Recovery Girl's infirmary had turned into an improvised VIP box for the festival's wounded. The screen mounted on the wall was broadcasting live the preparation ceremony for the final while the cleanup crews finished repairing what they could of the platform after the semifinal.
Momo sat on the cot with her eyes half closed from exhaustion, her head tilted to the right, slowly giving in to the weight of fatigue.
"You can watch the fight from here," Ren said, jerking his thumb at the screen. "No need to walk to the stadium and pass out on the stairs, Momo."
"I'm not going to pass out on the stairs," Momo protested in a voice so soft it completely contradicted the firmness of her words, "I just need a couple more minutes of rest and I'll be perfectly fine to..."
Her head tipped onto Ren's shoulder before she finished the sentence.
"Yeah, perfectly fine," Ren murmured without moving so he wouldn't disturb the position she'd just settled into.
At the other end of the infirmary, Mina was already fully recovered and sitting cross-legged on her cot, staring at Ren and Momo with narrowed eyes while she leaned toward the empty space on her right where Toru's uniform was floating.
"Are you seeing what I'm seeing, Toru?" Mina whispered behind her hand. "Those two are suspiciously cozy for being 'just classmates.'"
"They're adorable!" Toru answered at a volume that was several notches above what any reasonable person would consider a whisper. "Look how Momo-chan tucked herself against his shoulder, she doesn't even lose her elegance when she's asleep!"
"Toru, when you whisper the other person is supposed to not hear."
"Oops!"
Present Mic's voice exploded through the stadium speakers with enough power to leak through the infirmary walls and make the screen vibrate slightly in its mount.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!! THE MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR HAS ARRIVED!!!" Present Mic's voice boomed across the stadium. "THE FINAL BATTLE OF THE U.A. SPORTS FESTIVAL SEMIFINALS!!! THE MATCH THAT WILL DECIDE WHO TAKES THE LAST TICKET TO THE GRAND FINAL!!! DON'T CHANGE THE CHANNEL, BECAUSE THIS IS GONNA BE ABSOLUTELY INSANE!!!"
Midnight planted the heel of her boot on the freshly repaired platform and swept the arena with her gaze before turning to the cameras with a predatory smile.
"In the east corner, the young man whose explosive fury has demolished every opponent who's crossed his path without conceding a single inch!" Midnight raised her arm toward the right tunnel. "KATSUKI BAKUGO!"
Bakugo emerged from the tunnel with his shoulders tense and his palms already crackling with orange sparks that leapt between his fingers as he walked toward the platform.
"And in the west corner, the student who has dominated this festival with a strength that has left the entire country slack-jawed, the competitor no rival has managed to keep on the ground!" Midnight swung her arm toward the left tunnel. "INKO MIDORIYA!"
In the stands, Mitsuki set her beer on the ground next to her seat without a word, straightened up in her chair, and crossed her arms over her chest as she fixed her gaze on the arena with an intensity she hadn't shown all afternoon.
"READY?" Midnight raised the whip above her head.
Bakugo flexed his fingers and the nitroglycerin began to pool in his palms with the threatening glow of a fuse about to catch.
Inko activated Full Cowling and the green lightning enveloped her entire body as she bent her knees to drop her center of gravity.
"BEGIN!"
The two launched at the same time.
Bakugo propelled himself with a double detonation from both palms that catapulted him across the ten meters of separation in less than a second, his right arm extended with an explosion already loaded in his palm, and the heat of the combustion warped the air in his wake, leaving a trail of visible ripples behind him.
Inko crossed the same distance from the opposite side, One For All at fifteen percent concentrated in her legs and her right fist, the green lightning crackling with growing force as her body became a projectile of emerald energy.
The two fists met in the exact center of the platform.
BOOOOOOOM.
The shockwave rocked the entire stadium and tore chunks of concrete from the platform that shot off in all directions while the front rows of the crowd shielded their faces with their arms and the sound of the impact reverberated against the walls of the venue.
The cracks spread out from the point of contact, racing across the entire surface of the platform in a single second.
Both of them recoiled from the impact, their feet dragging against the concrete, leaving parallel grooves in the surface as the inertia pushed them backward, and when they finally came to a stop several meters apart, Bakugo lifted his head and flashed a savage grin.
