The display above the stadium flared to life, showing the results of the first round.
--- --- BLOCK A --- ---
Midoriya Izuku (W) vs Shinso Hitoshi
Todoroki Shoto (W) vs Sero Hanta
Shiozaki (W) Ibara vs Kaminari Denki
Iida Tenya (W) vs Mei Hatsume
--- --- BLOCK B --- ---
Tokoyami Fumikage (W) vs Yaoyorozu Momo
Bakugo Katsuki (W) vs Uraraka Ochaco
Kirishima Eijiro (W) vs Ashido Mina
Haruto Akagivs Yuga Aoyama
"ALRIGHT, HERO FANS! WE'VE SAVED THE BRIGHTEST FOR LAST!" Present Mic's voice shook the speakers.
"ON ONE SIDE, THE SHINING PRINCE, YUGA AOYAMA! AND ON THE OTHER... HARUTO AKAGI, WHO LOOKS LIKE HE'S ABOUT TO TAKE A NAP!"
Aoyama struck a pose, his teeth glinting.
"Akagi-kun! The world is watching! We must provide them with a spectacle that—"
Haruto wasn't listening, he was busy picking a piece of lint off his sleeve.
"Can we skip the monologue, Sparkles? I'm not in the mood"
Midnight raised her whip, glancing at Haruto's indifferent expression.
"START!"
"Navel Laser!" Aoyama shouted, thrusting his hips.
Haruto's expression didn't change, his body moved with efficiency, as he slipped the beam.
With a slight tilt of his torso, the laser whistled past his ribs, missing him by a fraction of an inch. While Aoyama was still committed to the thrust, Haruto was already closing the gap.
His feet blurred. He covered the distance in two heavy strides.
"Wait—non! Stay back!" Aoyama panicked, trying to sweep the beam across the ring to catch him.
But Haruto was already inside his guard. He ducked under the swinging arc of the laser - the heat touching the very tips of his hair - and rose up directly in front of Aoyama.
His frame cast a long shadow over the blonde boy.
"Are you done?" Haruto asked, his voice flat.
He didn't use a flashy move. He simply put a hand on Aoyama's shoulder. The weight of Haruto's hand alone made the blond's knees buckle - it felt like someone had dropped a bowling ball on a toothpick.
"Wait, wait! Let us discuss the aesthetics of—"
"Goodbye, disco ball."
Haruto grabbed the back of Aoyama's tracksuit and his belt. And casually - as if tossing a crumpled piece of paper toward a trash can - threw him away.
Aoyama went sailing horizontally, as he soared out of the ring.
Thump.
"AOYAMA OUT OF BOUNDS! HARUTO AKAGI ADVANCES!"
The crowd was half-cheering, half-confused. The match had lasted less than thirty seconds.
Haruto was already halfway to the tunnel before Aoyama had stopped rolling on the grass.
As he entered the shadows of the hallway, he ran into Kirishima, who was warming up for the next round by hardening his arms.
"Whoa, Akagi! That was... efficient!" Kirishima grinned. "Ready for our match in the Quarters? It's gonna be a real man's battle!"
Haruto stopped, looked at Kirishima's hardened, jagged arms, and then looked at the ceiling.
"Yeah, sure."
He kept walking, leaving a very confused Kirishima behind.
***
In the stands, the silence among Class 1-A was heavy.
While the rest of the stadium was still trying to process the sub-thirty-second "fight", Midoriya Izuku was analysing Haruto's movement patterns.
"He just picked him up like a bag of laundry." Uraraka blinked.
"It wasn't just that," Midoriya muttered, his eyes narrowed.
"Haruto-kun is always efficient, but this was... different. he didn't even look Aoyama in the eye."
"He seems totally off ," Kaminari added, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Normally he'd have cracked three jokes about Aoyama's light beam before ending the fight."
Tsuyu tapped her chin with a finger. "Ribbit. It's a bit scary, actually."
"He doesn't look like himself...Did something happen?" Midorya muttered, as he watched Haruto's retreating figure.
"Maybe he's just focused?" Toru suggested, her voice popping up from her seat behind them.
"You know how he is. He probably just wants to get to the finals so he can go home and sleep."
Mina Ashido suddenly leaned over the back of her chair, a mischievous glint in her eyes as she pointed a finger toward the invisible girl.
"Wait, wait, wait! Is that a hint of inside info I hear?" Mina grinned, her voice dripping with curiosity.
"Come on, Toru! Spill it! Are you two actually dating? How do you know him so well?"
Toru's gloves flew up to her invisible cheeks instantly, her entire frame jolting back in surprise.
"Wha—?! Dating?! No! No, no, no! It's not like that at all!"
She waved her hands frantically, the fabric of her sleeves blurring with the speed of her panic.
"We're just best friends! Honestly! We've known each other since middle school, so I'm just used to his weird moods. But even for him, this is... new. I really don't know what's going on with him today."
Mina giggled, clearly enjoying the reaction, but Midoriya remained focused on the entrance of the tunnel.
***
Quarter-Finals
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE'VE SEEN ELEMENTS AND WE'VE SEEN SPEED, BUT NOW WE HAVE RAW PHYSICALITY!ON ONE SIDE, THE HARD-BOILED HERO-IN-TRAINING... EIJIRO KIRISHIMA! AND ON THE OTHER, THE MAN WHO MAKES WINNING LOOK LIKE A CHORE... HARUTO AKAGI!"
Kirishima was already in the ring, his skin hardened.
"Come on, Akagi! Let's have a manly match"
Haruto stepped into the ring. He neither looked at the crowd, nor the cameras. He just stared at the concrete floor, as if his mind was somewhere else.
Midnight raised her whip. "START!"
