"Now," Midnight said, once the murmur had settled, "let's get started. The first game is what you'd call a qualifier. Every year, many drink their tears here."
A holographic wheel spun on the screen above her and clicked to a stop.
"This year, it's this. An obstacle course race. All eleven classes will participate, and the course is the outer circumference of the stadium, about four kilometers. As long as you stay on the course, it doesn't matter what you do. Take your places."
Megumi lined up at the mouth of the tunnel, shoulder to shoulder with two hundred other students, and felt the familiar drop in his stomach that came right before something started.
"Start!"
The entire field surged forward at once, and the tunnel bottleneck was exactly as bad as it looked.
"Move!"
"Quit pushing!"
"There's no room!"
Megumi kept his footing and moved with the pressure instead of fighting it, slipping through gaps as they opened. Bakugo shoved through with his shoulders, visibly furious that there wasn't enough room to blast anyone safely. Kirishima used his hardened shoulders to keep from getting crushed, shouting something Megumi didn't catch over the noise.
"This tunnel's way too narrow," Kirishima yelled, somewhere to his left.
Todoroki had started near the back, letting the crowd carry him forward instead of forcing his way through. By the time he reached the mouth of the tunnel, the leaders had already spilled out onto the open track, and the rest of the pack was still packed tight behind them.
"The first sifting," Todoroki said, and planted one foot.
Cold exploded outward from the tunnel exit. Ice raced across the ground, catching the students who'd already made it out, freezing shoes in place and turning the rest of the surface into glass.
"My feet!"
"It's freezing!"
Megumi didn't wait to see how bad it got. He dropped into his own shadow the instant the frost line reached him, thirty feet of open ground swallowed in a blink, and came up running on the far side of the ice before most of the pack had even registered what happened.
"Out of my way!" Bakugo roared, blasting clean over the frozen cluster using the situation as an oppurtunity.
Todoroki was already sliding forward on his own ice, unbothered, several strides ahead.
Megumi pushed past both the tunnel and the ice behind him, brought his hands together once he'd cleared the crowd, and let the shadow answer.
"Nue."
Wings tore out of the ground beneath him, wide enough to blot out the tunnel exit behind them. He caught one leg on the rise and let it pull him skyward, and for one long second the entire front of the pack watched a giant bird lift a first-year clean over their heads.
"FUSHIGURO'S AIRBORNE ALREADY!" Present Mic's voice cracked across the loudspeakers. "Folks, that thing just launched him over the whole front line like it was nothing!"
Todoroki looked up from his ice path as Megumi passed overhead. Bakugo twisted mid-explosion to track him, cursing.
Megumi released Nue further down the track, landed running, and didn't look back.
The ground shook before he even saw them.
A dozen Zero-Point robots rose out of the dust ahead, easily two stories tall, the same design from the entrance exam.
"TARGET FOUND."
A massive hand swung down toward him.
"Rabbit Escape."
Dozens of pale rabbits poured out of his shadow at once, flooding the path in every direction, and the robot's targeting system visibly seized up trying to track all of them.
"TARGETS FOUND. LOTS."
The hand crushed empty pavement. Megumi ran straight underneath the arm before it reset.
A second machine swept one leg across the course in front of him.
"Toad."
A long tongue snapped around his waist and hauled him off the ground mid-stride. He swung wide over the sweeping leg, released at the top of the arc, and sailed toward the next robot in line.
Todoroki reached his own machine a few seconds later, ice already spreading.
"If they went through this much trouble," he said, "they could've prepared something better."
The robot locked, mid-lean, frozen off balance. He ran between its legs without slowing.
"Don't follow directly," he called back to whoever was behind him. "It's off balance."
Megumi landed on a third robot's shoulder. Its head turned toward him.
"TARGET LOCKED."
"Great Serpent."
An enormous snake tore out of the robot's own shadow, coiling around its neck and shoulder joint before Megumi had even finished landing. He jumped clear as the snake twisted, metal screaming, the robot's upper body wrenched sideways hard enough to knock the falling, ice-locked machine off course entirely, away from the students bunched up below it.
"FUSHIGURO IS CHAINING THESE TOGETHER!" Present Mic bellowed. "Rabbits to blind the targeting, a toad to swing past an attack, and now a snake to redirect one robot into another! Eraser Head, is this kid improvising or does he have it all planned out?!"