"THAT'S HOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE, BROCCOLI HEAD!" he roared with his teeth clenched and his eyes burning. "No holding back, hit me with everything you've got or I swear I'll knock you out of the ring before you can regret it!"
Inko clenched her fists and felt the protest of pain in her right index finger where the fracture from her fight against Ochako still hadn't fully healed, but she ignored it and refocused on the battle.
"I'm not planning on holding back, Bakugo-kun," she answered as the green lightning intensified around her body, "so I hope you're ready for what's coming."
"DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH!" Bakugo detonated both palms against the ground and launched himself upward in an explosive arc that lifted him six meters above the arena, spinning in midair to realign his trajectory and plummet straight down toward Inko with both hands lit up. "READY FOR WHAT?! I'M THE ONE WHO SHOULD BE ASKING THAT!"
BOOM!
Inko jumped to one side with Full Cowling and Bakugo's explosions slammed into the ground where she'd been standing, opening up a crater that spat fragments of concrete toward the sky, but before the dust finished rising Bakugo had already propelled himself sideways with a detonation from his left palm, changing direction mid-air to intercept Inko's escape trajectory.
She saw him coming and answered with an upward strike channeled at ten percent of One For All that connected with Bakugo's guard and sent him flying backward with devastating force, but Bakugo fired off an explosion from both palms to brake his inertia in the air, stabilized himself three meters off the ground, and threw himself at her again before his feet touched the platform.
"IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?!" he roared as he unloaded a chain of explosions, each detonation launching him from a different spot so that Inko couldn't predict where the next attack was coming from. "MY GRANDMA HITS HARDER, AND SHE'S DEAD!"
Inko dodged the first explosion by rolling under the arc of fire, blocked the second with a Full Cowling strike that dispersed the shockwave, but the third caught her in the side and sent her tumbling across the platform until she dug her fingers into the concrete to brake her slide.
"WHOOOAAAH, LISTENERS, THIS IS TOTAL WARFARE!!!" Present Mic roared, slamming the commentary table. "BAKUGO IS FLYING ALL OVER THE ARENA LIKE A HUMAN MISSILE!!! MIDORIYA BARELY HAS TIME TO BLINK BEFORE ANOTHER EXPLOSION DROPS ON HER!!! BUT WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!!! EVERY TIME MIDORIYA LANDS A CLEAN HIT, BAKUGO GETS LAUNCHED LIKE A ROCKET!!! NEITHER ONE OF THEM IS WILLING TO GIVE UP A SINGLE INCH OF GROUND!!!"
"Bakugo has the advantage in mobility," Aizawa observed, his eyes fixed on the arena. "He can change direction with every explosion and attack from places a ground-based fighter can't easily cover, but Midoriya makes up for it with the raw power of each impact."
Bakugo landed ten meters from Inko and charged her head-on, his palms burning with the orange glow of accumulated nitroglycerin, and Inko met him with Full Cowling at eighteen percent, the green lightning crackling along her arms as she settled into the stance All Might had taught her for close-range exchanges.
What followed was an exchange of impacts that made the stands tremble.
Bakugo threw an explosive right hook and the detonation passed within centimeters of Inko's face, singeing a lock of green hair that curled from the heat, but she was already spinning and connected a strike to his ribs that sent him flying. Bakugo fired before he hit the ground, stabilized himself with an explosion that ripped concrete from the platform, and came back charging with a combination of three detonations that wrapped Inko in a curtain of fire and smoke.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Inko emerged from the smoke with her uniform scorched and superficial burn marks on her forearms, but her green eyes shone with an intensity that hadn't dimmed a single degree, and without slowing her momentum she landed an uppercut on Bakugo's crossed arms that lifted him two meters off the ground with the force of the impact.
"DAMN YOU!" Bakugo recovered in mid-air with another explosion and dove down with both palms loaded. "QUIT HOLDING BACK AND FALL ALREADY!"
"I can't do that, Bakugo-kun!" Inko answered as she dodged the aerial charge and threw a counterattack that Bakugo barely managed to deflect with a lateral explosion. "There are people who believed in me to get me this far, and I'm not going to let them down!"
The cracks in the platform had spread to the edges and were starting to creep toward the stands, and Cementoss got to his feet in his reserved seat at the edge of the arena with his hands already pressed against the floor.
Enormous walls of reinforced concrete began sprouting from the ground between the platform and the front rows of spectators, rising up like shields that separated the combat zone from the audience while the fragments from the impacts ricocheted off the freshly formed barriers.
