『 Chapter 13 』
⤐ ♤ « 〚♞〛 » ♤ ⬷
As if rallied into a single tracked mind, the crowd burst into explosions and detonated their praise and roars in gratitude. The abysmal atmosphere of hatred and jealousy that Bakugou had called upon was washed away in an instant as Y/N lathered her mind and being in the applause and recognition. The world now happy that this singular student had shown that not all 1-A heroics pupils are arrogant assholes with too much confidence in themselves.
With a delayed sigh, the classmates of the two pledgers thought that they were out of the creek when the other classes looked at the power female in thankfulness and determination.
As she walked down the steps and back over to her spot by Shouji Mezou, Y/N's head snapped to her left, her gaze wiggling its way through the plethora of students who looked at her in a silent awe.
Shinsou Hitoshi stared at his heroic friend, but it wasn't in surprise or thankfulness, but something else, something misplaced for an honorable event like the Sports Festival.
Katsuki, slightly aggravated and flared up at the praise and attention that the girl was getting, noticed this shared gaze between the General Studies kid and his own peer. His perceptive stare and calculating eyes dissected their facial expressions.
Both Y/N and Hitoshi held a smirk of malice and sin, their faces mirroring each other with a shared knowledge that was unknown the the rest of the eleven classes and the spectators. Their eyes held power, manipulation, and deception, as if they had pulled the wool over the gaze of the world.
Turning away from her friend, Y/N saw Bakugou facing her, his snarling face directed at her figure. With her evil smile and her eyes slanted like a feline, the girl muttered a wicked but sincere "Thanks," before dropping her malevolent expression as if she never wore it in the first place.
Her words only set off the blond even more. The way she switched herself into a different state of mind in less then a second was scarily deceptive. (Eye color) eyes once held ferocity and honesty in the speech she gave then turned into dynamic conviction in her true pledge, after that, they displayed corruption and deviousness, finally becoming blank and empty as her aloof frown was currently recognizable. This change brought upon by nothing other than sheer will and practice. The dishonesty in her posture and personality seemed all over the place, and god knows that Katsuki can't stand deceitful people, they reminded him of villains.
"What the fuck do you mean by thanks, Pop-Rocks?" The explosive boy snapped, his voice loud and drawing the attention of his classmates. "I didn't do anything for you, shitface!"
"You did everything and then some, Boom-Bitch," Y/N retorted, her blank frown curling up in amusement, but then back down in irritation, "and where the fuck did Pop-Rocks come from?"
"Let start right away, shall we?!" Midnight announced, ceasing the incoming argument from the two students.
The people in the stands roared in excitement again, their patience started to run thin, but with the announcement of the first event, the atmosphere was lively and explosive. Cheers and chants had commenced as the R-Rated female hero raised her arm the the air, a hologram appearing in the form of a TV screen behind her-the actual monitors around the stadium mimicking the same picture for all to see.
The words OBSTACLE RACE were large and blatant, the group of teenagers already talking about what would happen and what their strategies would be.
The rules were set in stone: run around the outer circumference on the stadium and avoid the obstacles thrown to slow people down. The length was four kilometers long, or about two and a half miles in imperial measures. Quirk use is allowed in all forms, as long as one stays on course and doesn't take shortcuts, freedom is key and celebrated.
Y/N immediately loved this rule, the allowance of movement and use of her fire could spell her a top ranked position in the race.
As the group of two hundred and twenty students turned to line themselves up to the large red gate that was off to the side, Y/N realized that if she would pass into the second round, she would need to be in the top forty-two finishers, aka the upper nineteen percent of racers.
For the majority of her life, Y/N was confident in the power of her quirk, having someone with the same quirk train her for a large majority of her youth-but now her mentor was gone. With that, her confidence started to fade and doubts started to grow, attaching themselves into her subconscious since that fateful day.
"Hidaka!" A voice announces as the young pupil stopped beside Shouji and turned to face the direction where her name was called. Reacting quickly, Y/N caught the piece of fabric that was tossed at her by Midnight. "You are required to wear that durning the tournament for the safety of your fellow students, it was recommended by Aizawa."
Looking at the black fabric, Y/N held it in front of her, realizing what it was. It was a fucking ski mask. With incredulous eyes and her heart seething in rage, the girl turned her attention towards the commentators box in the upper stands of the stadium. Her animosity for her teacher grew more by the day she spent in his class, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back. Biting her bottom lip so hard that it almost drew blood, Y/N reluctantly slid her hair back and away from her face before she slipped the mask over her head.
