Chapter 12
₊˚⊹✷ 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄.
⤷ Edogawa vs. Shiozaki.
THE WAITING ROOM DOOR slid shut behind Oda with a soft mechanical hiss, the kind that might sound calming. It didn’t work. His pulse drummed steadily in his ears, heavy but controlled, like someone tapping a single finger on glass.
He rolled his shoulders back, letting the familiar sensation of his quirk hum under the surface of his skin. It wasn’t activated—not fully—but the gravitational field he lived with daily tightened ever so slightly, like a quiet reminder of his limits.
Midoriya’s fight was insane.
Compared to that, his own match would seem almost… quaint.
But he wasn’t stupid enough to underestimate Shiozaki.
She was gentle and soft-spoken, yes—but vines that moved faster than the human eye could track didn’t care how polite their wielder was. Oda knew a binding-type quirk when he saw one, and he’d watched the Cavalry Battle from a few meters away: those vines had trapped a dozen students at once.
If she caught him, that was it.
A buzzer sounded above the door.
Oda exhaled, long and slow.
Time.
He walked out into the tunnel, adjusting the sleeves of his uniform. The cool, shadowed hallway felt deceptively quiet, the roar of thousands muffled into one low, persistent vibration. Dust still lingered in the air from Midoriya and Todoroki’s explosion—tiny glittering flecks drifting down from the lights.
When he stepped into the brightness of the arena entrance, the sound hit him all at once: a tidal wave of screaming, cheering, chanting. Too many eyes. Too many cameras.
He shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them from curling into fists.
Across from him, emerging from the opposite tunnel, was Shiozaki Ibara.
Her long vine-like hair was braided neatly behind her, though a few strands moved with a will of their own. She looked serene. Peaceful. Almost saintly.
It made the contrast between them uncomfortable—her, soft sunlight personified, and him, a storm made of tension and defensive red light.
As they walked toward the center, Present Mic’s voice blasted through the stadium:
“THE SECOND MATCH OF ROUND TWO! IT’S CLASS 1A’S… WELL, LET’S BE REAL, HE’S DEFINITELY A LITTLE SCARY—ODASAKU EDOGAWA! VERSUS CLASS 1B’S SHIOZAKI IBARA, THE VINE-HANDLING HOLY MAIDEN OF JUSTICE!”
The crowd cheered at the introduction of Shiozaki. For Oda, they mostly gasped, whispered, murmured. He didn’t care. Mostly.
They stopped a few meters apart.
Shiozaki bowed deeply, sincerely. “Edogawa,” she greeted in her soft, melodic voice. “I pray that we may have a righteous and honorable match.”
Oda blinked once. Formality like that always caught him off guard.
“You too,” he muttered, nodding. “And, uh… no hard feelings about anything.”
Even as he spoke, the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Her vines twitched. They were always moving. Always ready.
She smiled kindly. “Hard feelings have no place in the heart of a hero.”
Right, Oda thought. Except they do. All the time.
He rolled his neck once. The air around his body shifted—the pressure dropping a fraction, light bending subtly toward him as the gravitational field tightened in anticipation.
Shiozaki noticed.
Her expression didn’t change, but her vines rose.
“BEGIN!”
Midnight cracked her whip.
The instant the sound snapped, the ground beneath Shiozaki erupted—not violently, but gracefully—as dozens of thorned vines shot upward in a blooming spiral. They curved toward him with serpentine precision, moving faster than a thrown spear.
Oda didn’t wait for them to get close.
His right foot slid back, and the earth around him shuddered. A circular chunk of arena floor cracked beneath him and lifted upward, propelled by a sudden red glow that pulsed around his legs. He rose several meters into the air just as vines swept across where he’d been standing.
From above, the view shifted completely. The arena was a web of green now—lashing vines crossing, weaving, chasing him. Shiozaki spun, palms extended, guiding each movement.
Oda narrowed his eyes. She’s trying to force me into a corner. Limit my movement. Bind me midair.
The vines shot upward.
He snapped his body sideways. The air pulsed.
A gravitational burst rippled outward from his body—not enough to crush anything, but enough to shove the vines off their trajectory before they could coil around his legs. They whipped past him, slicing through empty air with terrifying force.
The concrete disc beneath him tilted and he adjusted automatically, using micro-adjustments of gravity to keep balance while circling Shiozaki from above.
“Impressive,” Shiozaki called up, voice carrying effortlessly. “But running will not save you forever.” Her vines suddenly sank into the ground.
Oda stiffened. That was new.
For one heartbeat, everything was still. Then—vines bursted upward around him like a cage. He didn’t even get a warning. They shot up from beneath the floating concrete, slicing toward his ankles like razorwire. A trap—perfect timing, perfect prediction.
Oda reacted on instinct.
