As Izuku got back to the seats, he was given a lot of encouragement by his fellow students. Pats on the back, congratulations.
He supposed he should feel happy about beating Todoroki, but the fact was that he just didn't.
Beating someone who was holding back just didn't feel right with him.
As he sat down in the seat that had recently been occupied by Mina(Who had headed down to prep for the next bout, which would be her against the girl from 1-B) Uraraka was strangely absent.
When he asked about that, the rest of the class just shrugged, saying she had left with Mina.
Nobody seemed to know more than that, so As Mei and Ibara stepped into the ring, he sat alone, and in silence to watch her and her ever cheery grin. Venom was still pissed at him and keeping his silence, so he wasn't even getting g comments from. Him. It was strange to watch one of the bouts with nobody at his side to talk to. Not Uraraka, not Mina, not Venom, and not Tenya.
So as he sat there, he instead took in the sight of the girl whose powers let her summon forth a torrentine of powerful green plant vines and the girl with the robot arms.
Now, she was still wearing the steampunk looking gloves, but she was now gripping the strange tube she had holstered to her belt, in her right hand, and brandishing it like it was actually a sword.
Said tube had a cable going straight down into the harness around her waist, so whatever it was, it was clearly powered by the same battery the arms were.
"AND NOW, WE HAVE THE BATTLE OF THE LADY OCTOPUS OF THE SUPPORT DEPARTMENT, WITH HER SINISTER ARMS AND LIGHTNING GAUNTLETS, AGAINST HER STANDS THE THORNY SAINT OF 1-B, HERE TO SEE GOD'S WILL DONE! WHO SHALL BE VICTORIOUS? LET US SEE… READY… SET… GO!!!"
Izuku was watching Mei closely as the battle began, and with his improved sight, he could see her push a button on her belt as a storm of vines shot forward against her.
Then, from the tip of the tube, green, burning light exploded, extending into a long, narrow blade of pulsing energy, nearly 2 meters long.
He blinked in shock, as Mei brought the fucking lightsaber in a sideways sweep, cleaving through the vines with such heat that not only did they instantly sever where they hit, but they ignited the vines themselves in green flames.
As Ibara recoiled from having her hair being set on fire, Mei quickly pushed herself back with her mechanical arms, easily avoiding the cut-off, burning parts of the vines, which hit the floor before burning themselves out to ash.
As Ibara was busy smothering the flames by slamming them down into the ground, Mei began on her sales pitch for this round.
"SUCH STRONG, POWERFUL VINES IBARA! BUT ALAS, PLANTS BURN! AND FEW THINGS BURN AS BRIGHT AS A SWORD MADE OF SEETHING, SUPERHEATED, OTHERWORLDLY ENERGY! BEHOLD THE POWER OF GEORGE LUCAS OLD SCIFI WEAPON BROUGHT TO LIFE INTO A REAL, PRACTICAL WEAPON IN THE FORM OF LUKE 23.4!"
Then, from below vines shot up from all around her! In front, behind, and to the sides, preparing to encase her in a cocoon, far more thorough than the way she had roped up Kaminari.
Then, the blade exploded far, far further in length, goes straight down sideways into the ground, turning the cement to molten glass the moment it touched it.
Mei then swiped the blade from one side of the arena to the other. The Vines still shot up, but were now obviously powerless, falling on top of Mei with no energy behind them, as Mei had severed them from their master down under the ground.
Mei quickly disentangled herself from the wines with her arms and went on selling her new sword.
"AND UNLIKE THE FICTIONAL PRODUCT THIS WEAPON TAKES INSPIRATION FROM, THIS WEAPON DOES NOT JUST COME IN ONE SIZE! INSTEAD, IT CAN BE MODIFIED TO BE ANYWHERE FROM 30 CENTIMETERS TO 10 METERS LONG! FAR, FAR MORE PRACTICAL TO USE, BOTH AS A WEAPON AND AS A TOOL."
As she talked, she did something at her belt, making the energy blade shrink down into a much more practical length.
This time the reaction was stunned silence from the entire arena, as everyone stared at the green blade, which was now about as long as the old Sci-fi weapon had been in the return of the Jedi.
Izuku was not a star wars fan, nor was he particularly familiar with any of the many, many different incarnations of Star Wars, but even he felt a certain level of awe watching the fluid way Mei turned the ground to glass and the vines to burning cinders.
"WITH THIS, I HAVE NOW BROUGHT THE LIGHTSABER FIRST BROUGHT TO REAL LIFE BY HACKSMITH INDUSTRIES IN THE 21TH CENTURY TO PERFECTION!"
And with that, she launched herself forward using the awesome power of her arms.
He wasn't sure what Mei had assumed Ibara would do, but the vine girl did not back away, nor shrink in fear. Instead, she did the exact same thing, launching herself forward using her vines, though hers was much more controlled than Mei's jump.
Then they smashed together into a flurry of green and Grey tendrils, that made it really hard to see what was going on.
Izuku instantly understood what Ibara had done. She had forced this into a close-quarters fight, where Mei could not use the sword to just cleave away at her plants, and sure enough, the blade when out, Mei apparently having retracted it.
Of course, getting into fisticuffs with Mei also meant exposing yourself to those gauntlets of hers.
Sure enough, with another blinding flash and a "CRACK" of thunder, the mass exploded into bright red light.
Ibara however, did not immediately go down, having seemingly used the same kind of grounding shield as she had used against Kaminari in their previous bout.
3 more blasts followed in the tangled mess, as metal and plants fought for dominance until finally, a metal tendril closed around Ibara's arm.
Then, To Izuku's complete shock, Mei brought up her gauntleted hand to said arm.
Ibara screamed as red light coursed through the arm in a shower of sparks, then through her body!
Then, she fell still, the mess of greenery immediately stopping to move.
"Winner Hatsune Mei!" Midnight announced as she walked over to where Mei was currently disentangling herself from Ibara's vines.
As Midnight called for some help from the robots to cut Ibara's vines away enough to easily move, Mei began walking away from the arena, one of her arms had completely blown it's fuses, and being carried by two of the others.
Like before, the end of the bout produced a hell of a lot of noise from people, as everyone began chatting about what had just happened, and how nifty her invention had been.
Izuku however, instead looked at her in silence, a level of fear pulsing through his body. He was going to have to face everything Mei had in her next round. And as he watched, he noticed that to her harness, she still had that metal ball attached. The final of the inventions that she had refused to leave behind during their talk.
If the tube was Luke, the gauntlets Mikasa, then that would probably be… He thought back… Eren.
How had she described it? It would just kill everything around it? Great. That probably meant she had yet to use her absolute best trump card.
...
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