Chapter 43: Finals (Set 4)
Summary: The final set of matches for the finals!
Chapter 43: Finals (Set 4)
As the previous matches wound down Sato and Sero, along with Shoji and Hagakure, had been called to their own preparation areas. It was only when said announcement came from the speakers, instead of their professor, that everyone realized Midnight had vanished. That puzzled everyone for only a moment, before Momo pointed out that Midnight had been with the other instructors on the platform at the start. Moreover, the numbers of professors vs students only added up if Midnight was one of their opponents. That got winces of sympathy from the remaining students, even as the new pairs headed off. Given that her students had already learned the hard way not to underestimate their professor, her inclusion didn't exactly fill the two new pairs with confidence, both sets privately hoping the other had to deal with her. Izumi, of course, had a shrewd idea at this point, being almost certain who her own team would face.
"The other pair is likely to face Ingenium, and I don't think he'd handle Sato's power armor all that well. That makes it likely Midnight will be up against Sato and Sero."
Several people blinked at that, working through the remaining heroes. It was Mina that got there first.
"Wait! You think they'll put Miruko up against you in the 3 vs 2?" She paused, then actually grinned. "Actually, that makes sense! You and Momo are the only people that could actually fight her!"
Momo and Izumi both winced at that remark. Mina wasn't wrong, exactly, but neither of them had actually done much more than force Miruko to break a sweat in their training sessions with her. And even that small victory had only come after she'd started to correct their forms somewhat. Mineta, of course, hadn't even come close. Though she also hadn't sparred with him so much as given him gruff pointers on three-dimensional movement…and occasionally causally punted him into a wall when he'd lost control and perved on her. He was, understandably, a bit pale as he worked through the logic himself after Mina's assessment.
"No! I don't want to die! Even if it would be to the glorious…rabbit thighs!"
Well, at least he'd very thoroughly learned not to call her a bunny. That was…progress? Speaking of their situation though, as everyone else turned their attention to the matches that were just starting, Izumi sighed and brought Momo with her to stand next to the little pervert. As her guess proved to be correct, with Ingenium zooming it to clothesline Hagakure, undoubtably using extra vision modes his helmet allowed him, she cleared her throat. Given who he was and who they were, it wasn't exactly hard to capture Mineta's attention. Thankfully, he was also still freaking out a little bit, so he actually listened instead of eye-fucking them.
"Well, time to face the music. We need a plan for facing both Miruko and Nejire at the same time. Given what I know of Nejire, we're probably going to have to think outside the box a bit, like Bakugo but without the collateral damage."
Even as Izumi laid out a few ideas, opening the floor for the other two to workshop them with her, the rest of the class watched as their occasionally-terrifying teacher knocked out Sato in the first two minutes of his and Sero's match with her. For all the things Mei had included in the power armor Sato used so well…a way to filter air hadn't been one of them. Midnight had neatly demonstrated that while his Power Armor made him extremely strong and decently fast, he wasn't all that agile. Anyone with a non-violent disabling Quirk and higher agility than him could take him out as he was. Sero lasted quite a bit longer, but found himself in a fight where someone else had better control over the same type of combat he used. Midnight was much better with her whips than he was with his tape, and despite a valiant effort focused on keeping her away from the civilian bots…he was taken out at the ten minute mark. Making their team's effort a failure.
Hagakure and Soji fared better, with Soji proving at least partially able to contain Ingenium, while Toru guided civilian bots off the streets. She managed to save Soji from knockout a few times by using blinding bursts of light…but the small part of Izumi's brain still tracking that fight instead of brainstorming with Momo and Mineta noted that Ingenium's helmet nullified most of the effect. They were going to need to see about getting Toru some sort of weapon or costume enhancement. A few ideas occurred to her, but she shoved them aside in favor of survival planning. Thankfully for that planning session, the invisible girl and tentacle-hugs man managed to clear their full twenty minutes, even if Ingenium managed to chew through enough bots to tank their score into the high 30s. It was still a pass for the two students being tested, and had provided the maximum amount of time to plan with.
With deep breaths, the three remaining students headed to their prep area without needing to be told. This was probably going to hurt…
... ...
The three of them didn't bother with their allotted prep time. Not beyond confirming that there were no particular surprises or sudden changes to the last testing zone. There were none they could identify, even with a quick scan by a stealthy 2B pod, and so they launched right out of the gate with their existing plan of action. All three of them had agreed that they needed to take a cue from Bakugo this time and move straight into an aggressive plan. While 2B launched skyward in an armed overwatch Pod, the trio on the ground immediately opened the show by doing the one thing that no student had thought of yet…
They set off a flare and yelled amplified orders to the civilian bots.
