The cases arrived on a rolling cart, silver briefcases with each student's seat number printed on the side in bold red lettering. Twenty cases for twenty students, each one containing a hero costume built from scratch based on their quirk reports and body specifications. An affiliated company had taken their measurements, their quirk data, their personal requests, and turned all of it into something real.
Manga's fingers itched as he pulled his case off the cart.
He'd spent three weeks on that request form. Three weeks of sketching, erasing, re-sketching, measuring, and writing notes in margins until the paper looked like a rough draft for a manga volume. He'd drawn the costume from four different angles. He'd included color swatches. He'd written a two-page explanation of the design philosophy, which the support company probably hadn't asked for and almost certainly hadn't read, but he'd written it anyway because a hero's costume was a hero's statement and he refused to leave that to chance.
The locker room buzzed with the sound of twenty zippers opening at once.
"Whoa," Tetsutetsu said, pulling out chrome-tinted shoulder straps and a jaw guard with "Fe" stamped on the sides. "This is SICK. Look at the soles on these boots!"
"They gave me a cloak," Kamakiri said, holding up a dark green garment that looked like it belonged to a dark assassin. He put it on. Blades immediately poked through the collar. "Yeah, that's badass."
Monoma lifted his costume out carefully. Black double-breasted tuxedo with long tails, a dotted tie, and three stopwatches hanging from a belt. He held the jacket up against his chest and looked at himself in the mirror with quiet satisfaction.
Manga opened his case.
Deep cobalt blue. Warm cream-white. Vivid red accents. Ink-black trim.
The jacket sat on top, folded neatly, and even in the fluorescent light of the locker room it looked like something pulled from the cover of a manga volume. He lifted it out. The fabric had weight to it.
He put it on piece by piece.
The throat collar first. Padded inside for protection, shaped on the outside to look like the speech-bubble tail connecting a dialogue bubble to its speaker. A natural extension of his mutation. The jacket next, cobalt blue with red paneling at the forearms like speed lines drawn onto the sleeves. The back panel had his centerpiece: a splash-page illustration of children reading manga, laughing, eyes wide with wonder. Not photorealistic. Clean manga linework, ink on cobalt, like it had been drawn there by hand.
White trousers with red piping down the outer seams. White boots with blue accents and red toe caps. White gloves with ink-black detail lines at the knuckle joints, like the hands of a drawn character given form.
And on the chest, his hero name written as a bold manga sound effect: COMICMAN.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
A god-like hero stared back.
The speech bubble on his head cycled through several emojis in rapid succession, stars and sparkles and exclamation marks, before settling on a single image: a tiny version of himself in the costume, posing with both fists raised.
"Nice one, Fukidashi," Awase said from three lockers down. "The kids are gonna love you."
"That's the point." Manga spun.
They filed out of the locker rooms and into the sunlight of Ground Beta, and for the first time, twenty students of Class 1-B looked like heroes. Or developing heroes, for sure.
Kendo wore a teal qipao with a black corset and a domino mask, her ponytail swinging behind her as she walked. Tokage's bodysuit was purple and scaly, a domino mask over her eyes, her sharp teeth visible in a grin as she looked around at everyone else. Shiozaki wore a simple white robe that made her look like she'd walked out of a Greek mural. Shishida had swapped his glasses for goggles and wore nothing but pants and a shirt collar with no shirt, which was either a bold fashion choice or an understanding that Beast form would destroy anything else. Honenuki's full-visored helmet covered his skeletal face, and for the first time, he actually looked like a hero instead of something that would terrify children. A choice he most likely made knowing his appearance didn't look the most heroic.
Pony's jockey-themed costume drew immediate comments. Bondo's yellow suit made him look like an industrial mascot. Kuroiro's black jumpsuit made him almost invisible against his own skin, which was probably the point.
Shoda stood near the edge of the group in a black high-collared suit with pale white accents, a blue scouter-like device over his left eye and a radar on one gloved hand. He looked like a character from a sci-fi anime. He caught Manga looking and gave a small, sheepish wave. Manga gave him a thumbs up on the reference.
