Recovery Girl offered to heal the worst of it, but Fushiguro refused. Her quirk would burn through stamina he still needed for his shikigami.
By the time he stepped back into the stadium, the burns along his left arm had been wrapped, his ribs bound tightly enough to make every deep breath annoying, and the ache behind his eyes had settled into something constant. The crowd didn't care. If anything, they were louder than before. The entire Sports Festival had narrowed down to one match.
Present Mic leaned so far over the edge of the commentary booth that Aizawa caught the back of his jacket before he could pitch himself into open air. "IT'S FINALLY HERE! THE LAST BATTLE OF THE U.A. HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS FESTIVAL! ONE MATCH LEFT TO DECIDE WHO STANDS AT THE TOP OF THE FIRST YEARS!"
The enormous screens above the stadium changed.
FUSHIGURO MEGUMI
VS
BAKUGO KATSUKI
The roar that followed rattled through the concrete under Fushiguro's shoes. Across the arena, Bakugo rolled one shoulder and stared straight at him. No grin. No yelling. Not yet.
Fushiguro stopped at his starting position. Bakugo's eyes moved over the bandaging around his arm, the bruising along his jaw, the deliberately shallow way he was breathing. "You look like shit."
Fushiguro flexed his fingers once. "Feel like shit."
Bakugo's mouth curled. "Then don't drop dead before I beat you."
"Wasn't planning on it."
Midnight raised one arm, and the stadium seemed to tighten around both of them. "Begin!"
...
Fushiguro's hands moved first. His shadow erupted, hundreds of white bodies pouring across the arena floor, Rabbit Escape swallowing the space between them in seconds, spilling over one another in a dense wave before surging around Bakugo from every direction at once. Rabbits climbed over his boots, his legs, his waist. More crashed in from behind until he disappeared entirely beneath a living mound of white fur.
Present Mic nearly choked. "FUSHIGURO OPENS WITH THE RABBIT SWARM! HE'S BURIED BAKUGO ALIVE!"
A flash burned inside the pile. Bakugo's voice came from somewhere beneath it. "GET OFF ME!"
BOOM.
The center of the swarm exploded, rabbits blasting outward in every direction and dissolving into black shadow before they hit the ground. Heat rolled over the arena. Smoke punched a hole through the center of the formation, and Bakugo came through it fast.
Fushiguro's eyes narrowed. Bakugo wasn't clearing the rabbits and resetting. He was already attacking.
Totality burst from Fushiguro's shadow, lunging for Bakugo's exposed side. Bakugo fired one palm, not at the dog but at the air beside himself, the explosion kicking his body sideways just enough that the jaws snapped shut beside his ribs instead of through them. He twisted in the same motion, his other palm flashing, and Fushiguro dropped into his shadow a half second before the blast tore through the space his head had occupied.
Bakugo's boots touched concrete. His eyes snapped left immediately, finding Fushiguro rising from another patch of shadow, and fired again. Toad's tongue wrapped around Fushiguro's waist and yanked him sideways, the blast ripping through empty air where he'd been standing.
Bakugo landed and skidded. "STOP FUCKING RUNNING AWAY!"
He blasted after him. Fushiguro let Toad release and dropped into the shadows, and Bakugo angled downward, palm already open, only for Fushiguro's shadow to catch him before the explosion did, vanishing into black. Bakugo's blast cratered the empty floor.
Fushiguro surfaced behind him, Totality coming with him, the massive black dog tearing free from the shadow and lunging. Bakugo heard the claws scrape concrete and didn't turn, firing downward instead, the explosion launching him clear over the attack as Totality's jaws closed beneath his boot. He twisted midair and fired again, not backward this time but sideways, and Nue came screaming down from above, forcing him to roll around the diving bird by less than a meter, one arm nearly brushing its wing.
