I AM ALIVE!!!
***
Itsuki Tenrin
Musashino Ordinary High
Day forty-nine, and the uniform is still stupid.
His new school was called Musashino Ordinary High, and the name pretty much said it all.
Itsuki had spent a couple of weeks trying to see if there was a single interesting thing in his school. The vending machine on the second floor had drinks that were scalding hot; most students avoided using it. The groundskeeper had a quirk that made his arms really long, which would seem useful until you realised you were in a school.
Itsuki didn't really remember anything else about the school. The teachers were boring, but that was the usual — teachers aren't generally supposed to be your friend — and he had also found the people in his new school insufferable.
He sat in the last row, next to the window on the left side. The teacher's voice came in one ear and flew out the other. He sighed and looked out at the weather.
The class had bored him enough, talking about the geological history of the Japanese archipelago. The day before he had genuinely slept through thirty minutes of the lesson.
His wings were folded close against his back. In his first week he had learnt that keeping them small and unnoticed reduced the number of conversations he had by roughly eighty percent. Japan was not a country that struggled with quirks as a concept, but mutants were often seen like a historical artefact.
Itsuki watched the clouds.
Day forty-nine in this hell. And wearing this stupid uniform.
Itsuki started grimacing about his decision not to apply to U.A. He had sat in the kitchen in January of his final year of middle school with the application form on the table, procrastinating over whether or not he should apply.
But as he thought more and more about it, he had no reason to apply. He had spent most of his first life following orders that were handed to him through a chain of command. After finishing U.A he would most likely be expected to become a hero and help others. He had no vindictive reason to become one.
He knew what Shinso's reason was.
He had watched it being built in real time since they were four years old, when some kid had told a small purple-haired boy in a kindergarten that his heart decided who he was.
Shinso was going to walk into the institution that had spent a decade preparing to exclude him, and he was going to come out the other side of it as a hero, and every single person who had pointed at his quirk and called it villainous would have to revise their position.
That was a dream. An ideal worthy of chasing after. Something Shinso could say he breathed and lived for.
He knew what Toru's reason was too — a snowflake who wanted to help everyone, which wasn't really wrong, but Itsuki's heart didn't beat like that.
His family had stayed the same. Itsuki hadn't noticed any significant changes in their behaviour.
His mother still had her cheerful attitude, and her caring nature. She had been very shocked and heartbroken when Itsuki had been tried for those crimes, although he turned out mostly innocent of all the charges, so she wasn't too worried. She also had the habit of cooking enough food for more than five people. They ended up with a lot of leftovers, which were frankly never eaten, as she cooked quite a bit.
Amane, who was now fourteen, was a teenage girl. Her behaviour would be uncontrollable from time to time — outbursts and the like — but honestly she had remained the same. Itsuki didn't really observe her closely enough to notice anything notable. As her older brother he just found her annoying; the feeling was mutual.
Her goal in this world was to become a hero, which wasn't a niche ambition — it was the near-most popular thing for kids to pursue — but for Amane he felt like she was trying to look cool. That said, he had also seen how she had rushed to save a civilian woman even when there was danger, and even after he had told her to stay put. So at least she had a heroic heart. For now.
His father stayed in the same chair almost every evening. The usual suit. He had come to be less suspicious of Itsuki — or at least Itsuki thought so. It still kind of bugged him, the incident where he had mentioned RCT. But all in all, it was a conversation he would need to have with his father eventually. Building false relationships was pretty easy for someone like him, but he had been trying to turn a new leaf, so it was best he cleared it up. He had to be careful with his words, though. Careless words could make him reveal more than he should, and that could complicate things.
As lessons ended, Itsuki packed his bags quickly, the buzz of the bell fading in the background. He walked out of the school building and expanded his wings; a few feathers drifted along the way.
A gust of wind grazed past him. His hair swayed with the wind, each individual strand flowing in a haphazard pattern, a few of his pale white feathers dispersing with the gust.
Itsuki looked mildly annoyed and rearranged his hair into a more orderly fashion.