The gravitational field around him spiked—flaring outward in a red shimmer. The concrete beneath him split apart into six separate slabs, each one thrown in a different direction by the pulse.
The vines grabbed the wrong targets—binding chunks of broken arena floor instead of his legs.
Oda himself dropped through the gap—then stopped mid-air, suspended by gravity alone. Shiozaki blinked in surprise. He landed lightly on a new patch of floor, skidding back to widen the distance. He exhaled sharply through his nose.
“That was close,” he muttered.
Shiozaki responded by lifting both arms.
Every vine in the arena—dozens, maybe hundreds—rose like a forest waking all at once.
“Holy crap, she’s fast!” Kirishima yelled. “Edogawa’s barely dodging any of that!”
“He’s analyzing her patterns,” Midoriya said rapidly, tapping his chin. “Wait—no, he’s reading the angles. Every vine has a predictable arc of movement.”
“Predictable?” Sero balked. “It looks like a jungle down there!”
Tokoyami watched quietly. “Shiozaki’s range is exceptional. If Edogawa is restricted to defense, she’ll eventually snare him.”
Kaminari leaned forward. “Nah. Look at him. He’s not panicking.”
He was right.
Oda wasn’t panicking.
Shiozaki’s voice rang clear, “Forgive me for what must be done!”
The vines surged.
A tornado of green, twisting in a spiral, closing in from every direction—above, behind, underfoot. There was no safe angle. No open path. No escape.
Oda’s teeth clenched. “Alright,” he whispered. “Guess we’re doing this.”
He drove his foot into the ground.
Red light exploded outward.
The gravitational field expanded violently, and the arena floor cracked in a perfect circle beneath him. Chunks of concrete rose around him—thirty, forty pieces—each one suspended like planets orbiting a star.
Shiozaki’s vines crashed into the floating debris instead of him, wrapping around concrete, not flesh. Some of the slabs shattered under the pressure; others were flung aside.
Oda dropped his shoulders.
Every remaining slab dropped like a meteor. A shockwave of dust blasted across the arena. Shiozaki shielded herself as the debris struck the ground, creating a cratered field between them.
The vines recoiled, regrouping. Oda straightened, hands still in his pockets.
The dust settled slowly, drifting in lazy spirals across the damaged arena floor. What had once been smooth stone was now a battlefield of shattered concrete and deep grooves carved by vines and gravity alike. The crowd held its breath—half because of the spectacle, half because no one was entirely sure what either student was about to unleash next.
Oda exhaled as the red light around him dimmed to its usual faint shimmer. His heartbeat thudded heavily against his ribs—steady, but stronger than he wanted. Using that much force over that wide an area always threatened to dip into the threshold where his organs began to protest. He rolled his shoulders to settle the pressure and forced his breathing calm.
Across from him, Shiozaki stepped forward onto the ruined ground without hesitation. Her expression remained gentle, but the vines behind her quivered.
“That last defense was formidable,” she said, voice clear even at a distance. “Your will is strong. But I cannot allow myself to falter here.”
“Yeah,” Oda muttered under his breath, hands still buried firmly in his pockets. “I got that impression.”
Shiozaki pressed her palms together.
Every vine she controlled went still.
Then—
They struck.
It wasn’t a barrage this time. It was one technique—one enormous, coordinated strike. The vines looped and spiraled around her, braiding themselves together until they formed a towering, crown-like structure above her head.
Then the crown collapsed into a single, colossal whip of vines that shot across the field with terrifying precision.
“Oh crap, that’s huge,” Kaminari blurted from the stands.
“She’s trying to bind him in one blow,” Midoriya said, excited and horrified. “If that attack closes around him, he won’t be able to break free.”
Tokoyami’s eyes narrowed. “It is a righteous technique. But look—Edogawa has not moved his hands from his pockets. Not once.”
Midoriya blinked rapidly. “Why… do you think that is?”
“No idea.” Kaminari replied.
The vine-whip slammed into the ground where he had been standing a second earlier, cracking the stone with enough force to shake the arena stands. Oda had stepped sideways, simply stepped, gravity tilting around him so subtly the motion looked almost lazy.
The whip surged toward him again, faster now, angling upward to catch him midair if he chose to escape vertically.
He didn’t.
Instead, he leaned forward slightly.
The air pressure shifted.
A gravitational well formed directly in front of the vine-whip, pulling inward like a sudden, invisible sinkhole. The vines twisted off trajectory, yanked into the dirt as if the ground itself had suddenly grabbed them.
Shiozaki gasped softly. That had been her strongest technique. He had redirected it with nothing but a tilt of the head and a fractional change in weight.
Oda raised one eyebrow slightly. “Not bad,” he said, voice steady. “But you’re overextending.”
Before she could respond, the red glow around him sharpened.
He didn’t throw his hands outward or shout the name of a move. He simply took another step—this one forward—and gravity responded like a living thing.
