MHA: Lust Quirk

The training ground was a compressed city block. Four streets, two alleys, a dozen buildings ranging from two to five stories. Concrete and steel and broken windows and a fire escape hanging off the east building at an angle that suggested someone had tested it and lost. The exit gate was at the north end, a hundred meters from our starting position. A camera drone hovered above the arena, broadcasting the fight to the monitoring station where the rest of the class was watching.

Aizawa stood at the center of the intersection. Gray scarf coiled around his neck. Goggles on his forehead. Thermos in his left hand. He took a sip and set it on a concrete barrier and didn't look at us.

Recovery Girl was at a medical station by the entrance with her chair and her gummies.

"Thirty minutes," Aizawa said. "Cuff me or reach the gate. Clock starts on the buzzer."

Momo was next to me. She'd changed into her hero costume, the crimson bodysuit cut open from neck to navel for maximum skin exposure. Her utility belts were loaded with pre-created equipment. Flashbangs on the left belt. Caltrops in a pouch on the right. A folded net strapped to her lower back. Two communication earpieces she'd Created this morning and tested during breakfast.

She handed me one. I put it in my right ear.

"Channel two," she said. Low.

"Copy."

The buzzer sounded.

Aizawa's eyes opened.

His hair lifted. The gray scarf unwound from his neck and the goggles came down and his red eyes locked on me and his Quirk activated.

I felt nothing.

My muscles were the same. My grip strength was the same. My reaction time, my bone density, the power that had been accumulating since Mina, since Ochaco. All of it was still there because none of it was an active effect. It was me. It was what my body had become. Erasure couldn't take away muscle mass any more than it could take away a haircut.

Aizawa's eyes narrowed. His head tilted a fraction. He'd expected something. He saw nothing.

Then the capture weapon was flying.

The steel-wire cloth whipped toward me in a spiral. Fast, precise. I ducked left and the wire snapped past my ear and I was already moving, closing distance.

"Split," Momo said in my ear. "I'm going east. Draw him south toward the alley between buildings three and four."

I ran south. Aizawa tracked me, his Erasure locked on my face. The capture weapon retracted and shot out again and this time it caught my right arm. The wire tightened around my bicep and forearm and he yanked.

I planted my feet. The concrete cracked under my boots. Mei's boot pads absorbed the impact. The wire dug into the gauntlet and the armor plating took the bite. Aizawa pulled. I pulled back. His eyebrows moved. The wire was rated for his weight class. Fighters who could hit as hard as Bakugo. The wire held Bakugo.

I grabbed the wire with my free hand and pulled and the carbon nanofiber snapped.

The wire frayed and whipped back toward Aizawa and he sidestepped it and his expression changed. His mouth tightened. His eyes went cold, the look of a teacher recalculating a student he'd underestimated. The drone camera was overhead. The whole class was watching.

"Hayami," he said. Flat. "That wire doesn't break."

"It did."

He moved. Fast. Close-quarters, no more ranged game. His remaining capture cloth whipped around my ankle and he kicked my planted leg and I went down. He was on me in a second, elbow aimed at my throat.

I caught the elbow. My hand closed around his forearm and the impact jarred up my arm and his eyes widened because his full-force strike had stopped in my grip. I pushed and he went back and his feet skidded on concrete.

"Third alley on your left," Momo said in my ear. "He'll retreat to the rooftop. I've scattered reflective surfaces. I can track his shadow."

"How?"

"Compact mirrors. I Created thirty of them while you were fighting. They're on every windowsill facing the intersection."

Thirty mirrors. She'd been creating them while I was getting kicked.

Aizawa disengaged. He went vertical, launching himself onto the fire escape with the remaining capture cloth. Two stories up in three seconds. He crouched on the rooftop edge and looked down.

"He's on building two," Momo said. "Northeast corner. He's looking at you. I'm flanking from the south. Keep his attention for forty-five seconds."

I kept his attention. I ran toward building two and he dropped caltrops from the edge. Caltrops. He'd brought his own. I dodged left, boot pads absorbing a lateral slide that would have torn my ankles without them. Mei's gear was earning every minute she'd spent building it.

Aizawa came down off the building. He was faster than me on the approach, more technical, his movements economical and precise. His capture cloth wrapped my left wrist. I didn't break it this time. I let it hold. Let him think he had control.

He pulled. I stumbled forward. He moved to sweep my legs and I grabbed the cloth with both hands and yanked him toward me instead and he came forward faster than he expected because my pull was stronger than it should have been.

