Chapter 14
₊˚⊹✷ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍.
⤷ take your hands outta your pockets.
ODA WALKED DOWN THE tunnel towards something he had been explicitly told to accept. The crowd roared somewhere beyond the concrete walls, a rolling wave of excitement he felt only distantly, as if hearing it through thick glass. He kept his hands in his gym uniform pockets because the motion grounded him, because Ango had demanded the final result before the match had even begun, and because if he didn’t hold on to something, he wasn’t sure his control wouldn’t slip.
He could feel the faint hum of gravity gathering under the skin of his palms, a familiar pulse he’d spent years learning to regulate. But intent mattered. Will mattered. And right now his will wasn’t in the fight. It was locked in a cold room somewhere behind his ribs, where anger twisted.
Throw the match.
Ango’s voice looped over itself, condescending and final.
Oda swallowed it down.
He’d give Bakugo a fight. He would detach himself, treat it like one more training exercise, show just enough to avoid suspicion… and then he would lose.
Not because Bakugo deserved the win.
But because Ango demanded it.
Ahead of him the tunnel brightened. The world outside waited.
“ALRIGHT SPORTS FANS, IT’S THE MOMENT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!” Present Mic screamed at the top of his lungs, the stadium shaking with the force of it. “THE FINAL MATCH OF THE FIRST-YEAR SPORTS FESTIVAL! TWO MONSTERS OF POWER, TWO STUDENTS WHO HAVE BLOWN THE AUDIENCE AWAY AT EVERY TURN!”
Oda stepped into the light.
“ON THE LEFT—THE KID WHO CAME IN ON PURE RECOMMENDATION AND FOUGHT WITH HIS HANDS IN HIS POCKETS LIKE IT WAS NOTHING—ODASAKU EDOGAWA!”
The crowd erupted in cheers. Signs with his name waved in the air.
Oda didn’t react, his expression unreadable.
“AND ON THE RIGHT, THE HUMAN FLASHBANG, THE WALKING GRENADE, THE BOY WHO KNOWS NO CHILL—KATSUKI BAKUGO!”
Bakugo came out of his tunnel and stomped across the field eyes burning with feral excitement.
When his gaze locked onto Oda, his lip curled.
“Take your damn hands outta your pockets.”
Oda didn’t respond. He just stared at him with a calmness that made Bakugo’s eye twitch.
Midnight raised her whip. “I want a clean fight, boys.”
“FINAL MATCH! READY—BEGIN!”
And Bakugo was on him instantly.
He shot forward on a burst of explosions so loud they rattled, palm glowing like a miniature sun as he aimed straight for Oda. The force of the blast kicked up dust in a cyclone behind him.
“Fight me seriously, damn you!”
Oda shifted a single step sideways—barely moving—and Bakugo’s blast skimmed past him, detonating against empty air. The shockwave blew Oda’s hair back and sent heat licking against his cheek, but he didn’t so much as flinch.
He kept his hands in his pockets.
Bakugo snarled, pivoting midair with another explosion that rocketed him up and around, circling, trying to find an opening. He came down at an angle, arm pulled back for a sweeping explosion, ready to slam Oda out of the ring with brute force alone.
Oda didn’t even blink.
A ripple of red energy shimmered around him and the gravity under Bakugo’s landing point warped just enough to send Bakugo’s foot sliding sideways instead of landing clean.
The explosion Bakugo intended went off early, blasting him backward in a burst of sparks.
He flipped midair, correcting instantly, teeth bared.
“You bastard!” he roared.
Oda said nothing. Not because he wanted to be intimidating. But because he couldn’t trust his voice not to betray everything he felt.
Bakugo landed again, explosions staccato under his palms as he darted forward. “What’s wrong?! You scared?!” He fired a blast at Oda’s face. “Or you think you’re you’re too good o even look at me?!”
Oda’s eyes lifted lazily.
“I’m fighting you.”
“No, you’re not!” Bakugo exploded again, the ground beneath his feet cracking. “Fighting me means using everything you’ve got! Not this half-assed crap!!”
He lunged again, weaving between explosions, fast—faster than he’d been in earlier matches—pushing himself harder out of pure fury at Oda’s passivity.
