MHA: Lust Quirk

Aizawa ran sparring from a folding chair.

He'd set it up at the edge of Training Ground Beta's dirt field, dropped into it like sitting down was something his body had to negotiate, and started calling matches. Both arms in casts. Notebook on his knee, pen between his fingertips, the only parts of his hands the bandages left exposed.

"Ashido. Hayami. Center."

Mina walked out onto the dirt already grinning. Her P.E. uniform was the same blue and white as everyone's but she'd pushed the sleeves up past her elbows and her forearms were bare and pink and the grin was the one that had too many teeth in it and knew it.

"Don't hold back," she said. Loud enough for the class to hear.

He didn't hold back.

She was fast. Acid skating, a thin layer from her soles, the dirt underneath hissing as it dissolved, and she slid across the field like it was ice. She didn't run. No push-off, no footfall rhythm to read. She cut lateral, angles that his legs couldn't match because legs need friction and hers had decided against it. Her acid dissolved a divot where his front foot had just been and the sweet chemical smell hit the air and he thought that's her and punched through where she'd been and she wasn't there.

She tagged him once. Open palm against his ribs, skating past, and the contact lasted less than a second but the heat through his shirt registered all the way up his spine.

Her grin got bigger.

He caught her on the second pass. Read the arc, she favored right turns, wider radius, and stepped into the line instead of away from it. His hand closed on her wrist and her momentum carried her into him and her shoulder hit his chest and she looked up from inside his guard with gold eyes and blown pupils.

"Down," he said.

"Make me."

He swept her feet. She went down. Rolled. Popped up. Her grin hadn't changed.

"Hayami wins," Aizawa said from the chair. His pen moved.

Round two. Sero. Tape shot from both elbows before Ryo cleared the starting line. Two strips, angled, trying to pin his arms to his torso. He ducked one and caught the other on his forearm and yanked and Sero came forward three stumbling steps and Ryo hit him in the ribs. Not hard enough to break anything. Hard enough that Sero sat down.

"Hayami."

Round three. Ojiro. This one was different. Ojiro had a martial arts background, actual forms, actual stance, footwork that came from somewhere with mats and mirrors and a sensei who corrected your hip alignment. He used the tail as a third limb, sweeping low while his fists worked high, and for thirty seconds Ryo was actually defending. A kick caught him in the thigh. A tail whip nearly took his ankles. Ojiro was good. Trained. Disciplined.

Ryo headbutted him.

Not proud of it. But it worked. Ojiro's guard was high, his tail was mid-swing, and his face was close enough that the fastest way to end the fight was through his forehead. Ojiro staggered. Ryo pressed. Three body shots and a shove and Ojiro hit the dirt.

From the sideline, Kaminari said, "Dude."

"What?"

"You headbutted him."

"Yeah."

"Is that legal?"

"Aizawa didn't stop it."

Aizawa didn't stop it. His pen moved.

Round four. Kirishima came out already hardened, his skin that jagged granite texture that made him look like a walking quarry wall. This was a fight Ryo understood. Two guys hitting each other until one of them quit. Kirishima punched him in the jaw and it hurt. Ryo punched him in the chest and Kirishima's hardening cracked at the surface. Kirishima looked down at the crack. Looked up at Ryo. Grinned.

"Manly."

They kept hitting each other. Kirishima's hardening was good but it wasn't infinite. After twenty seconds the cracks started spreading. After thirty, Ryo landed a right to his solar plexus that buckled the shell entirely and Kirishima dropped to one knee, still grinning, wheezing through the grin.

"Hayami." The pen moved.

Five rounds, four wins, and all of it was ugly. No stance. No guard. He hit things and the things went down and the technique involved was zero and the results were fine.

"Bakugo. Hayami."

The field got quieter. People stopped their side conversations. Mina, sitting on the grass with her legs stretched out, went still. Midoriya's muttering picked up speed.

Bakugo walked to center like a man who'd been waiting for his name and was annoyed it had taken this long.

"Finally," he said.

"Miss me?"

"Shut the fuck up and fight me."

Bakugo fought the way Bakugo fought. Explosions from both palms, concussive, directed, used for propulsion as much as damage. He launched himself forward with a right-palm blast and swung wide and the detonation expanded on contact and Ryo got his forearms up but the force pushed him back three meters and the heat washed over his face.

Hot. Different from Mina's. Mina was warmth. Bakugo was burning.

