MHA: Lust Quirk

Ochaco charged and Bakugo blew her across the arena on the first exchange. Right-palm detonation at close range, caught her in the chest, sent her tumbling backward through the dust. My fingers dug into my kneecaps.

She rolled. Hit the ground shoulder-first, skidded, caught herself on one hand and both knees. Her gym shirt was singed at the collar. She was already standing.

Bakugo was walking forward, palms crackling, smoke curling from his gauntlets. He hadn't rushed the follow-up because he hadn't needed to. The first blast was a statement. She was slower, smaller, and her Quirk required five-finger contact to activate. His required pointing.

She charged again.

Faster this time. Her feet were different. She planted and changed direction tighter than the start of term, the hours of pad work carved into her footwork, and she cut right. Right, away from his left follow-up. Bakugo's right hand came up and the explosion hit her shoulder and she went sideways and her hand caught a chunk of concrete the blast had ripped from the floor and her fingertips pressed into it and it went weightless and she let it go as she tumbled and the chunk floated up above the arena where nobody was looking.

There. One piece. Floating where the camera wouldn't catch it and Bakugo wouldn't think about it because he was winning and winners didn't look up.

Bakugo fired again. She dodged, took it on her hip, went down. Her hand slapped the ground and a fist-sized chunk went weightless and rose. She got up. Charged. Right-side dodge, absorb, touch, release. Another piece. The explosions tore the concrete into rubble and the rubble was supposed to be collateral damage and nobody tracked where the pieces went. That was the whole point.

She'd listened. Building it one piece at a time. Bleeding from a cut above her eyebrow. Hadn't stopped moving.

The crowd started booing.

It started scattered, a few voices in the upper sections, then louder, spreading. Aimed at Bakugo. At the boy using full-power explosions against a girl who kept getting knocked down and kept getting up and kept running at him.

"He's going too far," someone behind me said. Adult voice. Pro-hero scouting section.

My jaw tightened. They weren't paying attention. They were watching a boy hit a girl and seeing a bully because they didn't know what they were looking at. The boos were proof the plan was working.

The intercom crackled.

"If you're watching this fight and calling it cruel, you aren't watching closely enough." Aizawa's voice, flat and dry. "She's not defenseless. She has a plan. Pay attention."

The booing stopped. The stadium went quiet. Quiet was worse because now everyone was looking and looking meant they might look up.

Bakugo didn't look up. His palms were smoking and his face was locked in that permanent snarl and he was coming at her with everything he had because Bakugo didn't know how to fight at less than full and that was why Ochaco's plan was going to work.

A hand landed on my knee.

Pink fingers. Warm through the fabric. Mina was beside me, gold eyes steady, mouth pressed flat.

"She's okay," Mina said. Quiet. Under the crowd noise.

My knee was bouncing. My whole body was taut, leaning forward. Mina had felt the tension through the bench before I'd felt it myself.

"She's better than okay," I said. "Watch."

Mina's fingers squeezed my knee. She didn't move her hand. She turned back to the arena and her horn was warm near my jaw and she watched.

Ochaco charged again. Bakugo's right palm came up and she cut right and the explosion hit the ground behind her and the concrete shattered and she was already past the blast radius, inside his guard, her hand reaching for his arm. He jerked back, pivoted, fired with his left. She took it in the ribs. Went down hard. Her back hit the arena floor and she skidded and her fingers caught debris on the way down. Three pieces, one after the other, all floating up to join the constellation nobody was watching.

She stood up.

The cut above her eyebrow was dripping into her right eye. She wiped it with the back of her wrist, the hand she kept clear of surfaces. Her gym shirt was torn at the shoulder. Her chest heaving. Her knees shaking.

She pressed her fingertips together.

The sky fell.

Hundreds of pieces. Concrete chunks the size of fists and heads and entire sections of floor. They'd been hovering above the arena in a loose constellation that nobody had tracked and now Ochaco released them all and they came screaming down and the shadow covered the arena and the crowd gasped and my breath stopped and Mina's hand went tight on my knee.

Bakugo looked up.

He grinned. Both arms above his head, gauntlets angled, and the explosion was enormous. A dome of fire that blew outward in every direction, shattering the debris into powder and gravel, a wall of heat and pressure that turned the meteor shower into a dust cloud that rolled across the arena and into the stands.

The dust thinned.

Ochaco was behind it. She'd launched herself during the blast, while Bakugo's arms were up and his guard was open and the dust was a wall between them. Running. Full sprint. Her hand outstretched, five fingertips aimed at his chest. If she touched him he'd go weightless and she could throw him out and the fight was over and the crowd was screaming and Bakugo's eyes were wide.

Close. Closer.

He fired from the hip. A tight burst straight into her stomach at point-blank range.

She went backward. Hit the floor. Slid.

She got up.

The crowd went silent.

She was standing. Barely. Her legs shaking so hard the tremor was visible from the stands. Blood from her eyebrow. Burns on her arms. She looked at Bakugo and Bakugo looked at her.