All Might was waiting for them.
He stood at the entrance to Ground Beta like a monument given permission to move, his cape catching the wind, his smile wide enough to be seen from the back of the group. The Number One Hero. The Symbol of Peace. Teaching a class of first-years how to be heroes.
"I AM HERE!" His voice rolled across the training ground like a thunderclap wrapped in enthusiasm. "Welcome to your first Foundational Hero Studies class! Today you will be participating in the Trial of Battle!"
He spread his arms wide.
"The scenario is simple! Villains have hidden a nuclear weapon inside a building. Heroes must infiltrate and either capture the villains or secure the weapon before time runs out. Villains must protect the weapon or capture the heroes before fifteen minutes elapse!"
He held up a box. "Teams of two, chosen by lottery! Your partner, your opponent, and your role, hero or villain, are all determined by the draw! In real life, heroes don't get to choose who they work with or who they fight. This simulates that!"
He pulled a slip of paper from the box.
"Both teams will receive a schematic of the building. The villain team enters first and has five minutes to set up defenses and position the weapon. After five minutes, the hero team enters. Each participant receives capture tape. If you wrap it around an opponent, they're out!"
He held up a roll of white tape.
"Everyone not participating in the current match will watch from the monitoring room with me. I want you studying what happens. Think about what you would do differently. Learn from your classmates' choices, good and bad!"
The lottery started.
Names were drawn. Pairs were formed. Some students pumped their fists. Some groaned. Some looked at their partner with the expression of someone trying to figure out if they'd just been blessed or cursed.
Manga watched the board fill in.
Match 1: Tetsutetsu & Kamakiri (Heroes) vs. Monoma & Shiozaki (Villains)
Match 2: Pony & Tsuburaba (Heroes) vs. Shishida & Rin (Villains)
Match 3: Yanagi & Kodai (Heroes) vs. Honenuki & Bondo (Villains)
Match 4: Kaibara & Komori (Heroes) vs. Awase & Kuroiro (Villains)
Match 5: Kendo & Tokage (Heroes) vs. Manga & Shoda (Villains)
Manga looked at the board. Looked at Shoda, who was standing two people away with his scouter glinting under the sun and his expression hovering somewhere between nervous and determined.
Then he looked at the other side of the matchup. Kendo. Tokage.
The class president. The recommended student.
A grin, wide and sharp and hand-drawn, spread across his speech bubble.
"Shoda-kun."
Shoda turned. "Y-yes?"
"We're villains."
"I can see that."
Manga put his arm around Shoda's shoulders. "Do you know what that means?"
"That we have to protect the weapon?"
"It means I'm not the man who will surpass God today." His voice dropped an octave, theatrical and dark, and the speech bubble above his neck shifted from its warm cream-white to something deeper, the lines inside it darkening like a manga panel entering a villain's inner monologue. "Today, I am the villain who will surpass the Devil."
Shoda stared at him.
"Let's conquer the universe, Shoda-kun."
"...I'll do my best."
Match 1 was loud.
Monoma had politely asked Shiozaki for permission to copy her Vines quirk before the match began. She'd granted it with a prayer for their success that made him a little uncomfortable. The two of them had spent their five minutes turning the weapon room into a thorny forest, Shiozaki's real vines layered with Monoma's copied ones, creating a living wall of bramble around the nuclear device.
It didn't matter.
Kamakiri walked into the building and started cutting. Every vine that reached for him met a blade growing from his forearm, his cheek, his shin. He carved through the halls like he was trimming hedges, green cuttings piling up behind him, a trail of severed plant matter marking his path. Monoma tried using the copied vines to restrain him from behind a corner and Kamakiri just produced a blade from the back of his neck and sliced through without turning around.
Tetsutetsu followed in his wake like a chrome battering ram. Any vine Kamakiri missed, Tetsutetsu tanked through. A tendril wrapped around his steel arm and he just flexed until it snapped. If enough vines managed to wrap around him though, he knew it would be game over.
