….
After talking it through with Midoriya, they came up with something.
Dabi kept the explanation vague as he couldn't exactly say what he was actually trying to do; unlock latent quirks within One For All.
Because standing in a training ground surrounded by people who didn't know the full picture, that sentence would have raised more questions than he had answers for.
Even All Might, who knew everything, was watching with an expression that said he wasn't sure this was going to work but didn't have a better idea.
What Dabi explained it simply: he needed Midoriya pushed into a situation where Full Cowling wouldn't be enough. His body recognized on instinct that his current abilities couldn't save him, driving a desperate need for something new, something he didn't even know he possessed, until whatever lay dormant inside him had no choice but to respond.
Bakugo stood apart, and even though no one had explained anything to him directly; he had pieced together enough to know something unusual was happening with Midoriya's quirk.
"Same rules as before." Dabi said, stepping back outside the ring. "Midoriya, no Full Cowling or breathing techniques this time too. And Bakugo... don't just blast him. Focus on speed. I want you everywhere at once. Vary your angles, shift your vectors mid-air. Don't let him settle into a rhythm."
A jagged, dangerous grin cut across Bakugo's face. He didn't need to be told twice. "You want me to run circles around the nerd? Just watch."
….
The violence that followed was brutal again.
Bakugo moved, cutting in at multiple angles. He never attacked in a straight line, using sharp, percussive blasts from his palms to redirect his momentum mid-stride.
He appeared on Midoriya's left before the boy could even complete a turn, a strike catching him clean across the ribs.
By the time Midoriya's body registered the impact, Bakugo was already gone, another explosion launching him into a vector-shift that brought him screaming in from behind.
The confined ring only proved even more difficult for Midoriya, leaving no room to retreat.
Midoriya tracked it all, his eyes following each movement as his mind mapped trajectories, calculated angles, and identified openings with perfect accuracy, every detail understood and outcome anticipated.
By the time he committed to a block, Bakugo had already pivoted. A strike caught his shoulder; he steadied himself, reset, only to be hit again from the right, his attempted dodge lagging just enough for another clean blow to land.
A minute passed, then another, and Midoriya hadn't landed a single hit. He hadn't even come close; the ring worked exactly as intended, leaving him trapped with no room to maneuver, every exchange ending in blows he saw coming but couldn't avoid.
By the third minute, blood trickled from a cut above his eye where Bakugo's palm had grazed him, his left arm already bruised from shoulder to wrist.
During the fourth and fifth, nothing changed. One For All remained unresponsive, and the fight had reduced itself to a one-sided beating.
Off to the side, Dabi's jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly.
All Might's skinny hands clenched deep in his pockets. His body jerked forward with each impact before he forced himself still.
Aizawa stood with his goggles ready, his gaze settling on Dabi, the question clear without words: how much longer would this continue?
Dabi didn't look back. His eyes were locked on Midoriya as the sixth minute bled into the seventh.
He kept knocking him down only to watch him drag himself back up, each recovery slower, each impact heavier, yet nothing produced what Dabi was waiting for.
At seven minutes, Midoriya collapsed again and remained on his hands and knees for a long second, arms trembling as blood from the cut above his eye fell in steady drops onto the concrete.
Behind Aizawa, Shinso watched in silence. His expression blank while his eyes moved between Midoriya and Dabi, as if trying to grasp something he could sense but not quite see.
By the eighth minute, the exercise was clearly failing, the realization settling cold in Dabi's chest.
He had misjudged it.
Whatever had triggered the vestige connection before, the precise mix of desperation, emotion, and pressure was absent.
The setup was too controlled, deliberate, and clearly a test for Midoriya's instincts to mistake for real danger.
It might come only on its own terms, on One For All's timing rather than his.
He was about to call it off.
Then Bakugo drove Midoriya backward with a hard shove.
Midoriya staggered, caught himself, and stayed upright.
Bakugo stood there, breathing through his nose, palms faintly sparking at his sides, his expression stripped of anger and contempt, replaced by something worse:
…boredom.
He had expected a fight and found a chore instead, and the look on his face made it clear: Izuku Midoriya, without his borrowed power, was exactly what Bakugo had always believed, insignificant, background, a pebble on the road.
Nine minutes in, Bakugo surged forward again, the restraint he had maintained slipping just enough for his attacks to come faster and hit harder, each explosion carrying more force as frustration drove him to escalate against a fight that gave nothing back.
Midoriya kept dropping.
He was forcing himself up, his body long past its limits and held together only by a stubborn reflex that refused to let him stay down.
Bakugo caught the subtle shift in him, the constant analysis, muttering, and eyes tracking angles all gone quiet, like something powering down and leaving behind something that wasn't a strategy.
A clean right snapped Midoriya's head sideways, and sent him into the fire wall.
