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[Matches]
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…
'Well, hopefully that got through his head,' Taka muttered once he'd walked far enough from Todoroki and his emotional baggage, sweatdropping as he did.
He let out a sigh. He wasn't nearly as good at motivational speeches as Midoriya.
Actually, was what he'd just given Todoroki even a motivational speech? It felt more like a reprimand than anything else.
Regardless of what it actually was, hopefully it would do the job of getting the guy to stop sabotaging himself and actually go all out during the tournament.
'And if it doesn't, a thorough beating might help.'
With that thought settled, he nodded to himself and headed toward the cafeteria. He wasn't about to let his lunch break slip by because he'd had to fill in for Midoriya.
A few minutes later, he stepped inside.
'Damn... it's packed.' His eye twitched at the sight of the enormous line stretching across the room. Every student who'd arrived before him was already ahead of him in it.
All because he'd been late.
Taka clicked his tongue.
'Todoroki, I swear I'm going to beat the hell out of... your emotional problems, yeah.'
Just as he was resigning himself to the wait—
-Tap-
A hand landed on his shoulder.
"...?"
He turned to find Kirishima grinning at him, thumb jerked toward one side of the room. "Yo, Taka, we saved you a spot."
Taka looked in the direction he'd pointed. With the cafeteria this full, he couldn't see much past the crowd, but he took the man at his word.
"Thanks." He nodded. Not having to eat standing was more of a relief than he'd expected.
Though, now that he thought about it, standing with his aura handling everything wouldn't have been much of a hardship. He didn't even technically need his hands to eat.
'... Actually, would eating in a corner while my aura handles the chopsticks with my hands in my pockets count for aura farming, or aura losing?'
He set the thought aside before it could go anywhere.
He jerked a thumb to the line ahead of him. "... but I still need to get food, so I'll have to queue up before joining you."
"Don't worry!" Kirishima waved him off. "We grabbed what you usually go for—the spicy stuff, right? Yaoyorozu put it in a temperature box she made with her Quirk. Should still be hot."
Taka blinked.
They'd actually paid attention to that?
Well, it was his go to most of the time, so maybe it wasn't that hard to notice.
"Well, thanks then." He kept his expression even, even if something warmer stirred somewhere in the vicinity of his chest.
Problem resolved, the two of them left the line and headed toward the table.
… But as they neared it, Taka's pace slowed once it came into view.
"...?"
The cafeteria tables were meant for six. The one ahead had at least sixteen people around it, every single one of them his classmates. They'd somehow all compressed themselves around it—elbows on the surface, fingers interlocked in front of their mouths, and eyes fixed directly on him with matching expressions of absolute seriousness.
A heavy air suddenly fell upon him.
His eyes slowly drifted to Kirishima, who stood next to him.
The guy's usual grin was gone. Instead, he had the same expression as the rest.
'Et tu, Brute?'
"We saved your lunch, Takahashi-san." Yaoyorozu suddenly said as she pulled up a small box of some unfamiliar metal from under the table, took out the food tray with his lunch, and slid it across to him with one hand—while the other stayed folded over her mouth, gaze unbroken. "Please take a seat."
"Gee, thanks." He said with barely hidden sarcasm as he sat down and pulled the tray the rest of the way with his aura.
Kirishima settled in beside him, seamlessly joining the wall of stares and emo avenger poses.
While that happened, Taka picked up his chopsticks collectedly, acting as if the glares were not even there.
It annoyed some, who were blatantly trying to make them noticeable.
Then, as he finally took the first bite of his food and seemed to enjoy it with the calmness always present in him, he looked back at them.
"So... Something on your minds?"
"Yes, quite a lot," Yaoyorozu said, her tone respectful but precise. "We were wondering about the specifics of your telekinesis. You left rather abruptly before, Takahashi-san, and left us with rather a lot of questions."
"Hmm." He poked at his food, eyes drifting slightly to one side.
Then a wry smile crept onto his face.
"Ask away, then."
Everyone's focus sharpened at once.
-Slap!-
A hand slammed onto the table.
"How did you produce a giant flaming skeleton?" Jiro was the one who spoke, looking like an interrogator tired of waiting for straight answers.
Everyone glanced at her, gave a collective nod of agreement, and turned back to Taka.
"Air," Taka answered calmly, eating another bite. "With telekinesis, I compress it into a solid. The telekinesis not only holds it there, but acts as a layer that absorbs part of any damage the formation takes. As for why it looked like it was on fire and red—that's just the color of my telekinesis. You've all seen it by now."
