MHA: Lust Quirk

Aizawa wrote two words on the board.

FINAL EXAMS.

He put the chalk down, turned around, and waited for the room to finish reacting. It took about four seconds. Kaminari's head hit his desk. Mina made a sound like a deflating balloon. Midoriya's pen was already moving. Bakugo hadn't looked up from his notebook.

"Written portion covers everything from the start of the year," Aizawa said. "Standard format. You've seen it before. Study or don't. That's your problem."

He paused. Twenty students went quiet.

"The practical is different this year. You won't be fighting robots."

He let that sit.

"You'll be fighting us."

The room went silent. Kaminari's head came up. Mina stopped deflating. Even Bakugo's pen stopped.

"Pairs of students against individual teachers. The pairings are strategic. Each matchup is designed to test your weakest areas. You have one week to prepare."

Jiro's earphone jacks coiled against her neck. She was looking at the whiteboard like it had personally insulted her.

Aizawa picked up his clipboard. The class was leaning forward. Iida's hand was already up.

"The pairings are not negotiable," Aizawa said without looking at the hand. Iida's hand came down. His mouth opened to protest, and Aizawa said "Not negotiable means I don't want to hear the question, Iida." Iida's mouth closed.

He read the list.

"Midoriya and Bakugo versus All Might."

Nobody spoke. Midoriya went green. Bakugo's pen cracked in his hand. Kirishima said "holy shit" under his breath and Aizawa didn't correct him.

In canon, that fight was the one where Bakugo finally admitted he blamed himself for All Might's retirement. They'd lose, barely, and they'd lose together, and it would be the first crack in the wall between them. That fight mattered more than anyone in this room knew. I kept my mouth shut.

"Todoroki and Iida versus Cementoss. Asui and Tokoyami versus Ectoplasm. Uraraka and Aoyama versus Thirteen."

Ochaco sat up straighter. Her hand went to her chin. She was running the matchup in her head already. Thirteen's Black Hole against Zero Gravity. She'd need to figure out how to float in a vacuum.

"Ashido and Kaminari versus Nezu."

Mina's jaw dropped. "The PRINCIPAL?"

"Kirishima and Sato versus Cementoss." Wait, he'd said Cementoss already. "Kirishima and Sato versus Snipe."

I was counting down. The list was getting shorter.

"Jiro and Koda versus Present Mic. Shoji and Hagakure versus Midnight. Sero and Ojiro versus Power Loader."

Two names left. One of them was mine.

"Hayami and Yaoyorozu versus me."

The clipboard lowered. Aizawa's dark eyes found mine across the room.

Momo, who was sitting three seats to my left, turned her head and looked at me. Then she looked at Aizawa. Then back at me.

I looked at the man at the front of the room. Shota Aizawa. Erasure Hero: Eraser Head. The teacher who could nullify Quirks by looking at you, who'd taken on the League of Villains alone at the USJ and broken both arms fighting a Nomu, who was standing there with his bandaged hands and his coffee thermos and his flat expression like he'd announced a schedule change and not a death sentence.

Momo had beaten him in canon, with Todoroki, by building a plan good enough to exploit Aizawa's fighting style. She was the key. Aizawa's Erasure could shut down active Quirk effects, but my accumulated strength was baked into my body. He'd erase the activation and see a kid who was just physically strong. And Aizawa was the teacher most likely to notice that a kid who was "just physically strong" was suspiciously strong for a first-year who'd never been in a fight before April.

Aizawa dismissed the class. The room erupted. Midoriya was muttering at a speed that made words lose meaning. Bakugo grabbed his bag and left without speaking. Kaminari was telling Mina they were going to die and Mina was telling Kaminari to shut up because she was already planning their funeral outfits.

Ochaco caught my arm on the way out. "You got Aizawa-sensei."

"Yeah."

"With Yaoyorozu."

"Yeah."

She looked at me. Her brown eyes were steady and her fingertip pads pressed lightly against my sleeve. "Be careful. He sees everything."

She'd been in my apartment three nights ago. She'd watched me dent a doorframe. She knew I was stronger than my file said I should be, and she knew Aizawa was the teacher who'd notice.

"I will," I said.

She let go of my arm and walked toward Tsuyu, who was already pulling out her phone to start researching Ectoplasm's combat record.

The study room on the third floor, four-thirty. The same room Momo had used for chemistry tutoring two days ago. The whiteboard was clean. She'd brought new markers.

She was already there when I arrived. She'd changed out of her school blazer into a sleeveless top that left her arms bare from the shoulders down. Her Creation Quirk needed exposed skin. She was standing at the whiteboard with the Yaoyorictionary open on the table and she'd already drawn a floor plan of what I assumed was the exam arena.

