MHA: Lust Quirk

"Okay, ribbit."

Tsuyu said it at the water station between events while Ryo was still wiping mine dust off his forearms. He'd walked up to her with his pitch ready and she'd agreed before he finished the first sentence. One word and a frog sound. She'd watched him fight the Nomu at USJ. She'd watched him take a hit for Aizawa and get up. He'd passed at the shipwreck zone and she hadn't needed a second look.

"I want Jiro too," he said. "Her earphone jacks can read the ground. She'd know where every team is before they get close."

Tsuyu's wide mouth pulled sideways. "Ask her. She's prickly about being picked."

He didn't have to ask her. Jiro came to him.

She was leaning against the tunnel wall when he walked past, one earphone jack plugged into the concrete and the other coiled around her index finger. She pulled the jack out of the wall when she saw him.

"You need an ear," she said. "For the cavalry battle. Ground detection. I can hear footsteps through solid surfaces and I can tell you how many people are coming and from which direction."

"That's a hell of a pitch."

"It's a fact." She crossed her arms. The jack around her finger tightened. "Don't make it weird."

"Weird how?"

"Just don't."

He had a guess what she meant. The guess involved the cafeteria and a pulse spike and a pink girl three tables away. He wasn't going to test it.

"You're in."

The three of them stood at the staging area. Ryo as rider, Tsuyu on the left carrying position, Jiro on the right. Three-person team, smaller than most, but faster. Tsuyu's legs could jump with two people on her back. Jiro's detection meant they'd never get ambushed.

Tsuyu looked at Jiro. "You can call me Tsu."

Jiro blinked. The jack around her finger went still. "You don't- I mean. You barely know me."

"I know you approached him without being asked. That's enough, ribbit." She turned back to the field. "Tsu is fine."

Jiro's jaw tightened and she looked at the ground and she said "Tsu" once, quiet, like she was testing whether it fit in her mouth.

The horn blew and the cavalry battle started.

Midnight announced the rules from the stage and the stadium roared and the field exploded into chaos. Teams scattered in every direction, headbands flying, Quirks firing. Bakugo's team launched straight at Midoriya, whose ten-million-point headband was the biggest target in the arena. Ryo watched it happen from across the field. Midoriya scrambling, Tokoyami's Dark Shadow defending, Mei Hatsume's gadgets keeping them mobile.

His story. His problem.

"Two teams, left side, coming fast." Jiro's jack was in the dirt, her eyes closed. "One's heavy. Probably someone with a size or strength Quirk. The other's lighter, three people, moving in a spread."

"Tsu."

Tsuyu crouched and jumped. The three of them went airborne and the heavy team charged through the space they'd just left and Ryo watched them from the top of the arc and they landed clear and Jiro didn't even open her eyes during the jump. Her jack read the ground on impact and she called the next one.

"Right side. Solo team. Fast."

Tetsutetsu. Steel skin, charging straight at them, his rider screaming encouragement. Tsuyu's tongue shot out and snagged the headband off Tetsutetsu's rider's forehead in one clean flick. The headband was in Ryo's hand before Tetsutetsu's team realized it was gone.

"WHAT- WHO- THAT'S-" Tetsutetsu spun around, steel face furious, and saw Tsuyu retracting her tongue. "THE FROG?! GIVE THAT BACK!"

"No, ribbit."

They hopped away. Tetsutetsu's screaming faded behind them.

A cluster of vine-like tendrils shot across the field from the right. Green, thorned, fast. They reached for the headband on Ryo's forehead and Tsuyu jumped again and the vines missed the headband but one wrapped around Jiro's ankle and Ryo grabbed it and pulled.

The vine didn't tear. He pulled harder. It tore.

Across the field, Ibara Shiozaki stood at the base of her team's formation with her vine-hair extended in every direction, a mobile fortress of green tendrils reaching for anything with points on it. Two more vines shot toward them. Tsuyu's tongue grabbed a headband from the rider behind Ibara while the vines were focused on Ryo. A third vine snaked low, aiming for Jiro's jack where it was planted in the ground.