"ATTENTION TO THE AUDIENCE!" Present Mic's voice took on a professional tone for three seconds before reverting to his usual enthusiasm. "THE SAFETY MEASURES ARE ACTIVE, CEMENTOSS'S WALLS ARE PROTECTING YOU, SO YOU CAN KEEP ENJOYING THE SHOW WITHOUT WORRYING! AND WHAT A SHOW, FOLKS, BECAUSE THESE TWO ARE LITERALLY TEARING THE ARENA APART!"
In the infirmary, the screen showed the destruction in real time and Ren leaned forward in his chair with his eyes locked on the broadcast, keeping a firm arm around Momo so she wouldn't slide off the shoulder where she was still asleep, completely oblivious to the chaos unfolding two hundred meters away.
Toru had positioned herself standing behind Ren's chair with her hands resting on the back of it, and for the first time in the whole festival she was completely silent.
In the arena, Inko took a deep breath and made a decision.
If I keep trading blows at this level, my fingers aren't gonna hold up much longer, and Bakugo-kun is too tough for me to knock out of the ring with normal hits. I have to end this now.
The green lightning covering her body intensified to a level that made the broadcast cameras flicker, and Ren straightened up a little when he recognized what was happening.
She's pushing past her safe limit.
"One For All, twenty-five percent, Full Cowling," Inko murmured as the green energy enveloped her with a density that distorted the air around her, and the ground beneath her feet cracked from the pressure of the energy radiating off her body.
Bakugo stared at her from across the wrecked arena and knew exactly what was coming, and instead of backing up or finding a defensive position, his grin widened to show his teeth as he crossed his arms over his chest.
"NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT, BROCCOLI HEAD!" he yelled with a ferocity that echoed across the entire arena. "FINALLY YOU'RE DONE PLAYING AROUND! NOW YOU'RE GONNA SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I GET SERIOUS FOR REAL!"
He started to spin.
The explosions burst from both palms in rapid succession, each detonation feeding the rotation of the last, and within seconds his body became a whirlwind of orange light and heat that warped the visible air around it as the speed of rotation reached a level that made it impossible to distinguish his limbs from the core of fire.
The moment froze for an instant that felt like an eternity.
Inko with twenty-five percent of One For All wrapping her body like an armor of emerald lightning, her good fist drawn back and ready to unload all of her power into a single definitive blow.
Bakugo spinning with focused fury and the Howitzer Impact reaching its peak rotation speed while the compressed explosive energy inside the whirlwind searched for a point of release.
The infirmary screen captured the exact moment when the light of both attacks lit up the arena in shades of green and orange that reflected on the faces of everyone watching.
"They're going to collide," Ochako whispered, gripping the sheets tighter.
"HOOOWITZER...!" "FULL COWLING...!" "IMPACT!" "SMASH!"
The shockwave tore through Cementoss's walls and the hero had to throw up three new layers in immediate succession while the glass of the VIP boxes trembled in their frames and the sound of the impact reached a volume that made Present Mic pull away from the microphone to protect his ears.
The cloud of dust and debris covered the entire arena and spread toward the stands like a gray curtain that wiped out visibility completely for several seconds that felt endless.
The whole stadium held its breath.
In the infirmary, the broadcast showed an impenetrable cloud of smoke and the commentators were silent for the first time in the entire festival.
The screen showed gray fog for ten seconds that lasted an eternity, and then the wind began to clear the dust.
Bakugo's uniform was destroyed: the shirt in tatters, red burns on both forearms where his own Quirk had punished him for overheating, and a trickle of blood running down from a wound on his forehead that crossed his right eyebrow. His legs trembled with the effort of staying upright, and the smoke coming from his palms had a darker tone that suggested his nitroglycerin was running out.
Inko had two more fractured fingers in her right hand, and her right leg trembled with intermittent spasms that forced her to compensate her balance with the left, but her green eyes still burned with the energy of One For All active beneath her skin.
"Not bad, broccoli head," Bakugo said with a raspy voice and clipped breathing, "not bad at all."
"Same to you, Bakugo-kun," Inko answered with an exhausted smile that showed both the weariness and the respect, "really, same to you."
Bakugo raised his hands to load another explosion, but his palms trembled without producing sparks.