With one smooth motion, he jumped up, his wings beginning to flap.
FLAP — FLAP
He glided through the town — past the maid cafes, past the tall office buildings, the traditional houses and the ordinary ones — his hair moving with him as he twisted and turned through the air. He stayed relatively close to the ground, only ten feet up, to avoid clipping anyone below.
In a few minutes, Itsuki had arrived home.
His parents were still at work and Amane was probably out with friends, doing whatever teenage girls did — which he honestly didn't know, because he wasn't a teenage girl.
He took off his uniform and changed into something more casual. Which, in his case, meant a suit. He had inherited one from his father. It had started as a way to tidy him up at important events in his old life, and he hadn't been much of a fan then, but seeing it on his dad had changed something. Suits were, quietly, pretty cool.
[ Itsuki in the suit ]
His phone buzzed.
Toru:
okay I know you're awake don't pretend you're sleeping
I'm not allowed to tell you specifics about 1-A prep but it's literal torture… i wanna kms cuz of this
itsuki. itsuki. im trapped in this school and cannot leave bruh… u gotta help me out or smt
also do you think Shinso is nervous
Me:
He's fine.
She responded with a string of characters he chose not to interpret.
He put the phone down and poured himself water.
He went to the living room and turned on the TV. The sports festival was one of the few things he actually watched.
Well — movies were a lot better now, with fresher concepts, so he liked to binge-watch. He'd been catching up on Marvel and DC, since practically everything had been released by this point. He'd also helped himself to GTA 6 and a number of other things he'd missed.
(A/N: I'm not going to do too much with history and stuff, so JoJo fans — don't ask about episode two of SBR, because he checked and it still isn't there.)
The obstacle race was the first event in the sports festival. Itsuki watched with moderate attention; it was like re-watching the anime, but without the constant interruptions from villain schemes and random heroes loitering nearby.
The obstacle race consisted of three parts: the Robo Inferno — a field of giant robots, the same type used in U.A.'s entrance exam — the Fall, a deep canyon requiring navigation across tightropes — and the Mine Field, a treacherous stretch loaded with high-impact hidden explosives.
The top forty-two placements would advance. Simple enough.
Izuku Midoriya placed first. Todoroki placed second. Bakugo placed third.
Itsuki found this part a little boring. He wasn't a fan of races, especially when he already knew the results.
"Damn. I wonder if there were any gambling sites I could have used for this," he muttered, noting the imaginary loss.
Todoroki had used his ice quirk to glide through the entire course. Bakugo had used his explosions to propel himself forward — genuinely creative, Itsuki had to admit. But Midoriya had beaten them both in terms of imagination: he'd seeded the mines into one concentrated area and detonated them all at once, using the blast to launch himself into the lead, then sprinted the remainder as though his life depended on it.
The round ended with Shinso placing forty-second.
Which was a breath of fresh air. Itsuki had quietly worried their preparation might have been insufficient.
"Physical condition should probably improve," he noted to himself.
As the first round came to a halt and the participating brackets were decided, Present Mic began shouting the commentary and advertisements started rolling. At the same moment, the lock clicked at the front door.
Itsuki turned his head.
False alarm.
His sister came flying through the door and onto the couch, an ice lolly in her mouth and a wide grin on her face.
She had cut her hair short — she wore it now in short corkscrew curls just like their mother. She was still in her school uniform and was practically vibrating.
"I haven't missed it, have I?!" she squealed, dropping onto the couch.
Itsuki had forgotten. She loved these kinds of events. Which made sense — it was one of the most popular spectacles in the country, the rough equivalent of America's Got Talent in his old world, except the competitors were teenagers with superhuman abilities.
He took a sip of water.
Perfect, he thought, even though the water was tasteless.
"Why are they looking at the ground?" Amane asked.
"They think that's how his quirk works."
"Whose?" she asked.
"Shinso's. They believe avoiding eye contact is the countermeasure."
"Is it?"
"No."
She thought about this. "Did he tell people that it was?"
"No. I don't think he did."
"Then how did they come to that conclusion?"