Ryo caught it. Tore it. Caught the next one with his other hand and tore that too.

Ibara's eyes went wide. Her mouth opened. The vines retracted and her team pulled back and she was staring at the three torn stumps where her hair had been and then she was staring at his hands.

"Nice reach," he said.

The blush hit her from her crown of thorns to the collar of her toga. Deep red across green-tinged skin. She turned away fast and her vines coiled protectively around her team and they retreated and somebody on her team was saying her name and she was looking at the ground.

A sound from the left. High-pitched, whistling. Horns. Actual horns, detached from a head, flying at him in a guided arc. He batted the first one out of the air with his palm. Caught the second. The third hit his shoulder and bounced off because his durability was high enough that a projectile horn at that speed registered as a shove.

"TOO STRONG!" The voice was accented, bright, panicked English mixed with broken Japanese. A blonde girl across the field with stubby horns already regrowing on her head. Pony Tsunotori. "HE CATCH MY HORN! WITH HAND! THAT IS NOT FAIR!"

"Probably fair," Ryo said, but she was already firing another volley and Tsuyu hopped them sideways and the horns sailed past.

A kid from General Studies got too close on the left and Ryo grabbed his headband in passing and the kid's mouth dropped open and the satisfaction was ugly and small and he wore it anyway.

The battle wore on. Jiro called positions. Tsuyu jumped and grabbed. Ryo punched and tore and collected headbands and his team was small and fast and Jiro's detection meant they were always moving before anyone got close enough to engage for more than a few seconds. His shoulder ached where Mina's horn had dug in all night and every jump sent a pulse through the bruise and the warmth was still there under the soreness.

Midnight called the end.

Present Mic read the results. Team Todoroki first. Team Bakugo second. Team Midoriya third, because he'd managed to keep the ten-million headband through the entire battle which was still insane no matter how many times Ryo had watched it play out. Team Hayami fourth.

Top four. The bracket.

Tsuyu put him down. Her tongue unwound from his waist where it had been anchoring him for the last stretch of the battle and the muscle was warm and dry and when it released he could feel where it had been, a ring of warmth around his midsection.

"Good fight, ribbit." She was looking at him with those wide dark eyes and her expression was the same neutral flatness she gave to everything and he couldn't read it and she didn't help him read it and she walked toward the water station.

Jiro pulled her jack out of the dirt. She was breathing hard and her face-paint was smudged and her bob was sweaty and she straightened up and one earphone jack curled. Once. A tight spiral, like a finger twisting around a strand of hair. She caught it doing it and the jack snapped straight and she looked away.

"Don't make it weird," she said again.

She walked off. Fast. Her boots made sharp sounds on the concrete.

At the water station, Tsuyu was watching. She'd been filling a bottle and she was looking past the bottle at him and past him at where Jiro had been standing and the wide dark eyes moved between the two points. She screwed the cap on the bottle. Slow. The look lasted one beat longer than casual and then she turned away and drank.

She'd seen the jack curl. She'd seen him see it.

Ryo stood on the field. His arms were sore from tearing vines and batting horns and his shoulder ached from Mina's horn print and across the field Ibara was touching the torn ends of her vine-hair and her blush was still going and Pony was explaining to Kendo in half-English half-Japanese that the 1-A kid had caught her horn with his bare hand and that was illegal or should be.

Tsuyu was drinking water with her back to him and her tongue was coiled at her jaw and it was the same tongue that had been around his waist a minute ago and he was thinking about it and he stopped thinking about it because the bracket was next and he knew how every fight was supposed to go.

Supposed to.

The word sat wrong. He'd changed the numbers by being here. The matchups wouldn't be the same. His foreknowledge was worth exactly as much as the version of reality it was based on, and given that he'd just toppled a zero-pointer with one punch and torn vine-hair barehanded, that might be less than he thought.