It was a dark, thick cotton material that already made Y/N stuffy before she even started moving. Wrapping around her entire face, all of her hair was covered and the only opening in the mask was the cutout around her eyes. Both her mouth and nose were covered, her skin already feeling the perspiration of her hot breath against the tight fabric.
To say that she was livid would be an understatement, she was enraged. Incensed. Frantic. Indignant. Her arms and legs felt itchy, her blood boiling so hot that it would melt to the core of the earth. Her heart throbbed in her chest nonviolently, but loud, making noise and static in her ears and her skin started to steam from underneath her bandaged arms. Her esophagus tickled with heat as it wanted more than anything to erupt and scald whoever was responsible for putting her in this position, and it was none other than Aizawa Shouta.
"You seem very perturbed, Hidaka, but we're about to start and I recommend you take out your anger on the course and not our teacher." Mezou advised as he saw the smoke drifting off of her skin.
The dark and smokey gas stopped spewing from her arms and Y/N turned towards her friend with the frightening stature. "You're right, thanks, Shouji."
Walking away from the boy, Y/N wanders to the far back of the enormous group of students. The crowd was the most dense closest to the narrow alleyway of the entrance tunnel, and Y/N had already devised a plan to avoid the rush of the students flooding through the gate.
Looking around her, Y/N smirked as she saw how open she was and how much room she had around her. Yes, the back end of the crowd was the furthest away from the tunnel, but there was less students, so that meant more possibilities of what to do.
The first light blinked out.
Rubbing her hands together and adjusting the black mask around her head, Y/N kneeled to the ground. Her legs staggered as she took a position of a long stride, her few fingers holding up her upper body. She looked as if she would start a relay race in track and field, but she wasn't. Hidaka knew that this staring position forced the legs to carry much of the starting power, something she would use to her utmost advantage in this race.
The second light blinked out.
Concentrating her energy and power into her legs as it flowed down her ankles, Y/N was inwardly ecstatic that she was allowed to wear the boots from her hero costume during the festival. With the modifications on the boots in their soles, Y/N knew how to use her legs to their greatest potential during this race with quirks. Her feet began to warm, the soft tingling through her legs warmed her of how much power she had stored in them, and she was more than ready to release the energy and completely demolish the field when the race would start.
The third light blinked out.
The discharge of the energy was blindingly powerful. Mighty flames had burst out violently from the soles of Y/N's silver boots, launching her into the air in a spiral of an unleashed rocket.
Where she stood before the start was now marked by a small crater of melted and liquid concrete, black marks stained around the epicenter in a circular fashion, spraying in every direction away from the blast point. The radius of the crater wasn't two big, but it was scalding hot and it burned one's eyes if they were to look at it while standing too closely. The deepest parts of the divot were the imprints of two footprints, the charcoal black soot was the thickest and darkest in the prints.
With a cackling laugh, Y/N soared across the swarm of high school students, her blasting arc coming down when she was midway inside the tunnel. But, before she could land atop some unsuspecting and unlucky opponents, Y/N refocused her power into her shoes again as well as her palms.
As her curving blast ended, she shot forwards again, the fire from her limbs propelling her forwards like a missile, staying towards the ceiling of the tunnel. With the control of a professional, Y/N weaved through other students who made similar ideas as hers, but they didn't perform them at such a high calibre as the mask wearing female did.
As she flew towards the end of the tunnel, and blizzard of frozen air flushed over the crowd in a sweeping wave, planting students in place by force while also covering the walls in a sheet of ice.
About to be covered in the first attack, Y/N steeled herself for the impact, but the ice never even came close to her. She should've been frosted over like everyone else, even those who were in the air like her, but the ice split away from her as if she was a bolder in the middle of a river.
Conserving her energy, Y/N slowed her flames from her body and lowered herself towards the iced over pathway, her split-haired rival running ahead of her, leaving the world behind him-dying in a frozen chamber. The second her boots had made contact with the ice, the path had melted and evaporated away into nothing but vapor. Too quick for her to even see the change in state, Y/N ignored the water and continued to run, each of her steps leaving a single footprint of unfrozen ground.
Running on the balls of her feet, Y/N's mind surged itself for answers of why the ice hadn't effected her; to which then the answer was blatantly obvious. Her body temperature was already exceeding the melting point of ice and the evaporating point of water. When she had launched herself from the starting point, she had left of crater of molten concrete, so her feet and body temperature had to have radiated at least 1350 degree Celsius, or about 2462 degrees Fahrenheit. That was the temperature to start to soften and melt concrete, so if she blasted off with such intensity that it melted concrete that ran like dripping paint, her original blast must of been at least 1649 degrees Celsius, or 3000 degrees Fahrenheit.