Itsuki remained silent. Amane had an annoyed look on her face and pouted.
It was, in fact, a strategy that he and Shinso had developed together — though it had been mostly Itsuki's design.
Brainwashing was an exceptionally strong quirk. Itsuki knew this and had taken specific precautions to ensure it stayed that way.
He had arranged for Shinso to get into a handful of altercations. Shinso had argued at first, saying it would give people the wrong impression of him. But after hearing Itsuki's reasoning, he understood.
In all three of the staged confrontations, Itsuki had Shinso sustain deliberate eye contact with each opponent immediately before triggering the activation. To extract a pattern as subtle as eye contact from three seemingly ordinary school fights would be difficult for the average student.
As such, he made sure the fights happened in proximity to hero course students — who would recognise how dangerous Shinso could be — and support course students, who were the sharpest analytical minds in the building. Between those two groups, Itsuki and Shinso theorised the eye-contact pattern would be identified and circulated.
Itsuki had explained the other half of the reasoning, too. If Shinso's full mechanics were ever properly documented — in this sports festival, or a future one, or after he became a hero — his quirk could be studied and neutralised. The most obvious weakness was also the most dangerous one: simply don't speak. A glaring vulnerability in an otherwise overwhelming ability.
So you give your enemies something else to fixate on.
To fool your enemies, you must first fool your allies.
The rest propagated itself.
And now the cavalry battle had teams spending a meaningful portion of their attention on not looking at Shinso, which meant every other strategic consideration was receiving proportionally less focus than it deserved.
Give a person one thing to be paranoid about, Itsuki had told him once, and their brain does the rest of the work for you.
In the end, most teams gave Shinso's group a wide berth, carrying him through to the tournament brackets. His team placed third in the cavalry battle — they had claimed some headbands along the way, but the real prize was the bracket position and the intelligence advantage.
(A/N: Everything is the same as canon lmao just with a few tweaks about Shinso so far)
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
The Tournament Bracket
—
The draw was displayed on the big screen at the stadium's centre, and Itsuki leaned forward slightly, despite being on the couch.
The bracket placed Shinso in the lower half. His path to the final ran through three matches before it could intersect with Todoroki or Bakugo. Itsuki looked at the names.
He had done his research on the viable ones.
"Shinso versus—" Amane tilted her head. "Tetsutetsu? I know that name. He's from 1-B. The one who turned himself completely to metal during the cavalry battle."
"Steel quirk," Itsuki said. "Total-body transformation. Every surface converts to solid metal under activation. Durable enough that conventional blunt force won't accomplish much."
Amane looked at him. "You memorised everyone?"
"Yeah a little bit, but Shinso told me a little bit about interesting individuals and the ones that he thought might cause some trouble."
Round One — First Match
Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu
1-B Hero Course · Quirk: Steel
Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu entered the ring with confidence, shoulder-first, wide stance, mouth open with a loud grin.
He was a broad, densely-built kid from 1-B, with silver hair and the kind of frame that made it difficult to tell where the person ended and the quirk began.
Steel was a total-body transformation — every surface, skin and muscle alike, converting to solid metal under activation. His arms had a faint gunmetal undertone at rest, the dormant quirk sitting just beneath the surface the way an engine idled before it was needed.
He also seemed to be someone confident in their ability going by his shit-eating grin on his face.
The crowd was mainly silent but the tension was thick and anticipation filled their soul.
First, a marking step — Shinso had to lock eyes with you, hold them, complete some kind of visual targeting before anything else could occur. Second, a response step, where the marked target said something back. Without step one, step two was meaningless. You could talk all you wanted, as long as you never let him look at you properly.
It was an elegant false structure. Itsuki had spent some time designing it to be exactly that: partially true in a way that felt entirely true, offering people a concrete and actionable countermeasure. The countermeasure was the point.
Give people something they can do and they stop looking for what they've missed.
Tetsutetsu believed the theory completely.
He had not made eye contact with Shinso since entering the ring.