"He isn't summoning randomly," Aizawa said. "Each one covers the opening the last one left."
"So it's planned?"
"Mostly."
"MOSTLY?!"
A fourth robot stepped directly into his path. Megumi didn't slow down.
"Divine Dogs."
Shiro and Kuro burst out on either side of him, one left, one right, and the robot's targeting stuttered trying to split attention between three moving shapes at once. Megumi went straight up the middle while the dogs tore into the exposed wiring behind its knee and the seam at its ankle. The robot's balance broke a half second before he reached it, and he planted one foot against the collapsing leg and vaulted clean off it.
"Nue."
The construct swept beneath him again, and he landed running on its back as the whole cluster of robots came down behind him in a slow avalanche of scrap.
"What is that thing?" someone shouted, off to the side.
"Another animal?"
"How many of these does he have?!"
"FUSHIGURO HAS CLEARED THE FIRST OBSTACLE!" Present Mic's voice was somewhere past his normal register now. "He's taken the lead!"
Megumi glanced back once. Todoroki was emerging from the wreckage on a fresh sheet of ice. Bakugo blasted over the top of it a second later, snarling something about not letting anyone get ahead of him.
Neither one was far behind. Good.
Megumi leaned forward, and Nue beat its wings harder.
The second obstacle opened up beneath him without warning, a canyon of open air with nothing across it but thin cable strung between stone pillars.
"Obstacle number two!" Present Mic's voice rang out over the gap. "One wrong step and you're out! Welcome to The Fall!"
A girl with a frog-like face was already crossing on all fours, faster than most people could run. Somewhere below, a burst of pink glitter and a grappling line announced a support course student launching herself across on some kind of rig, cackling about companies watching from the stands.
Megumi never touched the wires. Nue carried him over the first half of the canyon at a clean glide.
Bakugo climbed after him on a chain of explosions. "You think flying makes you untouchable?"
"It's working so far."
Bakugo fired at the bird. Megumi dismissed it before the blast landed, dropping between two pillars, and called Toad on the way down. The tongue caught his wrist mid-fall, swung him under the nearest cable, and released him onto solid stone.
Todoroki passed below on a narrow bridge of ice. Bakugo landed on the pillar beside him.
"You bastard! DIIEE!" Bakugo said as he sent a blast towards Megumi.
Megumi quickly sunk into the pillar's shadow.
He came out the other side several yards ahead. Bakugo's palms crackled with the specific fury of someone who'd just watched a shortcut happen in front of him and hadn't been fast enough to stop it.
"DON'T RUN AWAY FROM ME!!"
Megumi summoned Nue one last time, let it catch him off the final pillar, and crossed the remaining gap in the air. He landed first. Todoroki touched down several seconds later. Bakugo hit the ground in a burst of smoke right behind him.
Megumi kept running, breathing controlled, legs steady. The extra stamina work had done its job. He could feel the cost of everything he'd used so far, but it wasn't buckling him yet.
He still had more to spend.
The minefield was the last stretch, and the person in the lead had the worst route through it.
"And now we've arrived at the final obstacle!" Present Mic called. "It's a minefield, and the leader gets the least mapped-out path in the whole field! That's the price of first place, folks!"
Almost every mine ahead of him was still untouched. Megumi entered first.
Todoroki stopped at the edge behind him. "This obstacle punishes whoever's in front."
Bakugo blasted into the air instead of answering. "Only if you need the ground!"
Todoroki sent a wall of ice up after him. Bakugo twisted around it and answered with an explosion, and the two of them were fighting each other again within seconds, more interested in beating one another than the getting across the field.
Megumi didn't wait around for it to resolve.
"Rabbit Escape."
Dozens of rabbits scattered across the mines ahead of him, and the whole field went up in staggered bursts of pink smoke, mine after mine, until the smoke was thick enough to swallow half the course.
"FUSHIGURO IS SETTING OFF THE MINEFIELD HIMSELF!" Present Mic shouted. "He's turning the entire obstacle into cover!"
He ran into the smoke his own rabbits had made, using it to hide his line as much as the rabbits had used it to find the mines. Kuro cracked a patch of ice reaching for his ankle before it could close. Behind him, Bakugo dropped through the smoke.
