God of Heroics: Comicman!

"SEMI-FINAL MATCH TWO!" Present Mic bellowed. "HONENUKI JUZO, THE RECOMMENDED STUDENT WHO SANK THE ARENA AGAINST ASHIDO AND BURIED KENDO IN FORTY SECONDS, VERSUS BAKUGO KATSUKI, THE MAN WHO CRACKED STEEL WITH HIS BARE HANDS! SOFTENING VERSUS EXPLOSION! LET'S GO!"

Honenuki walked out.

He'd had time to think during the previous match. Time to watch Manga dismantle Monoma without using his quirk. Time to sit with the knowledge that he was about to fight the most dangerous person left in the bracket, with a quirk that was terrible for the matchup.

Softening controlled the ground. Bakugo could fly.

No amount of secret training or Plus Ultra spirit changed the fact that his quirk was designed to fight people who stood on the ground, and Bakugo rarely touched it.

But he'd told his friends he would give it everything he had. And a man was nothing if he didn’t stick by his word.

Bakugo walked out of the opposite tunnel. Recovery Girl had patched him up after Tetsutetsu. The broken nose was straight again. The swollen eye was open. The bruises were gone. But healing cost stamina, and this was his fourth fight of the day. None of them were easy. Three rounds of Recovery Girl's quirk pulling energy from his body to mend bone and tissue.

He didn't look tired. Bakugo never looked tired. His red eyes burned the same way they had in the first round, and his palms were already crackling.

"START!!!"

Honenuki dropped and pressed both hands to the concrete.

The arena floor went soft in a wave. The entire surface turning to mud in three seconds flat.

Bakugo was already in the air.

He'd launched himself the instant Midnight's arm dropped, explosions firing from both palms, rocketing upward and forward in an arc that carried him fifteen meters above the stage. He looked down at the softened arena like someone looking at a puddle they'd already decided to step over.

Honenuki sank into his own terrain. If he couldn't fight in the air, he'd fight from below. He pulled himself under the surface and began moving, swimming through the liquefied concrete toward where Bakugo's shadow fell.

Bakugo fired downward. An explosion hit the mud and blew a crater in it, sending softened material spraying in every direction. Honenuki felt the shockwave through the mud and veered sideways, the blast missing him by meters.

Another explosion. Another crater. Bakugo was carpet-bombing the arena from the air, turning the softened surface into a churned-up mess of flying mud and concrete chunks.

Honenuki surfaced behind Bakugo's flight path and reached for the concrete at the edge of the ring, the only part he hadn't softened. He grabbed a chunk, softened it in his hand, then re-hardened it into a ball and threw it.

The improvised projectile arced upward toward Bakugo. It was fast but obvious. Bakugo blasted it out of the air without looking.

Honenuki threw another. And another. Softened chunks reshaped into balls, hardened mid-air, launched from different positions as he surfaced and dove and surfaced again. A barrage of stone projectiles from unpredictable angles.

Bakugo dodged the first three. Blasted the fourth. The fifth clipped his shoulder and he growled but didn't slow down. The sixth he caught with an explosion that turned it to dust.

"YOU THINK THROWING ROCKS IS GONNA WORK, SKULL FACE?!" Bakugo roared from above.

It wasn't going to work. Honenuki knew that. The projectiles were too slow and Bakugo was too fast. But they kept him moving, kept him burning fuel, kept his hands occupied with defense instead of offense.

Unfortunately for him the problem was fuel.

Honenuki didn’t know that Bakugo's quirk ran on sweat. The more he moved, the more he sweated, the stronger his explosions got. Fighting a prolonged aerial battle against a ground-based opponent was barely costing him anything. Meanwhile, Honenuki was burning stamina swimming through mud and throwing projectiles that weren't connecting.

The situation hadn't changed at all. In fact, it might’ve gotten worse for him.

Bakugo dove.

He came down like a missile, both palms forward, explosions compressing the air in front of him into a cone of force. He hit the softened arena surface and the explosion detonated on impact, blowing the mud outward in a ring that cleared a ten-meter circle around him. Solid concrete appeared beneath the blast zone where the force had compressed the softened material back into a hard surface.

Honenuki was caught in the shockwave. The mud he was swimming through suddenly wasn't mud anymore, the compressed force having re-solidified a section of it, and his left arm got trapped in hardened concrete up to the elbow.

He pulled. Softened the material around his arm with his quirk. Freed himself. But the half-second it cost him was enough.

Bakugo was already there.

A palm pressed against Honenuki's chest as he surfaced. Red eyes staring into his skull face from six inches away.

"Nice try."

The explosion hit him point-blank.

Honenuki flew backward out of the mud, his PE uniform scorched, his chest burning. He hit the soft material and sank, then surfaced coughing. The blast had rattled his ribs and knocked the wind out of him.

He tried to dive again. Bakugo was faster. Another explosion, aimed at the mud around Honenuki, compressed the surface and trapped his legs. Honenuki softened it. Bakugo compressed it again with another blast. A tug of war between softening and explosive force, with Bakugo's side winning because each blast came faster than Honenuki could undo.

The third explosion caught Honenuki and this time he didn't resurface.

Midnight waited three seconds. Then five.

"Honenuki is unable to continue! Bakugo wins!"

