Two weeks had passed.
And within that span of time, this coastline had transformed into a hellish crater. They kept returning here, turning this dusty beach into an altar of self-torture every time the academic bell rang its end.
On weekends, the ritual grew even more frenzied; they spent time from the freezing dawn until the night that swallowed all light, not stopping until their muscles screamed for mercy.
At this moment, the air above the coast vibrated with ions of pure energy. In the distance, Izuku Midoriya stood tall. The young man no longer looked like a frightened rabbit. His entire body was suddenly cloaked in an aura of crackling, wild lightning. Green emerald electrical currents coiled around his muscles, illuminating his face like a web of light.
It was Full Cowling!
In only two weeks since this training began, Midoriya had trained with agonizing intensity, forcing his body to adapt until he reached the stage where he could use Full Cowling!
It was an achievement that far surpassed the original canon timeline.
Leaving trails of wind in his wake, Midoriya shot forward instantly, his feet pushing off the sand to create small craters. He moved straight toward a young man standing in the middle of the coastline, yawning.
"This time... this time my hand will definitely touch you, Fuse-kun!" Midoriya roared, his voice brimming with confidence.
At the far end of the sand arena, Fuse only smiled—that sharp smirk he typically showed toward opponents he deemed beneath him.
"Try proving your sweet words if you think you're capable, Midoriya," Fuse replied, his voice calm yet strong enough to overpower the crashing waves.
Fuse maintained his signature pose: standing upright like a pillar supporting the sky, both hands buried in his pockets, staring at Midoriya who streaked toward him like a green comet.
"Your movements are still too slow for someone using that quirk. I'll give you some light challenges to warm up your engine," Fuse said, his eyes narrowing, emitting a threatening red glow.
Without needing to remove his hands from his pockets, Fuse's magnetic aura exploded in all directions.
Around him, hundreds of pieces of rusted iron suddenly flew and floated obediently like loyal soldiers. Some were small fragments as sharp as needles, while others were blocks and metal plates thick enough to crush skulls.
Then, in a flash, the swarm of killer iron cleaved through the air, surging viciously straight toward Midoriya.
"Try dodging all this iron dance without slowing your pace."
Seeing that, Midoriya was unfazed. His green eyes tracked every trajectory of the metal projectiles.
With movements enhanced by Full Cowling, he weaved, ducked, and rolled through the air, gracefully evading every stab and blow from the iron.
Sometimes, he deliberately jumped toward a medium-sized iron plate floating in the air, then used the sole of his shoe to push off it as a foothold, launching his body forward like a spring, destroying the distance between them.
Seeing the acrobatic display—vastly improved from their first encounter—Fuse nodded slowly.
"Your movements are starting to look nimble, Midoriya! An Agility maneuver quite praiseworthy for a beginner who just learned to crawl!"
Fuse's grin widened. "But... what's the use of that beautiful dance if you're only busy dodging and spinning like a ballerina in the air?"
Fuse gave no time to breathe. He manipulated his magnetic waves harder, sending additional layers of iron plates flying from the farther scrap piles with terrifying speed and completely unpredictable patterns.
Seeing Fuse's attack pattern shift into a chaotic, brutal metal web, Midoriya was forced to halt his offensive momentum.
Sometimes, instead of continuing forward through the defense, he decided the most logical option was to jump backward to avoid the crossing rain of iron!
During these two weeks that felt like torture to him, Midoriya had begun to understand that Fuse's attack patterns could be predicted if he acted linearly, and his brain was now forced to think at its absolute limits to find a way through this seemingly endless rain of metal.
"Just as I thought... this is a very sturdy wall," Midoriya muttered, his palm wiping cold sweat streaming down his temple. He regulated his ragged breathing, staring at Fuse's figure standing calmly without a single drop of sweat.
Initially, the secret strategy in Midoriya's head had been to play a war of attrition to exhaust Fuse mentally and physically. But as days passed, that strategy proved to be an impossible fantasy.
As the intensity of their training increased, Midoriya was forcefully awakened to one terrifying fact: Fuse Yasushi was an anomalous entity that was nearly invincible when it came to constant stamina tolerance!
