewritten the map three times. There was a hole in reality in Hallway 4, and Hallway 5 was now made of gingerbread. They were perfectly equal in power—a stalemate of pure chaos.
"Young Midoriya had her," I whispered, wiping sweat from my brow. "If he had just touched the bomb instead of doing that three-minute musical number in the middle of the fight..."
"He couldn't help himself," Aizawa sighed, rubbing his temples. "He's a slave to the narrative. And Shikanoko... she just out-waited him. She didn't have to beat him. She just had to make sure the clock hit zero."
I looked at the final score.
TEAM VILLAIN (Noko/Toga): WIN (Timer Expired)
TEAM HERO (Sunny/Aqua): LOSS (Distracted by Popcorn/Theatrics)
Down on the screen, Sunny was currently trying to argue with the buzzer, claiming it was 'out of tune' and shouldn't count, while Noko was trying to see if she could eat Aizawa's capture scarf.
"I'm retiring," Aizawa muttered. "I'm going to go find a nice, logical mountain and live in a cave."
I stepped on a cracker on my way out.
"Nunn," the cracker whispered.
I didn't even look back.