For half a second he was off-balance. His Erasure flickered as his concentration split.

The flashbang went off behind him.

Momo. From the alley. The bang was deafening in the concrete corridor and the flash whited out the intersection. Aizawa's goggles protected his eyes but his orientation was disrupted and his capture cloth went slack.

I heard the hiss before I smelled it.

The canister rolled across the intersection. Purple gas, thin at first, thickening. Momo's voice in my ear: "Sleeping compound. Somnambulin derivative. Midnight's lecture notes. He has twelve seconds of breath-holding capacity based on his fitness profile."

The gas filled the intersection. Aizawa held his breath and moved, fast, trying to exit the cloud. His Erasure was on Momo now, nullifying her Creation. She couldn't make anything new. But she didn't need to. Everything she needed was already made.

I ran into the gas. My enhanced constitution handled it. The Somnambulin hit my system and my body metabolized it. A dull heaviness in my limbs that faded in two seconds. My head swam and cleared.

Aizawa was at the edge of the cloud. Still holding his breath. Ten seconds. His movements were precise but he was running out of air and he knew it.

I came out of the gas behind him. He heard me. Turned. His capture cloth whipped toward my face and I caught it and wrapped it around my forearm and pulled him toward me and got both arms around his torso from behind.

Bear hug. Full strength. His arms pinned to his sides.

He tried to break free. Twisted, leveraged, drove his heel into my shin. The boot pad absorbed it. His elbow jabbed back into my ribs and the gauntlet plating took the blow. He was strong. He was experienced. He was running out of breath in a cloud of sleeping gas.

He exhaled. Inhaled. The Somnambulin hit his system. His movements slowed. His head dipped.

Momo was there. Handcuffs. She clicked them around his left wrist, then his right. His arms were still pinned against his body and the cuffs locked and I let go and he dropped to one knee.

The buzzer sounded.

PASS.

Aizawa was on one knee in the middle of the intersection. The gas was dissipating. His goggles were fogged. His capture cloth was torn where I'd snapped it and wrapped around my forearm where I'd caught it. The handcuffs were U.A. standard issue.

He looked up. At me. Then at Momo.

"Yaoyorozu." His voice was steady, unhurried. Even on his knees in handcuffs, he sounded like he was giving a lecture. "Your preparation was the deciding factor. The reflective surfaces for tracking, the pre-created equipment, the sleeping compound. You planned for every contingency I presented."

Momo straightened. Her cheeks were flushed from exertion and her hair had come loose from the ponytail on one side and her hands were still shaking from the adrenaline but her chin was up.

"Thank you, sensei."

Aizawa looked at me. The lecture voice was gone.

"Hayami."

"Yeah."

"We need to talk about your strength curve."

The words were casual. His eyes were not. They were flat and dark and the Erasure was off but he was still looking at me with the precision of a man who dissected Quirks for a living and had just watched a first-year snap a weapon that was designed to hold people three times his reported output.

"After class," he said. "My office."

He stood. Momo uncuffed him. He picked up his thermos from the concrete barrier, took a sip, and walked toward the monitoring station without looking back.

Momo and I stood in the intersection. The gas was gone. The mirrors glinted on the windowsills. The broken capture cloth was still wrapped around my right forearm. My heartrate was up and my skin was hot from the exertion and the boots had absorbed enough impact that my feet didn't hurt but my calves were tight.

Momo was breathing hard. Her hero costume had a scuff across the left shoulder from where she'd pressed against a wall during her flanking maneuver. Her ponytail was half-undone, black hair sticking to the sweat on her neck. A smudge of concrete dust was on her jaw.

"We won," she said.

"Your plan worked."

"Our plan." She pulled the loose hair behind her ear. Her hands had stopped shaking. "The wire. You broke it."

"Yeah."

"That shouldn't be possible for your registered Quirk level."

"Momo."

She stopped. First name. In the field, after a fight, breathing hard, standing in a concrete intersection with mirrors on every window. She looked at me. The concrete dust on her jaw caught the light.

"The plan was yours. You won this."

Her lips pressed together. The flush on her cheeks deepened. She nodded once.

"We should debrief," she said. "I want to document the timing sequences while they're fresh."

"Okay."

We walked toward the exit together. The fire escape was still hanging at its angle. The caltrops were scattered across the alley mouth. The concrete where I'd planted my feet had two boot-shaped cracks in it.

My forearm was red where the capture cloth had dug in. The gauntlet had protected my hand but the wire had caught bare skin above the wrist guard. A thin line, already fading.