He demonstrated, letting them all see the bubbly crimson aura that sometimes flickered between looking liquid and other times like raging fire.
A few looked struck by that. Almost like things were clicking into place.
Others, however, didn't look quite so convinced.
Yaoyorozu's voice came through the ripple of reactions.
"Air is mostly nitrogen and oxygen. At the pressures needed to solidify it, it should liquefy first, or ionize, depending on the energy involved. And if it's that dense, shouldn't there be shockwaves and pressure displacement around it? None of that was present when you and Jiro-san moved it. Also, if the telekinesis is absorbing kinetic energy, where does it go?"
Jiro looked a bit uncomfortable in the middle of that.
Taka simply shook his head.
"My telekinesis acts like a bond that holds the air together. That lets it behave like a solid without liquefying the way you're describing, and the bonds also absorb impact and energy when something hits it. As for where the energy from all your attacks or similar external stimuli goes, I redirect it all into the ground, evenly spread. Sometimes, back into the skeleton's own attacks for extra damage."
"What about the side effects of compressing air that way?" Iida raised a hand. "Shockwaves, displaced air pressure, extreme heat—shouldn't any of those occur?"
Taka didn't bat an eye.
"I contain those, too. Same method, transferring it all evenly into the ground."
Iida blinked baffledly. "How...? Energy like that can be extremely unstable and hard to control…"
Taka raised and pointed his chopsticks at him, his face completely serious. "With great care."
"T-then..." A voice rang out from somewhere along the table.
Taka looked over. Midoriya was there, sitting with his notebook already open and pencil in hand.
Taka's gaze went flat immediately.
'Not this guy...'
"Are you saying," Midoriya continued now that he knew he had his attention, "that you were simultaneously managing all those processes—while keeping the entire formation in the shape of a skeleton—while also making it mirror Jiro-san's movements in real time?"
"... Yes," Taka said flatly after a few seconds.
Midoriya didn't look fully convinced, and with it, his usual muttering was unleashed.
"Producing fire and electricity, pushing physical limits beyond what's biologically possible, adding cutting properties to blunt objects, and now this—on top of what seems like a computational ability to run multiple processes simultaneously and in extraordinary detail... Takahashi-san, your Quirk doesn't really sound like just telekinesis."
His eyes fixed on Taka with the look of someone who was onto something.
"Yeah, and your Quirk almost looks like it's not yours, given how inexperienced you were with it at first," Taka replied evenly.
"Never mind, it all makes complete sense!"
Midoriya's gaze snapped away immediately, hand going to the back of his neck with an awkward laugh.
Everyone around the table looked at that exchange with varying degrees of confusion.
As they did, Taka set his chopsticks down on the tray and stood.
"If that's everything, we should get moving. The Festival will resume in not too long."
The sound of him picking up the tray snapped everyone at the table out of whatever thought they may have been having.
Eyes moved between each other; the question going through their eyes was clear.
"Are we really just gonna let him go like that?!"
Those who weren't exactly versed in matters of physics looked at each other dubiously, not knowing whether what he had answered them truly answered their questions.
The sharper ones in the group, on the other hand, didn't look entirely satisfied with what they were given.
—but without a solid grasp of how his Quirk actually worked, there wasn't much to push back on. Telekinesis wasn't exactly an ability that played by the standard rules of physics.
Nor were many Quirks, actually.
Everything was as possible as impossible.
So, in the end, nobody spoke up.
With them unable to voice their dissatisfaction, Taka turned and gave the table his back, already about to walk away victoriously.
Before turning his head slightly, and gesturing at them to follow.
"Well? Let's go. Third game's about to start."
It was time for the last stretch of aura farming.
And he wasn't about to miss it.
...
°
°
°
| Minutes later... |
...
Taka stood calmly before the stage, surrounded by most of his classmates, as they waited for the next part of the festival to get underway.
While waiting for the rest of the classes to get there, and for the crowd at the stands to come back now that the recess was over, his hair swayed in a faint breeze as he stared stoically at the ahead.
Which was strange, given that they were standing in the middle of the stadium with no wind to speak of.
There was truly no rest for the aura farmer.
"..."
Still, standing there doing nothing but looking cool was a little dull, and the other classes would take a while longer to get there from what it looked like. So with nothing better to do, he checked his status to see how his growth was going so far.
But as he did so, His eyes widened slightly at what he saw.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
[STATUS PAGE]
▸ Strength: (182 Base) 1000
▸ Defense: (364 Base) 2500
▸ Aura Projection: 25,138
─────────────
Total Aura: 72,896 → 55,223 (75%)
1st Clone's aura: 12,273 (17%)
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
'Uh... what?'