"You know what I heard about you?" he said, addressing the approximate space to the left of Shinso's ear. "I heard the cavalry teams were actually scared of you. Scared of the general studies kid."
Shinso stood in the centre of the ring with his hands in his pockets.
"I think that's pretty funny," Tetsutetsu continued.
He was enjoying himself.
The gunmetal undertone along his arms deepened slightly as the Steel primed.
"You're a one trick pony so stop acting like a threat. I don't know what they were so worried about."
Shinso said: "Probably you."
Tetsutetsu's response was immediate, reflexive, and completely natural: "Me? Why would—"
His eyes went blank mid-syllable.
The crowd held its breath.
Shinso walked slowly towards Tetsutetsu.
He gripped the front of Tetsutetsu's sports uniform — the Steel along his arms sat dormant, because the mind that would have activated it was somewhere else entirely, and dragged him slowly across the ground, his skin rubbing against the ground.
Shinso threw him.
Tetsutetsu crossed the boundary line without ceremony.
The crowd registered it approximately two seconds later and responded the way crowds responded to things they hadn't finished processing — loudly, without coherence.
Amane set down her ice lolly.
"He was looking at his feet the whole time," she said. "He didn't look at him once."
"Good observation, he was."
"But it still worked," Amane muttered, her hand scratching her head in thought.
She was quiet for a bit before exploding: "So the eye contact thing was—"
"Wrong."
"But everyone thought—"
"Everyone was supposed to think it."
Itsuki took a sip of water as if he were drinking alcohol, he had even brought a wine bottle to fit the part.
"Everyone has seen the first myth about his quirk… busted!" Itsuki said with a light smile.
On screen, the cameras panned across the stadium. Faces of confusion and shock littered across multiple people.
Amane watched.
"They're going to need to come up with a new theory fast. ."
A series of other matches passed by but Itsuki didn't really pay attention.
Round Two — Second Match
Iida Tenya
1-A Hero Course · Quirk: Engine
Iida Tenya was, in Itsuki's estimation, the most methodical mind in 1-A. He had placed well in the obstacle race, not first though. Which had probably set a deep disappointment in him, seeing as to how his quirk was entirely speed related.
But Iida Tenya's power didn't just come from his speed, it also came from his mind. Although he was not the most creative or smartest guy in the class. He was quick to pick up the pattern, so he already knew that…
Eye contact was irrelevant.
In the cavalry battle pretty much everyone had avoided eye-contact with Shinso as well, so the quirk couldn't have reached that condition yet. And his opponent had never locked eyes with him either.
He had spent the fifteen-minute break rebuilding the problem from axioms.
His quirk was Engine — the muffler-type motors in both calves generated mechanical propulsion, bursts of acceleration that covered ring distances in fractions of a second and made sustained visual tracking difficult.
He favoured linear movement with sharp directional corrections. He had spatial awareness that came from years of practice with his quirk, so he was a formidable opponent not to be looked down upon.
He entered the ring without looking at Shinso either. But unlike Tetsutetsu, this was not a strategy built on borrowed confidence.
He had simply deprioritised Shinso visually because he had concluded that visual information from Shinso was not the relevant threat.
The relevant threat was audio.
Specifically his own.
His revised theory — reconstructed from Itsuki's perspective with some genuine respect — went like this:
Shinso's quirk required a verbal response, but the response had to be directed. An acknowledgment. Something that constituted, at some neurological level, a reply to him specifically. Background noise didn't count. Grunts of exertion didn't count. He could breathe hard, make contact sounds, say things to himself.
(A/N: To explain more for those who don't understand how Iida got here. Obviously the eye contact myth was broken, so obviously anything visual was pretty much off the table as he didn't even look at him throughout the battle. And about how he figured out that it had to be a response towards him? Well Tetsu was talking *about* Shinso the entire time but his quirk didn't activate. Only until he responded to Shinso did the quirk activate. I think Iida would be able to figure this out based on the information we have at this point. Ermm if not debate me as to why not and I'll change it lmao)
What he couldn't do was reply to him.
