33

Shoto felt numb. Not that he ever let himself feel much to begin with, but everything just seemed so out of focus and the crowds were quieter than they should have been. How had he lost?

"Um, Todoroki?" Momo put a hand on his shoulder and it was all that Shoto could do not to flinch. "Are you ok?"

"I'll be fine." Shoto said firmly. He had to be fine. If he were to show anything but the utmost composure on television, Endeavor's punishment would probably be even worse. Not that he was looking forward to the increased training that would undoubtedly follow his failure, but...he'd endured this much. He could handle a little more if it meant rising to the top without his power. "I apologize for losing our points."

"It's not…" Momo hesitated. "I mean, yes, that's very unfortunate and I'm not happy about losing either, but that's not what I was asking. Um, do you need to see Recovery Girl?"

Shouto turned to her, slightly raising an eyebrow, "Why would I need to see Recovery Girl?"

"Um…" Momo hesitated. "The burns?"

Shouto's eyes widened slightly in shock. He'd only activated his fire for a split second out of instinct before he'd realized what he was doing and snuffed them out, but that shouldn't have been nearly enough to burn him especially 

"It's just that with what Bakugo pulled with Ashido's acid, a lot of us have chemical burns, so we're all going together!" Momo explained. "Those tape grenades kinda exploded everywhere, you know? We're just lucky that Ashido didn't make the acid strong enough to do any real damage."

"Oh." Shouto looked down at himself, noticing for the first time that there were holes burned into his uniform from where Ashido's acid had splattered over the field as it fell. Sure enough, there were a few small burns trailing along his arms, but the pain wasn't anything more than what he was used to from his normal training. "I hadn't noticed."

"Understandable!" Iida joined the conversation, arms already swinging as he spoke. "The adrenaline in our systems was more than enough to keep us from noticing until the game was over as well! However, I believe that it is best to get these wounds, however minor they may be, taken care of quickly so we can focus on learning from the next rounds!"

Shouto thought about that for a moment. On the one hand, his father would consider going to the nurse for something so minor as a sign of weakness, but on the other...even if Endeavor managed to shove his way back into the student areas, he wouldn't do anything to cause a scene if there were other people around. If only he'd used his fire…

Shouto stomped down on that thought the moment it popped into his head. No. He wouldn't become like that bastard by using his power. In fact...Shouto forced himself to take a breath and almost smiled as a thought occurred to him. His father had failed too. He'd failed to become number one. Losing here just meant that he was better at failing than his father could ever be.

He hoped the bastard enjoyed what he'd created.

Izuku grinned at Mei and Shinso as Midnight cracked her whip to draw their attention to the screen where the brackets were laid out. They all had bandages covering various parts of their arms and faces from the cavalry battle, since Recovery Girl had insisted on only healing the worst of the damage so they wouldn't be too exhausted to do well in the rest of the festival. Izuku had even managed to get her autograph, even though Mei and Hitoshi hadn't stopped teasing him about geeking out over the school nurse. It was so weird having a friendship that included teasing that wasn't intended to hurt like the bullying he'd grown up with. 

Izuku still couldn't believe they had actually done it! They'd gotten Shinso into the one on one rounds, which meant that they were one step closer to getting him into the hero course. All the training they'd done was paying off and they were now in the perfect situation for Hitoshi to really show the teachers that he deserved that spot!

Everyone was silent for a moment as they looked at the lineup.

"I'm fighting Pony Tsunatori…" Hitoshi muttered quietly… "She was on the team we took control of, right?"

"Yep!" Izuku said happily. "That'll be an interesting match. She's an exchange student, so the language barrier might make using your quirk more interesting. We haven't experimented with other languages yet, have we?"

"Nope!" Mei piped up. "But if worse comes to worst, he can always use my babies!"

"Wonderful." Hitoshi grumbled. "Who have you got, Midoriya?"

Midoriya started as he suddenly realized that he was going onto the one on one fights as well. Somehow, he'd been so focused on getting Hitoshi into the third round that he'd completely forgotten that being on the same team meant that he'd made it as well. He frantically searched the screen for his name, crossing his fingers that he wouldn't have to face Katsuki right off the bat. 

"Umm, where…? Mina Ashido! Acid quirk" Izuku grimaced. "At least it won't be boiling this time…"

"Yeah, that sucked!" Mei said, tugging at one of the bandages on her arm. "Izu-kun! What's Monoma's quirk again?"

"Oh, his is a lot of fun!" Izuku grinned. "He has a copy quirk. I think he can copy up to three people's quirks at the same time? There's really no way to know who's quirks he's copied until you fight him though."

"Perfect!" Mei's eyes narrowed in on Monoma from across the crowd. "He'll be the perfect demonstration of how adaptable my babies are!!!"

"I don't know whether to pity him or just laugh." Hitoshi said, amused. "Oof, Uraraka's strong, right?"