Fuse was rarely seen growing tired or running out of breath, unless he was forced to control giant blocks weighing dozens of tons simultaneously with complex micro-managed movements!
If he was merely throwing nails and standard plates as projectiles, Fuse could keep doing it until the end of the world!
Therefore, Midoriya realized he had to devise a thorough plan that didn't rely on empty luck or waiting for Fuse to run out of breath.
Because if this were purely a contest of physical endurance, Midoriya was absolutely certain he would be the first to faint.
"What should I do? There has to be a gap somewhere..." Midoriya held his chin, his brain spinning rapidly. He stopped moving in the middle of the sand arena.
Seeing his opponent standing still like a statue, Fuse rolled his eyes. "What's wrong? Why did you suddenly freeze, Hero? Is your brain short-circuiting from thinking too hard?!"
Without mercy, Fuse launched another wave of iron plate storms toward Midoriya, forcing him to react.
Seeing the deadly consecutive attacks, Midoriya had no choice but to jump and evade in various directions again. His brain continuously assembled numerous plan simulations.
There's no way I can keep playing this game of cat and mouse. My stamina will deplete, and exhaustion will strip away my concentration afterward. Find a way! Think, Izuku! Find a way to divert his attention!
At this moment, Fuse, who was engrossed in toying with Midoriya's movements, suddenly narrowed his red eyes. His ears caught an unnatural static hum. He quickly turned his gaze toward the blind spot on his right flank.
Instantly, his eyes caught a flash of yellow light—a blinding high-voltage electrical current streaking straight through the air toward him.
From behind a pile of rusted refrigerators in the distance, Denki Kaminari shouted with an arrogant laugh of victory. "You let your guard down, Your Majesty!"
It was a concentrated lightning shot from Kaminari's Electrification!
Seeing the attack, Fuse was initially startled, but in an instant his arrogant smile returned, and he sighed.
"A surprise attack from the blind spot—not bad, Kaminari! But you're a fool if you think that's enough to touch the cloak of a protagonist! I could detect changes in the electrical field around me even with my eyes shut tight!"
Without hesitation, Fuse immediately performed a passive countermeasure against the attack. He quickly manipulated hundreds of small iron nails and metal fragments from the ground, making them scatter and converge to form an emergency lightning rod floating in the air, right in the path of the incoming lightning.
When Kaminari's lightning struck the nail pillar, instead of penetrating or exploding, the wild electrical energy was instantly contained.
The current was drawn and absorbed into the metal conductor that Fuse had deliberately compressed, until finally the lightning's glow dimmed and gradually faded, as if swallowed by an iron cage.
All that remained was a cluster of nails now floating passively, cloaked in the remnants of Kaminari's crackling electricity like overheated worms.
Kaminari, who had just struck a cool pose with one eye closed and fingers shaped like a pistol pointing straight at Fuse, suddenly widened his eyes. He clicked his tongue hard, his frustration instantly erasing his victorious smile.
"Damn it, that guy! His metal manipulation power is really useful for all sorts of annoying things like some illegal cheat!" Kaminari cursed.
The thing was, over the past few days, Kaminari had been training hard using flying iron plates arranged by Fuse as focus targets for his long-range attack accuracy.
So now, he felt proud because he no longer needed to rely on Support equipment or perform AoE attacks like he usually did.
Though the destructive power of those precision strikes was admittedly quite low, Kaminari knew it was more than enough to make an opponent's nerves spasm momentarily and disrupt their balance, rendering them unable to move for a split second.
Even one second mattered!
That was why, deep in his heart, Kaminari already knew logically that his attack on Fuse could be anticipated and easily countered using a conductor.
But still, seeing his effort dismantled so casually... he felt extremely irritated and humiliated.
Especially when he saw the expression on Fuse's face—so arrogant, as if looking at him like a child trying to fight a tank.
Veins of irritation twitched violently on Kaminari's forehead. "I swear I'll beat the hell out of him later! We have the advantage of numbers. I'll throw everything I have to wipe that annoying expression and that know-it-all smile off his face forever!"