Oda tilted his head and stepped back, letting another blast skim past him. He pushed the air subtly—barely—and Bakugo’s balance shifted for a breath, just long enough to disrupt the angle of his next explosive swing.
To the crowd, it must’ve looked like Oda was dodging by instinct alone.
But Bakugo knew better. “You’re holding back.”
Oda’s jaw tightened.
Bakugo fired two blasts in rapid succession.
“You’re holding back.”
Another explosion.
“STOP HOLDING BACK!”
Bakugo launched himself forward, full-speed, full-power, a roaring comet of heat and rage determined to blow Oda clean out of the ring, determined to force him—drag him—into a real fight.
Oda met his eyes.
Just for a moment.
And Bakugo froze midair for half a moment, because that look wasn’t fear or arrogance or superiority.
It was resignation. It was the look of someone who had already accepted the outcome. Someone who had already decided to lose.
Oda sidestepped again, gravity rippling soft and subtle around him as Bakugo’s attack slammed into the ground and blew apart a part the ring’s outer layer.
Bakugo sprang back, chest heaving, eyes wild.
“You think I want an easy win?!” he shouted. “You think I wanna be handed victory?! Fight me, damn it!!”
Oda remained still, the faint red glow around him. “I am fighting you,” he said quietly.
“No you’re not!” Bakugo exploded again, blasting himself high into the air before rocketing downward in a spiraling dive. “So stop lying and take those damn hands out of your pockets—”
Oda didn’t.
He let Bakugo attack.
His mind was quiet, mercifully numb. Detached, like he’d promised himself. Like Ango had forced him to be. He would fight. He would give Bakugo something to struggle against. But he would not give everything.
And Bakugo seemed to sense that more clearly than anyone.
“If you’re not really gonna fight me, then why the hell are you even here!?”
The words cracked through the air like thunder.
Oda had been moving on autopilot until then, slipping around Bakugo’s blasts with minimal effort, keeping the match alive without ever taking ownership of it. But the question dug its claws in somewhere deep. It snagged on something buried so far down he didn’t know it could still bleed.
His next step faltered.
Just barely.
A hesitation so slight no one but Bakugo—locked onto him—would notice.
The roar of the crowd receded to white noise as Oda’s mind was swallowed whole by memory—clearer than it had any right to be, vivid not with nostalgia but with loss.
—
He was small again, knees folded on a soft rug, crayons scattered around him. His twin brother was beside him, humming as he made a toy plane “fly” through the air. The office smelled faintly of lavender and ink, the blinds filtering afternoon light into pale stripes across the floor.
The click of the door.
And then she walked in.
His mother—barely taller than some of her subordinates, but with a presence that filled the room like wildfire. Blue hair loose around her shoulders, violet eyes bright, her smile widening automatically at the sight of her boys.
“Hi, mommy,” they both said in unison.
She froze for a moment, as if the greeting caught her chest off-guard—then melted into warmth. “Hi boys.” She let out, kneeling down and gathering Oda into her arms with a laugh. He remembered the feel of her heartbeat against his cheek, the gentle pressure of her fingers brushing through his hair, the softness of her kiss on the top of his head.
“Look what I drew,” he said, holding up the half-finished portrait. He had labored over it all morning, trying desperately to match the colors of the framed photo on the wall.
“Wow, would you look at that? You really are my child.” Her happiness was so radiantly simple. So genuine. So alive.
She sat with them—on the floor, on their level—as though she had no kingdom to rule, no wars to wage, no dangers stalking just out of sight. Oda settled back into her lap as naturally as breathing, and his brother slipped against her side.
“I wanna finish it before we have to go away again,” Oda murmured, already knowing the answer.
“Oh, well then you have until tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s too soon,” his brother whined. “I wanna stay with you.”
“I know, baby,” she sighed, and the exhaustion in that sound made Oda look up from his drawing. She cupped the back of his head gently. “But Mommy has to work. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Oda said, because that was what he always said. “Our birthday’s soon. So it won’t be too long. And Dad will be there too, right?”
“Right,” she echoed—but something hollow moved behind her eyes.
And then, after a long quiet, she asked the question.
“Boys… how would you feel if someone tried to take me away from you?”
Oda had never understood the tension in her voice until years later—after it was already too late.
