MHA: Lust Quirk

Halfway through the cavalry battle, someone laughed behind him and nobody was there.

Tsuyu had just landed from a jump and Jiro's jack was in the dirt reading the field and Ryo was scanning the chaos around them for the next team to rob when he heard it. A giggle. Close. Behind his left shoulder. High-pitched and quick and bitten off at the end like the person had covered their mouth.

He turned. Empty air. The field behind him was trampled grass and scattered teams and a Support Course kid screaming about a broken gadget. No one close enough to have laughed that close.

Except the grass near his feet was pressed flat. Two shoe-shaped depressions, side by side, a step behind his team. And as he watched, a headband lifted itself off the ground where a downed team's rider had dropped it and floated into the empty space above the shoe prints.

"Hagakure."

The headband stopped floating. The shoe prints went still.

"You could TELL it was me?!"

The voice came from the empty air between the shoe prints. Loud and scandalized. Toru Hagakure was standing right behind him invisible and she'd been stealing headbands from ground level while everyone watched the riders and nobody had thought to look down.

"Your laugh," he said. "I recognized it from class."

"My LAUGH? That's- I was being so sneaky! I've been sneaking for like ten minutes! I got four headbands!" The floating headband shook in the air. "Nobody else even- you just heard me and knew?"

He had. Her laugh was distinctive, a quick rising giggle that peaked on the second beat and cut off sharp. He'd heard it in the classroom when Kaminari said something dumb and in the hallway when Mina told a story.

The thought that followed was uncomfortable. She was invisible. Her entire Quirk was about not being noticed. And he'd tracked her through a crowd by a laugh she thought was hidden. He'd identified the invisible girl by the one thing she couldn't turn off. That was her power working perfectly and him cutting through it without trying and the look on her face- he couldn't see her face. The shoe prints were still. The headband was still.

"That's actually really cool," she said. Quieter. The cheerful voice was gone and what replaced it was smaller and warmer and it was coming from right next to his shoulder now. She'd moved without him hearing. "Nobody's ever done that before. The recognizing thing."

Her arm brushed his. He couldn't see it. He could feel it, warm skin against his forearm, brief, and then it was gone and the shoe prints were moving away and a headband from a team on the far side of the field lifted itself off a rider's head while the rider was focused on Bakugo's explosions.

"Thanks, Hayami-kun," she said from further away. Quiet enough that he almost missed it under the stadium noise.

Jiro's jack twitched in the dirt. "Heads up. Something big coming from the east side. Feels like a whole formation."

Vines.

A wall of them. Thicker than before, thorned, eight at least, moving together in a coordinated push that swept across the field toward any team with points. Ibara Shiozaki had stopped playing defense. Her team was advancing now with her vine-hair forming a mobile fortress around them, tendrils reaching in every direction, and the reach was longer than it had been earlier. She'd been holding back in the first half.

Two vines went for Ryo's headband. Tsuyu jumped the team sideways. A third vine tracked the jump and wrapped around Ryo's wrist mid-air. He grabbed it with his free hand and pulled and the vine tore loose and Ibara's head snapped toward him.

Three more came at once. Tsuyu's tongue snagged a headband from Ibara's rider while Ryo tore vines. He ripped the first one at the base. The second one he caught in both hands and snapped. The third got past him and went for Jiro and he caught it with one hand behind his back and pulled and the vine came apart in his fist and the green sap was on his fingers and it smelled like cut grass.

Across the field, Ibara was staring at the torn stumps of her hair. Her mouth was a thin line and her dark-green eyes were wide and she said it loud enough that the teams around her heard.

"He broke my vines."

Flat. Her vines could hold a person and lift concrete. He'd torn them with his hands.

From behind Ibara's formation, Pony's voice carried across the field, accented and rising.

"HE RIPPED THEM WITH HIS HANDS! IBARA-SAN! WITH HANDS! I TOLD YOU!"