As she continued to run, a wicked smile curled into her lips. The smile itself was too large for her face and her mouth was stretched too wide to look normal or genuine, if anything, it was a psychotic smile. But, with the mask that only revealed her (eye color) eyes, the horrendous and despicable grin wasn't known to anyone or anything, except Y/N herself.
She was a good distance away from Shouto, but she was also a good amount ahead of the other 1-A students behind her as she didn't have any delay at all getting out of the frozen underpass.
Even though the distance between the first and second place runners was decently large, it gave Y/N the time to survey the world and track ahead of her. As Todoroki is in first place, he crosses the obstacles first, giving Y/N the time to see them and assess the situation before she arrives to the scene of the barrier.
And as she approached the first area where the path had widened, Y/N watched in joy as hundreds of robots appeared from hidden passages and conveyors in the ground. So many targets, so many possibilities, so much freedom, so much power, and so much metal.
Watching Todoroki slow down at the sight of the goliaths, Y/N lessened her run into a trot, the group of pursuers catching up behind her meter by meter. Her eye glanced at the monstrous robots that were as tall as the stadium was in height, their sheer size surmounting over the student body and striking fear and remembrance into those who took the hero exam. Y/N, a student who took the differed recommended student exam, didn't recognize the robots at all, but she made them out to be one thing: hunks of metal that would melt like puddy in her palms.
Staring to build up energy in her hands and feet, Y/N prepared to launch a devastating hurricane of fire into the huddle of the gargantuan machines. But, as her proximity shortened between herself and the son of Endeavor, Y/N watched his hand move towards the ground, the feeling of a chilled wind blowing backwards towards the incoming group washed over her visage.
Todoroki's moves were meticulously calculated and dynamic. With one swift twist of his body and the arc of his right arm, all robots were surrounded in an icy, blue death.
With this sudden attack on the army of machines, Y/N's energy faded from her appendages and she picked up her speed back into full-fledged sprint. Todoroki breathed out a heavy release of air, his arm tingling slightly from the amount of cold her had just produced in such a quick burst.
As his feet were planted for just a moment or two for him to admire his work, a shoulder bashed against his violently as the perpetrator flew beyond him, their push leaving him off balance for a second before he realized what had happened: he had lost the lead. With powerful strides from his muscular legs, Shouto pushed himself forward, making sure he made it through the small window of time he had before the zero pointers collapsed.
"Thanks for doing all of the work for me, Hellfrost!" Y/N said as she looked over her shoulder at the now trailing male, who's face had twisted into a disgusted and angry knot.
"WHATS THIS?!" Hizashi screams from his commentators box as he stands up from his seat rapidly, throwing the chair to the floor in the process. "IT SEEMS AS IF...WHO IS THAT? A MASKED STUDENT HAS TAKEN THE LEAD OVER TODOROKI SHOUTO! THE SON OF NUMBER TWO PRO-HERO, ENDEAVOR!"
Shouta, knowing all too well who the bandaged and masked student was, kept his mouth shut. Having an unknown contender would keep Mic on his toes and continuously yelling, stopping Eraserhead for ever having to commentate on anything. Which he didn't even want to do in the first place.
As the stretch of dirt twisted and turned into the pitfall zone, Y/N could only think in direct thoughts, her lines of her priorities starting to mix around as cause doubts to rise. But no matter how hard the thoughts tried to slow her down, she had to keep moving, hold first place and continue to crush everyone in her way.
With heavy strides fueled with platinum fire in every step, Y/N threw herself from ledge to ledge, dodging the ropes entirely as she just soared over them. The only thing she did was shoot fire from her palms to burn the ropes in the places she landed.
Half the crowd booed her actions while the other half applauded for her wits. If one were to remove the tightropes in between each precipice, the majority of the students wouldn't be able to cross at all. While this could be seen as very unsportsmanlike, this wasn't the time for people to coddle others feelings. This was the Yuuei fucking Sports Festival. Where only the best win and the winners look their best.
With the enthralling action of landminds all around her and the rejoicing of the spectators, Hidaka's mind only slowed into four simple thoughts. Each one more important than the last. Spinning webs of complications and inner turmoil, Y/N needed to lock herself down and finish the course with a top position, she wouldn't settle for less, too many people, alive and dead alike, are expecting her to do them proud and to become something great. Something that she is not: great.
'Strive to best all others.
Take every advantage you have.
Remove their lifeline and they'll fall.
I will avenge you.'
⤐ ♤ « 〚♞〛 » ♤ ⬷
Nalet- croatian. [rush, burst]