Medical robots entered the softened arena on hover platforms and extracted Honenuki from the mud. He was conscious, barely. His skull-like face was smeared with brown sludge, his PE uniform was a ruin, and his chest was mottled red from the point-blank explosions.

But he was smiling. The same lipless, terrifying smile that made children cry.

"Did my best…" he murmured to nobody in particular.

In the stands, Class 1-B clapped respectfully. They'd known the matchup was terrible.

"Plus Ultra." Pony said softly.

The others repeated it.

Bakugo stood in the cleared circle of his own making. His hands were smoking. His face was set in its permanent scowl.

He turned toward the 1-B section. His eyes found one person in the crowd.

Manga.

Manga looked back. He pointed at himself in confusion.

Bakugo pointed at him and used his thumb to cross his throat before he walked off the stage.

Thirty minutes.

That was the break between the semi-finals and the final. Thirty minutes for the arena to be repaired, for the crowd to buy overpriced snacks and use the bathroom, for the commentators to fill airtime with analysis and replays, and for two boys to prepare for the most important fight of their lives so far.

In the east waiting room, Manga sat on a chair.

Tokage sat next to him. Her legs were crossed and her sharp-toothed grin was locked in place. Her hand rested on his knee.

"How's your throat?" she asked.

"I’m good."

"How's your body?"

"Good too."

"He's going to come at you like a rabid dog."

"You’re worried about little ole me?" Manga turned to look at her.

Tokage kicked his chair over, causing him to fall.

"Go kick his ass."

"Uhh, sure!" Manga wouldn’t word it that way but yeah he planned to fight and to win.

In the west waiting room, Bakugo sat alone.

His elbows were on his knees. His hands hung between his legs, palms up, small sparks popping from the nitroglycerin on his skin. His red eyes were focused on the floor, but they weren't seeing concrete. They were seeing replays.

Bubble Boy walking through Icy-Hot’s ice like it was rain.

Bubble Boy running through fire without flinching.

Bubble Boy crossing ten meters in the blink of an eye and hip-tossing that Copycat Bastard before the guy could speak.

Bubble Boy not using his quirk. Against his own quirk. And winning.

The boy who'd beaten him for first place in the entrance exam. The boy who'd held the ten million point headband for the entire cavalry battle. The boy who hadn't lost a single round. The boy who'd suplexed Icy-Hot, the son of the #2 Hero, into the concrete and walked away without breaking a sweat.

Bakugo's hands clenched.

He didn't have a plan. Bubble Boy’s quirk had too many options to predict. Every onomatopoeia in the Japanese language was a potential weapon. You couldn't plan for everything.

So he wouldn't plan.

He would fight. He would adapt. He would refuse to stop until his body gave out or the match ended. That was always enough. It had to be enough.

He stood up.

Walked toward the tunnel.

The light at the end was gold and orange, the setting sun painting the arena in the colors of fire. Thousands of people were waiting. The entire country was watching. Every pro hero with a screen was tuned in.

Bakugo Katsuki walked into the light with his fists clenched and his jaw set and the absolute, unshakeable certainty that he was going to win.

Even if some part of him, buried deep beneath the pride and the fury and the ego, wasn't sure how.

The arena was pristine. Cementoss had outdone himself. The concrete was smooth, fresh, unmarked. A blank canvas for the final fight.

The sun sat on the horizon line, half-visible behind the stadium's upper rim, casting the stage in a warm golden glow that made everything look cinematic. The cameras were in position. The drones hovered at their corners. Every seat in the stadium was full.

The tunnels lit up.

Two figures emerged simultaneously.

From the east, Manga. His PE uniform was clean, replaced between rounds. His bubble was blazing. He waved to the crowd and they screamed his name.

From the west, Bakugo. His PE uniform was also clean. His face was healed. His hands were sparking at his sides. He didn't wave. He didn't acknowledge the crowd. He walked to his mark and stopped and glared across the ring at the boy who'd been first all day.

They faced each other across ten meters of clean concrete.

The noise in the stadium built. And built. And kept building until it pressed against the skull like a physical thing, a wall of sound that climbed and climbed and showed no signs of stopping.

In the stands, Class 1-B was on their feet. Every single one of them. Tokage at the rail, her green eyes burning. Kendo with both fists clenched. Monoma standing despite Recovery Girl's orders to rest. Tetsutetsu, Honenuki, Kamakiri, Awase, Shiozaki, Komori, Kodai, Kaibara, Tsuburaba. All of them.

Class 1-A was on their feet too. Kirishima at the front, his bandaged arms resting on the rail. Midoriya beside him, his notebook out, his eyes wide. Todoroki standing apart, his heterochromatic eyes unreadable. Uraraka, Kaminari, Sero, Jiro, Asui, Iida.

Two classes. One stage. The best of each.

Present Mic let the crowd noise crest. Let it hang there at its peak. Then he spoke.

"AT LAST, WE'VE ARRIVED!"

The crowd surged.

"THE BEST OF THE BEST AMONG U.A'S FIRST-YEARS WILL BE DECIDED!"

Louder.

"IT'S THE FINAL MATCH..."

Manga's bubble shifted. A single emoji. A fist.

Bakugo's palms crackled. Sparks danced between his fingers.

"FUKIDASHI VERSUS BAKUGO!"

The stadium shook.

"NOW, START!!"

They both rushed forward.

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