God of Heroics: Comicman!

The corridor became a war zone in three seconds flat.

Two hundred students hit the bottleneck at the same time. Elbows. Shoulders. Fists. Bodies slamming into bodies. Someone stepped on Manga's foot and someone else's elbow caught him in the ribs and the whole corridor was a grinding mass of PE uniforms and panic.

"Hey, move!"

"This is too narrow!"

"Ouch!"

"Get off me!"

Then the temperature dropped.

Todoroki. His ice raced across the floor of the corridor, freezing feet to the ground, locking dozens of students in place. It spread fast, a sheet of white frost that crackled across concrete and turned the bottleneck into a skating rink.

Class 1-A avoided it. They'd trained with Todoroki. They knew what was coming.

Class 1-B avoided it too. Because they'd trained under double gravity, and a sheet of ice wasn't even close to the worst thing they'd dealt with at 6 AM.

Kaibara gyrated out of the ice the second it touched his shoes, his legs spinning free, and shouldering through three frozen general studies students. Awase looked up, saw Pony surfing overhead on her horns, and welded himself to her ankle. She yelped in surprise but kept flying, dragging him out of the corridor and into open air. Kamakiri stabbed his arm blades into the wall and scaled along it like some sort of creature, hand over hand, above the entire crush. Kuroiro pressed his palm against the dark and phased into it, sliding through the shadow of the tunnel roof and dropping out the other end.

Kendo, Shishida, Tetsutetsu, Shoda, Kodai, Komori, Rin, Bondo, and Monoma brute-forced their way through. Gravity-trained bodies that had been squatting under twice their weight for two weeks shoved through the crush like it was a crowded hallway, not a barricade. Tetsutetsu went steel and shouldered students aside. Shishida didn't even need Beast form.

Shiozaki extended her vines to the ceiling and pulled herself above the crowd, gliding over heads like a vine-covered angel. Tsuburaba created invisible air platforms and hopped above everyone, his solid-air stepping stones invisible to the students below who couldn't figure out why someone was running on nothing. Tokage split into pieces and her fragments floated through the gaps in the crowd, reassembling on the other side. Honenuki softened the ice under his feet and walked through it like it was mud, the frost parting around his ankles. Yanagi levitated herself above the entire mess.

The ice path Todoroki left behind was slick and treacherous. Students were sliding, falling, grabbing at walls.

1-B adapted.

Awase just leaned forward and slid, using the ice like a ramp. Monoma did the same. Kuroiro copied the sliding approach. Kendo, Kodai, and Komori surfed the ice on their feet, arms out for balance, gravity-trained legs keeping them upright where others would have fallen. Kaibara activated Gyrate on his legs, his rotation chewing through the ice under his feet as he ran. Kamakiri did the same with his blades, each step cracking the frost. Shishida crushed the ice beneath his weight with every stride. Tetsutetsu did the same, each steel footfall shattering the frozen surface. Shiozaki used her vines to keep herself from falling. Shoda and Bondo moved carefully but steadily, picking their way through. Rin slid forward on his scales.

Manga was already gone.

He'd said "Byuun" the instant the gate opened, and the corridor was a memory before the ice even formed. He shot out of the tunnel like a bullet, standing on top of the onomatopoeia meaning fast zooming or streaking launching him into the open field ahead of every other student. Behind him, Pony was surfing on her horns at speed, and Tokage's pieces were floating in their wake.

"WHAT AN EXPLOSIVE START!" Present Mic's voice shook the stadium speakers. "CLASS 1-B'S FUKIDASHI MANGA BLASTS OUT OF THE GATE LIKE A ROCKET! AND HE'S NOT ALONE! SEVERAL CLASS 1-B STUDENTS ARE RIGHT BEHIND HIM, ALREADY AHEAD OF THE PACK!"

"How unexpected," a teacher in the faculty area of the stands murmured. "Most of the students who've gone ahead are from Class 1-B."

Class 1-B informed me that they intensified their training after hearing what Class 1-A went through at the USJ! All Might thought to himself. Some sort of super secret training regimen, and it looks like that training is paying off! A majority of Class 1-B has an early lead, even above Class 1-A, who have firsthand experience against real villains!

First Barrier: Robo Inferno.

"OBSTACLES HAVE SHOWN UP SUDDENLY!" Present Mic shouted. "STARTING WITH THE FIRST BARRIER! ROBO INFERNO!"