His brother answered immediately: “Mad.”
Oda hesitated. “…Sad.”
He leaned back against her chest again, feeling her warmth wrap around him, wishing it would last forever.
“Yeah… me too.”
—
The memory ripped away like skin torn from bone, leaving Oda standing in the arena with a pulse hammering against his ribs, a firestorm boiling in his stomach.
Why was he even here?
Why was he at this school?
Why was he performing like some trained animal in a circus Ango controlled?
Why had he ever agreed to any of this?
A bitter truth surged up his throat.
Maybe because a bunch of deceitful, law-bending people had taken his mother from him.
They’d stolen her, stolen everything she had been, everything she’d given them, everything she might’ve become. They’d taken the woman who loved him with her whole spine and replaced her with silence and secrets and government files redacted into meaninglessness.
He wanted to scream it. Wanted to tear the stadium open with the gravity in his bones and shout the truth until the world trembled.
But the words stayed locked behind his teeth.
Instead, the anger came.
Hot. Fierce. Pulsing like a second heartbeat.
It sparked beneath his skin, sharp enough to make the air around him waver. The gravity field swelled out a fraction—tiny, subtle, but not subtle enough for Bakugo to miss it.
Bakugo’s explosions sputtered for half a second as he took in the change.
Oda’s expression wasn’t cold anymore.
It was furious.
And Bakugo—hovering midair with smoke trailing from his palms—grinned like a lunatic who had just been handed exactly what he’d wanted.
“There it is,” he growled.
Oda didn’t answer. But gravity pulsed again.
Blood slid warm and metallic over Oda’s upper lip before he even realized what had happened. A thin, steady line that crept from one nostril and gathered at the corner of his mouth. The copper tang hit his tongue, sharp and unmistakable, and his stomach lurched with a cold, hollow understanding.
He had overdone it in his fight with Todoroki.
He’d known—on some level, beneath the adrenaline and the stubborn determination—that pushing his power that hard, that repeatedly, that creatively, while still holding back from using everything he had… was a risk.
His quirk wasn’t a clean-cut tool with convenient edges. It was a system of balances and ratios, of internal pressure and external force. When he pushed in one direction, something inside him had to bend in the other to compensate. And if he pushed too far, something inside him snapped.
He wiped the blood with the back of his hand, but more welled instantly. His vision pulsed once, twice, an odd dimming at the edges like a camera lens struggling to adjust. He didn’t sway—years of practice kept his stance rooted—but he felt the wrongness crawling through him, a deep internal ache blooming beneath his ribs.
Kidneys, maybe. Or liver. He knew the sensation well enough that he didn’t bother lying to himself about it.
Something had torn. Again.
Gravity flickered around him in a red haze, responding automatically to the spike in his emotions, and Oda reeled it back with a force of will that tightened every muscle in his abdomen and made fire ripple up his spine. The red dimmed but did not fade entirely; it hovered around him like heat mirage, unstable and waiting for the smallest lapse in concentration to lash outward.
Using his quirk like this—while his organs were failing—was playing with the trigger of a loaded gun. One misstep and the gravity field would spiral out of his control. It wouldn’t just crush Bakugo. It could pull the whole arena into a localized implosion. There were dozens of heroes in the stands, and even then, he wasn’t confident they could fully counteract him if his power went rampant.
Which meant one thing, sharp and final:
He could not grab Bakugo. Not with his quirk. Not directly.
Anything involving external pressure on a living body was out of the question. He couldn’t afford to dramatically alter density or shift weight distributions. Not when the internal backlash might rupture something worse.
But the match wasn’t unwinnable.
He just had to be smarter.
He took a breath through his mouth because his nose was already half-blocked with blood. His lungs didn’t like it—there was a raw rasp deep inside—but he forced the air in anyway, slow and controlled, before letting it seep out. Every breath sharpened the ache in his gut, but he ignored it.
Bakugo noticed something was wrong. Of course he did. The blond’s instincts were terrifyingly sharp, even when drowned in fury. His eyes narrowed as he hovered in the air, explosions curling beneath his palms like restless animals.
“Hey! Don’t you dare get weak on me now!” Bakugo barked, the words a whipcrack of anger, “Fight me with your damn hands out of your pockets already!”