He landed. The shadow beneath his right foot gave way, his boot sinking to the ankle before his eyes went wide and Fushiguro was already moving, Great Serpent erupting from the floor, jaws snapping toward him from below. Bakugo detonated both palms at once, the sudden lift ripping his foot free before the shadow could swallow more of it, and Great Serpent missed him by inches as he shot higher into the air.
Fushiguro watched him go. There it was. That was the actual problem. Bakugo wasn't treating the shikigami like opponents at all. He didn't care about beating them. He only cared about getting around them, and it didn't matter that Totality could pursue, that Nue could dominate the air, that Great Serpent could close enormous distances in a single strike, if Bakugo could simply alter his own direction before any of them ever connected.
He descended in a spiral of smoke. "You think I wasn't watching your fights?!"
Fushiguro raised his arms. Bakugo's heel slammed into his guard, driving him backward, and he fired from the same hand he'd used to stabilize himself mid-kick. Fushiguro twisted, the blast catching his shoulder instead of his chest, heat ripping across the bandages, and dropped into shadow before the second hand could fire. Bakugo's explosion struck bare floor, black smoke rolling outward.
Fushiguro surfaced beside Toad.
'He watched every fight closely, he's smarter than he seems or acts.' Not just the obvious parts either. Bakugo had studied the timing, the exits, the patterns, everything Fushiguro tended to do under pressure.
Up in the booth, Aizawa leaned forward. Present Mic glanced over. "You're making that face."
"What face?"
"The teacher face."
Aizawa ignored him, watching Bakugo blast sideways as Totality came at him again. "He did his research."
"That surprising?"
"No. That's the point." His eyes tracked the movement carefully. "He knows he doesn't have to defeat the constructs. He's timing his own movement around them and going straight after Fushiguro instead."
Present Mic grinned. "SO HE'S CUTTING OUT THE MIDDLEMAN!"
"Basically." It was the same strength Bakugo had shown all tournament, the way his instincts sharpened every time something actually pushed back against him.
Bakugo hit the ground again. Fushiguro's shadow shifted beneath him, and Bakugo blasted upward immediately, the surface beneath his boot softening a fraction too late to catch him. He looked down, then back at Fushiguro. "Stop screwing with me."
Fushiguro said nothing.
Bakugo's grin widened. "Fine." He stayed airborne.
...
Fushiguro changed tactics, turning Toad into less of an attacker and more of a second set of limbs. Bakugo fired from above, and the tongue wrapped around Fushiguro's arm and snapped tight, pulling him sideways before the blast landed. Bakugo tracked him, fired again, and Toad swung him around the edge of the shockwave, catching his clothes but missing his body entirely. He planted one foot mid-swing, redirected, and released.
Bakugo adjusted instantly, a small blast from his left palm shifting his whole body half a step sideways in the air, his right hand firing a beat later. Fushiguro ducked, the explosion ripping over his head, and answered with Rabbit Escape again, not around Bakugo this time but directly between them, hundreds of bodies flooding upward like a moving wall.
Bakugo lost him in it. "Again?!" He blasted straight through, white bodies scattering, and found nothing on the other side. His eyes swept the ground. A shadow behind him rippled, and he turned and fired. Nothing. A second shadow moved, and he fired there too. Nothing.
Bakugo's eye twitched. "YOU'RE REALLY PISSING ME OFF!"
"Not trying to."
"THAT MAKES IT WORSE!"
Fushiguro almost smiled. Almost. Bakugo caught it anyway, his expression darkening as Toad's tongue shot toward him. He moved to evade, and toad changed the angle mid-throw, the tongue curving to wrap around his ankle instead.
"TOAD'S GOT HIM!" Present Mic shouted.
Toad pulled. Bakugo's body jerked toward him, and for one second the whole setup worked exactly as intended, Totality crouched and ready beside him. Bakugo looked down at the tongue around his ankle, then back at Fushiguro, and his grin came back.
Fushiguro's stomach dropped.