Fuse, seeing Kaminari's face apparently boiling with pure frustration, suddenly had a cruel mischievous idea. Casually, he controlled the cluster of iron nails that had just absorbed Kaminari's electricity, and spun them around, redirecting them straight toward their original owner.
"If you hate my face that much, then enjoy this appetizer. Here, taste your own lightning attack, electric man."
In the blink of an eye, the cluster of crackling iron shot through space toward Kaminari's position.
"Y-you're insane!" Kaminari, immediately realizing the reversed attack, felt as though his heart had leaped out of his throat.
He screamed in panic and struggled to jump sideways to evade his own creation. "That's a really dirty move, you Manipulator!"
"You're using and controlling my own attack against me?! That's copyright infringement, damn it!"
Fuse, standing calmly, couldn't help but feel extraordinarily satisfied seeing Kaminari's face as pale as paper, spinning in panic. He couldn't hold back a soft laugh and a wide smile.
"Why do you look so half-dead terrified facing electrical energy that you created from your own body, Kaminari? Are you really that stupid?" Fuse taunted with a voice that burned the ears.
However, in the middle of his enjoyment of mentally tormenting Kaminari, Fuse's ears suddenly caught an unpleasant echo. The sound of heavy footsteps pounding the sand, approaching at full speed from the blind spot behind him.
"Don't take your eyes off me, Mr. Class Rep!"
Fuse spun around fast. His eyes immediately found Eijiro Kirishima, who had activated his Hardening quirk. The sharp-toothed red-haired young man was charging forward, now swinging a rock-covered fist straight toward Fuse's back. Their distance was now extremely close, almost within striking range!
Yet, before Fuse could consciously command his quirk, iron nails and a protective plate hidden in the sand behind him shot upward on their own, immediately blocking the path of Kirishima's lethal fist.
The iron moved and formed a layered protective shield by itself, shielding Fuse without any command or focused thought from Fuse!
It was Automatic Defense!
During their training together on this beach, of course it wasn't only his friends who had evolved rapidly. Fuse wasn't about to let this rare opportunity slip by to train and perfect his Automatic Defense.
He had trained his subconscious reflexes so that he no longer needed to bother thinking and controlling iron pieces one by one to protect himself manually.
Instead, a cluster of iron floating near him seemed to have been programmed to react to shifts in air pressure or the speed of threats that violated the perimeter of his safe zone.
The iron itself had become a subconscious movement, like an eyelid closing automatically to protect the pupil from any danger!
Kirishima, whose attack was blocked so easily by a plate without Fuse even turning around, was stunned beyond belief. His eyes widened. "Truly a functional and unfair quirk. You can use the same material to attack and defend without losing momentum!"
But Kirishima's manly spirit quickly overtook his shock. He pulled back his fist, hardened his muscles even thicker, and prepared to launch his next counterattack.
"But don't expect that passive defense to be strong enough to withstand the hard blows of my spirit!"
Kirishima struck repeatedly. Of course, every hard attack was instantly blocked by the protective iron that reacted faster than a blink.
However, Fuse standing behind the shield couldn't help but knit his brows deeply. He quickly controlled a number of other iron nails from the air to attack Kirishima's body in succession.
This Automatic Defense was indeed very useful for intercepting surprise attacks. But its weakness lay in the fact that it wasn't designed to receive and absorb continuous, blind close-range physical attacks from a close-combat fighter like Kirishima!
"Hah! I've told you a thousand times that my skin is incredibly hard, Fuse!" Kirishima, now being showered with consecutive small iron pieces from Fuse, didn't budge an inch, as if he didn't care at all about the attacks he called laughable.
All the nails and small iron pieces that dive-bombed and struck his stone body immediately bounced off in all directions, so hard was his defensive skin.
True, at certain angles, there were sharp blades that managed to graze him and draw blood. But Kirishima swallowed the pain raw; he knew those scratches weren't fatal and were merely light wounds that triggered adrenaline.