Oda didn’t move. His hands stayed tucked inside his jacket, fingers curled lightly against the fabric—not out of reluctance or defiance, but because removing them too quickly might cause his quirk to flare again. His arms were trembling just faintly, almost imperceptibly, but if he freed them, the micro-adjustments he used to regulate the gravitational field would slip.
He couldn’t risk that.
He shifted, rolling one ankle subtly. Bakugo honed in on it instantly, blasting forward, palms sparking violently enough to rattle the far wall. Oda exhaled again, steady despite the throbbing under his ribs, and waited. When Bakugo got close enough, Oda dropped half a foot of gravity under his own weight—a controlled sink, nothing more—and Bakugo overshot by inches, sailing past him with momentum he hadn’t anticipated.
Bakugo twisted midair, furious but electrified by the challenge. “Stop running, short-shack!” He forced himself to pivot, explosions stuttering in bursts as he circled back. His feet hit the ground, kicking up dust. “Come at me!!”
Oda rolled his shoulders, trying to ignore the wet sound in his breathing. He wasn’t going to last long. He knew it. Every second stretched his stability thinner, and soon his quirk would grow harder to control. He needed to choose a path:
He could obey Ango—drag this out until a believable slip let Bakugo win.
Or he could disobey.
He could win.
The two options balanced in his mind like weights suspended over a bottomless pit. His organs ached, his temperature felt wrong, and the blood drip was becoming rhythmic.
He was running out of time.
Another thread of blood slid from his nose.
Bakugo saw it.
And for the first time all match, something like concern flickered in the explosive boy’s eyes—masked instantly by renewed fury.
Bakugo roared, blasting forward again, utterly relentless. “I’m not letting you go down without giving me a real fight!”
Oda’s breaths came shallow and uneven, but his mind—sharpened by urgency and pain—clicked rapidly through possibilities. Ango’s demand clung to him like damp cloth, suffocating and heavy, but it wasn’t ironclad. It wasn’t unbreakable. He could act like he simply miscalculated in the heat of the fight. Ango would rage, and Oda would deal with it. What else was new?
They weren’t going to throw him out of U.A. over this. They couldn’t. He hadn’t broken rules, he hadn’t endangered his classmates, he hadn’t done anything except too well. That wasn’t a crime. And after everything Ango had demanded of him—after everything Oda had already sacrificed—it was hard not to feel something cold and stubborn inside him settle.
If Ango wanted to control the outcome, he should have been the one standing in this arena.
Removing his hands from his pockets would lessen the tension coiled through his torso and abdomen, would let his quirk distribute pressure outward instead of inward. But at the same time, freeing his hands meant widening the field of influence—and with his organs faltering, the gravitational distortions would become more erratic, likely unpredictable. He couldn’t risk a slip. Not with so many people watching. Not when losing control could tear apart more than one opponent.
The floor, though. He could use the floor. He had used it against Kaminari, and the same logic applied now. As long as he kept the gravity directed through the environment and not onto Bakugo himself, he could keep things controlled, localized, safe enough. He just needed to think faster than Bakugo could blow things up.
And frankly, Bakugo was blowing things up at an alarming rate.
The blond roared forward, explosions detonating beneath his palms in bright, concussive bursts that shook the entire arena.
Even still, Oda pulled his hands out of his pockets.
“There it is.” Bakugo sneered in excitement. “Let’s go!”
“Careful what you wish for.” Oda shifted his stance, let gravity curl under the cracked concrete slab near his foot, and tore it upward in a clean arc. Bakugo’s explosion slammed into the slab instead of Oda’s ribs, shredding the concrete into a rain of gravel, dust, and sharp-edged fragments. The force of the blast washed over Oda’s uniform, making his injured organs protest viciously.
Bakugo snarled as he rocketed sideways, trying to flank Oda. “You think you can beat me with chunks of rock!?”
Oda didn’t bother answering at first. He kicked off the ground, gravity buoying him just enough to dodge the next explosion, then dragged another broken piece of arena floor up from the cracks and flung it across Bakugo’s path. Bakugo incinerated it instantly, of course—a bright, blinding detonation that sprayed dust everywhere and sent tremors up Oda’s legs.