In the monitoring room, the class watched.
"Kamakiri is the worst possible matchup for Shiozaki," Honenuki said quietly.
"More vines doesn't help either," Kaibara added. "Kamakiri's blades are too sharp."
On screen, Tetsutetsu burst into the weapon room. Monoma tried to stall him with a wall of thorns and Tetsutetsu punched through it, grabbed Monoma by the tuxedo collar, and wrapped capture tape around his wrist before the blond could switch to a different copied quirk.
Shiozaki fought harder. Her vines surged from every direction, wrapping Tetsutetsu's arms, his legs, pulling him back. For a moment it looked like she might take him. But Kamakiri came through the door behind him and cut every vine connecting her to Tetsutetsu in three clean swipes.
Capture tape. Match over.
Heroes win.
"An unfortunate loss," All Might said during the critique. "Young Monoma and Young Shiozaki's defense was sound in concept, but Razor Sharp is a direct counter to Vines. Sometimes the draw decides the fight before it begins. The lesson: always have a back-up plan that doesn't rely on your quirk."
Monoma apologized to Shiozaki for bringing her down. She told him that he didn't bring her down. They just didn't plan well enough like All Might said. Next time, they need to keep in mind what if their quirks aren't enough. Monoma agreed with a small smile on his face.
Match 2 was a chase.
Shishida in Beast form turned the building into a hunting ground, his enhanced nose tracking Pony and Tsuburaba through walls. Rin held the weapon room with scales bristling, firing projectiles at anything that moved.
But Pony never touched the ground.
She launched herself on her horns the moment she entered, flying through corridors at head height, too fast and too maneuverable for Shishida to catch on all fours. Tsuburaba followed behind her, sealing off corridors with invisible air walls that Shishida slammed into face-first, his enhanced nose doing nothing to detect transparent barriers.
Pony reached the weapon room. Rin's scales bounced off her horns. She detached two more, pinned Rin to the wall through his cloak, and touched the nuclear device.
Heroes win.
"Mobility," All Might declared. "Young Tsunotori's ability to bypass ground-level defenses entirely made the villain team's strategy irrelevant. Young Tsuburaba's air walls turned one of the Beast's assets, his speed, into a liability. Excellent teamwork!"
Pony pumped her fist. Tsuburaba grinned.
In the corner of the monitoring room, Shishida sat with his glasses perched on his nose and his expression thoughtful. He'd learn from this.
Match 3 was elegant.
Honenuki softened every floor in the building into quicksand. Bondo sprayed adhesive across every doorway. The building became a swamp of traps, every step a risk, every surface ready to swallow or stick.
Yanagi floated.
She levitated herself on a metal panel, hovering six inches off the ground, and carried Kodai with her. Every piece of debris in the building became ammunition as Kodai enlarged screws and bolts into battering rams and Yanagi hurled them through doorways ahead of them, triggering Bondo's glue traps from a safe distance. They navigated the building without touching a single trapped surface.
Honenuki tried diving through the softened floors to ambush them from below and Yanagi caught him mid-emergence with a levitated desk to the face, pinning him half in and half out of the floor while Kodai enlarged a filing cabinet on top of him.
Bondo panicked, sprayed glue in every direction, and got his own feet stuck. Kodai shrank him a capture tape's worth and Yanagi floated it around his wrists.
Heroes win.
"Synergy," All Might boomed. "Young Yanagi and Young Kodai's quirks complement each other so naturally that their combined output exceeded the sum of their parts. Young Honenuki, your terrain control was excellent, but an airborne opponent negates it entirely. Consider vertical threats in your future strategies!"
Honenuki nodded from behind his visor, already taking mental notes.
Match 4 was dirty.
Awase welded every door shut on the first three floors. Kuroiro melted into the shadows and waited.
Kaibara drilled through the first welded door with Gyrate. Then the second. Then the third. Komori walked behind him, spreading spores through the building, mushrooms blooming on every dark surface she could reach.