It was the one oversight that Izumi and Momo had both noted in every simulation so far. Each team had treated the bots like bots, rather than like civilians capable of responding to a hero ordering them to clear the streets. The fact that the bots began to immediately react filled Izumi with satisfaction as it proved her assumptions correct. Two separate but related assumptions, actually. The first assumption had been that, these being UA quality bots, would mean they had at least some basic response programming. The second being that Nedzu believed in realism…and so only some of the bots actually started to obey the actual contents of the order. Roughly half of the bots outside did so, but the other half were split wildly between panic reactions, hero fanboy reactions, and trouble reactions. The last set was the most problematic as it resulted in bots heckling them, throwing things, trying to 'steal' from other bots, or even engaging in opportunistic looter behavior.
Thankfully, those bots were both the smallest in number and they'd been expecting them. Mineta, bouncing along quite fast from the improvements to his gear, zeroed in on the most violent of the trouble bots and rapidly began disabling them with this Quirk. Meanwhile, Izumi and Momo both acted with ruthless and unremorseful dispatch in dealing with the 'fanboy' bots by tossing capture-foam grenades into groups of them. The specific foam they were using had a very nice side-benefit in that it was designed to retrain people with super strength…and it did so by absorbing kinetic force in a non-Newtonian fashion. Since it was breathable, capturing the bots with it shouldn't result in injury points, and it was extremely resistant to the sort of kinetic damage that both Miruko and Nejire did. Any foamed civilian bots would be highly protected against elimination, even if they were likely to get a lecture about their methods later.
Of course, it only took about twenty seconds for their initial rapid actions to draw a reaction, and likely even that way only because they'd rushed the zone without using their prep time. Whatever the cause of the delay, the reaction to it by their pair of opponents was both fast and predicable. Miruko and Nejire-chan came zipping over the rooftops at high speed, both angled to hit groups of 'panicking' bots. Despite that high-speed approach, neither of them made it to their targets, both having to swerve out of the way as the fourth person on the hero team made them regret forgetting she was a factor. Rocket Propelled Grenades rained down from on high as 2B opened up with the racks of RPGs her Pod was equipped with. Her ammo was limited, but those RPGs carried the exact same Capture Foam that Momo and Izumi were using. So, when her targets managed to evade, 2B simply remotely detonated them early to spray that Foam all over the groups of panicking civilian bots the two had been targeting. That would likely make them panic more, of course…but they'd be safe. Relatively.
Forced away from their opening targets, neither 'villain' got a chance to retarget another group before Momo and Izumi closed with them. Izumi was in her newly developed Assault Mode. Developed specifically through sparring with Miruko in their after-school sessions, it dropped Striker Mode's energy immunity in favor of kinetic absorption and slash protection, while maintaining max speed. It also gave up a bit of stopping power to keep energy expenditure within acceptable range, but Izumi had options there. One such she employed to open the fight by materialized a pair of tranq-dart submachine guns and unloading them in Miruko's direction as she closed with the heroine. Momo, meanwhile, took advantage of her own ability to fly to press in on Nejire-chan. She broke up Nejire's initial energy wave with her equivalent of All Might's Delaware Smash, forcing her way through the shockwave to attack Nejire directly.
Neither Izumi or Momo managed to land hits, of course, even if Miruko did yelp a bit as she was forced to rapidly shift directions to stay ahead of the tranq-dart spray. She wasn't a top ten heroine for nothing, however, and compensated by kicking the concreate, shattering it enough to put a wall of debris between her and those weapons a half-second after they started to fire. Izumi cursed, dropping the guns even as she redirected her own momentum, barely avoiding high-velocity debris that was kicked her direction a moment later, spreading like a shotgun blast. She only managed to avoid the follow-up kick a moment later by millimeters…but cut her own hearing and let loose with a sonic grenade she'd pulled from her inventory as she dodged.