His total aura had grown by around eleven thousand while he wasn't looking.
And from the looks of it, it was still climbing.
'... How?'
He thought it over.
It wasn't like there was a camera on him while he had been lecturing Todoroki, or when he justified his susanoo rip off to his classmates, right? And even if there was, he doubted it would have earned him that much aura.
That would be pretty funny, but it clearly wasn't the answer.
So why had he gained more aura while sitting in a cafeteria than he had during the actual aura-farming moments at the festival?
'... Delay.' He thought, arriving at an understanding.
What had come in before, the 8k, which he'd assumed was most of it—had most likely only been the aura from people watching live inside the stadium.
What was arriving now was from further out. People across Japan, and beyond, who'd been watching the broadcast from a distance.
Some who hadn't seen it live and were only now catching the highlights were also another reason for the aura to have a delay.
Others abroad, who'd gotten the transmission late and needed it translated on top of that, probably another reason.
Add in the distance the aura itself had to travel to reach him, and the delay made sense.
"Damn." The word slipped out quietly.
He'd known the gains would be significant. He'd assumed he'd accounted for most of it during the games themselves.
'I miscalculated a bit.'
Despite his thoughts, he couldn't stop his mouth from curling upward.
He'd underestimated just how wide the reach of an event this size actually was.
And there was still the afternoon to go.
'My aura is almost recovered too,' he noticed. The number was at 75% and rising steadily, clawing back what the skeleton and the race had eaten through. At this rate, it'd be back to its cap of 83% —the limit due to the active clone—before the first fight even started.
Though, seeing as the total kept climbing, that cap would likely keep growing with it.
His grin settled a little more firmly.
'So I finally achieved it.'
Whatever the final aura gained ended up being, by today's end, he'd be at last standing alongside the true heavy hitters of this world.
Still a bit behind, of course, given he had to spread his aura across his three stats.
But in raw power, and if he decided to go all in, his output would probably equalize or be bigger than even All Might or even All For One.
He couldn't wait for the day he met Gigantomachia again. This time, it wouldn't be a one-sided fight.
'He might not even survive a point-blank aura blast as he did with the 10k version I shot him with when we met,' He thought, snorting.
Maybe not even All For One would.
He shook his head. 'Actually, let's keep my distance from All For One for a while longer.'
Confidence was one thing. Walking into range of a Quirk that could steal abilities was another, especially when his own Quirk was as unusual as it was—and the system attached to it was something stranger still.
He'd prefer not to test what an AFO with a system would be like.
Of course, that was given the guy could touch him, which he very much doubted.
But it was still better to wait until there was no question of the outcome.
'Now, growing a lot is great and all… but that's not the main reason I'm here, is it?'
With that thought, his eyes drifted up toward the VIP section. Eri and Seiji weren't there anymore—probably grabbing food and planning to come back in a bit.
Focusing on the aura was important, but focusing on the process of today's act was just as much.
He was going to make sure this was a day neither would forget.
Nor anyone else.
'But I already said that, didn't I?'
Smiling faintly, he glanced at his status screen one more time and dismissed it.
And found Jiro staring directly at him from the spot where it had just been.
"Look at you grinning at the air. What's got you so amused?"
Taka's smile dropped. He cleared his throat and looked away. "The weather is nice."
"Uh huh."
{"WE ARE BACK, BABY!"}
Present Mic's voice cut through everything, pulling all attention to the stage.
{"Now that lunch is over, it's time to reveal what the last game will be!—right before that, though, an announcement for those who didn't make the finals: we've prepared recreational games so everyone still gets a chance to shine. This isn't called a Sports Festival for nothing!"}
Relieved sighs and cheers broke out from the students who hadn't made the cut.
{"Now that that's taken care of—THE LAST GAME OF THIS YEAR'S SPORTS FESTIVAL!"}
The screen above lit up with an image that made plenty of eyes go wide.
A tournament bracket.
{"Once the recreational games wrap up, our finalists will duke it out tournament style, one on one!!!"}
The crowd's noise hit a new high, many reincorporating spectators joining in on the hype.
But the finalists themselves had a rather different reaction.
"WHAT?! FIGHTING?!"
"YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS!"
"THIS IS RIGGED, RIGGED I TELL YOU!"
"THERE GOES MY CHANCE TO SHINE!"
All eyes drifted, wryly, to the one person standing completely calm through all of it.
The collective thought at that moment was a single, shared prayer:
'Please don't let me fight him.'