"RED COUNTER!" Kirishima yelled, his skin hardening into jagged armor.
He unleashed a flurry of hooks and straights, each punch carrying enough force to shatter brick.
Haruto tilted his head a fraction of an inch to let a jagged fist whistle past his ear.
He stepped back just enough to let a heavy blow graze the air in front of his chest.
His feet moved in small circles, his body pivoting on the spot with zero wasted energy.
"Come on, Akagi! Stand and fight!" Kirishima roared, frustrated by the lack of impact.
He lunged in for a massive overhead strike, pouring every ounce of his stamina into the blow.
Haruto let out a long sigh. "You're leaning into it, Red. Big mistake."
As Kirishima's fist descended, Haruto stepped into the attack's blind spot. Instead of resisting the force, he reached out and caught Kirishima's arm and the back of his gym shirt, using the boy's own forward momentum against him.
With a fluid rotation of his hips - a textbook Ippon Seoi Nage (Shoulder Throw) - Haruto helped Kirishima finish the journey he had started.
Kirishima, fully hardened and heavy as a boulder, realized too late that he had no brakes. Haruto's strength redirected him like a railgun. Kirishima was launched through the air, soaring right over the boundary line.
CRASH.
Kirishima slammed into the dirt outside the ring, his hardening Quirk leaving a deep crater in the grass.
"KIRISHIMA IS OUT OF BOUNDS! HARUTO AKAGI ADVANCES!"
Midnight lowered her whip, looking back and forth between the crater and Haruto, who was already turning away.
"Manly..." Kirishima groaned from the dirt, his skin returning to normal as he looked up at the sky. "He didn't even break a sweat..."
***
After the fight Haruto didn't head for the recovery room or the stands to bask in his victory. Instead, he ducked into a narrow maintenance closet in the tunnel.
He locked the door and pulled his phone out. His thumb hovered over the screen.
30 Unanswered Calls. 0 Replies.
"Damn it, Jin. Pick up," he hissed under his breath.
The silence was the worst part. When he had asked Jin to make a clone of him, and take it with them, it had felt like a perfect plan - a safety net.
"Dammit," Haruto whispered, his fingers flying across the keypad.
[Haruto]: Did something happen? Report in. Now.
He leaned his head against the cool metal of a shelf. The paranoia was a living thing, gnawing at the back of his mind.
What if the "Ingenium" had actually called for backup faster than usual? What if Toga's bloodlust had finally overridden her common sense and she'd gone for a "taste" of the Hero Killer?
"I'm the one who told them to play this stupid bodyguard game, If I lose them because I wanted to save a secondary character's career..."
He checked his phone again. Still nothing.
The stadium above him shook with roars.
The vibrations traveled down through the concrete, rattling the mop buckets.
He was supposed to be the cool, detached observer - the guy with the meta-knowledge who treated life like a game.
But standing in the dark and feeling the crushing weight of not knowing, he felt less like a gamer and more like a parent who had sent their kids into a war zone with nothing but a couple of Glocks and wishful thinking.
'I'm done. I'm going.'
He shoved the phone into his pocket. He reached for the door handle, intending to slip out the service exit and vanish into the city.
But suddenly, the phone buzzed. He pulled the phone back nearly dropping it fumbling to swipe the screen open. A single photo message had finally downloaded.
[Jin]: BOSS!! SORRY!! TOGA-CHAN SAW A CREPE STAND AND THEN WE SAW A SHOP WITH THOSE WEIRD CAT PLUSHIES!! MY PHONE DIED! WE'RE AT THE STATION HEADING BACK NOW!! DID YOU WIN?!
Underneath was a shaky photo: Toga, face smeared with strawberry sauce and clutching a plush cat, and Jin in the background giving a double thumbs-up.
Haruto's head hit the cool metal of the locker next to him.
"I am going to kill them," he whispered, the sheer relief washing over him.
"I am actually going to murder them both."
He unlocked the door and stepped out into the hallway. And moments later he ran into the invisible girl.
"Haruto! There you are!"
The sleeves of a UA track jacket bobbed anxiously in front of him. Toru Hagakure was standing in the center of the hallway.
"Everyone's been looking for you! You disappeared right after the match," she said.
She stepped closer, her hands reaching out as if to check him for injuries.
"Are you okay? You look... really pale. Did something happen? Did Kirishima actually get a hit in? Do we need to find Recovery Girl?"
Haruto leaned back against the concrete wall. He let out a long yawn, his eyes drooping with indifference.
The frantic "parent" who had been ready to storm Hosu was gone.
"Relax, Toru-chan. No need to call the morgue or the Avengers, I'm fine" he muttered, his voice returning to its usual tone.
"But you locked yourself in a maintenance closet! We thought you'd collapsed from the strain or—"
"I was just looking for a quiet place to have a power nap. The stadium is too loud. I figured a dark closet was the best bet for twenty minutes of peace. Turns out, it's actually pretty comfortable if you lean against the mops just right."
Toru went silent for a moment, her head presumably tilting in disbelief.
"You... you were napping? Haruto! You're in the Semi-Finals! You're up against Bakugo next! How can you be sleepy right now?"
"Toru-chan. Honestly, I've never been a big fan of the whole 'School Tournament Arc' trope. I was just bored and looking for a skip button," he said, pushing off the wall and walking past her with a casual wave.
"Tell the others to stop the search party. I'm going to find some caffeine before Sparky tries to blow my head off. I'd hate to fall asleep mid-explosion."
As he walked away, his hand stayed firmly in his pocket, gripping the phone. He could still see that photo of Toga's strawberry-smeared face in his mind.
'Idiots. Absolute idiots.' he thought, with a faint glint in his eyes
'But at least now I have someone to take my frustration out on.'