It was a reasonable theory. It was almost the correct shape.
The match started.
He moved immediately. The Engine kicked in and he covered half the ring in a flat burst that forced Shinso to move or absorb impact. He wasn't trying to win by force; he was trying to deny him stillness, create a kinetic environment where precision became difficult.
Shinso said things.
Iida did not respond to them.
He called out his own movements as was his habit — direction shifts, throttle changes, internal accounting spoken aloud to himself in the clipped shorthand of someone who had drilled it. He made sounds deliberately — proving to himself that his theory was correct, that sounds existed on a spectrum and only directed responses counted.
Forty seconds in, he was doing well by every metric he had.
The collar device activated.
It was subtle and barely visible on the broadcast, a small indicator light at Shinso's collar. Itsuki had suggested the placement specifically because it looked like a standard U.A. support accessory, getting the proper permit for it had been a bit difficult but with a nice letter to Nezu he was able to do so.
What it did was different from what anyone assumed.
The standard assumption was probably something like an amplifier right?
It shifted the frequency profile of Shinso's voice. Not the volume. Not the pitch in any simple sense.
The specific acoustic signature — the combination of harmonic frequencies that, processed by the auditory cortex, registered as this is the voice I have been tracking.
For someone paying no particular attention to Shinso's voice, the shift was imperceptible, like background nice.
For someone paying extremely close attention to Shinso — someone who had decided that audio monitoring was their primary defensive strategy, who had been cataloguing his voice continuously for any deviation from the expected pattern — the shift was something he was not expecting.
Iida's auditory cortex processed the wrongness at the 0.3-second mark.
His conscious mind, which had been very busy with a direction correction and a throttle adjustment, received the flag at the 0.6-second mark.
By the 0.9-second mark, his body had produced a sound.
A short, involuntary exhalation, it was barely audible but it was…
Enough.
The ring went quiet for two full seconds. Iida's momentum carried him another three steps before Shinso's command stopped him, turned him around, and he walked up towards Iida who had a shocked expression on his face.
And kicked him.
Iida tried to struggle to turn on his quirk but nothing happened, his body wouldn't respond, and now he was on the floor.
Shinso smirked a little.
"I'm sorry Iida, I guess I win this one."
With one final kick he booted Iida.
The crowd went silent again.
Presents Mic's voice cut through the silent like a knife through butter. He announced the winner as Shinso walked off stage.
In the living room, Amane had both hands pressed over her mouth.
"Ohh Gosh he was so careful as well! I'm pretty sure he was talking to himself with those moves, what happened!?!?" Amane said in disbelief.
"He was paying too much attention," Itsuki said. "The device only catches people who are listening specifically for his voice. If he had ignored Shinso talking entirely, the shift wouldn't have registered. The countermeasure works against people whose primary defensive tool is audio tracking."
Amane stared at him. "Okay Itsuki did you come up with this design as well?."
"I come up with everything"
"I'm scared if you ever become evil."
Itsuki hummed back, "Who knows…"
She looked back at the screen, where Iida's face was having a mix of emotion but mainly confusion and in deep thought as to what happened. The way he was defeated seemed to bother him more than the fact he was actually defeated.
"I feel bad for the U.A students, they must be so confused, are they ever going to beat Shinso, on the side-note, the ice-guy and the explosion guy seem pretty strong," Amane said.
"Hmm yeah he might face some trouble."
"But would he lose?"
"I dunno."
Toru:
okay I'm watching from the prep hall and I literally cannot breathe
the support kids are going insane trying to reverse-engineer the collar device
someone said it projects a secondary voice?? someone else said it cancels quirk resistance?? nobody knows
Itsuki I know you helped with that. I KNOW YOU WELL PAL!!!
Itsuki had an annoyed look on his face.
Round Three — Third Match
Tokoyami Fumikage
1-A Hero Course · Quirk: Dark Shadow
If Iida had been almost correct, Tokoyami Fumikage had simply been correct.
He had arrived at the actual answer.
Itsuki had not expected this. He had expected the third round to be a mop-up, someone who had a rough idea but was still in the "testing" phase of it.
