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CHAPTER START---
"JET BURN!" Todoroki's battle cry is barely heard over the roaring flames.
"UA's first-ever true legacy move!" Present Mic says excitedly as the pillar is about to collide with Midoriya a few dozen meters above the stage.
In the crowd Enedavor's flames dance excitedly as he laughs hysterically, filled with pride, and excitement, in his son's abilities yes, but mostly because this means his relationship with Shoto has taken yet another step toward being mended.
Beside him Fuyumi is crying, already seeing her dream of having her family together and happy becoming that much more tangible.
But all of that quickly changes to looks of shock, as Midoriya suddenly lands on the ground directly in front of Shoto.
At the last second before the Jet Burn hit, when he was supposed to throw his strongest punch and collide with the attack.
He instead raised his hand and flicked his finger to the side, using the recoil to throw himself out of the way.Easily dodging where nobody expected him to, in mid-air, he then spun around and launched a powerful kick at the sky, using that to launch himself down toward the arena, directly in front of Todoroki.
Shoto's eyes track some of this as a blur, but they lock onto Midoriya's as the boy lands in front of his, hunched over with his first reared back.
Shoto's lack of mastery has locked him in place, breaking his control of the Jet Burn now is impossible, since all of Midoriya's movements to get from in the air to where he is now, happened in less than one second.
Before Todoroki could even lower his hand, a brutal straight right connects to his gut, completely doubling him over onto the fist before Midoriya stands up and transitions into an uppercut.
But instead of launching his friend into the air he simply stopped there, holding Todoroki's body on his fist for a moment before calmly placing him onto his shoulder to be carried to Recovery Girl, completely unconscious.
It all happened so fast that only a few Pro Heroes such as Endeavor, Ms. Midnight, Eraser Head, and a few others were able to see exactly what happened, leaving the audience confused until the slow-motion replay clarified things moments later.
"Shoto Todoroki is unable to continue!" Ms. Midnight announces to the stunned crowd. "Izuku Midoriya advances to face Tokyami Fumikage in the finals!"
---Horizon's Observation Room...
"Oh c'mon!" Juzo whines as he hands Shinso some money. "The one time I bet against Deku and he wins, seriously?!"
Sero and Shinso laugh at him while Horizon just shakes his head.
"We haven't been in school most of the time to know what their training has been like," Horizon says. "Even I didn't expect that kind of show from Deku."
"Yeah well we are too busy dealing with villains to keep up with the news around UA," Shinso says. "But a little birdie told me Deku's been doing a lot of training with All Might lately so I took an educated guess."
"And by little birdie you mean...?" Sero looks at Shinso, expecting something interesting.
But instead, Shinso just shrugs, "I just asked Aizawa what our classmates have been up to before the festival started."
"Lame," Sero says. "I thought you meant a secret girlfriend or something, you know, like Juzo."
"I don't have a secret girlfriend," Juzo says. "Tokage and I are just, taking things slow, it's not like we don't know we like each other, I've just been super busy with Team Horizon stuff."
Shinso just listens in and takes a sip of his drink, until Horizon speaks up.
"Shinso is just as busy and he manages to have a secret girlfriend---"
"ACH!" Shinso chokes on his drink and begins sputtering.
"---And she doesn't even go to UA, so stop making excuses," Horizon says.
As Juzo and Sero immediately turn on Shinso, Horizon warps away, arriving in Recovery Girl's infirmary.
There he sees Shoto lying in bed, half awake as Endeavor is scolding him for being so reckless, something he couldn't deny as his left hand has severe burns on it.
Across from him Deku and All Might are having a quiet conversation while Deku is doing some stretches after his checkup.
"I got your message," Horizon says, drawing all eyes onto him as he approaches Recovery Girl.
"It's this one," he taps Shoto on the head with her cane. "His injuries are too much for me to use my Quirk so it'd be best if you step in."
Horizon groans, but looks between Endeavor and Shoto.
"Fine, but this means he's out of the tournament, which means I get the fun job of telling Bakugo's he's been demoted, from silver, to bronze..."
After a break so that everyone could go have lunch, the Sports Festival resumes with the stage completely repaired and the crowd excited for the final match.
All the students are watching, even Bakugo who's bitter about his bronze medal defeat and sulking behind his classmates.
"Let's get this show started!" Present Mic yells as both Midoriya and Tokoyami are already standing on the massive concrete stage, staring each other down.
Away from the stage, Ms. Midnight and Cementoss are on a raised platform, keeping them away from any wide-sweeping attacks while allowing them to intervene where necessary in the match, a lesson they learned last year.
"Is everyone ready?!" Ms. Midnight asks, and both the boys nod at each other.
She raises her fan high as the crowd goes silent, allowing the tension in the air to build, then quickly brings it down.
"Begin!"
Midoriya instantly dashes forward with One For All 45% and launches a direct kick at Tokoyami's face.
He makes direct contact, causing a gust of wind to blow through the arena and reach the crowd, but to his surprise, Tokoyami isn't sent tumbling off the stage.
Instead, he sees his friend's head and parts of his body shrouded in shadow energy as he tanks the kick, only having it slightly move his head.
Midoriya's eyes open wide as Tokoyami swings his right hand out, launching a fist toward his chest as shadow energy erupts from his skin to make a reinforced punch.
Midoirya quickly steps back, avoiding the punch and making some distance between them.
'He actually took that hit and activated his Quirk as armor fast enough to counterattack,' Midoriya thinks as he sees Tokoyami's body now fully enveloped in shadow energy, with two glowing red eyes layers over his own. 'He's gotten even stronger than we realized...'