The army of robots blocked the path. One-pointers, two-pointers, three-pointers, and towering behind them all, the massive zero-point villains. The same colossal machines from the entrance exam, their red eyes scanning the approaching students.

"Aren't those the zero-point villains from the entrance exam?!"

"This is what they meant by obstacles?!"

"There are too many! I can't get through!"

"Seriously?! The hero course had to fight THOSE?!"

"I wonder where they got the money for it?"

Manga didn't slow down.

He opened his mouth, took a breath, and spoke.

"Dokkaan."

The word erupted from his throat and formed in the air, massive and dark, the kanji for a ground-shaking explosion. It slammed into the cluster of zero-pointers at the front of the robot army and detonated.

Three zero-pointers went up at once. Metal screeched. Limbs flew. The explosion carved a smoking crater in the robot blockade, debris raining down in pieces. The shockwave rippled backward and toppled two more zero-pointers like dominoes, their massive frames crashing into the smaller robots behind them.

Manga kept running. His throat stung, but it was manageable. A single Dokkaan didn't wreck his voice the way it used to. Months of vocal training had widened the road.

"INCREDIBLE!" Present Mic was losing his mind. "FUKIDASHI MANGA, THE STUDENT WHO SCORED FIRST IN THE HEROICS ENTRANCE EXAM, AND ONE OF THE RARE FEW TO DESTROY A ZERO-POINTER SOLO, JUST WIPED OUT MULTIPLE ZERO-POINTERS IN A SINGLE SHOT! THIS KID IS THE REAL DEAL, FOLKS!"

Behind him, Class 1-B hit the robot wall and tore through it.

Awase slapped his hands against two three-pointers and welded them together, their limbs fused at the joints, immobilized and useless. Kaibara drilled straight through a one-pointer's torso, Gyrate turning his arm into a metal-shredding drill bit. Kamakiri went to work like he'd been born for this, blades flashing from every limb, slicing robot arms off at the joints, carving legs out from under two-pointers, leaving a trail of dismembered machinery behind him.

Kuroiro rode along underneath Pony's shadow as she surfed on her horns overhead, phasing from her shadow to the shadow of a falling robot and back again, slipping through the chaos. Kendo smashed robots with enlarged fists, her martial arts form turning every punch into a demolition swing. Shishida didn't bother with Beast form. He grabbed a one-pointer by the leg and swung it into two others, then vaulted over the wreckage.

Kodai, Komori, and Yanagi stuck close to Shoda, who was boxing his way through the smaller robots, his Twin Impact turning each punch into a two-hit combo that sent bots flying. Shiozaki wrapped her vines around a three-pointer and crushed it, thorns puncturing hydraulic lines. Tsuburaba was just walking over the robots entirely, stepping on invisible air platforms above the fray.

Tetsutetsu went full steel and charged through the center of the robot army, smashing everything in his path. A falling zero-pointer, toppled by Todoroki's ice from behind, nearly crushed him. He burst through the robot’s body alongside someone from Class 1-A.

Tokage floated her pieces around and through the robots, never presenting a single target. Honenuki softened the ground ahead of him, and three robots sank to their waists in liquefied concrete, stuck and helpless. He sunk into the material and swam past them. Bondo sprayed adhesive across a cluster of one-pointers, gluing them together in a useless mass, and Monoma ran through the gap Bondo had created.

"VLAD KING, YOUR CLASS IS AMAZING!!!" Present Mic shouted. "WHAT ARE YOU TEACHING THEM?!"

In the faculty area, Vlad King's lower canines showed as he laughed loudly. He often bragged about his kids to the other faculty members.

Todoroki had frozen his own path through the robots, elegant and efficient as always. Bakugo was flying over them with explosions. Midoriya was using a metal plate to slice through the smaller bots. Yaoyorozu had created a cannon. Class 1-A was strong, experienced, battle-tested.

But Class 1-B was right there with them. And in several cases, ahead.

Second Barrier: The Fall.

"HEY, HEY! THE FIRST BARRIER'S A PIECE OF CAKE?!" Present Mic sounded genuinely surprised. "THEN WHAT ABOUT THE SECOND?!"

The pit opened up in front of the runners. A massive canyon with stone pillars connected by tightropes. Fall and you're out.