Except for two people, of course. One explosive, one half-and-half. They were itching for a fight, judging from their expression, and the tournament had just given them what they wanted.
-Whip!-
Midnight's whip cracked, and the noise settled.
"Before we reveal the bracket and move on to the recreational games, there's one more thing. We need two more students to fill out the bracket evenly. Two members of the fifth-place team may advance."
She pointed directly at the relevant group.
"Team Shinso—you'll need to decide among yourselves which two of you move on, or we'll leave it to chance."
'So Shinso made fifth place,' Taka noted. 'He must have hypnotized a lot of people in desperation at that last minute, but still fallen just short of making the proper cut.'
He let out a quiet, amused breath at the image of Shinso pulling in all those headbands from other teams only to end up one step outside the line.
That's when noise from that direction caught his attention, making him turn.
"I said I don't want to!"
On scene, Ojiro, was glaring at Shinso with real heat in his expression, while Shinso looked thrown off.
"H-how are you—?"
{"Quirk usage outside of the games is not permitted."} Aizawa's voice came through the speakers, flat and unhurried. {"I have my eye on you."}
Shinso blinked in shock. Then his jaw tightened as his most reliable move was shut down before it could get started.
'So they were aware of it.' Taka hummed in faint surprise.
But, well, it was to be expected to an extent. It wouldn't have made much sense for the teachers, who had information on the Quirks of the students, not to have expected or to have let Shinso hypnotize the others into letting him move on to the next round.
Good thing he hadn't needed to step in himself.
So, with the quiet resolution of Shinso hypnotizing them into a consensus gone, the group of four—Ojiro, Shinso, Aoyama, and a student from Class 1-B—broke into squabbling almost immediately.
… Most of it was directed at Shinso, who'd hypnotized them into teaming with him in the first place.
"No agreement, then?" Midnight interrupted their bickering from the stage. Her whip cracked decisively. "Chance it is."
A roulette appeared on the screen, the four names spinning against tense music.
-Bang!-
One name crossed out.
Aoyama Yuga.
The wheel kept spinning.
-Bang!-
Another name crossed out. The wheel stopped.
Nirengeki Shoda.
Leaving two: Mashirao Ojiro and Hitoshi Shinso.
"The two advancing are Hitoshi Shinso and Mashirao Ojiro!" Midnight announced.
'Lucky guy... or maybe not so much,' Taka thought, watching Shinso's brief flash of relief die the moment he caught Ojiro's expression.
Not only had he made an enemy of the guy—Ojiro clearly knew his secret now. That was going to be a problem.
Regardless, that was for them to solve.
"Now that the participants are set, let's draw lots for the bracket!" Midnight produced a box. "Starting with the first team—Takahashi Fukumoto, step forward!"
Taka did, walking up the stage without any change in expression, reaching into the box, and pulling out a ball.
"Number one!" Midnight announced.
A very audible gulp rippled through the mass of students. Everyone who'd heard it already knew they didn't want to be number two.
Everyone except the usual two, of course.
'Didn't even need to look.'
He turned the ball over in his hand with a faintly amused look, then headed back as his name went up first in the bracket.
As he rejoined the group, he caught Todoroki and Bakugo both watching him with the same focused expression.
'I could arrange the matchups like I did in the first combat exercise,' he thought, 'but where's the fun in that?'
He looked back ahead.
'If they can't get past their now-stronger classmates on their own, that's on them.'
One by one, the rest stepped up, drew, and returned. The bracket filled in slowly.
Until it was done.
[First Combat: Takahashi Fukumoto vs Mina Ashido]
[Second Combat: Shoto Todoroki vs Momo Yaoyorozu]
[Third Combat: Izuku Midoriya vs Katsuki Bakugo]
[Fourth Combat: Fumikage Tokoyami vs Hanta Sero]
[Fifth Combat: Kyoka Jiro vs Eijiro Kirishima]
[Sixth Combat: Ochako Uraraka vs Denki Kaminari]
[Seventh Combat: Mashirao Ojiro vs Hitoshi Shinso]
[Eighth Combat: Hatsume Mei vs Tenya Iida]
"Nooooooo!!!" Mina's wail carried across the field.
Taka looked at the bracket with quiet amusement.
'Midoriya against Bakugo. Iida against Hatsume. It's almost like fate, those four.'
This was going to be one hell of a final act.
He was up for it, though.
...
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-To Be Continued...-
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(A/N: Disclaimer - I went a bit overboard with the exposure to all the fights in the tournament. It got better at the end, but I think it may be a bit annoying.)