MHA: Lust Quirk

Bakugo came out of the tunnel already screaming.

"HAYAMI!"

His voice hit the arena before the horn did. He was walking across the concrete with his palms crackling, little detonations popping in both hands like he couldn't keep the Quirk contained, and his face was locked into the expression that meant he was about to try to kill somebody. He was shorter than me by a centimeter, broader across the shoulders, and his blond hair was spiked in a way that looked angry on purpose. His gym shirt was damp at the collar. The nitroglycerin was already building.

"You beat Half-and-Half." Loud enough for the whole stadium. Bakugo didn't have a setting below announcement. "You beat Deku. Big deal. Neither of them was ME."

The horn sounded. He was already moving.

The first explosion caught me in the chest and blew me off my feet.

The blast was different from anything I'd taken today. Todoroki's ice was cold and structural, Midoriya's wind was force at range. Bakugo's explosions were hot and sharp and concussive, a detonation that rattled my teeth and turned the air orange and hit like getting kicked by a horse that was also on fire. My sternum lit up where the Delaware Smash bruise was still sitting. I hit the arena floor on my back and slid three meters.

I got up. Bakugo was in the air. He used his explosions like jet engines, palms angled behind him, and he came down with a right-hand blast aimed at my head. I rolled. The concrete where I'd been cracked and glowed orange from the heat.

The problem was immediate.

Every time I closed distance, the explosions pushed me back. The closer I got, the harder they hit because Bakugo didn't retreat from pressure. He escalated. A gas fire. Harder you press, hotter it burns. And he was fast. The explosion-propelled movement was a different kind of speed from running. He could change direction mid-air, lateral bursts from one palm sending him sideways while the other hand fired at where I'd been. He fought in three dimensions and I fought on the ground and the gap was a problem.

I closed distance anyway. Took a blast to the shoulder. Another to the ribs. The heat seared through my gym shirt and the force jarred my bones and burnt cotton filled my nose. I was inside his range for half a second and threw a right cross.

Bakugo detonated point-blank in my face.

The world went white. Then loud. Then the arena floor was under my back again and my ears were ringing and the smell of nitroglycerin and burnt fabric was everywhere and copper sat on my tongue where I'd bit the inside of my cheek.

I got up.

The crowd was loud. Present Mic was screaming commentary. Bakugo was ten meters away with smoke rolling off his palms and his red eyes fixed on me. He looked annoyed that the first exchange hadn't ended it.

"Stay down," he said.

"No."

He fired an AP Shot. A focused, compressed blast, narrow as a fist, aimed at my left shoulder. I barely got my arm turned into it. The impact was concentrated on a point the size of a coin and it drilled into the muscle above my collarbone and the bruise formed on contact, deep and hot, the kind that turns black by morning. He fired another. And another. Precision shots, methodical, each one probing a different spot. He was testing where I'd flinch and mapping the results.

I walked through the AP Shots the way I'd walked through Midoriya's wind pressure. Step by step. Each blast rocked me and each blast hurt and the distance closed. My shirt was burnt in four places. The skin underneath was red and raw. My left ear was ringing louder than my right from the first point-blank detonation. I kept walking.

Bakugo's mouth pulled tight. The explosions were landing clean. The target was still coming.

I reached punching range. Threw a haymaker.

He blasted sideways. Explosion-propelled dodge, faster than legs could carry him, and he was three meters to the left before my fist finished its arc. He fired a right-hand blast into my exposed flank. The heat bloomed across my ribs. The force knocked me sideways. He was already moving again, circling, staying out of grappling range because he'd watched the Todoroki fight and the Deku fight and he knew what happened when I got my hands on someone.

Smart kid. Angry, but smart.

I charged again. Took the blast, closed the gap, swung. He dodged with another explosion and countered from a new angle. I charged again. Same result. The arena was filling with smoke and the concrete was cracking from heat stress and the crowd was watching a fight between a guy who wouldn't stop coming and a guy who wouldn't stop hitting.

My arms were burnt. My chest was burnt. The shirt was holding on by the collar and not much else. Bakugo's palms were starting to go red from overuse but the sweat kept coming and the explosions kept coming and every time I got close enough to touch him he was somewhere else with an explosion in the gap between us.

He went high.

Explosion-propelled launch, spinning, building centrifugal force with blasts from both palms. I knew what this was. Howitzer Impact. The move that had flattened his semifinal opponent. The ceiling of Bakugo Katsuki's first-year arsenal.

He came down with both hands aimed at the center of the arena where I was standing.

The blast was enormous. A dome of fire and pressure that blew the smoke flat and cracked the concrete in a radial pattern and the sound of it hit the stands hard enough to make people flinch. The heat hit like a wall. My gym shirt was gone from the waist up, burned to scraps hanging from the collar. The skin across my chest and arms was red and blistered in patches. My hair was singed at the tips. My eyes were watering from the smoke and the heat and everything from my shoulders to my waist felt like I'd been pressed against a stove.

I was standing.

Bakugo was landing from the Howitzer with smoke rolling off his shoulders. His palms were raw and red from overuse. That move cost him. It was supposed to end the fight.

"That's your big one, right?"

His eyes went wide. His mouth opened. He screamed and fired both palms at once and I put my head down and ran through it.

The blast hit me full in the face and chest and I ran through it. Bakugo fired again, rapid blasts, but the sweat reserves were depleted from the Howitzer and each shot was smaller and weaker and I was inside the range and closing and my hands found his gym shirt.