"Got you!"
"Toad."
The tongue caught him around the waist and hauled him under the blast, swinging low before releasing him onto open ground. He called Great Serpent immediately after, landing on its back as it plowed forward, its passage detonating mines down both sides and leaving a narrow, cleared line behind it. Bakugo and Todoroki chased through the smoke on either side, neither gaining.
Todoroki dropped a pillar of ice directly into Nue's path the second Megumi summoned it again. Megumi released the construct before it hit, dropped onto the ice instead, slid down the far side, and stepped into the shadow at its base.
He came out well past both of them.
"You keep running," Bakugo snarled, catching up again.
"You keep falling behind," Megumi said, and didn't slow down to enjoy it.
Behind him, the back half of the field erupted all at once.
Megumi glanced over his shoulder in time to see Izuku launched bodily into the sky, trailing pink smoke, a chunk of robot armor plate still gripped in both hands, sailing clean over Bakugo and Todoroki.
"DEKU!" Bakugo turned mid-stride and blasted himself into the air after him.
Todoroki froze a path under his own feet and sprinted after both of them.
Megumi kept moving, unwilling to burn what he had left on a stunt like that, and watched from the ground as Izuku dropped back in front of the other two, slammed the armor plate into one last mine, and used the blast to throw all three of them toward the tunnel at once.
The shockwave caught Megumi's back a second later. It pushed him forward. It didn't put him on the ground.
He used it.
"Nue." One last time, low and fast, just enough to catch the momentum and carry him clear of the smoke entirely. He released it right at the tunnel mouth and hit the ground running, Izuku's footsteps close behind him, Bakugo and Todoroki closing from either side.
The tunnel curved toward the stadium, stadium lights flooding the last stretch ahead, throwing all four of their shadows long across the walls.
"FUSHIGURO'S STILL IN FRONT, BUT THE OTHERS ARE CLOSING!" Present Mic's voice shook the speakers. "THIS IS GOING DOWN TO THE FINAL STRETCH!"
Bakugo rose behind him. "YOU'RE NOT WINNING!"
He fired. Megumi didn't turn around.
"Toad."
Toad's tongue caught onto Bakugo's wrist deflection his blast on the wall.
"YOU DAMM BASTARD!!"
Todoroki raised a wall of ice near the exit a second later. Megumi sent Kuro ahead to crack the base of the wall, and drove one shoulder through the weakened ice as he landed.
Todoroki's collapsing wall scattering around him, the tunnel exit and the finish line beyond it close enough now that Megumi could see the crowd through the opening.
Todoroki broke through what was left of the ice right behind him. Bakugo blasted past the wreckage a half second later. Izuku came through the gap after that, armor plate finally thrown aside, sprinting flat out, all three of them closing the last few yards of tunnel at once.
"YOU'RE NOT WINNING!" Bakugo roared, already reaching for him.
The shadows thrown by the tunnel lights stretched long across the concrete underfoot, deep and unbroken all the way to the mouth of the exit.
The distance sat well within his range.
'That's the opening.'
Megumi brought his hands together and let his shadow open beneath him.
For one full second, he wasn't anywhere at all.
Bakugo's hand closed on empty air where he'd been standing. Todoroki's ice swept under nothing. Izuku ran straight through the last of the fading shadow, eyes going wide as he understood, half a step too late, exactly what had just happened.
The dark patch at the tunnel's mouth rippled once.
Megumi rose out of it already stepping through the exit, and the stadium's light hit him a full stride ahead of the other three. He crossed the line before any of them had cleared the tunnel behind him.
The noise that followed didn't sound like cheering so much as pressure, a wall of sound that hit before it registered as anything specific.
"HE VANISHED HALFWAY DOWN THE TUNNEL AND CAME OUT RIGHT AT THE FINISH LINE!" Present Mic was out of his seat, voice cracking clean through. "FIRST PLACE GOES TO MEGUMI FUSHIGURO OF CLASS 1-A!"
Izuku crossed less than a second later. Todoroki came in third. Bakugo landed fourth in a burst of smoke and slammed both palms into the ground hard enough to crack it.
"DAMN IT!"