Another explosion. And another. Bakugo fired with no hesitation, no restraint, no regard for the destruction he caused. He was relentless fury incarnate, the embodiment of detonation, tearing apart every obstacle Oda raised the second it existed. He didn’t allow Oda rhythm, didn’t allow him to breathe, didn’t allow him even a moment of reprieve.
But anger had its own rhythm—violent, linear, predictable.
Oda narrowed his eyes against the dust. “You’re wrong,” he muttered, more to himself than Bakugo as he raised another slab and let it shatter under impact. “I absolutely can beat you with rocks.”
Bakugo blasted through the haze he’d created, face twisted in a mixture of rage and exhilaration. “What the hell did you just say!?!”
The dust thickened around them—an entire cloud of pulverized concrete swirling from Bakugo’s attacks, kicked into the air by wind and shockwaves. And Oda, feeling that familiar gravitational hum under his skin, let his fingers shift just barely as he adjusted the pull.
Just a push.
A nudge.
He reached out—not at Bakugo, but at the dust itself. Hundreds of thousands of tiny, weightless particles suspended in air, swirling unpredictably—except gravity could make them predictable.
Oda inhaled through his teeth, ignoring the sharp pain that lanced through his side, and flicked gravity sideways with a sharp mental snap. The dust cloud responded instantly, as if an invisible hand had swept through it. It moved in a dense wave, surging forward like a fog bank collapsing inward.
Directly into Bakugo’s face.
Bakugo choked in surprise, flinching hard as the dust slammed over him in a gritty sheet. His eyes squeezed shut, every instinct screaming at him to clear his vision, but he couldn’t—he’d blinded himself with his own aggression.
“You—WHAT THE—?!” Bakugo howled, stumbling midair.
Oda didn’t give him time to recover. Gravity surged under his feet in a controlled burst, pushing him forward with a boost. His foot connected solidly with Bakugo’s stomach, a kick strengthened by gravitational acceleration.
Bakugo flew.
The force hurled him backwards, skidding him across the arena floor in a spray of dust and debris. Bakugo growled through the pain, clawing at the ground to stabilize himself before he could be thrown out of bounds, and managed to catch himself on one knee, panting, eyes watering from dust irritation.
He wiped at them furiously. “You cheap-shot—!”
Oda landed lightly, though his knees nearly buckled from the internal strain. His nose was still dripping blood, now enough to stain the collar of his uniform, but his expression stayed flat, cold, distant.
“Seems like rocks work just fine,” he said quietly.
The stadium erupted into noise—some cheers, some gasps, some curses—but Oda barely heard any of it. His pulse was loud in his ears, his ribs ached deep, and something sharp twisted inside his abdomen with every inhale. But he had bought himself a sliver of time. A brief advantage.
Bakugo’s eyes were wild—bloodshot, furious, exhilarated in the way only Katsuki Bakugo could be. His lips peeled back into something between a grin and a snarl as he steadied himself on the cracked arena floor.
“Now this is a fight.”
He launched, explosions bursting beneath his hands in rapid succession. His entire body became a streak of sweat and pure velocity, ripping across the air like a missile fired at point-blank range.
In midair, he swung one arm forward, grabbing his wrist with the other—Oda knew exactly what that meant. Bakugo was about to use the same hell-scorching explosion he used to obliterate Uraraka’s meteor shower. A blast big enough to crater the arena. A blast big enough that even the pros in the stands leaned forward, tense, ready to intervene if things went too far.
Bakugo’s palm glowed white-hot.
There. Oda thought, feeling it before he even saw it.
“Now you die!” Bakugo roared, a gleeful, unhinged edge to his voice as the explosion erupted—an earth-shattering blast of heat and sound that filled the stadium, ripped the air apart, and sent a shockwave racing into the stands. People ducked as debris and hot wind shot upward. Children shrieked. Even heroes flinched.
When the smoke finally thinned, Bakugo tore through it with a swipe of his hand—only to freeze when the space in front of him was empty.
No Oda.
Just lingering embers and curling dust.
“You were right.”
Bakugo’s head snapped up so fast it cracked. Oda hovered above him, crouched on a ragged chunk of concrete floating lazily through the red-tinted air. He looked pale—too pale—but his eyes were sharp, locked on Bakugo with cold precision.