Ryo came back in low. Under the next blast, inside the range where the explosions lost their advantage and Bakugo's arms were just arms. Bakugo caught the body shot on his elbow and detonated against Ryo's ribs at point blank. Ryo grunted. Grabbed Bakugo's wrist before the hand could withdraw. Bakugo tried to blast free and Ryo held on and the explosion crackled against his palm and it hurt, it actually hurt, and Bakugo's eyes were red and his teeth were bared and his free hand was already swinging.

They traded. Close range. Ugly. Bakugo hitting him with everything and Ryo hitting back and neither giving ground. A knee from Bakugo. An elbow from Ryo. A headbutt that Bakugo dodged because he'd watched the Ojiro fight. Bakugo blasted the ground between them to make distance. Ryo closed the distance before the smoke cleared.

The bell rang.

Neither of them stopped.

Bakugo's palm hit Ryo's chest and the explosion sent him sliding back on his heels. Ryo dug in and charged forward. They collided in center and Bakugo's hand was on Ryo's face and sparking and Ryo's fist was in Bakugo's stomach and pressing.

"Enough."

Aizawa's voice. Flat. The scarf moved from his seated position, he'd shifted it with his neck, the fabric coiling in the air between them. They both saw it.

Bakugo pulled his hand off Ryo's face. The palm was smoking. There was a heat-mark on Ryo's cheek, red, not blistered but close.

"Draw," Aizawa said. The pen moved.

Bakugo wiped his hands on his pants. His breathing was hard. His eyes hadn't cooled.

"Next time I'm winning."

"You didn't win this time."

"I SAID next time."

He walked off. Shoulders tight, fists clenched, small pops crackling from his palms like a car engine pinging after shutdown. He didn't look back.

Ryo stood in the ring. His cheek stung. His ribs ached from Kirishima and from Bakugo and from the two clean hits Ojiro had landed before the headbutt. Sweat on his arms and dirt on his knees. Five fights. He wanted five more.

The class started packing up. Aizawa folded his notebook, tucked the pen somewhere into the cast's edge, and stood from the chair like every joint was a separate argument. He left without saying anything else. Iida collected the equipment. Momo organized the water bottles by size for a reason that only Momo would have a reason for. Kirishima slapped Ryo's shoulder on the way past, "Good fights, bro," and his grin still had the split lip from where the hardening had cracked under Ryo's right hand.

The field emptied.

Late afternoon sun on the buildings. Long shadows from the west, the observation towers casting dark lines across the dirt. A bird landed on the chain-link fence behind him, looked around for whatever birds look for, and left. Ryo pulled his phone out to check the time and there was a notification from the emoji-string contact and he almost opened it but didn't.

He picked up his water bottle. Drank. The water was warm from sitting in the sun. He drank it anyway.

Then he looked up.

Second-floor observation walkway. The metal-railed catwalk that ran along the east face of Ground Beta's main building, high up, built for instructors to watch field exercises from overhead.

She was leaning on the railing with both elbows, and she wasn't in costume.

Dark blouse, fitted. Pencil skirt, gray, ending above the knee. Her hair was down, long dark-purple falling past her shoulders, moving in the late-afternoon wind. Flat shoes instead of the usual heeled boots. She'd walked here from somewhere comfortable and hadn't planned on being in the field.

Nemuri Kayama without the mask looked like a different person. The R-Rated persona, the whip, the leather that her Quirk legally required, all of it was gone. Just a woman in a blouse leaning on a railing in late sunlight.

Who'd been watching him fight. Her head turned when he looked up, unhurried, and her eyes were already on his. She'd been tracking him from behind that railing before he ever thought to look.

She pushed off the rail. Walked to the staircase at the walkway's far end. The stairs were metal and her flat shoes sounded on each step, the sound carrying across the empty field.

She crossed the dirt toward him. Her hair moved against her back. The blouse shifted against her body when the wind caught it and he noticed and then noticed that he'd noticed.

She stopped a few steps away. Sky-blue eyes. Beauty mark under the left one. Without the domino mask every expression on her face was right there with nowhere to go.

"Hayami." She knew his name. Faculty knew all twenty.

"Kayama-sensei."

The corner of her mouth pulled up. Stopped before it got anywhere.

"You fight ugly," she said.

He waited.