Kuroiro watched from inside a shadow on the ceiling. Komori's mushrooms were growing on the walls near him, on the floor below him, closing in on every dark surface he could use. His hiding spots were shrinking by the second.
He moved.
He burst from a shadow behind Komori, grabbed her, and Awase appeared from a side room and welded her shoes to the floor before she could react. Capture tape around her wrists. Komori was out.
Kaibara turned, drills spinning. But Kuroiro was already gone, melted back into the one shadow Komori's mushrooms hadn't reached yet. Awase came at Kaibara from the front with a welded shield fused to his forearm, tanking a drill punch that would have sent anyone else flying. The impact rattled his teeth but held.
Kuroiro emerged from behind and wrapped capture tape around Kaibara's spinning arm. The gyration almost tore it free, but Awase grabbed the other end and welded it to Kaibara's gauntlet.
Villains win.
"Timing and teamwork!" All Might said, clearly impressed. "Young Kuroiro's patience in waiting for the right moment to strike, combined with Young Awase's creative use of his quirk for both defense and restraint, won that match. Young Kaibara, Young Komori, you pushed them hard. The mushroom strategy nearly eliminated Kuroiro's advantage. A few more seconds and the outcome might have been different."
Match 5.
The monitoring room got quiet.
On the screen, the building designated for the final match stood silent against the afternoon sky. Three stories. Concrete and steel. Standard layout, hallways branching off a central stairwell, rooms on either side.
Inside, the villain team had just started their five minutes.
Manga stood in the weapon room on the third floor with the fake nuclear device behind him and a grin in his speech bubble that had menacing teeth.
"Five minutes," he said. "Here's the plan, Shoda-kun. I'm going to trap this entire building. Every floor, every hallway. By the time I'm done, walking from the entrance to this room will be the worst fifteen minutes of Kendo and Tokage's lives." He then looked at him. "Shoda-kun, what's your quirk? I saw you do something at the ball throw but I didn't get a clear look."
"Twin Impact. If I make contact with something, I can set off a second impact on that exact spot later. Remotely; I just say the word and it triggers wherever I last touched." A beat. "The second one's a lot stronger than the first."
Manga's speech bubble lit up with a row of loading dots. "So you tap something light now, and blow it open whenever you want."
"Basically."
"Could you double one of my words? If I land a blunt hit and you trigger the same spot,"
"Maybe, if the timing worked." Shoda frowned, turning it over, and then the nervous set of his shoulders changed into something quieter and a little sharper. "But I don't need your words for it. I can set my own marks. I just have to touch them first."
Manga's bubble went still.
"Here's the thing I was already going to do," he said slowly. "There's a silence field going up on the corridor they have to cross to reach this room. Shiin. No sound in, no sound out, and it runs cold. My plan was to stash you there and have you jump them on the way past."
"You wouldn't have to," Shoda said, and now the idea was coming faster than his shyness could keep up with. "If they can't hear me and can't sense me behind them, I don't ambush them in the corridor at all. I walk up behind each of them in the quiet and touch them once. Light. They won't notice a tap they can't hear, not after everything else you've put them through. I set a mark on both of them, fall in behind, and follow them all the way to this room. Then whenever you give the word, they both get hit at once by something a lot worse than a tap. From inside their own guard."
For a long second Manga said nothing.
Then his bubble detonated into fireworks with a tiny triumphant cartoon Shoda at the center of them.
"Shoda-kun," he breathed, theatrical and delighted. "You’re an amazing villain. Truly sinister."
"Th-thank you?"
"I keep their eyes on me from the front, loud as I can be, so they never think to look back. You bring their downfall in behind them, riding on their own shoulders." Manga clapped once. "They'll walk all the way to the Devil's door and never know they’ve already been poisoned."
"That's kind of evil."
"We're the villains today. Try to keep up, dude."
Shoda tucked the schematic into his belt and straightened. "I understand."
"Good. Now stand back. This is going to take all five minutes."
Manga started on the first floor and worked his way up.
"Beto-beto." The entrance hallway. The kanji formed in his mouth and plastered across the floor, sinking into the concrete until the surface turned sticky icky.
