● THE ALTAR OF AMBITION: THE INTRODUCTION
The air in the UA stadium was no longer oxygen and nitrogen; it was a pressurized mixture of anticipation, ozone, and the raw, kinetic heat of one hundred thousand souls. The very architecture of the arena seemed to lean inward, a concrete throat swallowing the light of the afternoon sun. Every seat was occupied, every camera lens was polished, and every heart was beating in a synchronized, frantic rhythm.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" Present Mic's voice didn't just come from the speakers; it seemed to erupt from the sky itself, a sonic boom that rattled the teeth of everyone in the front rows. "WE HAVE REACHED THE PEAK! THE QUARTER-FINALS CONTINUE WITH A MATCH-UP THAT NO ONE—I REPEAT, NO ONE—COULD HAVE PREDICTED!"
The Jumbotron flickered to life, split down the middle. On the left, a flickering green silhouette; on the right, a deck of cards fanned out like a white wing.
"ON MY LEFT! THE UNSTOPPABLE UNDERDOG! HE'S BROKEN EVERY BONE IN HIS BODY TO GET HERE, AND HE'S STILL HUNGRY FOR MORE! FROM CLASS 1-A, IZUKU MIDORIYA!"
The roar was a physical strike. Midoriya stepped into the light, his arms wrapped in thick layers of surgical tape, his breathing heavy and rhythmic. He looked like a soldier who had survived a war only to find another one waiting for him.
"AND ON MY RIGHT—THE ENIGMA! THE MAN OF PAPER AND DECEPTION! THE STUDENT WHO HAS GLIDED THROUGH THIS TOURNAMENT WITHOUT A SINGLE SCRATCH! SHERLOCK SHEET!"
Sherlock stepped onto the concrete stage, his face a mask of pale indifference. He adjusted his dark vest, his eyes scanning the crowd not for fans, but for the most efficient exit. The stadium went into a frenzy. To the crowd, this was the ultimate clash: the raw, bloody passion of Midoriya versus the cold, untouchable logic of Sherlock.
● THE GREAT REFUSAL: A STADIUM IN SHOCK
Sherlock stepped forward, his boots clicking rhythmically against the stone. He didn't look like a warrior. He looked like a man who had accidentally wandered into the wrong room on his way to a library. He wore a crisp, dark vest over a white button-down, and his hands—hands that had never known the rough calluses of manual labor—were meticulously clean.
Sherlock stopped at the edge of the painted ring. He looked at Midoriya's trembling hands, the way the boy's skin was mottled with purple bruises from his previous clash with Shinso. Sherlock sighed—a sound that, through the high-sensitivity microphones, echoed like a thunderclap of apathy.
He raised a single, bored hand.
"Wait," Sherlock said, his voice flat and conversational. "Midnight-san. Referee. I'm forfeiting."
The stadium didn't just go quiet; it went dead. It was the sound of a hundred thousand people holding their breath at once. The wind whistled through the support beams, the only sound in the vacuum of shock.
"What did he say?" Uraraka whispered in the stands, her hands frozen mid-clap.
"He's... quitting?" Kaminari blinked, leaning over the railing. "After getting this far? After beating Ojiro without even trying? Is he serious?"
In the VIP box, the glass around Endeavor's seat cracked as the hero's flames flared in a sudden burst of irritation. "Coward," he hissed. "He's insulting the very concept of this stage."
Arthur Sheets, however, remained motionless. He watched his son's back, his eyes narrowing. He wasn't surprised; he was calculating.
Sherlock turned away from the center of the ring, his hands sliding into his pockets. "Midoriya, look at yourself," Sherlock said, not even turning his head. "In your match against Shinso, you broke your fingers to break a trance. You are a biological disaster. I have no interest in participating in a match where my victory is determined by how much more self-destruction you can endure before you collapse. It's unsightly. It's irrational. I'm going to the cafeteria."
Sherlock began to walk toward the exit of the ring. Every step he took away from the center was a slap in the face of the UA tradition. The crowd began to murmur—a low, ugly sound of disappointment and confusion.
● THE WEIGHT OF THE WILL: MIDORIYA'S STAND
"Stop."
The word wasn't loud, but it was heavy. It was the sound of a man who had hit rock bottom and found a way to dig deeper.
Sherlock stopped, his heel hovering over the boundary line. He turned his head slightly, peering over his shoulder.