"Now it's my turn again, take this fist and crumble!" Kirishima shouted. He hardened his skin again and again to its limit, continuously attacking Fuse's protective shield with brutality.
At this point, Fuse—who had never retreated even a single inch from where he stood since the first day of training—was now forced to move his legs. He stepped back. One step. Then another, trying to hold the pressure.
This rock idiot... he's too noisy and his strength is incredibly annoying to deal with at this close range, Fuse thought with irritation, feeling the vibration of the impacts traveling from his magnetic field into his brain.
He was slowly being pushed back by Kirishima's brutal, relentless attacks!
A sight that was rare even for himself.
Realizing he held the momentum, Kirishima immediately released the hardening effect on the rest of his body. Instead, he focused one hundred percent of the hardening effect solely on his right hand, compressing it to its utmost limit.
Kirishima's right hand now appeared to change color, becoming darker—so sharp and hard, as if every killing intent he possessed was concentrated solely on that part.
Fuse narrowed his eyes, recognizing this reckless tactic. Isn't this Midoriya's way of fighting!?
It was nothing less than a fighting style that abandoned his own safety, leaving his entire defense wide open like a soft target, and purely focusing on the destructive power of a single strike!
Seeing that lethal fist raised into the air, Fuse couldn't help but feel his danger instinct alarm screaming in his head.
"Take this and get blown away, Fuse!" Kirishima roared, his gaze burning sharp and fierce.
But strangely, Kirishima was smiling, so proud. Perhaps that smile was born because he felt incredibly satisfied and proud in his heart that he had finally managed to make Fuse—who always appeared invincible and arrogant—feel overwhelmed enough to be forced to step back before him.
Right after that roar, Fuse didn't hesitate and immediately manipulated dozens of layers of thick steel plates and concrete blocks, placing them in a thick, aligned barricade fortress before Kirishima to absorb the destructive force of the attack.
BRAKKK-BOOM!
In an instant, all the thick iron layers reinforced by magnetism appeared to crumble and were easily pierced through by Kirishima's fist, which had focused his hardening.
However, before the remainder of the punch broke through the final barrier and reached Fuse's chest—he was no longer standing there to receive the blow.
Fuse had already jumped backward, using magnetic repulsion against the sand, and taken a flying retreat distance safe enough to avoid the lethal impact zone.
"You're too arrogant and careless, Kirishima! Did you think that desperate punch would succeed in touching me?!"
Exactly as Kirishima completed his swing and was in a recovery position, in the blink of an eye, the iron that had been destroyed blocking his attack didn't go dead.
Fuse ordered them to rejoin and coil tightly, making Kirishima's right hand pinned and trapped between the steel debris.
Kirishima was shocked, trying to pull his arm in panic. He couldn't break free!
His primary hand was locked by the iron grip!
"There's nothing wrong with trying extreme risks, right?! This is just training, man!" Kirishima gritted his teeth, enduring the throbbing in his shoulder, struggling to break free.
Seeing his opponent locked down, Fuse broke a light sweat. He exhaled, preparing to deliver a long lecture about the foolishness of discarding one's defense.
But at this moment, he suddenly widened his eyes and his instincts forced him to spin his body and turn directly behind him!
Previously, because he had poured nearly all his concentration and magnetic maneuvering capability solely into blocking and locking Kirishima's brutal frontal attack, he had become too focused on one point.
Now he realized a dark presence that froze his bloodstream.
Fumikage Tokoyami, his body fully cloaked and protected by Dark Shadow, was hovering exactly one centimeter behind Fuse.
At this moment, Fumikage no longer wasted time. He swung his dense shadow claws, striking squarely at the wide-open blind spot on Fuse's back.
As this lethal threat approached, medium-sized iron immediately floated in response as automatic defense, appearing instantly to block the shadow claw attack from Fumikage.
But soon after, the automatic defense—unaided by Fuse's full mental focus—was quickly breached and shattered to pieces by the sudden, extraordinarily powerful and massive claw strike from Dark Shadow.