Bakugo fired both palms behind himself at the exact moment Toad pulled, the two forces combining into something far faster than either alone. He became a projectile. Fushiguro's eyes went wide.
'Too fast.'
"Shit."
Bakugo crossed the distance in an instant, his knee burying itself in Fushiguro's ribs. Pain detonated through his whole side, and he folded as Bakugo grabbed his uniform. "Got you." The explosion launched him backward. He hit concrete shoulder-first, rolled twice, and barely managed to sink into his shadow before Bakugo crashed down exactly where he'd landed, broken concrete scattering everywhere.
Fushiguro surfaced several meters away, one knee down, hand pressed against his ribs. Breathing hurt now.
Bakugo straightened. "Don't hand me free momentum, dumbass."
'Noted.'
...
Great Serpent came next, regular size this time, not the monstrous version he'd forced out against Todoroki. He didn't have the stamina left for that. It tore across the arena, carving through broken concrete as it snapped toward Bakugo, who waited, waited, then fired at the last possible instant, his body shooting sideways just as the jaws closed on empty air.
Totality came from the opposite direction. Bakugo twisted midair, fired again, missed. Nue descended from above. He flipped beneath its talons, missed again. Fushiguro emerged from shadow directly under him, and Bakugo's eyes snapped downward in time to block the punch that followed, the impact landing clean anyway. His other hand opened beside Fushiguro's head.
Fushiguro vanished. BOOM. Smoke tore across the arena.
Bakugo landed hard. "You're too slow!" Great Serpent struck again, and he blasted clean over its head. "You've got all these damn monsters." Totality lunged, and he kicked off a broken slab of concrete to explode out of range. "And none of them can fucking touch me!"
Fushiguro stood still for half a second, breathing louder now. Bakugo was right, and worse, he was making Fushiguro pay for every single miss. Totality dissolved. Nue returned to shadow. Great Serpent disappeared. For a moment Fushiguro had nothing manifested at all, and he felt the difference immediately, his shadow heavier, his body heavier, even summoning Totality again suddenly costing more than it had five minutes earlier. His ribs weren't helping. Neither were the burns. But those weren't the real problem.
The real problem was simpler than that. Bakugo wasn't defeating the shikigami. He didn't have to. Every dodge forced Fushiguro to spend again. Every escape forced another summon. Every attempt to create an opening cost stamina he didn't have an infinite supply of, and Bakugo only had to keep moving.
'I'll collapse first.'
Fushiguro looked up. Bakugo was breathing hard too, but nowhere near as hard as he was. Then he noticed something else. His last shadow transition had been slower, barely, a fraction, and Bakugo had fired at the exit before he was fully clear of it. Another fraction and that blast would have caught him in the face.
Bakugo only needed to notice once.
Fushiguro lowered his eyes, shadow spreading beneath his shoes. He thought about Rabbit Escape, hundreds of bodies, numbers, confusion. The rabbits themselves had been useless against Bakugo, one explosion erasing the whole swarm in a single motion. But the rabbits had never really been the point. The numbers were.
He stared into the darkness beneath him. 'I don't need the rabbits.'
The shadow moved. Bakugo's brows pulled together. Another Fushiguro stepped out. Then another. Then another.
Present Mic went completely silent. A fourth emerged. Then a fifth.
Bakugo stared. "What."
Six Fushiguros stood across the arena, identical down to the uniform, the bruising, the bandages, the exact same flat expression. Present Mic finally found his voice. "WHAT THE HELL?!"
Aizawa's eyes widened slightly. Bakugo looked from one to another, then back again. "You've gotta be kidding me."
All six moved at once.
...
The first attacked from the front. Bakugo threw a straight punch, and the clone slipped outside it exactly the way the real Fushiguro would have. A second came from the left, and he blocked the kick. A third attacked low, forcing him to jump, and the fourth was already there, an elbow slamming across his jaw and snapping his head sideways. He fired immediately, and the clone took the explosion straight in the chest, bursting into black shadow.