"Come on," he growled, shaking his hands in frustration as the sparks refused to appear, "come on, damn it, don't do this to me now..."
Inko took a step forward. Her right leg protested with every movement, but she forced it to function because giving up wasn't an option All Might had taught her to consider.
Bakugo saw her coming and stopped trying to produce explosions. He raised his empty fists in front of his face in a guard stance without taking a single step back.
"I'm not going down, you hear me?!" he yelled with ferocity. "You can hit me with everything you've got, but I'M NOT BACKING UP A SINGLE DAMN INCH!"
Inko stopped in front of him a meter away, and for an instant that the cameras captured in high definition, the two of them looked directly into each other's eyes: her with the green lightning still crackling faintly beneath her skin, him with empty hands and a clenched jaw refusing to admit defeat.
Inko raised her left fist, and gave him a soft tap on the chest with barely five percent of One For All, just enough to push him back without hurting him, and the force of the impact slid him across the platform with his feet dragging against the concrete until he crossed the white line and fell on his back onto the safety mats on the other side of the boundary.
Bakugo stared up at the sky.
The clouds moved slowly above the stadium, white against the blue of the afternoon, and for several long seconds all he did was breathe while the roar of the crowd reached him muffled.
Midnight stepped to the edge of the platform and raised the whip.
"OUT OF BOUNDS! THE WINNER IS... INKO MIDORIYA!"
The stadium exploded with a roar that made the metal structures of the stands tremble, and the applause and shouts blended into an avalanche of sound that could be heard from kilometers away.
"INCREDIBLE, INCREDIBLE, INCREDIBLEEEEE!!" Present Mic was on his feet in the booth with his arms thrown wide and his voice on the verge of cracking. "YOU HAVE WITNESSED ONE OF THE MOST BRUTAL SEMIFINALS IN THE HISTORY OF THE UA SPORTS FESTIVAL!! THESE TWO YOUNG FIGHTERS GAVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THEY HELD NOTHING BACK, AND THE RESULT IS A FIGHT THAT'S GOING TO BE REMEMBERED FOR YEARS!!"
In the arena, Bakugo was still lying on the safety mats staring at the sky. Then he sat up slowly, looked at the wrecked platform that resembled a battlefield after a bombing run, and raised his gaze to Inko, who was standing at the edge of the arena with her hand extended toward him and an exhausted smile on her face.
"Tch." Bakugo stared at the hand for a second and a half before taking it, letting her help him to his feet, and let go of her hand immediately after. "Next time I'll wreck you, broccoli head, so you'd better keep training, because when we fight again it's not gonna end the same way."
"I hope you try, Bakugo-kun," Inko answered with a smile, "I really hope you try."
Bakugo turned his back on her and walked toward the exit tunnel without looking back, limping slightly.
In the stands, Mitsuki's eyes were bright with a wetness she would have flatly denied if Ren had dared to mention it, and she wiped the back of her hand across her face in a quick gesture.
Damn stubborn brat, lost and couldn't even fall gracefully.
She pressed her lips together and felt the absurd urge to want to hug someone, and the first image that flashed through her head was of a bald boy.
What the hell am I thinking? It's the dust from the explosions, I've got something in my eye, that's all.
"Good fight," she muttered to herself as she wiped her face for the second time.
In the infirmary, Ren let out the breath he'd been holding since the two final attacks collided, and leaned back against the chair, letting the tension leave his shoulders while Momo kept sleeping against him, completely unaware that she'd missed the most intense battle of the festival.
"That was absolute insanity," Mina said, breaking the silence in the infirmary with her voice still shaky, "those two almost destroyed the entire stadium."
The screen switched from the replay of the fight to the final bracket of the tournament, and the glowing letters rearranged the names into the last matchup that remained pending before the closing ceremony.
SPORTS FESTIVAL FINAL
INKO MIDORIYA vs REN HAYASHI
"Well," Mina said as she pointed at the screen with her finger, "that's a pretty huge problem, don't you think, baldy?"
Ren stared at the screen where his name glowed right under Inko's, the same girl who'd just demolished Bakugo in a fight that had wrecked the platform and forced a pro hero to step in to protect the audience.
Looks like I'm fighting the heir of One For All, the girl who basically carries the most overpowered Quirk in manga history inside her body.
The strongest heroine in history against the most perverted bald guy of the modern era...
********
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