His quirk was Dark Shadow: a sentient darkness-type manifestation capable of operating at range, extending its reach across the ring in tendrils of shifting shadow that could attack, deflect, and apply sustained pressure at distances no physical quirk could match from stillness.
His plan was: complete silence, he didn't talk much anyway so it wasn't anything special.
Dark Shadow began moving the moment the match started, probing sweeps of its tendrils across the ring surface that kept Shinso mobile and prevented him from establishing any kind of stillness. The message was clear
Forty seconds.
Shinso said things.
But Tokoyami remained largely quiet and so did his dark shadow. He caught himself and pressed forward, the tendrils increasing in frequency, the sustained pressure requiring more consistent evasion on Shinso's part.
A minute.
The crowd were restless, the fighting was entertaining, Tokoyami's quirk was always a joy to watch, Shinso on the other-hand was a bit irritated, he wanted to finish this fight as quickly as possible to preserve energy.
Itsuki watched.
(A/N: Please ignore the dead joke, all will be explained soon…)
Shinso said: "You know what the worst part about fighting someone with a shadow quirk is?"
The tendrils kept sweeping.
*CRASH*
"You can never tell if it's brooding or just the lighting."
Tokoyami's face remained untwitched
Not enough Shinso… Itsuki thought.
Shinso said: "They asked me before the match if I had any superstitions. I said I had one — I never fight anyone who makes it feel like I've wandered into a Tim Burton film and nobody told me."
Two minutes.
Shinso said: "I looked up Dark Shadow in the dictionary. It said, and I'm quoting — 'the ability to look extremely serious while a large sentient darkness lurks just behind your left shoulder.' Forty-two confirmed practitioners. I'm looking at number forty-two."
*BOOM*
"He's saving the wrong ones." Itsuki sighed.
Amane glanced at him.
Shinso said: "My friend told me a joke about brainwashing last week. I can't repeat it. But I can tell you the punchline ends with the words 'and that's why the support course has trust issues.'"
*CRASH*
Shinso said: "Why did the U.A. examiner give Tokoyami a passing mark but fail Dark Shadow?"
The tendrils held steady. Tokoyami's jaw was set hard.
"Only one of them filled out the application. The other one just stared at the evaluator until she left the room."
Tokoyami's eyes closed for one second.
One second was the window.
His beak produced a sound, he exhaled out of his nasal twice, his brain screamed at him not to but he couldn't. It was barely audible even if the crowd was completely silent. You probably wouldn't be able to hear it, but Shinso managed to.
Dark Shadow dropped.
The manifestation collapsed like a structure whose foundation had been pulled.
The crowd was silent for a long three seconds.
Itsuki unfolded his arms.
Then someone in the upper seats started laughing.
Then more.
Then the sound built in the uncontrolled, unstoppable way crowds built sounds when they couldn't help it .
The commentator's voice broke upward into a register Itsuki associated with All Might sightings and emergencies.
Shinso dragged the frozen Tokoyami to the boundary line. His expression was…. Well unreadable his beak made it hard to recognise anything but if anything his eyes were one of betrayal, betrayal to himself for laughing at a bun so bad it overridden his physiological silence.
In the living room, Amane had her knees pulled to her chest and was staring at the screen with an expression that suggested she was revising several things simultaneously.
"A joke," she said, eventually.
"The sixth one I had prepared. The first five had roughly a forty-percent chance of not landing. This one had a guaranteed minimum response."
"How do you calculate a guaranteed minimum response for a joke," Amane questioned with a raised eyebrow.
"You find the intersection of the premise being coherent enough to process and terrible enough to produce an involuntary physical reaction before the brain catches up and tells the body not to."
"Itsuki."
"The hold only requires sound above a minimum threshold. The content is irrelevant. The sound is the mechanism."
She looked at him for a long, still moment, in the way she did when she was deciding which category something belonged to.
"That," she said finally, "is the most unhinged thing I have ever heard explained calmly."
"Hey it worked at least, so you can't doubt me."