Heat seared through his scorched shirt as he bounced off the perimeter, dropped to one knee, and dragged himself back to his feet.
H took another strike, a left hook to the same battered ribs, something inside shifting wrong as he doubled over, gasping, copper filling his mouth, yet rising once more.
Bakugo stood a few feet away, barely winded or touched, wearing the same look Midoriya had known since childhood.
It was the quiet certainty of distance, of one standing above while the other remained below, while Midoriya's mind had gone still.
The battle awareness was gone, and replaced by something older than everything that had reshaped his life, a memory rooted at the beginning of always chasing and never closing the gap.
He had gained power, trained under Pro Heros, fought villains, broken and rebuilt himself, yet here, with everything reduced to its core, the truth remained unchanged:
Bakugo stood while he struggled to stay on his feet.
And not waiting anymore, Bakugo moved again, faster than at any point before.
His right palm led the charge, the explosion already building, that familiar, arrogant grin etched onto his face.
Midoriya saw the strike coming with agonizing clarity. He mapped the angle, the timing, and the trajectory, arriving at a singular, crushing certainty
He couldn't move in time. He would take the hit, he would fall again, and Bakugo would still be standing over him, looking down.
Then, something in his chest finally snapped.
It didn't come from thought or intent, but from the pressure that had been building for years finally breaking past its limit, tearing loose without warning or control.
Thick, serpentine cords of crackling green energy erupted from his hands.
They slammed into the reinforced concrete on either side of him with the force of falling girders, fracturing the floor instantly. The tendrils flexed, anchored, and launched him forward in a singular motion.
Midoriya vanished.
He moved so fast the air collapsed inward with a sharp, concussive pop, leaving Bakugo's explosion to tear through nothing but empty space.
For a split second, genuine shock shattered Bakugo's composure. His head snapped side to side, searching for a target that had been right in front of him a heart-beat ago.
He found him on the opposite end of the ring.
Midoriya stood there, barely steady with shaking legs and a swaying frame; the tendrils still anchored beside him like thick cables alive with green lightning, pulsing with something that didn't look human.
Midoriya stared at his own hands, his eyes wide and terrified by the power that had emerged without his control.
Bakugo turned slowly. His eyes tracked from the fractured floor to the living weapons sprouting from Midoriya's arms. A single bead of sweat slid down his temple.
"Hah." Bakugo's voice was lower than usual, stripped of its typical roar. "So you were holding out on me." The jagged grin returned, slower and wider this time. "Another trick, huh? You always do this, Deku. Pulling something out at the last second... it's so damn annoy–"
He moved before finishing the thought, because hesitation wasn't in his nature.
"STOP!"
He took one step forward, and Midoriya screamed.
The tendrils multiplied in an instant, and erupted from his arms; wild, whipping lashes that tore into the air in every direction.
Each one moved with its own independent, predatory logic, ignoring every frantic command Midoriya tried to give them.
They slammed into the ground, lashed at the air, cracked against the fire wall hard enough to scatter the blue flames across the concrete.
"I CAN'T—" Midoriya's body jerked violently as the cords pulled him in four different directions at once, lifting his feet off the ground. "I CAN'T CONTROL IT! KACCHAN, MOVE! EVERYONE! GET AWAY FROM ME!"
A rogue tendril snapped toward Bakugo, faster than the attack he had been preparing.
Bakugo saw it coming, he primed his palms to blast himself clear; but the strike was already on top of him, aimed squarely at his chest.
Before it could connect, a hand caught the back of Bakugo's collar.
He was yanked backward with bone-jarring force, dragged several meters clear as the tendril tore through the space he had occupied.
Dabi stood beside him, having crossed the distance from the perimeter to the ring in the blink of an eye.
He released Bakugo's collar.
However, his eyes had a satisfied interest; a tendril whipped past his ear, close enough to singe his hair, and he simply leaned aside without even looking.
"Took you long enough," Dabi said, his voice steady over the roar of the lashing power. "Though... you might want to dial it down, kid."
…and obviously, Midoriya couldn't.
Aizawa stepped forward with goggles raised, eyes glowing red as he prepared to shut it down, but Dabi lifted a hand to stop him.
"Wait." he said. "Give him a minute."
Aizawa's look made it clear that this had better justify the collateral damage to his student and the building.
"Oi, kid." Dabi's voice cut through the localized hurricane. "Stop fighting it."
"WHAT?!" Midoriya's voice was a panicked shred of its usual self, his feet dangling inches off the floor as a coil of green energy tightened around his waist.
"Stop resisting the flow! Let it go!"
"I… if I let go, my hands…!" Midoriya stared at them in panic as the tendrils surged between his fingers and coiled up his arms, slipping through every attempt to contain them. "It won't stop–"
"I am here, and Aizawa's too." Dabi cut in, his tone flat. "Open your hands and let it go."
.
….
[To be continued…]
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