Midoriya was shaking—not from the cold, and not from the pain. It was a tremor of pure, unadulterated fury. His head was bowed, his messy green hair casting a shadow over his eyes.
"You're making fun of me," Midoriya whispered. "You're standing there, with all that talent... with a Quirk that lets you manipulate the world with the flick of a finger... and you're acting like this is a burden."
"It is a burden, Midoriya. It's a waste of energy," Sherlock replied, his tone clinical.
"YOU DON'T GET IT!" Midoriya roared, snapping his head up. Tears were pricking the corners of his eyes, but they were hot, angry tears. "Do you have any idea what people would give to be where you are? I spent fourteen years of my life being told I was nothing! I was quirkless, Sherlock! I was a glitch in the system! I had to work ten times harder just to get to the starting line, and even then, everyone told me to give up!"
Sherlock's expression didn't change, but his eyes tracked the green sparks beginning to dance around Midoriya's body.
"I studied every hero, every move, every strategy," Midoriya continued, his voice cracking with emotion. "I trained until my lungs burned and my muscles screamed. I earned this spot with blood! And you... you walk onto this stage with a gift that most people can only dream of, and you treat it like a chore? You treat this fight like it's beneath you?"
Midoriya took a step forward, the concrete beneath his boot spider-webbing under the pressure of One For All.
"Momo-san told me you're quitting the school. She told me you think being a hero is just a 'bad investment.' But being a hero isn't about the math, Sherlock! It's about the person who needs you! It's about the fact that if you walk away now, you aren't just quitting a match—you're quitting on everyone you could have saved!"
"Saving people is a job for the police and the specialized units, Midoriya," Sherlock said, his voice hardening. "I don't owe the world my life just because I was born with a high-utility Quirk."
"YES, YOU DO!" Midoriya lunged forward, the green lightning illuminating the entire arena. "Because you're the only 'Sherlock Sheets' there is! If you walk away, the world loses the things only you can do! I won't let you quit! I won't let you walk out of this ring until you look me in the eye and admit that you're just afraid of trying!"
Midoriya didn't wait for a rebuttal. He vanished in a blur of emerald light.
"DETROIT... SMASH!"
The shockwave of the movement alone sent Sherlock's hair flying back. The MC didn't have time to reach for his cards. The air itself seemed to solidify as Midoriya's fist approached his face—a physical manifestation of a boy who had nothing, fighting a boy who had everything and wanted none of it.
herlock's hand finally moved. Not with apathy, but with a sudden, sharp instinct of survival. The mask of the "lazy student" was gone. In its place was a technician who had just realized his opponent was no longer fighting for a trophy.
He was fighting for Sherlock's soul.
The Clash: Logic vs. Will
In an instant, Midoriya was gone—a blur of green light. To Sherlock, the world slowed into predictable vectors. Trajectory: linear. Velocity: Mach 0.8.
Sherlock flicked his wrist. "Glaze Wall: Level Three."
The cards expanded, weaving at a sub-atomic level into a crystalline barrier. CRACK! Midoriya's fist collided with the barrier. The shockwave sent a cloud of dust billowing outward. Midoriya didn't stop. He pivoted—a Manchester Smash—shattering the edge of the paper wall.
Sherlock retreated, his fingers dancing. He wasn't just throwing cards; he was painting a battlefield of hazards. Each snap of his fingers caused a detonation as pressurized glaze cards exploded like C4.
"Why are you even here?" Midoriya yelled, punching through razor-edged pages. "You have all that power, but you're just… playing!"
Sherlock's mask slipped. "What's the point of being serious? Being a hero is just a job! It's a cycle of futility!"
Midoriya skidded back, blood seeping through his uniform. He looked up with a sincere smile. "It matters to the people we save! It's about the person crying right in front of you!"
Sherlock felt a pang of doubt. He built a massive, reinforced paper wall. "Hope is a fragile thing! It breaks! My power makes things unbreakable, but even that is pointless if the world itself is fundamentally flawed!"
"You're a hypocrite!" Midoriya yelled, leaping high. "You're reacting to every move! You're not bored… YOU'RE JUST SCARED!"
The Revelation: The Pulp Princess's Legacy
The word hit Sherlock like a physical blow. Scared? The arena lighting flared as a power surge hit the stadium. Sherlock stared at his wall of paper; it felt as brittle as dried leaves. Suddenly, a memory he had suppressed for a decade surged forward. He saw her—Mayuri Sheets, known to the world as the Pulp Princess.
