MHA: Lust Quirk

Ryo vs Tokage. First round.

My name on the board next to the girl with the sharp teeth and the detached hand. I'd fight her first. The grin from the obstacle race and the scuttling hand and "remember the name" and now I'd get to see what the rest of her could do.

The bracket had other names. Todoroki vs a Gen Studies kid. Midoriya in the second round. And in the upper half, the matchup that made my stomach tighten:

Bakugo vs Uraraka.

I found Ochaco at the edge of the field. She was looking at the board and her jaw was tight and her fists were at her sides. Bakugo. Explosion. The kid who'd fought me to a draw in sparring and hadn't held back against anyone today and wasn't going to hold back against her.

The hallway between the waiting rooms was empty except for the fluorescent buzz and a janitor pushing a mop bucket near the far end. Ochaco was sitting on a bench with her hands on her knees, thumbs pressing into the fabric of her gym pants. She looked up when I sat next to her.

"Don't give me a pep talk," she said.

"I'm not going to give you a pep talk."

"Deku already tried. He was really nice about it." She looked at her hands. "I almost cried and that made it worse."

"I'm going to give you a briefing."

She looked at me. I talked.

"Bakugo leads with his right. Every opening attack. His left is the follow-up or the feint but the first hit is always right-hand, right-palm, right-side detonation. If you dodge left you're moving into his follow-up. Dodge right." I held up my hands, showing the angle. "His gauntlets pull his arms wide when he fires the big blasts and that's the gap. Two meters of opening between his elbow and his ribs. He's faster than you but he's not faster than your toggle. If you can make his gauntlet weightless on the upswing he'll overcompensate and the explosion goes high and you're under it."

Her hands had stopped pressing into her knees. She was listening. Same focus as during training.

"He'll try to end it fast because he doesn't respect you yet. Let him think he's winning. Every attack that misses generates debris. Every piece of debris you touch on the way down is a piece you float. Don't grab for them. Just brush them when you're rolling or stumbling. He won't notice because he's watching for the big move and the big move is a hundred small ones." I looked at her. "You've been building the meteor shower since the first time you trained the toggle. This is what it was for."

"The combat toggle isn't-"

"It's ready. Your release time is under half a second. You curved a tennis ball around a support pillar. Your fingers know what to do."

She swallowed. Her permanent blush was darker. Her fingertip pads were pressing into her knees, all five on each hand, not floating the bench.

"Am I going to lose?"

"Maybe."

Her shoulders pulled in.

"But there's losing where the crowd forgets your name before the next match starts, and there's losing where sixty-five thousand people stand up." I kept looking at her. "Fight him like you mean it."

She held my gaze. Then her fists closed and her jaw set and she stood up. Shorter than me by half a head. Going into an arena against the angriest kid in the school with a gravity Quirk and a combat toggle she'd built in less than two weeks.

"Thank you," she said. "For not being nice about it."

She walked down the hallway. Steady footsteps. Didn't look back.

I sat on the bench. The janitor's mop bucket squeaked on the linoleum.

And the ugly part of my brain noted that the loss would break her guard open. She'd cry in a hallway with a flip phone to her ear and I'd be there and the armor she wore, the cheerful broke-kid routine, would crack and she'd lean into me. I was coaching her toward a defeat that would push her closer to me and I knew it. The alternative was scripting her victory from my couch knowledge and that would be worse than letting her lose honestly.

The fight against Bakugo was hers. The loss was hers.

I hated the thought. Didn't take it back.

A door opened. Momo walked out of the analysis room carrying her Yaoyorictionary with a pen behind her ear. Flipping through pages. She almost passed me.

"Yaoyorozu."

She stopped. Looked at me over the open book. "Hayami-kun."

"Studying between rounds?"

"Preparing. I might face Todoroki and I need to review thermal conductivity at-" She closed the book. Held it against her chest. "Actually. Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah."

"During the Battle Trial. When we were paired together. You told me I already knew how to beat them." Her grip on the book tightened. "Did you mean that?"