"IF YOU FALL, YOU'RE OUT! IF YOU DON'T WANNA FALL, THEN CRAWL! IT'S 'THE FALL'!"

Manga didn't crawl.

"Fuwa-fuwa."

He floated across the entire pit in a gentle arc, feet never touching a rope, the weightlessness carrying him like a leaf on still air.

"AND NOW, THE LEADER OF THE PACK IS EASILY GETTING THROUGH FIRST!" Present Mic shouted.

"That guy in first place is way ahead!" someone in the crowd called out.

"His quirk is really versatile."

"It looks like a game to him. He isn't even trying, it doesn't look like."

"Even Endeavor's son is having trouble keeping up with him."

"The blood of the guy second only to All Might?! Then who is that weird speech bubble kid?!"

"People are going to be fighting over who gets him as a sidekick."

Behind Manga, 1-B crossed the pit their own ways.

Pony surfed across on her horns. Kuroiro phased into the shadow of Pony's horns and rode across inside the darkness. Tokage split and floated her pieces across the gap. Tsuburaba ignored the tightropes entirely and created invisible air platforms, running across thin air while students below watched someone sprint across nothing. Yanagi levitated herself over.

Awase welded himself to the rope, reached further along, unwelded, rewelded, inching forward like a human caterpillar. Not fast, but impossible to fall. Kodai touched her tightrope and enlarged it, turning the thin wire into a walkway wide enough to run across. When she reached the other side, she shrank it back to normal, and students who'd been walking behind her yelped as the walkway vanished under their feet.

Shiozaki swung from the ropes to reach the pillars on her vines, using far more mobility than anyone’s ever seen her use. Shishida ran across the tightrope on all fours, his massive hands and feet finding balance that shouldn't have been possible for someone of his size. Bondo stuck himself to the rope with his adhesive and walked along it carefully. Monoma crawled at his own pace. Everyone else balanced their way across.

Then Todoroki and Bakugo made their move.

They'd been closing the gap since the Robo Inferno, and by the time the front runners reached the final barrier, Todoroki and Bakugo were right on 1-B's heels. Angry. Determined. Not used to being behind anyone but themselves.

Bakugou had it rough enough with Deku and Half-and-Half Bastard. Now these nobodies from class 1-B were showing him up too?! Who the hell even were these assholes?!

Final Barrier: The Minefield.

"AND NOW, WE'VE QUICKLY ARRIVED AT THE FINAL BARRIER!" Present Mic announced as the leaders reached the last stretch. "THE REALITY HERE IS THAT IT'S A MINEFIELD! IT'S SET UP SO THAT YOU CAN TELL WHERE THE MINES ARE IF YOU LOOK CAREFULLY! SO YOU HAVE TO USE YOUR EYES AND LEGS! BY THE WAY, THESE LANDMINES ARE FOR GAMES, SO THEY'RE NOT THAT POWERFUL, BUT THEY'RE LOUD AND FLASHY ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU WET YOUR PANTS!"

The minefield stretched between the students and the stadium entrance. Patches of disturbed earth marked the buried charges.

Manga floated over it. Fuwa-fuwa was still active. The mines were irrelevant to someone who wasn't touching the ground.

Pony was right behind him, surfing on her horns above the field. Kuroiro rode in the shadow of her horns, hopping between dark patches on the ground.

That's when Todoroki and Bakugo stopped caring about the mines and started caring about the students in front of them.

Bakugo launched himself forward with an explosion, aiming straight for the cluster of 1-B students entering the minefield. The blast wave triggered three mines behind him and sent dirt and smoke into the air. Todoroki froze a path ahead of himself and sprinted down it, ice crackling under his feet, cutting through the minefield like it wasn't there.

"GET OUT OF MY WAY!" Bakugo roared, explosions popping from both palms.

Pony looked back. Two horns detached from her head and shot at the incoming 1-A students. Todoroki created an ice wall to block. Bakugo blasted the horn away with an explosion, but both lost seconds dealing with it.

Manga glanced over his shoulder without slowing down.

"Gon."

The blunt impact kanji formed and launched backward, slamming into Todoroki's ice wall and shattering it. Fragments rained down onto the minefield, triggering two more mines. Todoroki had to create a new ice platform to avoid the chain of explosions at his feet.