Both fists in the fabric at his chest. Bakugo detonated against my forearms, point-blank, and the heat was vicious and the pain was sharp and real and my fingers didn't open. I lifted him off the ground.

Slammed him into the arena floor.

The concrete cracked under his back. He blasted upward into my face from the ground and I took it and lifted him and slammed him again. And again. Each impact shaking the arena. Bakugo was firing with every slam but the explosions were getting smaller as the sweat ran dry and on the fourth impact his head hit the concrete and his eyes went unfocused.

One second. I grabbed his wrist and dragged him to the boundary line and threw him past it.

He hit the ground outside the arena. Rolled. Was on his feet in a second with his palms up and his face twisted into a snarl that looked permanent.

"THAT DOESN'T COUNT! I'M NOT-"

Midnight's aroma hit him mid-step. His eyes glazed. His knees buckled. He went down face-first and didn't move.

The stadium was quiet.

Then it was loud. Then it was confused, because the guy standing in the arena looked like he'd lost. Burns on my arms and chest and face. Shirt destroyed. Hair singed. Bleeding from a cut above my ear where an explosion had clipped me. I was standing with my hands at my sides and breathing hard through my mouth because my nose was full of smoke and the crowd didn't know what to do with a winner who looked worse than the loser.

"HAYAMI WINS! WINNER OF THE U.A. SPORTS FESTIVAL!"

Midnight's voice. The roar built but it sounded confused. The winner looked worse than the loser and the fight hadn't ended with anything the crowd could cheer cleanly for.

I stood in the center of the arena. Everything hurt. I'd won the Sports Festival.

The podium was set up on the arena floor. Three platforms. I was on the tallest one. Todoroki on third place, arms crossed, face giving nothing. The second-place platform had Bakugo.

He was chained. Steel restraints on his wrists and a muzzle over his mouth because Midnight had put him to sleep twice now and the second time he'd woken up swinging and screaming profanity the cameras couldn't broadcast. His red eyes were visible above the muzzle. They were locked on me. The look was a promise. The Sports Festival rulebook didn't cover what that look was promising.

In the manga, the chains had been about a hollow victory. Todoroki hadn't used his fire and Bakugo felt cheated. Here Bakugo was chained because he'd lost. Full power, best move, everything he had, and it wasn't enough. That was going to eat at him for a long time.

All Might walked onto the arena floor.

Muscle form. Blue and yellow suit. The smile. He was carrying three medal cases and his stride was long and steady and every step looked like it cost him nothing.

His hands were shaking.

The left one was worse. The medal case in his left hand had a fine tremor running through the hinges. The left side was the damaged side. The stomach, the lungs, everything All For One had destroyed. Kamino was coming. The fight that would take the last of him. And he was standing on an arena floor handing medals to kids and smiling.

He hung the gold medal around my neck. The ribbon was cheap. The medal was heavy. His fingers brushed my collar and they were warm and unsteady and I looked up into the face of the Number One Hero.

The eyes behind the smile were tired.

"Congratulations, young Hayami." Loud. Public. Warm. "A magnificent display."

"Thank you, sir."

He moved to Bakugo. Had to hold the silver medal near the muzzle and let it hang at an angle because Bakugo's hands were chained and his neck was rigid with refusal. The medal ended up dangling from one ear of the restraint. Then Todoroki. Bronze. Todoroki took it with the same flat expression he'd worn the entire ceremony and didn't look at it.

The crowd cheered. Fireworks went off above the stadium. Confetti drifted down and stuck to the burns on my arms.

I stood on the top platform with a gold medal on a cheap ribbon and my shirt destroyed and my skin burned and my chest aching and my ears still ringing from a day of explosions and ice and wind pressure. The confetti settled in my hair. The stadium was loud. The sun was going down behind the press boxes.

Kaminari found me in the hallway outside the locker rooms.

He came around the corner at speed and hit me with a full-body tackle that was closer to a hug than anything resembling actual combat technique.

"You WON." Both arms around my shoulders. Shaking me. "You threw Todoroki. You beat BAKUGO. I'm telling everyone. I'm telling everyone I know. My mom is going to hear about this."

"Your mom watched it on TV."

"I'm telling her AGAIN."

Kirishima was behind him, grinning with all his sharp teeth. Sero was filming on his phone. Somewhere further down the hallway, Tokoyami said "a worthy victor" in his deep serious voice and Kaminari yelled "SEE? Even the bird agrees!" and the look on Tokoyami's face was better than confetti.

I stood in the hallway with Kaminari's arm still around my shoulders and burns on my arms and a gold medal around my neck. The confetti was still in my hair because I hadn't showered yet and the whole day was sitting in my body like a weight I hadn't put down.

Mina's text buzzed in my bag. I didn't check it. I'd check it later, in my apartment, after the adrenaline finished draining and everything I'd done today caught up with me.

The stadium was emptying behind us. The sun was down. I'd won the Sports Festival. My hands were shaking and the gold medal was cold against my burnt chest and I'd beaten three people today and the fourth problem was chained to a podium with a muzzle on his face and red eyes that were still looking for me even after Midnight's Quirk put him under.

The final was over. Tomorrow the internship offers would start coming in. And a handwritten note from a small agency in Hosu was already sitting in my mailbox at school.

Stain was in Hosu. Next week's problem.

Tonight, my hands were shaking and the medal was heavy and Kaminari was already calling his mother.