Megumi slowed to a walk, breathing hard but steady, legs burning, shadow still answering under his feet when he tested it. He'd spent a good amount of what he had.
He still had enough left to win.
Izuku doubled over near the finish, hands braced on his knees. Megumi walked up beside him, studying him for a second longer than the moment really called for.
"You got that far without your quirk," Megumi said. It wasn't quite a question.
Izuku looked up, still catching his breath. "I, ah. Yeah. Kind of."
"Robot armor and your own mines. That's all improvisation." Megumi shook his head slightly, something almost like respect in it.
"It wasn't that impressive," Izuku said, waving a hand. "I just saw an opening and used it before I could talk myself out of it."
"That's the impressive part."
Izuku's face did something complicated, pleased and embarrassed at once, before he recovered enough to gesture back down the tunnel. "You, though. I watched the whole thing from behind you and I still don't understand half of what I saw. Rabbits, a snake, a bird big enough to carry passengers, and then you just disappeared."
"Versatility like that, you can answer basically anything. Most of us only get to solve a problem one way. You get to pick which way."
"But... There's no way I'm backing down."
Megumi didn't have a ready answer for that, so he didn't try to force one.
Behind them, close enough to hear but not close enough to be part of it, Todoroki stood with his arms crossed and his expression locked down tight, and Bakugo was pacing in a short, furious line with smoke still leaking off both palms, neither of them in any state to talk to anyone yet.
Uraraka reached the two of them a minute later, out of breath and beaming, apparently deciding not to go anywhere near the other two for now. "Fushiguro, you won! And Deku got second!"
"It was mostly luck," Izuku started, straightening too fast. "I saw something that might work and it just happened to, but I didn't actually plan the landing-"
"You got second," Megumi said. "Stop arguing with it."
Izuku opened his mouth, closed it again, and nodded.
Kirishima jogged up with the next cluster of finishers, took one look at Todoroki's face and Bakugo's pacing, and wisely decided to plant himself next to Megumi instead. "Okay, I'm almost afraid to ask, but how'd it go?"
"I won."
"I got that part from the scoreboard. I meant the other two."
"Give it a minute."
Once the last of the forty-second qualifiers straggled in, Midnight climbed back onto the podium, results screen glowing to life behind her.
1st: Megumi Fushiguro
2nd: Izuku Midoriya
3rd: Shoto Todoroki
4th: Katsuki Bakugo
"The top forty-two of you made it through," Midnight said. "Unfortunate if you didn't, but don't worry, there'll be other chances to shine." She snapped her whip once, and the board behind her went dark. "Now, the real competition starts. Here's game two."
A new title lit up across the screen.
"A cavalry battle."
"A cavalry battle?" Kaminari groaned. "I'm terrible at those."
"It isn't scored individually," Yaoyorozu said. "So how does that work with results this uneven?"
"Teams of two to four," Midnight explained. "Every participant's worth is based on their placement in the last game. Forty-second place is worth five points. The value goes up by five with every rank above that."
Students all around the stadium had already started doing the math. Megumi felt the exact moment the calculation landed, a slow shift of attention rippling outward from wherever it started, faces turning his way one at a time. General studies. Support course. Class 1-B. His own classmates.
Midnight's smile went sharp. "And the value assigned to first place is."
The screen behind her changed.
10,000,000 POINTS
The stadium erupted.
"Ten million?!" Uraraka said, staring at the number like it might rearrange itself into something smaller.
"So whoever gets Fushiguro's headband basically wins outright," Kaminari said, already turning to look at him.
"That's right!" Midnight called out, delighted. "Anyone at the very bottom can take first place in a single move! Survival of the fittest, everyone!"
Every eye in the stadium found him at once.
Shinso was watching him from somewhere across the field, unreadable. Todoroki's gaze had gone cold as ice. Bakugo had stopped pacing just long enough to grin like Christmas had come early.
Megumi looked around at two hundred students already working out how to reach him, felt the last of the adrenaline from the finish line settle into something colder and more useful, and let a small, humorless smile show through.
'They want the top.'
His shadow stirred under his feet, patient, waiting.
"Let them come take it," he said, to no one in particular, and meant every word of it.
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100 PS By Friday = 1 Bonus Chapter on Saturday
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