Fuse, who tried to block the remainder of the attack by crossing both arms, clicked his tongue hard. "Tch!"
BUAGH!
Fuse's body was launched into the air by the shadow claw's impact.
But even as his body was thrown, a cunning and vindictive smile didn't fade from his face. He had already prepared an absolute counterattack.
At this moment, Fumikage, who felt relieved that his attack had landed, suddenly sensed that the air around him had turned cold, and a super-giant dark shadow appeared, blocking the direct sunlight above his head.
His eyes went wide, a deathly premonition haunting him, and he quickly looked up at the sky.
He was stunned beyond belief to find that tons of scrap iron, steel plates, and car doors had gathered into a giant iron ball above him, floating in the air, and were now preparing to fall directly onto his head like a destructive meteorite!
Fumikage tried to pump his legs to run and evade, but he realized he wouldn't have time to get out of the fall radius of the giant object.
BAMMMM!
The iron ball crashed into the sand—fortunately, Fuse had left a small safe margin at the last second, so it fell exactly one hand's breadth beside Fumikage's body, creating a massive crater and blasting sand that sent the bird-headed young man flying from the fall's shockwave, collapsed and shocked on the sand.
On the other side of the arena, Fuse, who had been launched into the air, landed hard and rolled onto the sand. He immediately sprang up smoothly, brushing the dust off his pants.
"Isn't that a very dirty and dishonorable act, attacking my back from the blind spot right when I was busy and off guard?" Fuse complained loudly.
He tilted his head, staring at Fumikage who was coughing amid the dust. "Furthermore, what was that combo? A cheap follow-up attack after another pawn sacrificed themselves? Don't you feel any shame as a shadow knight?"
He was about to clean the remaining dust from his clothes with his hand, but stopped his movement when his retina caught sight of Izuku Midoriya running through the dust smoke at terrifying speed, heading straight toward him.
Fuse clicked his tongue with irritation and immediately showered Midoriya's running path with a storm of countless sharp small iron projectiles.
However, Midoriya, who had consistently activated Full Cowling, jumped, weaved, and evaded the rain of metal with very easy agility.
"The same monotonous attack as this will never succeed in touching me again, Fuse-kun!" Midoriya shouted, his voice filled with a trembling confidence.
"Is that so, Green Hero?" Fuse replied, smiling stiffly and slightly annoyed at the sight.
Instantly, Fuse called and controlled all medium and large iron in the beach area, merging them, and made the giant deadly iron storm attack Midoriya simultaneously like an iron dragon. He was no longer holding back!
"Do you really think you're a fool who doesn't pause to consider that this whole time I've only been toying with your little dance?"
Midoriya, seeing the scale of that giant attack, instantly felt his blood freeze. He broke into cold sweat, his face pale as he realized he wouldn't be able to evade an attack range that large.
"Y-you're joking, right, Fuse-kun?" his voice trembled severely.
"Does my handsome face look like it's joking to you?" Fuse answered quickly, his smile growing wider and more confident.
It was abundantly clear that Fuse didn't want Midoriya to get even an inch closer and ruin his safe distance. He intended to level the area.
But at this crucial, heart-pounding moment, Fuse suddenly felt the corner of his eye catch a yellow silhouette, and he quickly turned.
In the blink of an eye, a very concentrated long-range lightning attack from Kaminari was once again aimed and shot straight at Fuse's head.
"Isn't it too excessive and incredibly cruel if you treat my existence like invisible dust here?!" Kaminari fired with a fierce expression, his breathing ragged, ignoring his fear.
BZZZZT!
Fuse's automatic defense system reacted instantly. Steel plates immediately activated, flying fast in front of Fuse's face, blocking the lightning strike from frying his brain.
Fuse let out a tired sigh behind his iron shield, feeling the hot magnetic sting. "Too bad, Kaminari, this is a battle, not a circus show where you can seek attention as you please."
Kaminari, seeing his attack dismantled so easily once again, looked extremely irritated—he bit his lip. "You're truly the world champion when it comes to being the most annoying person!"