She turned back to the screen. After a few seconds, the corners of her mouth started doing something she was actively trying to prevent.
Toru
ITSUKI
A joke he won by telling terrible jokes
also please tell me you have more of those because it managed to get TOKOYAMI OF ALL PEOPLE TO LAUGH!!! HOW!?!?
Round Four — The Semifinal
Midoriya Izuku
1-A Hero Course · Quirk: ???
Shinso's fourth match was announced.
The bracket shifted on the screen above the stadium until only two names remained.
Shinso Hitoshi.
Midoriya Izuku.
Itsuki had expected this matchup eventually, it was something that happened in the original so he had made sure that Shinso was prepared for it.
Shinso hadn't asked. He hadn't needed to. But Itsuki had still mentioned a few things—little tricks that might work, a lot of people in the Hero Course passed due to the fact that their quirks were highly destructive, the entire test pretty much favoured them, so he had made sure that Shinso learnt a few tricks against people like Midoriya.
Mostly psychological ones.
Before he gets like ten different abilities from that busted quirk
Midoriya stepped into the arena first.
He looked tense but focused. His eyes kept moving around nervously, he looked like he didn't belong here but Itsuki also knew his dangerous analytical skill with quirks, which was one of the best if not THE best in the entire show.
He had tons of notebooks just on quirks alone, although he predicted that half of them were just filled with All Might glaze and powerscaling.
Shinso walked in from the opposite side.
Hands in his pockets.
Wide grin on his face.
The referee raised his hand.
"Begin!"
Shinso moved first, he didn't close the distance but the one step that he took manage to shake Midoriya a little bit.
"You're Midoriya, right?" he said casually. "The guy who came first in the obstacle race right."
Midoriya looked up automatically.
"Y-yeah—" Midoriya shakily replied, which was one big mistake.
His nervousness had made him screw up.
Shinso's smile widened.
The brainwashing had taken hold instantly. Midoriya's body went slack, his eyes losing focus.
The crowd took a second to understand what had happened, this was by far the worst performance against Shinso.
Then the murmuring started. The entire crow facepalmed, class 1-A looked a bit disappointed.
"What—?"
"Did he just—?"
"Why did he speak? Does the kid not understand his quirk?"
Shinso didn't waste time.
"Walk forward," he ordered calmly.
Midoriya stepped forward.
"Stop."
He stopped.
From the stands, Amane leaned forward.
"…That was fast."
Itsuki nodded slightly.
"Midoriya talks when he's nervous. Shinso knew that, so he made sure to look intimidating, the constant confident smiles, hands in pockets, looking like he owned the place, this made Midoriya feel inferior of course."
"You evil bastard…" Amane muttered.
"Why are you looking at me? I'm not the one who's doing this?" Itsuki chuckled back.
Down in the arena, Shinso looked relaxed. Almost bored.
"Walk out of bounds," he said.
Midoriya turned.
He took one step toward the edge of the ring.
Then something cracked.
A sharp, ugly sound.
Midoriya's right hand jerked violently. His index finger bent at an angle it definitely wasn't supposed to bend at.
The crack echoed across the stadium.
The brainwashing shattered.
Midoriya gasped and stumbled, clutching his hand with clenched teeth.
Shinso's eyes widened.
The crowd erupted.
"What the hell was that?!"
"Did he break his own finger?!"
Amane stared.
"…He just broke his finger." she repeated again
"Yes," Itsuki said.
"Why would he do that? Was that on purpose maybe?"
"Yeah his quirk inflicts damage on him, probably because he hasn't properly adapted to it yet."
"Adapted?" Amane said but was met with no answer.
'Of course, Midoriya would be able to break free with sheer willpower. He may seem like a nervous and frightened wimp, but under pressure he turns into a diamond. He's able to swallow up all those doubts and worries and turn into the most courageous hero.' Itsuki sighed in thought. 'I had hoped that Shinso would be able to scare him enough in order not to get access to that courage, but I guess… I was wrong.'
