MHA: Lust Quirk

The building was quiet.

Ryo stood on the second-floor landing with his back to the stairwell wall, listening. Below him, the first floor was a maze of Momo's creation: trip wires strung at ankle height across the main corridor, smoke grenades tucked into wall brackets, a secondary barrier across the east hallway made of something she'd called "high-density polymer mesh" while he'd nodded like he knew what that meant. Above him, the payload sat on the fourth floor doing nothing useful.

Five minutes of setup. Momo had used three of them and built more than some engineers did in a week. She was on the fourth floor now, behind a barricade she'd created around the warhead, ready to make whatever else the situation needed.

Ryo's job was simpler. Stand here. Wait. Hit whoever came up the stairs.

The second-floor hallway smelled like concrete dust and the faint chemical tang of whatever Momo's Quirk used as raw material. The lights were fluorescent, humming. A pipe ran along the ceiling with a bolt missing from one bracket.

From below: footsteps. Two sets. One heavier than the other.

They were inside.

Then silence. One of the footstep patterns stopped. A faint sound, organic, like a cable being drawn across a hard surface. Jiro had plugged into a wall. Her earphone jack pressed flat against the concrete, her head tilted, listening through the structure. She could hear heartbeats through walls and floors. She could hear his heartbeat right now, two floors up, and whatever she was hearing wasn't matching what she expected from a first-year waiting for a fight.

"Hayami's on the second floor," Jiro's voice came up through the stairwell, flat and low. She wasn't trying to be quiet. She was talking to Kaminari at normal volume, which meant she'd already decided stealth was pointless. "His pulse is like sixty beats a minute. He's not even close to nervous."

"Maybe he's meditating." Kaminari. Louder.

"Nobody meditates before a fight, Kaminari."

"I could."

"You can't sit still for thirty seconds."

"That's fair."

Their voices were getting closer. First floor, approaching the main corridor. The trip wire was about eight meters past the entrance, strung low, connected to a smoke canister on each side. Momo had calibrated the smoke for density and spread. She'd explained the chemical composition. He'd heard none of it.

Footsteps. Closer. Kaminari was walking on the left side of the corridor. Jiro on the right, her jacks trailing along the walls, scanning.

A sharp sound. Wire tension releasing. Then the hiss of smoke filling a space.

Ryo pushed off the wall and went down the stairs.

He took them three at a time, faster than he'd ever moved in this body, and the landing was clean. The smoke was already thick on the first floor, white and acrid, filling the corridor from floor to ceiling. Visibility was maybe two meters. Kaminari was coughing somewhere to the left. Jiro was quiet, which meant she was listening.

Ryo went left.

He found Kaminari by sound, a cough and then a stumble and then a shape in the smoke that was about the right height and wearing the wrong expression. Kaminari saw him at the same time, eyes going wide, mouth opening to say something.

Ryo grabbed him by the front of his jacket and threw him.

He just grabbed the kid and sent him in the direction of the stairwell with most of the strength he was willing to show. Kaminari hit the wall next to the stairs, bounced off, and went down three steps before catching himself on the railing. He was on his back, looking up at Ryo through the smoke with a face that was trying to decide between scared and angry and was settling on both.

"Dude, what the-"

Then Kaminari discharged.

It wasn't aimed. It wasn't controlled. He just lit up. The electricity came out of him in every direction at once, white-yellow arcs that jumped from his body to the walls to the floor to the railing to the ceiling to Ryo.

Two million volts.

It hit him everywhere at once. His jaw locked. His fingers curled. His vision went white at the edges. Every muscle in his body contracted. His back arched. His teeth slammed together.

He didn't go down.

His knees bent. His boots skidded on the concrete. One hand found the wall and the fingers dug in hard enough to crack the surface. But he stayed up. Standing. The electricity ran through him and out of him and his body absorbed it.

The current stopped. The lights flickered twice and stabilized.

Kaminari was sitting on the stairs with his eyes unfocused, a trail of drool running from the corner of his mouth, his hands up in two shaky thumbs-up.

"Whey," he said.

Derp mode. Brain short-circuited. He'd be like that for an hour.

Ryo blinked. His vision was still patchy. The taste in his mouth was copper and ozone. His left hand was shaking. The smoke was thinning. His ears were ringing.

He was standing, though. That was the relevant part.

Footsteps. Fast. Moving away. Jiro was alone now and her partner had just emptied his entire arsenal into a guy who was still on his feet. She was running, which was smart, because if she stopped running Ryo would catch her.