That was enough. Manga and Pony kept their lead. Todoroki and Bakugo fell back, furious but slowed.

Behind the leaders, the minefield became a brawl.

Not between 1-A and 1-B. Between everyone. General studies students who'd been struggling to keep up saw the minefield as an equalizer. Support course students with gadgets found their moment. And within 1-A itself, the competition went internal. Bakugo was blasting forward without caring who was in his radius. Todoroki was freezing paths that helped others when he was avoiding that initially. Midoriya was on his hands and knees, digging up mines with his metal plate, piling them together for something nobody understood yet.

Class 1-B was different.

They were racing each other. Nobody was giving up a position willingly. But they weren't sabotaging each other either. When Honenuki softened a path through the mines, Shoda and Bondo used it too, and Honenuki didn't collapse it behind him. When Kamakiri found a clear lane by stabbing the earth ahead of him and feeling for mines, Rin followed in his footsteps. When Tetsutetsu triggered a mine accidentally and the explosion revealed a clear stretch behind it, he yelled "CLEAR PATH HERE" and three classmates used it.

They watched Class 1-A fighting each other to get ahead. Explosions hitting ice. Ice blocking paths. Students shoving students.

1-B raced. 1-A fought. The difference was visible from the stands.

"VLAD KING, YOUR CLASS IS AMAZING!!!" Present Mic repeated for the third time, genuinely bewildered. "SERIOUSLY, WHAT ARE YOU TEACHING THEM?!"

"Vlad King mentioned his class has been doing supplemental training since the USJ incident," Aizawa mentioned from the commentary booth. "Whatever they've been doing, it's clearly paying off."

"SUPPLEMENTAL TRAINING?! MOST OF CLASS 1-B IS AHEAD OF CLASS 1-A RIGHT NOW! WHAT KIND OF TRAINING DOES THAT?!"

"This kind apparently."

Manga crossed the minefield without touching the ground. He landed at the stadium entrance, well ahead of anyone else, and jogged through the tunnel back into the arena.

"U.A. SPORTS FESTIVAL, FIRST-YEAR STAGE! WHO COULD'VE PREDICTED THE DEVELOPMENTS AT THE BEGINNING OR THIS CONCLUSION?! RIGHT NOW, THE FIRST PERSON BACK IN THE STADIUM IS THAT MAN... FUKIDASHI MANGA'S MADE A HUGE SPLASH!" Present Mic announced.

The crowd erupted. Cheers, clapping, screaming. The big screen displayed Manga's face, his speech bubble bright with a sun emoji, and his name in bold text below: FUKIDASHI MANGA. 1ST PLACE.

He slowed to a walk at the center of the arena. Turned to face the stands. The ocean of faces and cameras and noise.

“I DID IT!!!” He leaped into the air with his hands raised. Then he landed, raising his hands and waved, giving the crowd the same energy they were giving him. Every cheer got a wave. Every section of the stands got acknowledged.

Pony burst through the tunnel seconds later, hooves clattering on the arena floor. Second place.

Kuroiro emerged from the shadow of the tunnel entrance, stepping out of the darkness with his hands in his pockets and his pale eyes catching the stadium lights. Third place.

Then the flood. Todoroki. Bakugo, snarling. Midoriya, panting. Honenuki. Shiozaki. Tetsutetsu. Tokage. Class 1-B and Class 1-A pouring in, mixed together, one after another.

Forty-two students crossed the finish line.

In the business department section of the stands, five students with tablets and calculators were already working.

"What do you think?" the first one asked.

"First of all, Fukidashi's stock will climb fast. His quirk has been shown to be incredibly powerful, adaptable, and flashy."

"If you took on management of an agency, how would you market him? Opinions?"

"His appearance will be a huge hit with kids."

"His quirk and appearance by itself is enough to spark huge interest in comics and drawing. Things kids already like."

"There's an educational angle too. He uses onomatopoeia. Can you guess how many kids are going to go nuts trying to learn onomatopoeia like their favorite hero?"

"That's a good point..."

"He has all the makings of a popular hero already. It's not a matter of if, but when."

"Yeah, he's too easy. Let's choose someone harder to market. What about the black guy? What do you think his market would be? An underground hero like Eraser Head? The all black is very advantageous for him."