"Yeah, she really is!" Izuku answered. "Why?"

"Because you better hope she wins her fight." Hitoshi pointed at the brackets. "Otherwise you're going to be up against Bakugo in the next round."

Izuku gulped and glanced over to where Katsuki was surrounded by his team from the cavalry battle. Kirishima was patting him on the back, but Izuku could feel his anger from all the way across the field. Katsuki had always been the best, ever since Izuku could remember, so it must be eating at him that he hadn't gotten first in either of the first two rounds and it must hurt even worse that he was beaten by Izuku of all people. He wanted to feel guilty about that. Years of standing in Katsuki's shadow had primed him to believe that if he wasn't helping his best friend, being a stepping stone on his way to greatness, then he was nothing. If he wasn't helping Katsuki be the best, then he really was the useless deku that everyone told him that he was. 

But things had changed since middle school. For one, Izuku had found a new dream that didn't have anything to do with Katsuki and for another he knew what real friendship was like now. Friendship was comparing notebooks to figure out why Mei's latest experiment kept exploding. It was ganging up on Hitoshi to make him laugh when he hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before. It was curling up under a fluffy blanket after a villain attack. 

It was winning the first two rounds of the sports festival when he didn't have to, just to make sure his friend made it to the third round. 

"Don't worry." Izuku assured his friends. "Katsuki may be strong, but we're not friends anymore. He's lost the right to hurt me."

"So...uh...did you ever figure out how that gen-ed's kid quirk worked?" Ojiro asked Tokoyami. "You might have to fight him again, you know."

"I am aware." Tokoyami answered. "But first I will have to beat a fellow agent of darkness."

"...ok?" Ojiro looked at him strangely, but Tokoyami was more focused on his next fight and on ignoring Todoroki, who was brooding in one of the upper rows of their section of the stands. If he was being completely honest, he hadn't expected his team's last minute strategy to come to anything. He and his teammates had been fully prepared to embrace the dark void of empty failure when the buzzer rang, but somehow they had managed to pull through. Tokoyami couldn't stop wondering, however, why Todoroki had refused to use his fire. It had been obvious in that moment that Dark Shadow was weak to his left side and yet Todoroki had let him win. There must be some dark reason for his refusal, but Tokoyami wasn't one to reveal others' inner darknesses to the world. 

But perhaps revealing it to a certain analyst who seemed determined to help their class wouldn't be the end of the world. Perhaps he should talk to Aizawa about peering through the shadows to implore the assistance of the mysterious Cheat Code? 

"It is of no importance." Tokoyami said finally. "Dark Shadow and I will be victorious."

"I just hope the purple kid doesn't start singing again." Dark Shadow shuddered. "I think that was creepier than being brainwashed."

"Singing?" Aoyama looked at them curiously. "Why would the monsieur sing in the middle of a fight? He doesn't seem nearly gorgeous enough to pull it off!"

"I think it had something to do with his quirk activation." Kamakiri leaned over the wall dividing 1A and 1B. "Sorry to eavesdrop, but it's a tournament, so I might have to fight him again too. It was only after he started singing that he took control of us."

"But he didn't sing to me!" Dark Shadow complained. 

"You did hear him sing, though." Tokoyami said. "Perhaps the best strategy would be to cover one's ears to prevent themselves from being pulled under by the siren's song."

"What the heck are you guys talking about?" Mineta yelled. He had an ugly purple black eye that Recover Girl had apparently refused to heal. "That purple guy doesn't sing! And covering your ears won't do shit! He takes control of you though punching you!"

"He only punched you because you were being rude, Mineta." Tsu pointed out bluntly. "He takes control of you through physical contact. He never made contact with me, so my head was clear the whole time, but I'm pretty sure he touched Shoji when he was going after you."

Everyone turned to look at Shoji, who gave a dignified nod. Tokoyami was starting to get more confused the more people spoke up, "But...I never touched him, at least not before he and his agents of chaos possessed my team."

"You're all idiots." Monoma said. "It's obviously eye contact."

"You didn't even fight him, Monoma, so pipe down!" Kendo slapped him over the head and shrunk her hand as she appeared over the wall. 

"I think he's got kinda a sphinx quirk or something." She suggested. "He got us by giving us riddles. When we couldn't figure out the answer quickly enough, he took control."

"I hope it is not that." Pony jumped up and landed on the wall. "I have difficulty with riddles in my first language, I won't have no hope in my second!"

"Is his quirk truly that difficult to parse out?" Yaoyorozu piped up. Most of the class had joined the conversation by this point, understandably. "Surely the activation requirements must be obvious by now if he's fought so many of you."

Tokoyami sighed. "He is a mystery wrapped within an enigma."

"He's a weirdo, that's what he is." Dark Shadow grumbled. "Come on Fumikage, I want french fries."

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