He moved to the next corridor. "Nuru-nuru." The floor became slick and frictionless. Anyone hitting this without warning would go down hard.
The stairwell landing between the first and second floor. "Fura-fura." The kanji hung in the air at head height like a floating mine. Walk through it and the world tilts. Balance gone. Inner ear screaming that you're falling when you're standing still.
Second floor doorway. "Fuwa-fuwa." The letters formed an arch over the frame. Step through and gravity loosened, feet leaving the ground, body drifting upward. Fighting while floating was like throwing a punch underwater.
Second floor corridor. "Zuki-zuki." Throbbing, pulsing pain that settled into the skull. A migraine hallway. Anyone walking through it would feel their concentration crack like glass under pressure.
Third floor approach. "Shiin." The big one. Absolute silence. No sound entered. No sound left. And with the silence came cold, not freezing, but enough to make muscles clench and reactions slow. This was where Shoda would wait.
The last hallway before the weapon room. "Doro-doro." Viscous resistance. The floor became thick, clinging, like wading through waist-deep mud. Every step a war. Every second in it draining whatever reserves you had left.
Manga stepped back into the weapon room. His throat felt warm. He'd used his quirk steadily for five minutes and his voice knew it. He took a sip of water from the bottle clipped to his belt.
Seven traps. Three floors. One path that got worse with every step.
"Shoda-kun. You're up. Get to the Shiin corridor. Good luck buddy!"
Shoda gave a small salute and jogged out of the room, taking his position in the silent hallway. Manga watched him disappear into the cold, soundless void and then turned to face the weapon.
He cracked his neck. His speech bubble shifted to villain-black, the panel lines darkening, white text appearing in reverse against the dark field.
"Now then," he said to the empty room. "Let's see how the heroes handle true hell. MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
In the monitoring room, All Might watched the villain team's preparations on the screens. His smile hadn't wavered, but his eyes were sharp.
"Young Fukidashi has turned the entire building into a trap," he murmured.
"I'm glad he's a good guy." Kaibara muttered.
"Could you imagine that goofy dude as a villain? It'd be terrifying." Rin shook his head.
"I'd be too busy laughing before one of his words put me out of commission." Kamakiri chuckled.
"The potential of his quirk is absurd…" Kuroiro muttered.
On the adjacent screens, the hero team was studying their copy of the building schematic outside.
The horn sounded. Five minutes up.
Kendo and Tokage stood at the building entrance in full hero costume, schematics memorized, earpieces live.
"Three floors," Kendo said. "Central stairwell. The weapon is probably on the top floor."
"I'll send a piece ahead to scout." Tokage split off a chunk of her face containing one eye, guiding the flesh-colored fragment through the open doorway like a drone.
The eye piece flew three meters into the entrance hallway and hit the Beto-beto field.
It stuck to the floor.
"What the..." Tokage's remaining eye blinked. She tried to recall the piece. It didn't move. "My eye is stuck. There's something on the floor."
Kendo crouched and looked. The hallway floor had a faint sheen, and hovering above it, barely visible, were kanji characters embedded in the surface. Beto-beto.
"He trapped the entrance." Kendo's jaw tightened.
"Let me try another way." Tokage detached three more pieces, sending them through windows on different sides of the building.
Two of them she lost in seconds. Her hand piece drifted into a hallway where the air had gone thick as syrup, and the wading-through-mud field closed around the flying flesh and would not give it back; she pulled until she felt the focus bleed out of her other pieces, then let it stay. Her torso fragment crossed a knot of kanji on a stairwell landing, and the disorientation didn't bother with the piece at all, it ran straight up the thread she'd run to it and broke over her own head, the whole stairwell heaving, every piece she held lurching at once before she clamped down and barely saved the set. The second eye got luckier: it drifted under an arch meant to strip its weight, a float trap, on a girl made of floating parts, and sailed through without a bob, right up until the corridor past it drove a migraine up behind her good eye and she lost that one too, between blinks.