'Clones,' Bakugo thought, eyes narrowing.
Another Fushiguro drove a fist into his stomach. He grunted, swung, got blocked. A second copy caught his wrist. Another kicked the inside of his knee, and he stumbled just enough for the real Fushiguro to come through the opening and bury an elbow into his ribs. Bakugo coughed. Then another hit him from behind. Then another.
Present Mic was losing his mind entirely. "HE'S GETTING JUMPED BY FUSHIGURO! BY FUSHIGUROS! I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO SAY THIS!"
Aizawa ignored him, eyes moving rapidly between the figures. "They're not visual decoys."
"What?"
"They have weight." One clone punched Bakugo, boots skidding from the impact. "Same strength." Another caught an explosion and immediately collapsed into shadow. "But not the same durability."
Bakugo ducked beneath a punch, and another caught him in the shoulder. He couldn't tell which one was real, and that was the actual problem. They moved the same. They hit the same. They reacted the same, and every second he spent testing one gave another an opening. Three converged at once, one blocked, the second grabbed his arm, the third caught him clean in the face. His lip split.
His expression changed. Fushiguro saw it happen. Bakugo stopped trying to identify him at all and blasted straight upward instead. The clones looked up as one. He climbed higher, higher, then started rotating, smoke wrapping around him, explosions firing in careful sequence, building speed with every revolution.
Up in the stands, Midoriya shot to his feet. "Oh no."
"What?" Uraraka asked.
His eyes tracked the rotation. "He's adding momentum." Every revolution meant another burst layered on top of the last one, speed compounding on speed until the whole spin itself became the weapon rather than just the delivery for one.
Bakugo spun faster. Fushiguro looked up as he disappeared inside a tornado of smoke.
"HOWITZER-"
Fushiguro's hands came together, his shadow buckling under the sudden demand. 'Too wide to dodge.'
"Max Elephant."
Present Mic shouted. "THE ELEPHANT!" Water flooded across the arena as Bakugo descended.
"IMPACT!"
The world turned white.
BOOOOOOOOOOM.
Water flashed into steam. The blast vaporized the whole space around his descent and drove a shockwave through the arena hard enough that Cementoss's barriers cracked outright, Present Mic ducking, Aizawa's scarf whipping violently behind him. The entire field vanished beneath steam, smoke, and broken concrete.
Fushiguro felt the heat first, then the pressure. Max Elephant took part of it. Not enough. The shockwave threw him, his back striking the arena once, twice, his injured arm scraping concrete, and he lost track of which way was up before hitting again.
Then everything went quiet.
...
Bakugo landed in a crouch, smoke pouring from his hands, breathing hard. The arena in front of him had vanished entirely beneath steam.
Present Mic slowly stood. "What." He coughed. "What the hell was that?!"
Aizawa stared through the white cloud. "Rotation. Momentum. Explosion."
"That's your explanation?!"
"He turned himself into the projectile."
Bakugo straightened, steam drifting around him. Nothing moved. He clicked his tongue. "Don't tell me that's it."
A shadow shifted. He froze. A hand pressed against the concrete, and Fushiguro dragged himself upright, one knee first, then the other, breathing ugly now, bandages partly burned away, blood running from his forehead.
Bakugo stared. Fushiguro looked back at him through the steam. "Still here."
Something like a grin found its way back onto Bakugo's face. "Good."
...
There wasn't much left to spend. Fushiguro knew it. Full summons came with a weight he simply couldn't keep paying, so he stopped trying to maintain any of them. A brief strike from Totality, gone. One strike from Great Serpent, gone. Toad only long enough to move him, gone. Everything got shorter, cheaper, sharper.