He went after her.

The ringing in his ears was fading. His legs worked. The shaking in his left hand was getting better. The smoke was almost gone. He could see the corridor ahead, Jiro's black jacket moving fast toward the east stairwell, her jacks whipping behind her.

She reached the end of the corridor, pivoted, and plugged both jacks into her boots.

The speakers in the soles. He remembered that detail from the costume reveal yesterday, how the boots had looked heavy for her build.

The sound hit him like a wall. Jiro's heartbeat amplified through the boot speakers and projected as a concussive wave. Pure sound pressure, a bass note so deep and loud that it pushed the air in the corridor ahead of it like a physical barrier. Dust kicked up off the floor. The fluorescent light above her head shattered.

Ryo dodged left. The main wave missed him, but the edge caught his right side and his ribs felt like someone had slapped them with a plank. He stumbled, caught himself, kept moving.

She fired again. He was already low, running below the sound line, and the wave passed over him close enough to ruffle his hair. Ten meters between them. Eight. Five.

Jiro's eyes went wide. The red face paint under them made the whites look bigger. She yanked her jacks out of the boots and swung them at him like whips, both of them, fast, the metal tips aimed at his face.

He ducked one. Caught the other.

The jack was cold in his hand, metallic, lighter than it looked. Jiro pulled. He held. For a second they stood there, connected by six feet of earlobe cable, and her jaw tightened and her teeth showed and she was trying to reel the jack back with everything she had.

She was strong for her size. He was stronger for his.

He pulled. She came with it, stumbling forward two steps, close enough that he could see the face paint had smudged slightly under her left eye. He let go of the jack, pulled the capture tape from his belt, and wrapped it around her wrist in one motion. Then the other wrist. Then he stepped back.

"Match over," he said.

Jiro looked at the tape on her wrists. Looked at him. Her mouth was a flat line. The earphone jacks hung at her sides, limp. Her breathing was fast but her face was controlled.

"Your pulse didn't change," she said.

"What?"

"During the whole fight. Through the electricity, through my attacks, through all of it. Your heart rate didn't change." She was looking at him like she had in the classroom. Tilted head. The furrow. "That's not normal."

"I'm an easygoing guy."

She didn't laugh. She also didn't look away.

The buzzer sounded. All Might's voice came through the building's speakers: "VILLAIN TEAM WINS!"

They walked out together. Jiro with the capture tape still on because Ryo hadn't figured out how to take it off without it being weird, Kaminari trailing behind them with vacant eyes and two permanent thumbs-up. Momo met them at the building entrance. She'd come down from the fourth floor and was standing with her book under her arm, her mouth pressed together like she was holding back the first three things she wanted to say.

Her trap network was untouched.

The class was waiting in the control room. Ryo walked in and the room was quiet. Kirishima's mouth was open. Sero was leaning forward in his chair. Tokoyami's bird head was tilted.

Bakugo was standing against the back wall with his arms crossed. His jaw was tight. His eyes tracked Ryo from the door to the center of the room without blinking.

Midoriya was in the front row with his notebook open. His pen wasn't moving. His eyes were.

All Might cleared his throat. "Excellent work, Team C! Now, who can tell me who the MVP of this match was?"

The class murmured. Kaminari was sitting on the floor in the corner, still drooling.

Ryo raised his hand.

"Yaoyorozu."

The murmur stopped.

"She built the entire defensive network. Trip wires, smoke grenades, barriers, fallback positions. She analyzed both opponents' Quirks and designed countermeasures for every scenario. I just walked downstairs and hit somebody." He looked at All Might. "Her strategy won this. I was the delivery system."

All Might's smile got wider. He turned to Momo.

Momo was holding her book with both hands. Her knuckles weren't white anymore.

"Well said! Young Yaoyorozu, your strategic preparation was exemplary. The mark of a true hero is not just power, but the planning that ensures power is used effectively. You are this match's MVP!"

Momo bowed. Short, precise, exactly the right angle. But when she straightened, her shoulders were lower than they'd been all day.

Ryo went back to his spot against the wall. The left hand had stopped shaking. His right side, where the edge of Jiro's sound wave had caught his ribs, ached when he breathed deep. He breathed shallow and didn't think about it.

Across the room, Jiro was sitting next to Momo. She'd gotten the capture tape off. One of her jacks was draped over the armrest of her chair, the tip pointed at the floor.

She was still frowning.