“Quirks are physical abilities,” Oda said, voice thick from the blood still rolling from his nose. It gave him a strange sound—nasally, choked, tired. “And you’ve been using massive explosions since your first round with Uraraka.”
He dropped the concrete slab like it was nothing and landed soundlessly behind Bakugo. The blond spun on instinct, palms crackling with explosive sweat—and Oda didn’t move.
“I’ll remind you now,” he murmured, “that you’re the one who told me to take my hands out of my pockets.”
The red glow around Oda’s body erupted—bright, pulsing, alive. Suddenly the air bent around him, shimmering, vibrating. Gravity distorted until the air itself seemed to distort around him.
“So what happens now is your own damn fault.”
Bakugo’s grin only widened.
He backed up instinctively, boots scraping across the torn concrete as the entire arena began to rumble. Chunks of floor ripped free, slabs of stone twisting upward into the air. Walls cracked, pieces splintering off and hovering, suspended in Oda’s gravitational field.
The markings along Oda’s arms and cheeks—once a muted crimson—now churned in agitated swirls, darkening to a deep, violent red. Against the dust-filled light, Oda didn’t even look human anymore. He looked like something conjured.
A demon wearing a school uniform.
Bakugo should have been afraid.
He wasn’t.
“Finally got serious,” he said, voice echoing with manic delight. He crouched slightly, palms igniting as he prepared to launch again. “You better not hold back.”
He blasted upward—higher than before, spinning through the air as he built momentum. Each rotation layered more explosive force into his next attack, his body turning into a fiery drill. And then—
He launched it.
A massive, world-splitting explosion detonated from Bakugo’s palms, slamming into the airborne debris Oda had placed like a shield.
But Oda was done playing defense.
Each rock lit with red energy, bloated with gravitational pressure. When Bakugo’s explosion collided with them, it didn’t shatter them.
A shock wave of red burst from Oda’s body— violent enough to shove the explosion back where it came from. Bakugo’s own attack recoiled, slamming into him full-force.
The blond vanished into the smoke.
“WOAH-HO-HO!” Present Mic hollered, voice cracking with disbelief. “BAKUGO COMBINED SPEED AND ROTATION WITH A HUGE BLAST LIKE THE ONE HE USED AGAINST URARAKA! HE TURNED HIMSELF INTO A HUMAN MISSILE! AND EDOGAWA—HOLY CRAP—RELEASED A FULL-BODY SURGE OF POWER! SO WHAT HAS BECOME OF OUR TOP TWO COMPETITORS?!”
The smoke drifted.
The dust settled.
What remained was carnage.
Debris littered the far side of the arena—massive chunks of concrete embedded into the wall under the stands. A crater carved itself into the wall where Bakugo had hit, his body slumped at the base, unconscious, limbs limp. He didn’t stir.
A collective gasp rippled through the stadium.
“Bakugo is out of bounds,” Midnight declared, her voice wavering. “That means… Edogawa is the winner!”
The arena exploded into screams—cheers, cries, shouts of disbelief. Some people leapt to their feet. Others threw their hands over their mouths. A few heroes exchanged looks, equal parts impressed and alarmed.
“AND WITH THAT THE FINAL MATCH IS OFFICIALLY OVER!” Present Mic bellowed. “THE FIRST-YEAR CHAMPION OF THE U.A. SPORTS FESTIVAL IS—ODASAKU EDOGAWA OF CLASS 1-A!!”
Oda stood there alone in the ruined field, the red aura around him flickering weakly now—like a dying ember. Pain curled sharply under his ribs, venomous and immediate. He could feel something give way inside him, something fragile and important.
His stomach lurched.
His vision doubled.
Then he coughed—once—and a dark ribbon of blood splattered the broken concrete at his feet.
He barely had time to think, Ranpo is probably losing his mind right now, before another wave of pain slammed into him.
Ango would be livid.
Ranpo would be delighted.
Oda? Oda just felt tired. His quirk flickered out. His knees buckled.
And then the world tilted sideways. He didn’t even hear the scream from the crowd or the scrambling footsteps of teachers rushing the field. He didn’t hear Midnight shout his name or Cementoss’s concrete rise to cushion his fall.
He only felt the cold ground.
And then—
Blackness.