She was coming home from a night patrol, her cape torn to ribbons, her face bruised. She had spent fourteen hours in the rain, saving people from a collapsed subway tunnel. Sherlock, only eight years old, had asked her why she bothered when the city would just decay again.
She sat on the edge of his bed, her hand—rough and scarred—stroking his hair.
"Sherlock," she had said softly.
"People don't look at heroes to see if they win. They look at us to see if it's still possible to try. We aren't here to solve the world's problems; we're here to prove that the world is worth fighting for. Even if we only save one person, for that person, the world is fixed."Worth fighting for.
High in the VIP boxes, Arthur Sheets stood, his hand pressed against the reinforced glass. For the first time, the clinical mask of the CEO cracked. In the way Sherlock stood now, Arthur saw Mayuri.
"So, you finally found it," Arthur whispered. "The engine has a heart."
In the stands, Momo Yaoyorozu leaned forward, tears in her eyes. "You're not hiding anymore, Sherlock."
From the announcer's booth, Aizawa exhaled slowly. "About time."
Sherlock's eyes snapped open, glowing with piercing emerald clarity.
"Fine," he whispered. "Let's see if your worth can break my conviction."
The Final Clash: Mechanical Art — The Origami Singularity
Sherlock stopped retreating.
"Mechanical Art: The Origami Singularity."
Every scrap of paper in the arena began to vibrate. Shattered walls, spent cards, dormant constructs—all of it folded inward at impossible speed. Thousands of paper shards spiraled around Sherlock's arm, forming a massive, rotating mechanical gauntlet. Its mono-molecular edges screamed through the air.
Across the arena, Midoriya drew back his fist.
"100%… DETROIT SMASH!"
"HIGH-TENSION… PULP GRINDER!"
The collision was catastrophic.
Paper and lightning detonated in a blinding flash. The gauntlet shredded as it absorbed and redirected the impact, bleeding the force away in screaming spirals. The final shockwave hurled Midoriya backward to the edge of the ring and smashed Sherlock into the stadium wall.
Silence.
Midoriya lay unconscious. Sherlock pulled himself from the rubble, trembling but standing.
"Winner… Sherlock Sheets," Midnight announced.
Sherlock smiled faintly as paper fragments fell like snow.
● THE AFTERMATH: FRAGMENTS OF PEACE
The explosion final stage was a blinding pillar of light that shot straight into the clouds, parting the overcast sky to let a single beam of afternoon sun hit the ring.
As the dust settled, a heavy, ringing silence descended over the hundred thousand spectators.
Midoriya was the first to move—or rather, to fail. His body, exhausted and broken by the 100% output, slumped forward. He didn't fall; he simply drifted into unconsciousness before his knees even hit the floor. He lay at the very edge of the boundary line, a faint, peaceful smile on his bruised face.
Sherlock was still standing, but barely. His right vest sleeve was gone, his arm scorched and trembling. The massive paper gauntlet had disintegrated, leaving thousands of tiny white fragments falling through the air like an unseasonable snowstorm. His glasses were gone, revealing eyes that were no longer cold and calculating, but wide and filled with a raw, human exhaustion.
He looked down at his hands. They were covered in dust and blood. They were "imperfect."
"Winner... Sherlock Sheets," Midnight announced, her voice trembling as she lowered her arm.
The crowd didn't roar immediately. They were too stunned. They had expected a chess match; they had witnessed a war. Slowly, a single person began to clap. Then ten. Then ten thousand. The roar that eventually followed was louder than any explosion—a recognition of the boy who had finally stepped out of the shadows.
Sherlock didn't pump his fist. He didn't celebrate. He limped over to the unconscious Midoriya and looked down at him.
"You were right, Midoriya," Sherlock whispered, a small, genuine smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as the paper "snow" settled on his shoulders. "The math is broken. But I think I like the result."
In the VIP box, Arthur Sheets sat back down, his hands trembling ever so slightly. He had seen it. The shell had cracked, and what was inside was more powerful than even he had imagined.
Sherlock turned and walked toward the tunnel, leaving the "lazy student" behind in the rubble of the ring. He was going to the medical wing
Elsewhere, a scarred man watched from a flickering screen, holding a paper card.
"The Pulp Princess's legacy is hardening," he murmured. "Let's see if that heart survives the fire ahead."
Read My New Fanfic MHA:- The Sin-Eater