I leaned against the wall. "You ranked first in the Quirk Apprehension Test. First in midterms. You designed a trap network for the Battle Trial that worked before I had to use it. You created an insulating blanket against Kaminari's discharge in under a second." I stopped. "You need me to keep going?"

Her thumb pressed the bent corner of a page. The paper creased.

"That was blunt," she said.

"You didn't need kind. You needed honest."

She looked at the book in her arms. At her thumb. Then at me.

"Stop asking other people to confirm what you already know," I said.

Her mouth opened. Closed. The pen behind her ear tilted. Her eyes were sharp and dark and her posture had changed, the shoulders pulling back a fraction.

"Thank you, Hayami-kun." Formal. Her grip on the book loosened. She turned and walked toward the analysis room and the pen fell from behind her ear and she caught it without looking and kept walking and the door closed behind her.

A vending machine down the hall was grinding. A third-year was hitting it with his palm and swearing in Osaka dialect. The machine gave him nothing. He hit it again. I watched him lose the fight and then I got up.

The stadium corridors were loud between matches. Support Course kids hauling equipment. A food vendor selling takoyaki from a cart that smelled like batter and cheap oil. Two kids from Class 1-B were sitting against the wall sharing a water bottle and one of them had a vine leaf stuck in her hair and the other was trying to tell her without touching it.

Kirishima found me near the stairs. Red hair, sharp grin, shadowboxing because Kirishima's resting state was motion.

"Dude, you're fighting that 1-B girl first right? The one who comes apart?"

"Tokage. Yeah."

"Just grab the pieces and throw them. That's what I'd do."

"That's what you'd do with every fight."

"Because it WORKS." He punched my shoulder. It hurt less than it would have two weeks ago. "Go be manly out there."

"I'll try."

"Don't try. BE."

Gone. Still shadowboxing. A first-year from Gen Studies flattened against the wall to let him past.

The stands were packed. Mina was in the 1-A section saving a seat with both arms waving and her horns catching the stadium lights. The kids around her were pretending they didn't know her. Kaminari was two rows back with a foam finger he'd gotten from somewhere and Sero was trying to take it from him.

I sat down. She leaned into my arm. Full lean, shoulder against my bicep, horn close enough to my jaw that the warmth radiated into my skin. Public. Surrounded by classmates. Didn't care.

"Kick their asses," she said.

"Which asses specifically?"

"All of them. Every ass. Comprehensive ass-kicking." She grinned up at me. Too many teeth. Gold eyes bright in the stadium light.

Her hand found my wrist. Squeezed. Fingers warm through my sleeve. Acid-citrus scent faint under the stadium air and the concrete dust. She smelled different from Ochaco and different from the sterile hallway.

"You're tense," she said. Quieter. Just for me.

"Big day."

"You're going to win." She said it like she'd already watched the fight and was bored by the outcome. "I'm more worried about my voice. I've been yelling for three hours."

"You could stop."

"I could NOT."

Three seats down, Jiro's earphone jack lifted off her thigh. The cable oriented toward us. Her eyes stayed on the arena but the jack was pointed at my chest. My pulse and Mina's voice and whatever my heart was doing right now were all in Jiro's ears and she was sitting there with her face pointed forward.

Behind Jiro, Tsuyu was watching the jack. Wide dark eyes tracking the cable's angle. To me. To Mina on my arm. Back to Jiro. Finger to her chin. She looked at the arena and said nothing.

"First match," the speakers announced. "Hayami versus Tokage."

Mina squeezed my wrist one more time. "Go."

I walked down toward the tunnel. The corridor narrowed and the crowd noise went from everywhere to muffled and the concrete walls were cool. At the entrance to the arena, Setsuna was leaning against the opposite wall. Arms crossed. Chin up. She saw me and grinned. Sharp teeth in the tunnel light.

I grinned back.

We walked out from opposite sides and the stadium was loud and the sun was overhead and Midnight's voice carried over everything.

"FIRST MATCH. HAYAMI VERSUS TOKAGE. BEGIN!"