"I've been reviewing Aizawa-sensei's combat record from available sources," she said. She didn't turn around. Her marker moved across the board. "His fighting style prioritizes capture over damage. He uses his Erasure to remove the opponent's advantage, then closes distance with his capture weapon. His binding cloth has an effective range of approximately five meters. His hand-to-hand combat rating is A-rank among U.A. faculty."

She drew a circle on the floor plan. "His weakness is his eyes. Erasure requires continuous line of sight. If he blinks, the effect resets. He's trained to suppress his blink reflex, but extended use gives him dry eye. Anything that blocks his vision, even briefly, gives us a window."

She turned around. "What happens to your Quirk when he erases it?"

I'd been waiting for this question. I'd rehearsed the answer, which was a bad sign because rehearsed answers were how foreknowledge slips happened.

"He can erase the activation," I said. "If he looks at me while I'm actively using my Quirk, the active effect shuts off. But the accumulated strength is already in my body. It's not an active effect, it's a physical change. My muscles are just stronger. He'd see a kid who's naturally built."

Momo stared at me. Her marker was still in her hand. Her head tilted.

"That's a remarkably detailed understanding of Erasure mechanics," she said. "For someone who's never been erased."

The room was quiet. The whiteboard markers sat in their tray. The Yaoyorictionary was open to a page about carbon-fiber tensile strength.

"He's my homeroom teacher," I said. "His Quirk is the first thing I'd want to understand."

"That's what you said about the chemistry."

She held my gaze. Her onyx eyes were steady and her mouth was flat.

Then she turned back to the board. "If your accumulated strength persists through Erasure, that changes our tactical profile significantly. You remain combat-effective even under his gaze. That makes you the frontline pressure while I create support items."

She started drawing. Arrows, positions, timing windows. Her hand moved fast and her explanations were dense with technical specifics and her sentences started running together.

In canon, Momo had beaten Aizawa by creating a Russian nesting doll with a flash grenade inside the smallest layer while attached to him via a capture weapon she'd secretly Created during the fight. The whole plan had been hers. Todoroki had been the distraction. The win was Momo's brain.

She didn't need me to fight. She needed me to buy her time.

"What's the plan?" I said.

She stopped drawing. Turned. Her ponytail shifted over her bare shoulder. "You want me to lead?"

"You're the strategist. I hit things. Tell me where to hit them."

Her lips parted. Her chin rose half an inch. Her shoulders straightened and her eyes got brighter.

"All right," she said. "Here's what I'm thinking."

She talked for twenty minutes. She drew escape routes and contingency plans and she Created a carbon-fiber ribbon sample to test flexibility while she spoke, the material forming from the exposed skin of her forearm in a brief shimmer, and she snapped it between her fingers to check the tensile strength and kept talking without breaking rhythm.

The plan was good. She'd mapped Aizawa's likely approach vectors, identified his response patterns from the USJ footage, built in three contingencies for when the primary plan failed, and designed a sequence of Created items that would progressively restrict his mobility while I kept him engaged at close range. The final element was a capture device she'd build during the fight itself, hidden under a decoy Creation.

"That's the outline," she said. "I'll have the full design specifications by tomorrow. We should run practice drills starting Wednesday."

"Okay."

She capped her marker. Turned to face me. She was close to the whiteboard, standing in front of her own plan, and the late afternoon light from the window caught the edge of her jaw and the bare skin of her arms.

"You're good at this," I said.

She blinked. "At strategy?"

"At all of it. The plan, the materials, the timing. You built a whole operation in twenty minutes."

The faintest flush appeared on her cheeks. She looked at the board. "It's incomplete. I still need to refine the contingency for his close-quarters response."

"Yaoyorozu."

She looked at me.

"The plan is good."

Her mouth opened. Closed. She swallowed. The flush deepened. She nodded once, a small precise movement, and she tucked the marker into her pocket with steady hands.

"Thank you, Hayami-kun." Quiet. "I'll have the revised version by tomorrow."

She gathered the Yaoyorictionary. Packed her bag. At the door she paused with her hand on the frame.

"We're going to win," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "We are."

She left. Her footsteps were quick down the hallway. Eager.

I looked at the whiteboard. Her plan was still there. Arrows and positions and timing windows and the word ERASURE circled twice with a list of countermeasures underneath.

She'd drawn a small star next to my position on the map. I didn't know what it meant. She probably didn't either.

I took a picture of the board with my phone. Then I erased it, because Aizawa's classroom was two doors down and I didn't want him walking past an open study room with his own defeat sketched on the whiteboard.

The hallway was empty. The sun was going down. A week until the exam.

I walked home. The convenience store cat was gone. The spot on the low wall was empty.