"He trapped the whole building." Tokage recalled what she could and reattached, grimacing. "Every route I tried has something different. Sticky floors, slippery surfaces, a dizzy field, some kind of zero-gravity zone. I can't get a good look without losing pieces."
Kendo took a slow breath. "Then we go together. On foot. Through the front."
"Through the traps?"
"Through all of it." Kendo enlarged her fists. "I'll break whatever needs breaking."
They went in.
…
The class watched on the monitors.
The Beto-beto caught Kendo's boots immediately. She felt the adhesive grab and pulled hard, her enlarged fists slamming the ground ahead of her to shatter the kanji apart. The letters cracked under Big Fist's force, the adhesive field dying in that section, but every step required her to break the floor first and then walk over the rubble.
Tokage tried floating pieces ahead to spring the traps early, but the floor traps had nothing to do to a scout that never touched down; her pieces sailed over the slick stretches and told her nothing, while the ones that grabbed cost her a piece every time. She gave up the approach after the third loss.
"This is stupid!" Tokage stepped onto the Nuru-nuru floor and immediately lost her footing. Kendo caught her arm. They pressed against the wall and inched forward, boots finding no grip, every step a gamble.
"This is his quirk?" Tokage hissed. "He can just make floors impossible to walk on?"
"Let's keep moving." Kendo struggled to smile. The traps were getting to her as well.
They reached the stairwell. Fura-fura hit them both.
The world tilted. Kendo's inner ear screamed that she was falling sideways even though she was standing still. She grabbed the railing, knuckles white, jaw clenched. Tokage staggered into the wall, both hands flat against it, eyes squeezed shut.
"Just... keep... going..." Kendo forced out.
They pushed through. The dizziness faded once they left the field's range, but the damage lingered. Their balance was off. Their steps less sure. The confidence they'd walked in with had been chipped away.
Second floor. Fuwa-fuwa.
Kendo's boots left the ground. She floated up, arms flailing, her enlarged fists pulling her off-balance in the weightless space. Tokage was the less troubled of the two; floating was halfway to her nature, and she used her pieces to brace and steady, keeping Kendo from smacking into the walls.
"There!" Kendo spotted the kanji above the doorframe and hurled a fist at it. The impact cracked the letters. Gravity returned and both of them dropped. Kendo landed on her feet. Tokage's pieces reassembled on the way down and she hit the floor in a heap, cursing under her breath.
"I hate traps!"
"Keep going."
Zuki-zuki hit them in the second-floor corridor. The headache came on like a vise, sudden and pulsing, settling behind their eyes. Kendo pressed her palm to her temple. Tokage's floating pieces wobbled in the air as her concentration fractured.
"He put a HEADACHE in the hallway?!" Tokage's voice cracked.
"Just keep swimming..."
"Swimming?! What are you talking about?!"
"Sorry, was thinking of a movie." She formed a half-smile with a clenched fist.
They climbed the last stairwell. Every step heavier than the one before.
Shiin hit them at the top of the stairs.
All sound vanished.
Kendo opened her mouth and nothing came out. She tapped Tokage's shoulder. Tokage turned, mouth moving, words lost to a silence so thick it felt physical. And it was cold. Not freezing, but cold enough to make sweat feel icy. Cold enough to tighten every muscle they had left.
They couldn't communicate.
They couldn't hear anything.
So they never heard the short boy in the cartoon-inspired costume peel out of the alcove behind them. Shoda's heart was going hard enough that he was sure they'd feel it through the floor. They didn't. The silence swallowed his steps; the cold swallowed his breath. He came up on Kendo's blind side, matched her staggering pace for half a stride, and pressed two fingers flat to the back of her shoulder. Light. A tap, nothing more. His scouter blinked as the mark set. She didn't so much as flinch; she couldn't have heard it if she'd tried.
Tokage next, and harder, because her pieces drifted at the edges of her and any one of them might brush him. He waited for her attention to pull forward, toward the room and the noise Manga was about to make, and laid two fingers on the small of her back. Mark set. He stepped off her heel and let the gap open.