The air bent. The stones beneath him rose and hovered. Dust swirled around his ankles in spiraling currents.
A thin veil of red shimmer surrounded him, barely visible except where the light caught it: a gravitational distortion hugging close to his body, warping anything that touched it.
Shiozaki’s vines shot toward him again, dozens this time, weaving to strike from multiple angles at once.
The first vine touched the veil—
—and snapped downward as if dunked into wet cement.
More vines followed, each one hitting the distortion and being pulled violently toward the ground. The arena floor began to shake from the pressure of dozens of forced impacts.
It didn’t crush the vines. He wasn’t trying to injure her quirk. He was simply pinning them. One by one, the green tendrils were forced flat to the ground, locked there by an ever-increasing gravitational pull that extended outward in a controlled cover around him.
Shiozaki strained, fingers trembling as she tried to wrestle her vines back under control.
But they wouldn’t budge.
Oda’s voice carried across the battlefield, quieter than before, but far more unsettling in its certainty: “Your vines are strong. But gravity affects everything. Even what you grow.”
The crowd erupted.
With her vines immobilized in a massive spread across the battlefield, Shiozaki was left standing alone, chest rising and falling with exertion. She wasn’t injured—Oda had been careful of that—but she could no longer advance.
Oda stepped across the cracked earth toward her, each footstep gently tilting the arena’s gravity just enough to keep any stray vine from lifting again.
When he stopped a few feet away, Shiozaki met his eyes, breath steadying. Her shoulders lowered in acceptance.
“You fought with strength and with restraint,” she said softly. “I thank you for that.”
Oda nodded once.
She bowed. And then she said the words clearly, without bitterness or hesitation: “I yield.”
The stadium exploded with sound.
Midnight whipped her arm through the air. “Shiozaki has forfeited! The winner of the second match of round two is Edogawa!”
The noise was deafening, but the commentary among Class 1A rose above it all.
Tokoyami tilted his head thoughtfully, studying the field. “Fascinating. He fought the majority of that match with his hands in his pockets. A peculiar choice.”
Midoriya’s mind was already racing. “I think it’s intentional. His quirk operates in wide-range fields—if he gestures too broadly or focuses too loosely, he could cause collateral damage or overexert himself. Keeping his hands in his pockets forces him to localize his power. He’s regulating himself.”
Kirishima let out a low whistle. “Man… that’s kinda hardcore.”
Jiro nodded. “It’s like he built a limiter into his fighting style.”
Kaminari added, “I’d, uh… definitely zap myself if I had to fight like that.”
“Tch. He’s holding back. That’s the annoying part.” Bakugo crossed his arms.
Midoriya frowned slightly at that phrasing—but made a mental note of the observation.
Because Bakugo wasn’t wrong.
Oda walked off the field barely winded.
𓏵
ODA SLIPPED INTO THE row just as Midnight announced Ashido’s loss—way too quickly for comfort. The acid girl was already trudging off the field, shoulders slumped, her usual bright aura deflated like someone had poked a hole straight through it.
“…She’s gonna be bummed about that,” Oda muttered, stuffing his hands deeper into the pockets of his black jacket as the stadium’s roar shifted toward the next match.
He wasn’t surprised she lost—Tokoyami was a terrible matchup for half the class—but he still felt a pang of sympathy. Ashido always fought like the ground beneath her was a dance floor rather than a battlefield; watching her get shoved out instantly felt… wrong.
“Nice win,” Kaminari chimed as Oda approached. He scooted over a bit to make room.
“Thanks,” Oda replied, sliding into the seat beside him. His eyes flicked up the rows almost immediately—drawn by messy green curls bouncing in place as their owner shifted awkwardly. “Midoriya. You’re up already?”
“Yeah,” Midoriya said with a sheepish, almost apologetic laugh, rubbing the back of his head. “Recovery Girl patched me up pretty quick.”
“So the surgery went fine?” Oda asked, casual in tone but not oblivious—he could still see the faint stiffness in how Midoriya held his arms.
Midoriya nodded, but it was more hesitant this time. “Mhmm. Gave myself a crooked hand, though.” He raised his right hand, letting Oda see the faint warp in the knuckles. There was a strange mix of pride and distress in Midoriya’s eyes.
“Well,” Oda said bluntly, “that sucks.”
Kaminari snorted. “Dude.”
Oda shrugged. He wasn’t wrong.
Before Midoriya could respond, Present Mic’s hype-laced voice rattled the stadium walls as Bakugo and Kirishima’s names flashed across the display. Both boys took to the field with very different energies.
As the match burst into motion—punches thrown, explosions detonated, hardened fists meeting furious blasts—Oda leaned forward slightly, pitching his voice low so only Midoriya could hear over the chaos.
“This is the first time you’ve ever used your quirk this hardcore, right?”