She charged.

He blasted her down.

She got up.

He blasted her down.

She got up.

Her knees buckled on the fifth attempt. She went down to one knee, then the other, then her hands were on the floor and she was trying to push herself up and her arms shook and her elbows gave and she went flat. Cheek against concrete. Her fingers twitched. Reached for the ground beside her. A pebble floated up. Then her hand went still.

"Uraraka is down!" Midnight called. "If she cannot stand within ten seconds-"

Ten. Nine. Eight.

Her palm pressed flat. She tried. Her shoulder lifted, her elbow locked, her body shook. For a moment it looked like she might make it.

Three. Two. One.

"Bakugo wins!"

The crowd erupted. For her. The whole stadium standing and clapping and shouting for Ochaco Uraraka, who had lost, who was lying on the arena floor with burns on her arms and blood in her eye and a strategy that had almost worked.

She raised one hand. Thumb up. Eyes closed. The stretcher team was already moving and she let them lift her and she kept the thumb up and she kept her eyes closed because she was not going to cry in front of this stadium. Her jaw clenched, lips pressed together, and the tears were right there at the edges of her closed lids. She held them.

The stretcher passed below the stands. I watched it until it disappeared.

Mina's hand was still on my knee. Loose now.

"Go," she said.

I went.

The hallway under the stadium smelled like disinfectant and old sweat. The medical wing was down the left corridor but she wasn't there. Recovery Girl's station was empty except for a second-year with a wrapped ankle reading a magazine.

I found her in the side hallway past the vending machines. On the floor. Back against the wall. Knees pulled up. Flip phone pressed to her ear.

"-really close, Dad." Her voice cracking. "I almost had him. I almost-" A breath. Shaky. "I wanted to win so you and Mom could see me on TV."

I stopped walking. She hadn't seen me. The hallway was empty except for her and the vending machine glow and a janitor's cart against the far wall with a mop handle sticking out at an angle.

"No, no, I'm okay. I'm fine." Wiping her eye with the heel of her hand. "It was a good fight. Everyone said it was a good fight."

Her breath hitched. Her shoulders pulled in. Her voice went thick and wet and she was crying. Quiet crying. On the phone with her father at sixteen years old and she'd lost on national television and his voice was making it worse because she'd wanted to give him a win and she gave him a loss that made people clap.

"I gotta go, Dad. Yeah. Yeah, I love you too."

She closed the phone. Held it in her lap with both hands. Her head dropped forward until her forehead was on her knees and her shoulders were shaking and the sobs were silent except for the wet hitch of her breathing.

I sat down next to her. Back against the wall. Legs out.

She flinched. Turned her face sideways on her knees. One eye visible, brown and red-rimmed and wet. She saw me and her chin trembled and her lips pressed together and she tried to smile and it didn't hold.

"Don't," I said. "You don't have to do that with me."

She pressed her face back into her knees and the crying got louder, still quiet by any standard but louder than it had been, and her shoulders shook and her hands clutched the flip phone against her shins.

I didn't touch her. I sat there. Down the hall a door opened and closed and footsteps went the other way.

The shaking slowed. She breathed. In. Out. The hiccupping stopped. She turned sideways again. Both eyes. Her nose was running and her cheeks were blotchy and the permanent blush was lost in the redness.

"I wanted to win," she said.

"You built that meteor shower one piece at a time. Every hit you took, you grabbed another piece on the way down. You turned every blast into ammunition. The whole fight was a trap and you set it while he was blasting you across the arena." I looked at her. "You were incredible."

"I wanted to win."

"You will."

I said it the same way I'd said it in my apartment with the udon between us. Like a fact. Because in a timeline that played out on a screen in a life that didn't exist anymore, Ochaco Uraraka became a pro hero and founded her own agency and her parents' company recovered and everything she was crying about in this hallway was going to be fine.

Her wet eyes searched my face. Her jaw unclenched.

"You always do that," she said. "You say things like you already know."

"I pay attention." Same answer as last time. She'd remember.

She leaned into me. Forehead against my shoulder, then her whole weight shifting sideways until she was pressed against my arm and chest and her head fit against the side of my neck. Warm and shaking. She smelled like burnt fabric and cheap shampoo and the salt of tears drying on her skin.

I put my arm around her. She let me.

My shirt was getting wet from her face. Her breathing steadied against my ribs. Her hand moved from the flip phone in her lap to my hand on the floor. Her fingers found mine.

Four fingertip pads pressed against the back of my hand. Four out of five. Her thumb was raised, held carefully away from my skin, the pad hovering above my knuckle. Years of practice. Every touch in her life calibrated so she didn't accidentally make the world weightless. She couldn't hold my hand with all five fingers without floating me.

So she held me with four.

I looked at her hand on mine. The four pads warm against my skin. The thumb lifted. The gap.

Her breathing slowed. The tears dried. She didn't pull away.

Down the corridor, the mop handle on the janitor's cart tipped and fell and clattered against the floor and neither of us moved.