Two marks. Two heroes. Neither of them knowing she was carrying a second impact into the room with her.
The marks wouldn't keep, though. He had maybe a minute in them, less if Fukidashi-kun loved the sound of his own villain voice as much as he seemed to. Shoda let out a slow, shaking breath that no one could hear, and fell in behind them.
Kendo and Tokage pushed through the Shiin zone and stepped into the Doro-doro.
The floor became mud.
Thick, clinging, viscous resistance that grabbed their ankles and pulled at every step. Tokage tried to float her pieces forward and the heavy air dragged them through the mud like everything else. Kendo powered through on leg strength alone, her enlarged fists punching forward through the viscous air, but she was slow. They were both slow. And tired. And hurting. Seven traps, each one taking a little more, and they were not the same heroes who'd walked in eight minutes ago.
The weapon room door was right there.
Kendo smashed it open with Big Fist.
Inside, the fake nuclear device sat on a table in the center of the room. And standing beside it, hands on his hips, cobalt blue jacket flaring from the breeze of the destroyed door, was Manga Fukidashi.
His speech bubble was pitch black. The panel lines had gone dark and angular, like a villain's splash page. White text appeared in reverse against the void.
"WELCOME," the text read, "TO THE LAIR OF THE VILLAIN WHO WILL SURPASS THE DEVIL."
Then he spoke, and his voice came out deeper, rougher, dripping with theatrical menace.
"Did you enjoy my evil booby traps?! I hope so! I spent the whole five minutes on them! Personally, I think the Zuki-zuki was a nice touch. The headache hallway. That was my favorite." He laughed. It was a full villain cackle, loud and sharp, scrolling across his bubble in jagged lettering. "MWAHAHAHAHA!"
Kendo's eye twitched. Mud on her boots. Head still throbbing. Balance still not right.
"I'm going to wrap you in so much capture tape, All Might is going to need to give me a second one." she said.
"Threats, threats!" Manga wagged a finger. An exaggerated manga-villain grin stretched across his bubble. "You're welcome to try, heroes! But I should warn you, you're not in any condition to fight the Devil!"
Tokage's teeth ground together. "I swear, Fukidashi, when I get my hands on you..."
Behind them, at the mouth of the Doro-doro, Shoda watched his scouter count down and felt the marks starting to go stale. Maybe thirty seconds left in them. Manga had his hands on his hips and the look of a man who could keep this up until sundown. Please, Shoda thought, please get to the part where I do the thing.
"You won't." Manga's grin sharpened to a point, and as if he'd felt the same clock, he stopped drawing it out. "Because the Devil keeps a partner. And you walked right past him."
His bubble flashed a single black arrow, pointing over their shoulders.
"FELLOW EVIL-DOER. IF YOU'D BE SO KIND."
Both heroes started to turn.
"Twin Impact."
Shoda's voice, small and certain, right at their backs. They never finished the turn. The two marks he'd set in the silent corridor went off at once, and the second hit was nothing like the tap that planted it. Kendo took hers in the back of the shoulder, a wrecking ball where a fingertip had been, and her spent legs buckled, dropping her face-down into the Doro-doro. Tokage took hers at the small of the back, the air driven clean out of her, pieces scattering across the mud as her focus tore apart.
For a moment the two of them could only lie in the muck, stunned, trying to work out how a blow had landed without anyone touching them.
Shoda was already moving, wading through the mud he'd known would be there, a roll of tape in each hand. One around Tokage's wrist while her pieces were still finding their way home. One around Kendo's before her fist could find the floor to push off.
"Sorry, Kendo-san. Tokage-san." He meant it. He probably always would.
Kendo got a fist half-enlarged and shaking before the tape and her own wrecked balance won out, and she sank back into the mud.
Two heroes wrapped. Worn down by seven floors of trap, and closed out by the quiet boy they'd never once thought to watch.
Manga looked down at them. His speech bubble shifted from villain-black back to warm cream-white. The evil text vanished, replaced by a bright sunshine emoji.
