"Dude, the way you flew between all those robots was so manly!" Kirishima yelled as we got our trays.
I thanked him before going to eat with my normal group. Shoto and Momo on one side, Me and Sasha on the other. Lunch today was much simpler than usual, but since LunchRush was feeding the entire student body at once rather than at separate times, I understood the need to cook only one meal.
Conversation didn't come as usual as we all dug into our food. Shoto and Momo ate more since they'd used quite a bit of their respective quirks during the race. Sasha ate a bunch because her body consumed more calories than usual, given how strong and limber she was. Me? I was big for the love of the game.
"Micah, I have a question," Momo said as I nodded. "Do you not get quirk exhaustion? Neither your fire nor wings seems to tire you out very much." I thought for a moment before answering.
"I do, but it just takes a while. For my wings, I get tired after flying for a while or from doing complex aerial maneuvers. The fire is a bit trickier; sometimes it feels like I can just use as much as I want, other times it takes much more effort and consumes a lot of energy."
She nodded as she went through whatever thoughts were going on inside her head. "Anything on your mind, Shoto?" I tried seeing his somewhat tense look. 'It must be since Endeavor is here.'
"It's nothing. I'm just wondering what the next round will be." Shoto then shoved more food in his mouth so as not to talk anymore, as we finished our food and were called back into the stadium. Already, Midnight was waiting for us in her strange outfit as the massive screens displayed the race results once more.
"As you know, not everyone made it into the next challenge. They will have more events to compete in later, but for now, we have the next main event, a team game." She then explained the rules and the roles of both the 'horse' and the 'riders' before grinning.
"Now the fun part. Each team will have a bandana with their points on it. Steal it to earn more points for your team. The amount of points will be assigned based on how you placed in the race."
Everyone's eyes turned to the screen as points appeared next to names, until they finally got to my name. "I'm sure you're all wondering how much first place is worth?" She purred as everyone nodded.
"10 MILLION POINTS!" She declared as I felt dozens of eyes bore into me. 'I forgot about that. . .' I felt slightly nervous with everyone looking at me like a fresh pizza, but if I survived the nomu, I can survive this, right?
Thankfully, I was able to find a team much easier than Izuku did in the show. Obviously, Sasha was on my side, but Momo and Shoto had gone to do their own thing. Our third member was a pink-haired girl with no sense of personal space named Mei Hatsume.
In her words, I was supposed to 'help show off her babies, and make exciting new ones. ' Sasha was a little less than thrilled by the girl's lack of personal space, but her personality was so disarming that they were gossiping in no time.
Now, Sasha was sitting on my shoulders as Mei supported her from behind, busy strapping various babies to us to help us out, hopefully. We'd already made a simple plan for this match. I would use fire to keep everyone away from us, with Mei stepping in to use her gadgets as needed.
Sasha's only job was to keep the headbands away from everyone else, especially mine. That 10 million point price tag did nothing but paint a massive target on us that I could almost feel. The other teams didn't even try to hide that they were going straight for us.
"START!" Midnight exclaimed as everyone rushed towards us. Shoto and Bakugo were the first to get close enough to strike, as ice and explosions were thrown at us. I countered Shoto's ice with a wall of flames as Mei threw down what looked like a grenade that exploded into a wall that absorbed the blast before falling.
That gave us the chance to reposition as Sasha weaved her upper body all over the place to avoid various quirks. Asui's tongue was the most problematic, lashing towards us several times. I was forced to singe the tip of it so that she'd leave us alone.
Several class 1-B teams also tried their best to secure their pass to the next round. Mei's plethora of babies quickly dissuaded them, and they backed off soon after. The rest of the match was simple, as most of the teams stopped gunning for them, with only Shoto and Bakugo still making passes at us.
"And we have our winners!" Midnight exclaimed as the round ended. Mei cheered loudly as I tapped Sasha's thighs. "You gonna get off yet?" I asked as she hummed noncommittally. "I don't know, it's pretty comfy up here." She purred as she started to squeeze.
"This is new, even for you, Sasha," Momo said as I spun around, nearly throwing Sasha off me. She was just standing there, menacingly! "See, even Momo agrees with me," I said as Sasha flexed her thighs once before clambering down.
"Come on, tiger. We gotta get out of the way for the next round." I rolled my eyes as we followed after her and went up to where the rest of class 1-A was seated. Once we got there, Midnight had finished listing off the teams that did and didn't pass the round.
"Now we will have a-" I zoned out as I looked at the new ticket I'd gotten for winning the last round, just a simple bronze ticket. 'Spin the wheel.'
[Spinning, spinning, spinning, done!]
[Novice Biology]
|Common Skill|
You have the skills and knowledge of a Biology Major. You have a decent repertoire of knowledge regarding biology, bodies, and organs, as well as how things interact with biology.
'Not bad, I guess?' I closed the gacha interface as the games below ended, and the final event began.
"Now we have come to our last event for the day! Feast your eyes upon the screens, and see who our final competitors are!" Midnight gestured with her whip to the screens as the brackets appeared.
For the most part, it stayed true to canon, other than one small detail: Mei wasn't on Izuku's team this time. Yet, somehow he still made it, so in the end, Sasha and I, not supposed to be here, replaced Aoyama and Tetsutetsu in the bracket.
Mina Ashido vs Micah Hall
Sasha Yakovleva vs Eijiro Kirishima
"You aren't going to hurt Kirishima too badly, right?" I whispered to Sasha as Izuku and Sinso took their spots on the field. "Maybeee~" She purred as the fight below started. It started the same as in canon. Sinso baited Izuku to answer him as he poked and prodded at his insecurities.
