43. Battle tournament!

"Now with the results of the cavalry battle, we can proceed onwards!" Midnight interjected, trying to cool down the situation and change the topic.

"The top 4 teams will qualify for the final event, the battle tournament!

As there are 15 participants, we'll start by drawing lots." Midnight continued, as Snipe brought our a box.

"Let's start picking. From rank 1, Yuji." She said as we lined up and picked our numbers.

I got 8, allowing me to skip the first round directly.

"Lucky me~" I muttered, and took a seat in the front row, watching the other battles go by, as Bakugo burned with jealousy at my fortune.

I had specifically made my plans around him and Shoto, trying to eliminate them from the running as early as possible.

After all, what better way to humiliate the bombshell than to throw him out of the finals altogether!

His pride and ego definitely won't be able to handle that!

And I'll enjoy watching him stew is misery and self loathing, every minute of his time.

Mwahahahahhah!

As for why I wanted Shoto out, it was simple. I am not Deku.

I gain nothing from helping him 'accept his fire' and I certainly didn't want him growing stronger.

Plus, this allowed me to silently humiliate that fiery bearded bastard, looking down on others. I wonder how it feels to see your weapon against All Might fail to clear even the preliminaries?!

Just the thought of him writhing in indignation...delicious!

Or it could have been the egg rolls. I do make some killer egg rolls.

The first was Monoma vs Kirishima, which was won handily by Monoma with a copy of Iida and Bakugo's quirk, blasting Kirishima out of the ring in three shots.

"Hmm.." I stuffed an egg roll into my mouth as I analyzed, "Skillful. Better than I expected. He didn't fall for my trap in the cavalry battle either. I'll look forward to fighting him!"

Next came the battle between Tetsutetsu and Tsuyu, which also ended surprisingly quickly, with Tsuyu luring him to the border and using her tongue to drag his leg out of the margin.

The third match was an instant win as Reiko demolished Aoyama with a single sweep of her arm, pushing him out of bounds using his belt and laser's momentum.

The lopside to this was that his laser burnt through a major beam in the stadium's roof causing mass panic.

A whole section of the stadium had to be evacuated to deal with the falling debris that resulted, delaying my match further.

Nearly an hour later, after triple checking the structure, the audience trickled back into the stadium, and Cementos reset the stage for the next fight, Kendo vs Joruta, Man vs Beast, was considerably longer, as Kendo's martial arts training and sheer perseverance lasted her a whole 10 minutes under Joruta's relentless assault, only losing due to an inability to continue.

Though, calling 4 shattered ribs and a cracked femur along with a flooded lung is more attempted manslaughter than resignation.

This world is seriously fucked up to show that to kids worldwide in a live broadcast.

The fifth match, was plainer. Shoji vs Yui, which she won by enlarging her sweat drops, flooding him out of the ring after a small hand to hand scuffle.

Creative power usage! And from a ice cold babe at that!

Noice!

The sixth match came along, as Mineta and Kamakiri walked onto the stage.

Kamakiri squared up to Mineta, trying to intimidate him.

"Just give up ball guy. Don't make me kick you out like soccer ball."

All he got in return was a hateful glare, and a middle finger, as Mineta snuck in his hair ball onto Kamakiri's foot in the process.

Now stuck, and unable to move he was a sitting duck, no matter how many blades he had on him. Slowly, Mineta turned the boy into a pointy grapevine, until he couldn't even blink. Then he got his ass handed to him by .... Mineta. Fucking Mineta.

And I thought I'd seen everything.

What do you know eh?

Fuck. This is interesting!

The seventh and final match before mine ended unceremoniously too, Ojiro and Jiro being pretty simple characters.

Before Ojiro could even move, moments after the match began, Jiro stuck her earphone jacks across his head and concussed him into submission.

Finally with eight participants, I got a chance to participate!

Not yet though. There were three more matches to go before I faced Jiro.

The first, Monoma vs Tsuyu, started in a stalemate.

Monoma was on a timer and Tsuyu was wary of his hidden quirks.

They circled the arena, gauging each other, when suddenly Monoma jerked forward, scaring Tsuyu into action, as she jumped back in alarm.

Now without the traction of the floor to her pads keeping her bolted to the floor, she could only watch as she was thrown out of bounds from mid air by a mysterious energy.

Monoma had copied Reiko's Poltergeist!

Smart!

The delicate strategy, the feint. Mind games!

Hehehehehehe! Now I really can't wait to fight him!

The second match, Reiko vs Joruta was less of a spectacle.

It was a battle of pure physical force output, as Reiko, lacking her usual projectile armaments was forced to pit her Poltergeist against the unadulterated might of Joruta beastly muscle.

Momentarily, she tried tripping him, her purple power wrapping around his legs, but to no avail, as it only weakened her push against him in their sumo tangle.

And Joruta, despite being in his beast form, wasn't dumb enough to let this opportunity slip by him. He was like Drax in that regard, I chuckled as he pushed Reiko out of the ring and onto her butt.

The third and final match before mine came next, Yui vs Mineta.

Quite like Reiko, Yui was also over reliant on her projectile armaments, and now, having rested in the air conditioned resting area, she didn't even have her sweat to use against Mineta.

Though that didn't mean she gave up hope.

She had seen Mineta jumping off of jis balls during the race and knew that to him, they were pliant and elastic, like a bouncy castle.

And so the first thing she did was lure him into a trap.

The moment he threw a sticky ball at her, she caught it on her palm.

Them, facing it below her she jumped up, enlarging the ball below, pushing her quirk into overdrive, till it grew to sixteen feet across. Now sufficiently high, she sat and waited, looking down at her short opponent.

She knew from his figure that he wasn't much for exercise. So she was confident that he wouldn't be able to climb the elastic surface of the sixteen foot high ball, stalemating her opponent indefinitely.

Not for lack of trying on Mineta's part. He did all he could, stacking balls up high, bounching off of them, trying to stick his balls onto the others as a ladder, only for her to enlarge the topmost one blocking his acces, until he ran out them, head bleeding from overdraw.

Ultimately, both of them refused to give up, ending the match in a draw, disqualifying the both of them.

Finally, it was time for my match.

I walked onto the stage, cracking my knuckles, leisurely squaring her within my gaze.

I was going to end this and quick at that too. I had a surprise to unveil at the end, after all!

That meant that the moment the match began, I used my shelving to push her off the platform, insta-winning the match.

No effort to waste on the sideshow. The main course, I thought, licking my lips, glancing at the bored rabbit in the stands, is yet to come.

The semi-finals were once more uneventful as I skipped them, given that my opponents, both being stubborn bastards had disqualified themselves with a draw, and the match between Monoma and Joruta turned into another sumo brawl, Monoma having copied Joruta's power for himself, before he KO'ed Joruta with a sudden, explosion-powered uppercut.

Time for the finals, I sighed. This was going so slow, I might just die of boredom.

But at least it's finally here. The appetizer before the main course. And I'm going to dig right in!