The Other Trials

In the drawing for the second round, Shoto Todoroki and Mezo Shoji took the role of heroes, while Toru Hagakure and Mashirao Ojiro took the role of villains. As per the rules, the "villains" had five minutes to prepare.

Meanwhile, the class in the audience kept looking between the screens, Kai on the floor once again, and the dejected Bakugo. For the first, things moved rather quickly, as Shoto's Quirk was able to quickly disable both "villains" and finished the trial without so much as a punch being thrown.

Kai appeared to be asleep on the floor, but nobody could tell due to the nature of his hood. At the very least, the glowing eyes that had appeared before had disappeared. It wasn't until the combatants returned and Kai gave another blunt and to the point analysis without giving anyone so much as a second to talk that they realized that not only was he awake, he was watching and… angry.

As for Bakugo, his expression of despair grew. Kai's remarks, though delivered in an undeniably rude fashion, had nothing but praise for everyone's tactics and Shoto's control.

Then, Teams H and J went out as heroes and villains, respectively. Three minutes after the fight began, Kai stood up, much recovered and far more interested in this fight than the last one, if you could call that a fight. In terms of powers, everyone on this matchup was well-suited to their roles. Tokoyami and Asui had both mobility and power for attack. Meanwhile, Kirishima had a high defensive stat, and Sero had control power.

At the point that Kai stood up, Sero had made a web of sorts with his tape, and he and Kirishima were headed out of the payload room to set up an ambush, leaving more tape down their whole path. Kai was interested in how interactions were going to work from this point. The reasonable answer for the attacking hero team was for Tokoyami's Dark Shadow to clear the path and then dematerialize. Rinse and repeat. However, this would make an opening for an ambush, and neither attacker had a particular sensory aspect to their Quirks.

For a little while, things went exactly as Kai predicted, and Tokoyami cleared the path for himself and Asui. They pressed forward cautiously, but very conscious of their limited time. The heroes soon reached a point where they passed straight through a crossroads in the building. A moment after, Kirishima and Sero came down from a different path, taking them right behind their opponents.

Kai smiled. This was where the fun began.

For a few moments, the villain team snuck up behind their hero opponents. They prepared to strike the heroes unawares, capture tape in hand.

Then their best laid plans were ruined as Dark Shadow returned to Tokoyami for dematerialization. Now facing the rear, it alerted its master and Asui. With the last trace of the element of surprise, the villains leapt forward with their capture tapes, hoping to get the heroes before they could react.

But Asui and Dark Shadow were too fast. The former jumped up and stuck to the ceiling while the latter pushed Kirishima away from Tokoyami.

Asui and Sero, as the two in this fight with the most mobility options, started a game of cat and mouse in which both were also trying to prevent the other from being able to gang up on their teammate. At the same time, Tokoyami was trying to keep Kirishima moving and had given Dark Shadow the capture tape. While Tokoyami couldn't do much to Kirishima with his defense, he attacked by himself to give an opening for Dark Shadow to make the capture.

Sadly, things didn't end well for the hero team. While Asui was able to keep up with Sero, he left the tape around and without Dark Shadow clearing it, Asui eventually got caught in it, and then was properly captured. Then it was two on two, and Tokoyami had far less combat potential outside of Dark Shadow and was captured.

Kai was in a much better mood now. First, even though his faith in All Might was well exterminated, he had seen a bit of potential in his classmates. Even though hope was dead, at least there was going to be something to loot from its corpse.

Second, his own turn to fight was getting more and more imminent. That would always be fun.

Third, his anger had gone cold. Not dead and gone, just cold. He had let logic and reasoning take control over how it would direct him.

But as luck would have it, he was not next to fight. As soon as he heard that Yaoyorozu was on defense, he knew how it was going to end. Her versatility would make her a terrible nuisance, and in the five minutes she had to prepare, she was able to make the payload room a proper bunker. While Kaminari and Jiro had great attack power, that was far less true against structures. All the "villains" had to do to win this exercise was sit back for fifteen minutes.

That being the case, Kai pulled Sato aside to strategize. Nothing interesting was going to happen for a while.

"Why do we need to strategize? I'm sure we have the power to deal with them," Sato said confidently.

Kai hesitated for a moment. Then, shrugging, he went ahead and said what he wanted to anyways.

"For this exercise, I'm going in Quirkless."

"EHHH!?!"

"Come on, don't be like that. Quirks mean almost nothing," Kai said. "If you want mine to mean something, just know that if I use it, this is going to be so easy you won't have to do anything, and you won't be able to show what you've got. Which defeats the purpose of this whole exercise."

Sato thought for a little while. He had to admit that Kai had a point if he was right about his strength. Looking at the screens again, he decided that he didn't want to just sit back and do nothing, letting his partner do all the work.

That was exactly what Mineta was currently doing, but he was too busy looking at a couple of certain somethings to care that the person they were attached to was doing the work.

"But then what are we going to do?" Sato asked. If his partner was going to be Quirkless, then it was Sato that was going to be doing all the work.

"Whether we are attacking or defending, just let me take care of Aoyama. I can deal with him better than Ashido. My thoughts: you use your strength, tear up pieces of the building, and fastball them at her as much as you can. If you fought her directly, she could stick you, and then it's game over. You keep her busy until I'm done whacking Aoyama over the head, and we win."

"Do you have a problem with Aoyama or something?"

"Not at all. Considering his obsession with sparkles, I would like him to see some stars."

Sato chuckled, drawing the attention of the rest of the class.

"But really, he is easier for me to deal with than Ashido, so if you don't mind?"

"Not at all, but can you really do that much without your Quirk?"

"Wouldn't consider myself worth anything if I couldn't."

"… Okay then, we'll do it your way. But you will use your Quirk if things get difficult?"

"Sure," Kai said with a smile.