"Thank you very much for the honest compliment," Fuse lifted both shoulders, not offended in the slightest.
But inside, Fuse felt his heartbeat quicken slightly. Of course, he knew very well that if he had been lazy and hadn't trained his automatic defense reflexes over these two weeks of training, he would have surely been scorched by that direct, unexpected attack—especially since his concentration had been entirely focused on obliterating Midoriya!
At this moment, because the lightning attack had diverted his main focus, Fuse turned his head back and quickly glanced toward the position where Midoriya had been.
Suddenly, his red eyes widened.
He didn't see a terrified Midoriya there!
The sand where the young man had stood only left an empty crater!
He spun his body, searching the surrounding sand arena, but found no trace of the green silhouette.
"Is hiding like a rat in a hole really that enjoyable for you, Midoriya?" Fuse shouted. "You look like a cowardly loser, you know?"
At this moment, his danger instinct rang sharp. He felt a large shadow fall over his body, blocking the afternoon sunlight.
Fuse narrowed his eyes and reflexively looked up at the sky.
It was Midoriya!
The young man had used the power in his legs to leap close at full Full Cowling supersonic speed straight up high, cutting across the horizontal line of sight, purely to hide in the vertical blind spot of the sun.
Fuse frowned, feeling underestimated, and immediately dispatched dozens of iron spears into the air, attacking Midoriya in the sky.
But Midoriya, in a free-fall position, weaved and evaded the aerial spear attacks with nonsensical midair maneuvers.
"The same attack will never succeed in touching me again—I've already seen this attack pattern before!" Midoriya shouted, his voice filled with triumph.
Then, as gravity pulled him down and his vertical distance grew closer to Fuse's head, he released the full energy of One For All concentrated on his right fist. The muscles of his arm swelled and glowed burning red.
Midoriya intended to strike and destroy Fuse's defense with one full-power One For All blow from the sky!
He was aiming for the finishing move!
"You've apparently really developed rapidly in these two weeks." Fuse stared at the green meteor falling toward him, and he couldn't help but smile wryly. "It seems it wasn't a waste of my holy time spent sweating and torturing you all here!"
But even as he praised, Fuse felt the highest-level alarm blaring deafeningly inside his skull. His logic and survival instinct unanimously screamed at him to immediately call all steel shields or at least roll and dodge as far as possible from the impact point.
But Fuse clenched his jaw tight, knitting his brows deeply.
His ego would not accept and allow himself to perform cowardly acts like dodging or running away in front of all of them!
My ego knows only two outcomes… either I win gracefully, or I destroy everything trying!
In the blink of an eye, instead of calling shields, Fuse instead drew and focused thousands of black iron sand fragments and solid metal plate pieces from the coastline. The iron immediately flew, cloaking and coating the entire surface of his right hand. The metal interlocked, compressed, and it looked as if he were forming a thick, lethal mecha armor gauntlet on his bare hand.
Then, with a terrifying smile, he clenched his iron fist tight.
He refused to dodge—so the only option was to face Midoriya's absolute power head-on and trade blows directly!
At this moment, Midoriya's meteor punch from the sky drew closer, only one meter remaining from Fuse's face.
Instantly, Fuse's uncontrollable automatic defense instinct appeared; iron plates floated up from below, trying to cover Fuse's head, attempting to block Midoriya's lethal attack on pure instinct. But that self-protective action was utterly in vain.
In an instant, the iron plates shielding Fuse's head were obliterated like wet paper struck by pure power.
Fuse, who had already planted a firm stance and was ready to receive the impact, immediately swung his iron fist upward, directing the steel-coated fist straight at Midoriya's descending knuckles.
At this moment, their two lethal punches finally collided at the meeting point...
KABOOMMM!!!
A deafening kinetic explosion erupted in all directions. An extraordinarily fierce cyclonic wind spiral emerged from the point of their fists' collision, creating a very thick local sandstorm, making both their silhouettes instantly blur and become completely invisible to the naked eye.
Kirishima, Kaminari, and Tokoyami also suffered the brutal impact of the shockwave. They were pushed backward and quickly had to raise their hands, shielding their eyes from the sharp sand dust flying wildly like a desert sandstorm.