Bakugo adapted right alongside him. A shadow copy emerged, and he blasted it immediately. Another came from the side, and he punched straight through it. Shadow. The real Fushiguro appeared behind him, and their forearms crashed together as he blocked. Fushiguro elbowed. Bakugo slipped it. Bakugo punched. Fushiguro rolled beneath it. Bakugo's palm flashed, and Fushiguro sank into shadow, the blast hitting bare floor. He emerged near the boundary, Bakugo already chasing.
Rabbit Escape flooded between them again. Bakugo blew straight through the wall of them, and Fushiguro was already gone. "QUIT HIDING!" Toad's tongue snapped out. Bakugo saw it, smiled, and let it wrap around his waist anyway. Fushiguro pulled. Bakugo fired behind himself.
Again. The exact same trick, tongue and explosion combining into real speed. Fushiguro watched him come.
'There.'
Shadow copies rose up in the lane. Bakugo blasted through the first, shadow, the second, shadow, the third, shadow. "GET OUT OF MY WAY!" He came through the last one, and the real Fushiguro rose directly beneath him. Bakugo saw him. Of course he did.
Their fists collided. His other hand came up, and Fushiguro caught the wrist. Bakugo grinned. "Got you." The palm began to glow.
Fushiguro couldn't shadow-travel fast enough. Couldn't afford another summon. So he did the thing he already knew was stupid. Lightning flashed across his fist, and Bakugo saw it a half second too late. Fushiguro's fist struck his forearm.
CRACK. Electricity snapped through both of them at once. Pain tore through Fushiguro's already ruined hand, and Bakugo's arm spasmed hard enough that the explosion fired sideways instead of forward.
BOOM. The blast missed Fushiguro's head by inches. Bakugo's balance broke, and Fushiguro stepped inside, one hand catching his wrist, hip turning, shoulder driving underneath. Bakugo's eyes went wide as Fushiguro threw him toward the boundary.
He twisted midair, free palm igniting on reflex, and Fushiguro saw the correction coming before it finished forming. Of course he was going to try it. Water gathered around Fushiguro's one working hand shaped in the form of a gun. Bakugo fired. Fushiguro fired back, the compressed water jet striking not at Bakugo himself but directly across the vector of the explosion, cutting the force out from under it entirely.
Bakugo's body shifted. Barely. A few degrees. His eyes went wide.
His boot came down outside the line.
Silence. Bakugo stared at his own foot. Fushiguro stood inside the boundary. For one second Midnight looked almost as stunned as everyone else in the stadium. Then her arm came down.
"Bakugo Katsuki is out of bounds!"
The stadium erupted. "FUSHIGURO MEGUMI WINS!"
Present Mic's voice crashed over the noise. "THAT'S IT! THE WINNER OF THIS YEAR'S U.A. HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS FESTIVAL IS FUSHIGURO MEGUMI!"
Fushiguro's knees nearly gave out. He caught himself. Barely.
...
Across the line, Bakugo stayed exactly where he'd landed, shoulders rising and falling, staring at his own boot outside the boundary before looking up at Fushiguro. He'd studied Fushiguro. He'd adapted to every single thing Fushiguro had thrown at him. He'd used everything he had.
And he'd still lost.
Bakugo's jaw tightened. Fushiguro walked closer to the boundary, and Bakugo glared up at him. "Don't you fucking say 'good fight.'"
Fushiguro stopped. "I wasn't..."
Bakugo stared at him for another second. "Good."
Fushiguro turned to go.
"Fushiguro."
He stopped. Bakugo was still sitting outside the ring, expression not softened at all. "I'll beat you next time."
Fushiguro looked back over his shoulder. "Then catch up."
Bakugo's eye twitched. "YOU-"
Fushiguro kept walking. Behind him, Bakugo finally exploded. "GET BACK HERE, YOU SHADOW BASTARD!"
Present Mic laughed so hard he nearly fell out of the booth again. Aizawa caught his jacket without even looking over.
Above the arena, the massive screen changed one final time.
U.A. SPORTS FESTIVAL
CHAMPION
FUSHIGURO MEGUMI
...
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