*PLAY DEKU THEME IN BACKGROUND*
Down below, Midoriya straightened slowly.
His eyes were clear now.
Locked directly onto Shinso.
Shinso seemed to be lost in the eternal ocean of determination that shimmered of Izuku's bright green eyes.
Shinso clicked his tongue quietly.
"…That's annoying."
Midoriya didn't answer this time.
In the ring, Shinso tried again.
"Did that hurt?"
Midoriya didn't respond.
Shinso tilted his head.
"…You're just not going to talk, huh?"
Silence.
Midoriya shifted his stance instead.
Shinso sighed.
"Well, that complicates things."
The next few minutes were messy.
Without conversation, Shinso couldn't use his quirk.
So he fought normally.
Which meant dodging.
A lot of dodging.
"Come on… try harder Midoriya, isn't your quirk super cool or something?" Shinso taunted.
*BOOM*
A flash of green lightning came from Midoriya, the air had visibly twisted, sparks flew off everywhere, the ground had suffered some damage.
A huge chunk of the ground just disintegrated. Izuku had lost another one of his fingers.
Shinso had barely missed it, his hands were a bit of a mess from tanking some of the debris that came from the ground. He was a bit disorientated.
Midoriya had anticipated this and made his move.
A sudden dash forward.
Shinso reacted instantly, trying to slip past him—
But Midoriya grabbed his sleeve with his left hand.
The grip was rough but solid.
Shinso tried to twist free, he had managed to get one of Izuku's hands off his body.
But what he hadn't expected was a punch to his face.
Shinso went flying, but managed to stay just slightly in the ring. Midoriya was already on him and pushed him, Shinso tried with all his might to resist.
'I'm sorry to say Shinso but Midoriya's got you beat on the physical aspect. In a pure fight with no quirks, Izuki Midoriya will win. You did well to get here, but I guess your journey ends here.'
Shinso then tried saying something but Midoriya shifted his footing and pulled.
The buzzer sounded.
"OUT OF BOUNDS!"
The match was over.
Midoriya immediately let go and stepped back, breathing hard.
Shinso stared at the line for a moment.
Then he laughed quietly.
"Man."
He scratched the back of his head and walked off the ring.
Same relaxed pace as before.
From the stands, Itsuki watched him go.
A long time ago.
A small kid sitting on the floor in a kindergarten classroom. Purple hair messy. Eyes red from crying. Staring at his hands like he had just realized something important.
It wasn't the defeat… It was determination.
The same look Shinso had now.
Amane spoke softly.
"He did really well, it's so sad that he lost, he should've used that collar!" Amane said.
"I mean his quirk worked but Midoriya was just… well… crazy," Itsuki shrugged as he woke up from the couch and started walking away.
"Are you not going to watch the final matches?"
"Nah, I was only there for Shinso," Itsuki replied, "It was really fun seeing him go so far."
Amane had a slight devious smirk on her face," Going to sulk aren't you that your boyfriend lost," she teased.
Itsuki sighed, "Please don't say such weird things Amane." he replied and climbed towards his room.
Itsuki's phone buzzed.
Toru:
okay I might have been crying a little don't tell anyone
he worked SO HARD
tell him I said that. no wait I'll tell him. don't say anything
are you proud. you look like you're proud. I can tell even without seeing your face somehow. it's a talent I have
STOP IGNORING ME!!!
HELLO!?!?
HIII!!!?!?
IT SAYS READ
ANSWER
<<< 1 missed call >>>
Itsuki set the phone face-down.
"I don't know why I keep reading her messages," he muttered.
He sighed.
"Should I just block her?"
***
A/N: 6k words.
I rushed this a tiny bit, I used the ai sports festival as a way to demonstrate Shinso's growth, he still lost to Midoriya which I find kind of poetic.
I mainly focused on Shinso this chapter and the different things he has done to improve and more. I also didn't make Itsuki go U.A to show why most authors tend to go that way. It's pretty boring since all the action happens there, but don't worry he will have his time to shine.
Sorry for not uploading later, ermm hope you guys had a good meal.