Ibara's team retreated. The vine fortress pulled inward and they backed away and Ibara was looking at her hands and then at his hands.

A head appeared next to his left ear.

Just the head. Green hair, sharp teeth, amused green eyes. Floating. No neck, no body, just a smiling face hovering at his shoulder height.

"Hi again, 1-A."

Setsuna Tokage. Her head was detached and floating next to him and her body was somewhere else entirely and the smile had the same tilt from after the obstacle race.

"How's the view from up there?" she said.

He was about to answer when he felt fingers on his forehead. His headband slid off. He looked down and a detached hand was floating away from him carrying his points, sailing across the field toward a purple bodysuit standing near the eastern wall missing its right hand and its head.

"Hey-"

"Sorry! Well. I'm not." The floating head winked. The hand reached the body and the body reattached the hand and put the headband on and the head sailed back across the field and clicked onto the neck and Setsuna Tokage was whole again and standing across the field wearing his points.

He caught the next hand she sent.

It came later, detached, sneaking low through the grass. He grabbed it by the wrist. The fingers wiggled in his grip.

"Fool me twice," he said, holding the severed hand up. It gave him a thumbs up.

Across the field, Setsuna saluted with her remaining hand. The salute turned into a wave. She mouthed "keep it" and he dropped the hand and it scuttled back across the grass on its fingers like a very determined spider.

A man in the stands was eating yakisoba out of a paper boat. He had mustard on his chin and he was completely ignoring the battle and reading something on his phone. Ryo watched him for a second and then Jiro called another incoming and the battle continued.

On the far side of the field, near the south wall, a girl from 1-B was fighting in complete silence. Black bob. Blank expression. She was touching objects on the ground, rocks and debris from other Quirks, and the objects were growing. A pebble became a boulder. A stick became a log. She hadn't said a word or changed her expression and her team was using the enlarged objects as shields and cover and she directed the whole operation with pointed fingers and nods.

Yui Kodai. Size Quirk. She'd been out there for the entire battle and he couldn't remember hearing her voice once.

Jiro's jack pulled from the dirt. "Time's almost up. We're solid."

Tsuyu hopped them toward center field as the clock wound down. Across the field the battle was still raging and 1-B's teams were pulling back into clusters and the formations were tightening and everyone was protecting what they had. Ibara's vine fortress was a wall now, coiled tight, nothing getting in or out. Setsuna was intact again, all pieces reattached, leaning against the east wall and watching the final seconds with her arms crossed. Pony was sitting on the ground next to Kendo with her regrowing horns still stubby and she was talking in English to nobody in particular.

Yui was standing behind all of them. Silent. She'd enlarged a bench to use as a barricade and she was leaning against it with her arms at her sides and her expression hadn't moved the entire battle.

The horn blew. Midnight called the end.

The 1-B girls were deeper than the manga had shown. The anime had given them background shots and a couple of fight scenes. Here, in person, on a field he was sharing with them, they were full people with S-tier Quirks and sharp eyes. Ibara was going to remember his hands. Setsuna thought the whole thing was hilarious. Yui hadn't said a single word and that said more than anyone who'd been talking.

The bracket board lit up on the stadium screen. Names shuffled. Matchups populated.

Ryo looked at the board and the names on it were mostly the names he'd expected and the matchups were mostly wrong. Todoroki wasn't fighting the same person. Bakugo's bracket had shifted. Midoriya was still going to fight someone with ice, but the someone wasn't in the same slot.

He was on the board. His name next to an opponent's name that he'd never seen in this position in any version of the story he'd watched.

The script was gone. What was left was a stadium full of people who could hurt him and a bracket he'd have to fight through on whatever he had.

Mina's voice cut through the crowd noise from somewhere in the stands. He couldn't see her but he could hear her. She was cheering and it was loud and it had his name in it.

He looked at the bracket board. Looked at his opponent's name.

Time to fight.