During ten seconds that felt like a century passed in tension. The howling wind faded, and their silhouettes slowly began to reappear among the settling dust clouds.
Then, Kaminari and the others watching from a distance were stunned beyond belief. They unconsciously let out a long breath, unable to believe it.
In the middle of the small crater created by the collision, Midoriya lay fallen on the sand, his breathing ragged as he endured the throbbing pain, with a very severe wound on his right arm that now hung limp and purple.
It was the direct impact of forcing a full-power One For All head-on clash against pure steel, while his body wasn't yet strong enough to contain its own explosion!
Meanwhile, towering above Midoriya... Fuse stood perfectly upright.
Though his clothes were dusty and he appeared bathed in sweat mixed with sand, and the exhales of extreme exhaustion were clearly audible from his nose, he didn't look seriously injured at all. His iron arm had already faded back into iron sand fragments, and his hand was intact without fracture.
Fuse slowly turned his body. He pivoted, and with arrogant burning red eyes, stared at all his friends who had now fallen, kneeling in exhaustion, bruised, and helpless before him.
A crooked smile—tired yet filled with a conqueror's satisfaction—was carved on his lips.
He took a deep breath, and spoke in a voice loud enough to echo across the sandy beach.
"You've rested long enough from that performance. So... let's continue to the next round."
As those words rolled out, the sand expanse around them began to vibrate again. Thousands of iron chunks and plates at the edge of the coastline, which had been lying dead in piles resembling scrap hills, suddenly shook violently. The objects rose, flew into the sky, and began orbiting around Fuse's body.
Some were the size of baseballs, some medium-sized like shields, some as large as doors, and dozens more enormous ones in the complete form of rusted bus skeletons.
If the amount of iron used in previous training sessions had been considered very large and overwhelming... then this was ten times more massive, heavier, and more numerous than the total of all iron Fuse had controlled over the past two weeks combined.
The beach sky was instantly covered by clouds made purely of scrap steel.
Seeing the apocalyptic iron sight before their eyes, Kaminari, who had just stood up, instantly felt his kneecaps turn to jelly. His body slumped back down, falling to sit on the sand. His face was pale, drained of all blood.
"You've gotta be kidding me..." Kaminari groaned, his soul seemingly floating out of his body, preparing to face eternal torment.
...
The sound of seagulls suddenly shrieked loudly from the sky.
At this moment, Fuse's eyelids trembled. He opened his eyes slowly, squinting against the glare, and weakly raised one hand to rub his sticky, sand-caked eyes. Aches and numbness spread through every muscle fiber in his back.
With a soft groan, he forced his upper body up, changing from lying down to sitting stiffly on the wet sand expanse.
He was still slightly dazed. Raising his trembling hand, he blocked his vision from the piercing light stabbing his corneas. He stared straight at the endless boundary line of the sea.
On the eastern horizon, the sun god was slowly crawling, splitting the horizon. Gold and blood-red hues washed the morning sky.
Dawn had broken in its majesty.
"Did we all pass out and sleep here?" Fuse muttered hoarsely, his voice sounding like a sick person's whisper. His brain slowly pieced together the chaotic memories of last night's endless training session that ended when they all ran out of oxygen and strength.
Then, with eyes not yet fully open, he slowly turned his head, gazing around the ruined sand arena.
The sight was rather embarrassing.
Just as he'd guessed, the others had also fallen without strength. Midoriya lay pitifully near a pile of old tires, his mouth slightly open and drooling. Kirishima was face-down kissing the sand like a dead worm. Tokoyami was curled up hugging his knees, while Kaminari lay flat on his back with arms and legs spread like a traffic accident victim. They were all wiped out and sleeping soundly like babies on the cold sand mattress.
Fuse rolled his eyes, enduring the pain in his joints, and forced himself to stand up. His knees wobbled briefly, but his ego supported his body.
He walked with a limp, then stopped near Kirishima's head and gently kicked his friend's shoe.