…

"AND NOW, THEY'RE FINISHING ONE AFTER ANOTHER! WE'LL MAKE A LIST OF THE RESULTS LATER, BUT FOR NOW, GOOD WORK!" Present Mic said.

The arena buzzed with post-race energy. Students catching their breath, congratulating each other, arguing about close finishes.

Class 1-B gathered near their section.

"Pony, you got SECOND!" Tetsutetsu grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. "SECOND PLACE!"

"I know! I know! I was there!" She laughed, swatting his hands away.

"Kuroiro, third place?!" Tsuburaba stared at him. "How did YOU get third?"

"The shadows carried me." His pale eyes gleamed. "Pony's horns cast a remarkably useful shadow."

"You hitched a ride on my shadow?!" Pony looked half-impressed, half-offended.

"I prefer the term 'shadow-surfing.'"

"That's the same thing!"

"Honenuki, you were flying through that minefield," Kendo said. "Your ground-softening cleared a path for half the class."

"It wasn't intentional." He lied.

"Kodai," Tokage turned to the quiet girl. "You enlarged the tightrope and then shrunk it when you were across. People fell."

"Mm." Kodai's expression didn't change.

"That was badass!" She high-fived her.

"Mm." Kodai’s hand stung…

"That’s the type of Class B spirit I like to see." She had a sharp grin on her face.

"Did anyone see Tsuburaba running on air?" Kamakiri was grinning. "People below him were looking up like they'd seen a ghost."

"Haha, I've been practicing my breathing but damn I’m winded…" Tsuburaba was huffing and puffing, but ultimately pleased with himself.

"I got knocked down by a robot, burst through it, and came out the other side next to some red-haired kid from 1-A who did the SAME thing!" Tetsutetsu threw his hands up. "We literally burst out of the same robot at the same time! What are the odds?!"

"That's weird. Is his quirk similar to yours?" Tokage said.

"I don’t know! I just know he survived what I did and he could do things like me!"

"Sounds similar enough to me."

Manga stood at the edge of the group, water bottle in hand, his speech bubble had a smiling emoji in it.

…

"The first game of the first-year stage is finally over." Midnight's voice silenced the arena. "Now, take a look at the results!"

A massive screen lit up behind her. Names and placements for all to see.

Class 1-B dominated the top half. Three of the top five were 1-B students. By averages, they'd overtaken Class 1-A. The gravity training, the rescue work, the morning sessions, all of it right there on the board in numbers that couldn't be argued with.

"The top forty-two made it through to the next round! It's unfortunate, but don't worry even if you didn't make it! We've prepared other chances for you to shine!" Midnight licked her lips. "The real competition begins next! The press cavalry'll be all over it! Give it your all!" She flicked her whip as a spinning board appeared behind her, event names cycling past.

"Now then, here is the second game. I already know what it is, but what could it be? What could it be? I just said it, and now here it is..." The board stopped.

CAVALRY BATTLE.

"A cavalry battle?"

"I'm bad at those."

"It's not an individual event, so I wonder how it'll work."

"Let me explain!" Midnight cracked her whip, snatching attention back. "The participants can form teams of two to four people as they wish! It's basically the same as a regular cavalry battle, but the one thing that's different is... based on the results of the last game, each person has been assigned a point value!"

"A point-based system like the entrance exam, huh?"

"In other words, each team is worth different points depending on who's on the team!"

"I get it!"

"YOU GUYS DON'T HOLD BACK EVEN THOUGH I'M TALKING, HUH?!" Midnight's whip cracked the air to interrupt them. "Yes, that's right! And the points assigned go up by five starting from the bottom! So forty-second place gets five points, and forty-first gets ten points! And the point value assigned to first place is..."

She paused. The screen changed.

"TEN MILLION!"

Every head in the arena turned to Manga.

He laughed loudly. HAHAHA’s scrolling across his speech bubble in jagged, joyful lettering.

Two hundred students stared at the shortest kid in the arena, the one with the speech bubble for a head and a ten million point target on his back, and he stared back at them like he'd just been given a present.

"That's right!" Midnight continued. "It's survival of the fittest, with a chance for those at the bottom to overthrow the top!"

Manga's bubble shifted. The laugh faded. In its place, a single drawn image: a tiny version of himself wearing a crown, ten million written above his head in bold manga lettering.

“Come and get it everyone!” Manga wasn’t afraid of a challenge.

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