Midoriya stiffened, then nodded. Embarrassment flickered across his face, tinged with something like uncertainty.
Oda watched Kirishima get blown back ten feet before continuing. “When I first… started training hardcore,” he began, then paused—not because he didn’t know how to say it, but because he rarely spoke this honestly about the cost of his quirk. “They had to cut out my spleen. It kept bursting.”
Midoriya’s eyes widened so sharply it was almost comical.
“Doctors with healing quirks kept fixing it,” Oda went on, tone flat, matter-of-fact, as if discussing a mildly inconvenient childhood memory. “But what was the point if it was always one of the first organs to go? My body wasn’t made to handle the gravity output at full strength. Not at first.”
Midoriya stared, stunned into silence—not because he didn’t understand, but because he understood too well. The weight of self-destruction was something they suddenly shared.
“I didn’t even think about that,” Midoriya said slowly, brow furrowing as gears turned in his head at a million miles per hour. “I guess it makes sense that your organs would bear the strain of your quirk. But—wait—hold on.”
He jolted upright, realization hitting him like a train.
“You’re up next again, aren’t you? For round three?”
Before Oda could answer, Kaminari shivered dramatically beside him. “He’s up against Todoroki.”
“Are you kiddin’? This is gonna be epic,” Sero chimed in, leaning forward in excitement.
Jiro let out a dry sigh, flicking her earjack in Oda’s direction. “He’s sitting right there, you know.”
“Yeah. I’m against Todoroki,” Oda sighed, shoulders sinking just a fraction as though the weight of that matchup finally settled fully onto him. He didn’t glance at Sero, Kaminari, or anyone else—not when Midoriya was the only one in the row whose expression wasn’t made of pure hype or speculation. “And I don’t see him around here, so I assume he’s off preparing.”
“Shouldn’t you be?” Midoriya asked, worry threading into his voice, head tilting just slightly in that earnest way only he seemed capable of.
“Maybe,” Oda muttered, “but I wanted to see which of these idiots won.” He jerked his chin toward the field where Bakugo and Kirishima were still hammering at each other. “If Kirishima wins, he’s got little chance against Tokoyami, so if I beat Todoroki…” Oda exhaled through his nose. “I’ll have to figure out how to defeat Dark Shadow.”
Midoriya’s brows knitted in thought. “But if Kacchan wins…”
“He’s got like a fifty-fifty shot against Tokoyami,” Oda admitted. It irritated him to concede that—Bakugo was reckless, arrogant, explosive in every sense—but the bastard was undeniably adaptable. Relentless. Hard to predict. Harder to shake off.
“Can you imagine if the final was Bakugo versus Edogawa?” Sero blurted out, the words bursting from him like the idea itself had startled him.
“Now that would be epic,” Kaminari agreed instantly, eyes practically sparkling. He lightly nudged Oda’s shoulder as if the gravity student should be thrilled by the idea of getting blown up for twenty straight minutes.
“I’d certainly pay money to see it,” Ojiro added politely.
Asui leaned forward, frog-like gaze steady. “Do you think you could beat him? Bakugo, I mean.”
Oda paused. Not dramatically—just long enough that everyone understood he was actually calculating the answer, not dodging it. His fingers flexed inside his pockets, a subconscious response to the mention of Bakugo’s name.
“…Depends on how much stamina I have after this next round,” Oda said finally. “I’m not really built for drawn-out rounds of fighting like this. The whole structure’s kinda a pain in my ass.”
He didn’t say my organs don’t last long enough for tournaments. He didn’t need to. Something about the tired roll of his shoulders, the casual honesty, made it obvious.
Down on the field, Bakugo shifted from trading hits with Kirishima to full-blown relentless assault. Repeated explosions detonated with ruthless precision—each one a half-second apart, each one tearing more of the hardening from Kirishima’s skin, each one chipping away at the redhead’s stamina until even his unbreakable spirit couldn’t hold up. The final explosion rocketed Kirishima backward, dust erupting around him as he hit the ground and didn’t get up.
“Kirishima has been knocked out!” Midnight exclaimed, “Bakugo is the winner!”
“WITH THAT VICIOUS CARPET BOMBING, BAKUGO ADVANCES TO THE THIRD ROUND!” Present Mic boomed, practically vibrating through the stadium speakers. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, OUR FINAL FOUR!”
The screen surged to life with four faces—Todoroki. Tokoyami. Bakugo. And Oda Edogawa, eyes narrowed, expression as unreadable as ever.
“That’s my cue,” Oda mumbled.
He rose to his feet, the motion unhurried but firm, as if he’d been bracing for this moment the entire afternoon. His hands remained deep in his jacket pockets—always there, always contained—as he stepped up the row.
author’s note-
uploading at random. i’m trying not to release it all at once but i’m itching to just release it all.