"Good battle!" he said, in his normal voice. "You guys made it way further than I expected!"
"WE KNOW YOU'RE LYING!" Tokage screamed from the floor.
All Might's voice came through the building speakers.
"VILLAIN TEAM WINS!"
In the monitoring room, the class sat in silence for a long moment.
Tetsutetsu's mouth was hanging open. Kamakiri's arms were crossed but his eyes were wide. Monoma was staring at the screen with an expression that couldn't decide between admiration and envy.
Honenuki spoke first. "He turned the entire building into a booby trap."
"Every trap was different," Kaibara said. "No repetition. And he placed them to get progressively worse. By the time they reached the weapon room, they'd already lost."
"And Shoda," Pony started, then switched to English, then back. "Shoda was such a good minion!"
"Minion?" Kaibara huffed. "He walked up behind the two of them in the pitch dark and marked them both. They never felt a thing. Fukidashi set the table. Shoda's the one who ate."
"The poor lambs never had a chance," Shiozaki murmured.
Kuroiro, from his corner, said nothing. But he was leaning forward.
All Might stood before the reassembled class. Kendo had mud on her costume and a look that promised she'd be training twice as hard in the gym after school today. Tokage had already told three people she was going to beat Manga up after school. Shoda was standing beside Manga, doing his best to be invisible.
"The MVP of Match 5," All Might said, "is Young Shoda."
Shoda blinked. "M-me?"
Manga's speech bubble displayed a clapping emoji.
"Young Fukidashi's trap preparation was exceptional. The variety, the layering, the progression of difficulty, all outstanding." All Might paused. "But it was Young Shoda whose contributions decided the final confrontation. His patience in the silence corridor was an amazing ambush. The best villain team is one where both members are essential. Young Fukidashi created the gauntlet. Young Shoda closed the trap."
Shoda's round face had gone bright red.
"It was Fukidashi-kun's traps, sir," he said quickly. "They could barely stand by the time they reached me. I just touched them."
"Don't let him talk you out of it." Manga clapped him on the shoulder. "The traps were the easy part. He walked up behind the two scariest girls in our class in the pitch dark and marked them both without a sound. That's nerve I'm not sure even I've got, Sensei."
All Might's grin widened. "Your partner is right, Young Shoda. Take the credit. You earned it."
Shoda looked at the floor, somehow redder, and managed the smallest nod.
"That said." All Might looked at the whole class. "I want everyone to think about what you saw. Young Fukidashi turned a standard building into something that two highly capable heroes could barely navigate. His quirk's versatility, combined with preparation time, makes him an extraordinary defensive fighter." He let the words settle. "But what would happen if the time limit were shorter? If there were no five-minute setup window? Consider the gap between a prepared Fukidashi and an unprepared one. That gap is where opportunity lives for those of you who might face him in the future."
He let the question hang.
"For your first training exercise, you all performed wonderfully! Change out of your costumes and return to the classroom. Dismissed!"
The class broke apart. Conversations started up immediately, loud and animated, everyone processing what they'd just seen and done.
Kendo walked up to Manga. Mud still on her boots.
"Next time," she said, "I'm bringing earplugs and a broom."
"Won't help with Beto-beto."
"Then I'll bring bigger fists and a worse attitude."
Manga's bubble displayed a handshake emoji. Kendo took his hand. Her grip was iron and her eyes said this isn't over.
Tokage passed by without stopping but pointed at him with a detached finger that flew across the gap between them. "You. Me. Rematch. Soon." The finger rejoined her hand with a soft pop.
Shoda was surrounded by classmates. Pony was asking about Twin Impact through a mix of Japanese and English. Tsuburaba wanted to know if he could double-impact an air wall. Awase was telling him his scouter looked sick. Shoda answered everything with the flustered gratitude of someone who still didn't fully understand why anyone was paying attention to him.
Manga watched from a few steps away. A small, warm smile appeared in his bubble. He changed out of his costume, packed it carefully back into its case, and headed for his next class.
AN: I did indeed change Manga's costume from canon.