"Get up, you lazy extras!" Fuse's voice was hoarse, but its volume was enough to wake the dead. "Get up! The sun is already burning your asses! You're sleeping on the sand like a bunch of useless river rocks!"
Hearing the shout, their bodies jolted in shock. One by one, they stirred and rose from their deep unconsciousness. Their faces looked utterly confused, their muscles screaming in pain, and their mouths agape in disbelief, not knowing where they were.
But as their consciousness fully returned, they realized one crucial thing: the fact that today was D-day—the day that determined their fate.
It was the day the U.A. Sports Festival began!
"Damn it! We're dead!" Kirishima shouted. The first to spring up with a shocked expression, he jumped to his feet as if the sand floor were on fire. His red eyes blinked rapidly, his vision still slightly blurry from residual drowsiness, then he looked up at the reddish-blue sky. His memory returned. "Isn't today the Sports Festival?!"
Fumikage, still sitting cross-legged, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, then narrowed his sinister gaze toward the sun. "You're joking with me, right, fate?" he muttered with a hoarse voice concealing inner panic.
"Idiot! Who cares about fate?! What time is it?!" Kaminari, panicking wildly, jumped up and immediately rummaged through his pants pockets with rough movements, hurrying to grab his belongings. He pulled out his phone screen, slightly cracked, and stared in horror at the digital numbers displayed. "Oh, my god... this is a god-level disaster... we could be extremely late!"
Without waiting, with bodies still aching and reeking of sweat, they quickly gathered their remaining belongings and rushed off, leaving the beach, intending to go home, take a lightning-fast shower, change clothes, and then head straight to U.A.
Fuse, who decided to walk slightly slower at the back to maintain his calm image, stood still for a moment at the edge of the beach.
He stared at his friends' backs, growing smaller and smaller as they were swallowed by the morning city streets.
At this moment, a gentle, satisfied smile was carved on his face.
After making sure none of them could see him, Fuse slowly turned his body, facing the vast, endless expanse of the ocean once more. The wet dawn wind blew through his red hair.
He took a deep breath, feeling pure magnetic energy swirling wild and unstable through his veins, as if waiting to explode.
He slowly raised his right hand, leveling it with his chest. With red eyes radiating a gleam of madness, he pointed his index finger and thumb, forming the pose of a long-barreled pistol, aiming it at the vanishing point in the middle of the dark blue sea.
A hundred-yen coin floated from his pocket, spinning slowly and obediently, resting on the tip of his thumb.
Fuse's lips curved, whispering a single word he had once spoken before:
"Bang!"
His thumb snapped downward.
ZWWWWSSSSHHHHH-BAMMM!!!
Instantly, the small coin launched from the tip of his finger. No longer at bullet speed, but at an insanely, inexplicably hypersonic speed that defied ordinary physics.
So fast was its friction with the dawn air molecules that the coin's material instantly heated up, melted into plasma, and cleaved through space, streaking straight far above the ocean like an orange-red plasma meteorite laser splitting the sea!
The heat trail of that railgun shot even created small distortion ripples in the air and water below its path.
Seeing a sight that surpassed even his own calculations, Fuse's eyes couldn't help but open slightly wider. Pure surprise overcame his composure.
It's fucking peak…
He lowered his hand slowly. His chest rumbled. "No mistake about it. My power has truly developed and evolved."
"Both in pure kinetic penetration power and the acceleration speed limit of that railgun shot... Truly an extraordinary improvement. Has my ability permanently surpassed its limiter, right after I nearly died pushing myself insanely at the USJ?"
Fuse lowered his head, staring at his own reddened palm. He slowly gazed at his five fingers.
He then clenched his fingers, balling his fist tight until his veins bulged, feeling it. Clenching twice more with firm movements.
And once again, he raised his face, staring straight at the vast, boundless open sea, far toward the empty horizon where the light of the plasma coin he had fired had vanished, swallowed by the distance.
...
A/N: I'm sorry for not letting you know that I've been on hiatus all this time... I'm feeling better now, so I'll try to continue this story again.