It was a little aggravating to watch, but at some point, Izuku couldn't help but answer, only a few feet away from Sinso. Ojiro bowed his head when he saw Izuku freeze before starting to walk towards the boundary.
The entire stadium seemed to writhe in anticipation as class 1-A was silent, save for Bakugo. "Break outta that bullshit quirk already!" He roared as Izuku got ever closer to the line. "My mom told me about stuff like this, but with technology," Sasha said softly as she got a faraway look in her eye.
"Netrunners..."
"She called them Netrunners,"
We spoke nearly at the same time, as I couldn't help but say the first thing that came to mind. "Yeah, those guys." Sasha paused. I could feel the gears in her head turning for a terrible moment before she shrugged.
"Mother told me that Nightcity was full of implants, and some people were more metal than human. With all that technology fused with their bodies, they could sometimes be controlled by experienced Netrunners if they didn't have proper protection."
She didn't go into the details about what Netrunners could do if they got hold of your implants, but I already knew. From frying your nervous system to turning on your teammates, you could even force someone to zero themselves if you have the right demon in your deck.
"WHAT A MASTER PLAY! IZUKU'S BROKEN FREE!" Mic screamed as the crowd cheered. Sinso looked horrified that someone could break free from his quirk, but he didn't have much time to question how Izuku had done it before he was thrown out of the ring.
The next match was between Shoto and Sero, no points for guessing who won that fight. Sasha shivered and got closer to share body warmth as Shoto slowly removed the massive iceberg he'd created.
"Any chance you beat him?" She chattered as I gave the mountain of ice a wary look. "Short of burning down the whole stadium, I can't think of anything just yet." Her teeth continued to chatter until Momo made her a blanket.
The next match was much more interesting: Kaminari vs a girl from class 1-B whose hair seemed to be made of actual vines. "Ibara Shiozaki," Momo said, seeing my look as green vines formed a dome over the girl, before lashing out towards Kaminari.
Seeing a few arcs of electricity snapping around Denki, I averted my eyes as he discharged everything in one massive burst. Once the air cleared, Denki was on the ground babbling incoherently as Shiozaki emerged from her vines, completely unscathed.
"I'm going to get ready for my match." I squeezed Sasha's hand before going down to warm up. I did a few stretches before they finished clearing the ring, and my name was called. Briefly shielding my eyes from the glare of the sun, I saw that Mina was already waiting for me on the slab.
"Ready, you two?" Midnight asked, and we nodded as she snapped her whip. "START!" Flames burst from my wings as Mina threw a glob of acid at me. It melted before it could reach me, but she was able to reposition in time as I formed a wall of flames between us.
She tried to get closer to cover more area with her acid, but I didn't give her the chance. Each step I took forward formed another wall of flames that slowly pushed her closer to the edge. "Sorry, Ashido, this was just a bad matchup," I said apologetically as she pouted before a light wave of flames shoved her off the ring.
"MICAH WINS!" Midnight declared as I helped Mina to her feet. "Try to work on mobility. It really was just a bad pairing; you'd give anyone other than Shoto and Bakugo a run for their money." I said as we walked back to the stands.
We passed Momo, who was coming down, as Mina waved, and I hurried back to Sasha. "Not bad, tiger. I almost felt sorry for poor Mina." She said as I noticed she'd stopped shaking from the cold. I sat back down and took her hand as the next fight started.
"I bet Fumikage wins," Sasha said as the match started, and it wasn't hard to figure out why. Momo already had a shield ready to tank Dark Shadow's blow, but once the pressure increased, she stopped making as many things since she didn't have any room to think.
"Fumikage is smart. Momo is probably the most dangerous person in the class, able to make anything to deal with anyone. The only problem is she doesn't have much experience in a fight, or thinking under real pressure."
She nodded as Momo was finally pushed out of the ring, and Fumikage was declared the winner. "I'm going to go get ready, check on Momo for me?" I nodded as Sasha left the stands with a strange glint in her eye, poor Kirishima. . .
It didn't take much to find Momo, who looked more than a little upset. "Hey Momo, you did well." She didn't look convinced, so I made her sit down as I explained it to her. "Out of everyone in the class, you probably have the most eyes on you, that just comes with being attractive and strong. Everyone sees your power and has been looking for ways to work around it." Momo nearly choked on her water, but Micah didn't seem to notice.
"Since you have the most versatile quirk, Fumikage knew that he couldn't give you any time to think, since the moment you did, you'd be able to make something to even the odds, like a flashbang. Despite that, you were able to almost take him out; you just need more practice with these things, especially fighting."
As Micah was busy giving Momo a much-needed pep-talk, Kirishima was busy fighting for his life against Sasha. He'd thought this would be an easy fight, yeah, Sasha was fast, but she couldn't be that fast, right?
Wrong. Not only was Sasha quick on her feet, but she also had retractable claws that Izuku was freaked out by, as Kirishima now had several new scars. The biggest problem right now, though, was the fact that Sasha didn't seem in any hurry to finish him off.
Instead, she was busy playing with him, like a cat with a bird it's already caught. Bit by bit, she chipped away at his hardening as he swung wildly, barely managing to hit her shadow as she kept just out of reach.
She finally seemed to grow tired of this, however, as she went for his eyes, only for her to sweep his legs out from under him when he closed his eyes on instinct. Before he could figure out how he'd ended up on his back, Sasha latched onto his leg and spun him around before throwing him out of the ring as she was declared the winner.