"That's not an insult." She crossed her arms. "Ugly fighters are honest. Their bodies show exactly what they've learned and how they learned it. Pretty fighters are trained, their stance comes from a dojo or an agency or a mentor. Ugly fighters picked it up somewhere else." She tilted her head. "Who trained you?"

"Nobody."

"Nobody." She said it again, slower. "The body taught itself."

"Pretty much."

"Then your body's an interesting teacher." She wasn't looking at his face anymore. Her eyes moved across his shoulders, his hands, how his weight sat on his feet. "You guard your ribs with your elbows instead of your hands. That's instinct, not form. You lead right but you load power from your hips, which means you've thrown enough punches that your skeleton figured out the mechanics even though nobody showed you. You headbutted Ojiro."

"He was close."

"He was. That's not why you did it." Her eyes came back to his. Stayed. "You did it because you fight like someone who's been in real fights. Not school fights. Fights where the headbutt was the right choice because the other person was going to hurt you worse if you didn't end it fast."

A crow called from somewhere behind the main building. His water bottle was still in his hand and the plastic was warm.

"Rough area," he said. "Growing up."

She looked at him. Her eyes were level. She'd heard the lie and decided to leave it where it was.

"You remind me of someone," she said.

"Who?"

"That's a conversation for another day." She uncrossed her arms. Straightened. The instructor showing up behind the face. "The Sports Festival is in ten days. You're strong enough to make the bracket. Your instincts are good. Your technique is nonexistent. If someone with real training gets you into a technical exchange, you'll lose. Todoroki will freeze you at range and you won't have an answer. Bakugo will out-maneuver you because he's learned to use his explosions as movement, not just force." She paused. "You know this."

"Yeah."

"I can fix some of it. Not all. Ten days isn't enough for all of it. But I can give you guards, entries, transitions. The bones of a fighting style instead of just the hitting." Her chin lifted a fraction. "Not a formal arrangement. Just refinements. After my class on Thursday. Training Room 4."

Thursday.

Thursday was Mina. A date he'd agreed to in an apartment where the wall was still warm from her back and her mouth had said Thursday and meant you.

Midnight's Thursday was afternoon. School hours. Mina's Thursday was evening. There was space between them. Barely.

"Yeah," he said. "I'll be there."

The sun was behind the main building now. The shadow had reached them and the walkway lights above hadn't kicked on yet and everything was gray.

"Thank you," he said. "For the offer."

The beauty mark shifted. Her jaw loosened and her eyes lost the assessment. They just looked at him. Briefly.

Then it was gone and her mouth was set and she was a teacher again.

"Don't be late." Her voice was steady. Almost. "I hate late."

She turned and walked back across the field. Her hair moved against her back and the blouse caught the last of the light at the building's edge and then she was through the door without looking back.

Ryo stood on the training ground.

The bird was back on the fence. Bakugo's blast marks were scorched into the dirt, three dark smears in a rough line. His cheek still stung. His water was still warm.

In two weeks the Sports Festival would happen and Midnight would stand on the stage in the mask and the leather and the whip and call out matches as the R-Rated referee and the woman in the blouse would be nowhere.

About a year and a half from now, if the timeline held, she would climb the back of a giant and get knocked off and crawl broken through a forest and call Momo on her earpiece and give her last instruction and then someone would find her in the dark and she would die.

The field went gray. The walkway lights clicked on above him, automatic, sensors reading the dusk.

He was going to be there. He didn't know how yet. Gunga Mountain Villa was a specific place at a specific time and between now and then he had to figure out how to be standing in the right spot at the right moment. Mina would grieve her. Momo would carry the weight of it for years and Kirishima would be angry at a man nobody ever caught. All because she died in a forest and nobody got there fast enough.

He'd get there in time.

His phone buzzed.

Mina: 👊💥🤕❓

He typed: it'll bruise. looks cool though

Three dots.

Mina: 😤 that's MY face

He put his phone away. Picked up his bag from where he'd dropped it by the fence. Walked off the training ground toward the front gates, the lights clicking on behind him in sequence as the sensors picked up the darkening sky.

A cat was sitting under the bench at the bus stop near the train station. Orange. Cleaning a paw. It looked at him as he passed. He looked at it. It went back to its paw.

Thursday. Training Room 4. After her class.

Thursday. Wherever Mina was taking him. After that.

The train came. He got on. Found a window seat. His reflection in the glass had the burn mark on his cheek and his hair was worse than usual from five rounds of getting punched in the face.

Ten days until the Festival. A year and a half until Gunga.