Miruko howled, her extra-sensitive hearing making that sound painful, even if the high-tech sound baffles that were part of her gear, concealed in her lower ears, cut a huge chunk of the noise. It's not like she didn't know her own potential weaknesses, after all. Even so, the unexpected attack was enough to make her flinch and Izumi flipped away while she could…and another 2B-provided capture grenade forced Miruko to do the same a moment later. The newly made gap lasted only a handful of seconds before the wildly grinning rabbit-hero was kicking off a building for another high-speed assault toward Izumi. Grimacing, Izumi poured on the speed, pushing Assault Mode as hard as she could to keep up as she engaged in a fighting retreat. She couldn't beat Miruko and knew it. She just needed to stall for time…
Even as the two fought, they caught glimpses of a cheerful Nejire-chan dancing a dogfight with Momo. While Momo was technically faster, she was also far less experienced with flight. Nejire-chan was darting circles around her, with only the fact that Momo had a nigh-limitless supply of dirty tricks literally up her sleeves keeping her from being hammered hard by her opponent. Electrified nets, tranq rounds, bolos, waves of flame from a wrist-mounted flame thrower. Momo threw everything she could think of at her opponent, all while deliberately throwing herself in front of groups of civilian bots to tank any hits that might have smashed into them. And all the while, the rapidly bouncing Mineta zipped through and around both fights to grab bots and force them into buildings, sealing those buildings with his Quirk as he went.
Seven minutes in, Momo was still going strong even as Izumi was starting to hurt from several glancing blows. Then, Mineta shouted 'Phase 2!' and the entire tempo shifted. Momo shot right passed Nejire, angling for Miruko with a full 45 percent of One for All crackling around her, her control at that level not good enough to keep it from sparking out all over her armor. Izumi broke off at the same time, shifting as fast as she could from Assault Mode to Bruiser Mode…and pulled an anti-air canon almost her own size from her inventory. It was one of the largest things she'd ever digitized, and a completely new non-YoRHa creation that nevertheless used YoRHa tech.
The four-barreled monstrosity combined the standard Pod Gatling Gun with a much heavier capacitor. Normally, the guns fired a type of unstable shell made out of spinning QE. The instability meant they were fairly short ranged but extremely quick to form. This version created far more stable bullets, more slowly, but achieved an even higher rate-of-fire by essentially being four of the Pod Guns upsized and stuck together. It was heavy and awkward enough to require Bruiser mode for stable firing…but Nejire-chan gave a very satisfying panicked yelp as 2,000 rounds per minute tracked her wildly dodging form across the sky.
The abrupt, seamless switch of opponents set both Miruko and Nejire-chan on the back foot. But both were already recovering. While Momo would someday be as dangerous in close combat at Izumi was, she currently didn't have the instincts for it fully ingrained yet. Miruko had a far higher level of skill, and enough speed and power to rapidly begin turning the tide against Momo. Nejire-chan, meanwhile, activated a Super Move. She accelerated into a spiral, her helix-shaped energy fully enveloping her body as she powered through the anti-air fire toward Izumi. To everyone watching, it must have looked like the hero students had made a desperate gambit that failed…
But those people, like Nejire and Miruko, would have been wrong.
After all, there were four people on the hero students' side.
In a preplanned maneuver, a silent-but-terrified-looking Mineta released from the underside of 2B's Pod, which had screamed both of them to its maximum diving velocity and released Mineta as a payload. Given that the Pod was now lighter as all the RPGs had been fired, that speed was considerable…and the maneuver caught Miruko from behind. The rabbit hero was caught completely flat-footed in midair as Mineta took full advantage, despite his terror, by faceplanting right into her ass. An instant later, the capture-foam suicide-grenade he'd been holding went off, trapping that face against Miruko's glorious Buns of Steel, even as it trapped the Pro Heroine herself in mid-leap.
2B's Pod, meanwhile, accelerated even harder and slammed into the side of the Nejire-chan-shaped-missile just as said missile hit Izumi. The anti-air gun had taken the brunt of that hit as it dematerialized, leaving Izumi to smash face-first into Nejire-chan's boobs…right before the Pod's own suicide grenade went off and trapped both of them in capture foam, too.
Momo, the last person left standing on the battlefield as her girlfriend spluttered into an admittedly very nice pair of boobs and Miruko raged loudly about someone getting the 'midget out of her ass crack,' stared at the result and couldn't do anything but laugh…
... ... ...
A/N: I'm not at all sure I like how I handled the other matches for the finals...but I'm extremely pleased with the Momo/Izumi/Mineta vs Miruko and Nejire match, at least! I think it was a nice showcase of where Momo and Izumi in particular actually are in their power level. Izumi, in particular, has overwhelmed most of her previous opponents to the point I think some readers were thinking I'd made her horrifically OP. She isn't. Not by MHA standards. She's just closer to her peak power than Izuku was at this point. She struggled with the USJ Nomu, and veteran heroes like Miruko still outclass her, even ignoring her time limit. She's powerful, yes. But not beyond the level of other powerhouses in the series.