"That's new, you've been holding back this much in class Tokoyami?" Midoriya asks with a wide smile on his face, taking a moment to stretch his limbs as they both relax slightly.
"This is my power," Tsukuyomi says in a distorted voice. "One With The Abyss: Dark Shadow, Tsukuyomi!"
"Wow, even your voi---" Midorya immediately jumps to the right as the ground he'd been standing on erupts, a large tendril of shadow energy breaking out of the floor and whipping at him.
Before his feet are back on the ground he glances at Tsukuyomi, seeing him stretching a spear of shadow energy directly at him.
Midoriya immediately gets his feet on the ground and spins into a kick, crashing his shoes into the side of the shadow energy construct blade, trying to knock it aside.
But instead, it shifts to act as a liquid, taking the blow and swallowing his foot up to the ankle.
'His shapeshifting it better too!' Midoriya realizes as he bends and twists while the tendril tries to fling him out of the arena. 'I can't grapple with him since it'll be like fighting water, range or quick strikes are the only options...'
ALL FOR ONE: 60%!
Midoriya's momentary sudden surge of power before returning to 45% surprised Tsukuyomi who was intentionally avoiding breaking his friend's foot, with a strong kick he breaks out of the hold and lays flat on the ground to avoid the tendril swinging back at his head.
From his prone position, Midoriya digs into the concrete with his fingers and his hands, breaking the stage to make handholds and launch forward like a missile.
He moves so fast that to everyone he becomes a blur while dashing around the arena avoiding a torrent of sharp tendrils extending from Tsukuyomi.
Along many of the tendrils more glowing red eyes form, causing them to gradually become more and more accurate as Midoriya desperately tries to close the distance.
To the audience they see blurs of darkness whipping about destroying the concrete arena with bits of green appearing all over as both students send gusts of winds and shockwaves through the stadium.
'He can keep up at this speed?' Midoriya wonders as he deftly avoids the torrent of attacks, but after a few more moments he notices the edges of the arena are also being destroyed.
Places he's been unintentionally avoiding.
'His Quirk gives him more of those glowing eyes, but his brain still has to process dozens of fields of vision, he's only pretending to keep up...'
Realizing that Midoriya grits his teeth and charges directly, finding a gap in the attack his power suddenly jumps up to 60% to close the distance before returning to 45% as he punches at Tsukuyomi directly.
BOOM!
The first impact pushes Tsukuyomi back a few meters and he instantly retracts all the shadow energy moving about the arena onto himself, reinforcing his body with dense armor.
Tsukuyomi's arms become more dense, mimicking the makeup of muscles before seamlessly merging to launch a counter punch.
But Midoriya is much, much faster, and matches the strike fist against fist.
The shockwave cracks the stage and sends Tsukuyomi flying back, but he extends shadow energy from his legs to anchor him into the arena and catch himself, preventing him from going out of bounds.
'I'm stronger and faster, this is it,' Midoriya thinks as he rushes in once again, but this time Tsukuyomi shifts the shadow energy to form tendrils out of his back, effectively creating a dozen arms to compensate for his lack of speed and power as he anchors himself into the stage.
In a constant onslaught they brawl, blow for blow without taking a single step back, refusing to give each other an inch of ground.
The audience can barely keep their eyes open with the intense winds rushing about the arena and when they do, all they can see are tendrils rushing forward and Midoriya's blurred form matching it, his image moving so quickly he appeared to have multiple sets of arms.
"What an insane match, it's like they're determined to see who breaks first!" Present Mic yells out over the thundering clashes from the arena.
"Midoriya is speeding up, while Tokoyami is getting tired," Eraser Head points out, not that most people could notice such small changes in a hectic battle.
Tsukuyomi was forced to keep his Quirk tough, like armor, to avoid the air pressure from Midoriya's punches from throwing him out of the arena.
Even with his ability to fly, avoiding being thrown around by hurricane winds is beyond his capabilities which is why he's decided to stay anchored during this fight.
But now the constant use of that skill along with the mid-day sun beating down on them is wearing on him after only a few minutes.
Along with that, he too could feel Midoriya getting stronger.
Yet Midoriya couldn't feel it, he simply focused on breaking through the wall in front of him, the last obstacle separating him from the next challenge.
He accelerates in increments, and his punches hit harder each time.
At 45%, Tokoyami was feeling the punches deep within the armor, but grit his teeth and dealt with them, mostly by shifting his armor to make them glancing blows rather than direct hits.
At 47%, the punches became slightly harder to see, forcing Tsukuyomi to respond by softening pieces of his armor as he felt contact was made to ease the blows.
At 50%, he could barely avoid the full strength of the punches, and the determined, if not excited look on Midoriya's face had him greatly concerned for what came next.
As with every hit Midoriya seemed to recover some of his stamina, instead of slowing down his was speeding up, his body was moving more responsively and subconsciously, he could track the attacks easier, and his muscles didn't feel as sore after every hit.
And moments later, acting on instincts Midoriya performs an uppercut with his left hand, using the air pressure and direct contact against Tsukuyomi's arms to knock them upward, making a clear opening for a straight right into his opponent.
Before Tsukuyomi could realize what was happening, faster than the cameras or even Eraser Head could see, Midoriya punched forward with all his might.
No, he punched with beyond all his power.
In this moment his body finally became so acclimated to One for All that it finally began acting like part of him, no longer needed to constantly activate and deactivate it.
In this moment he unconsciously punched forward with 100% directly at Tsukuyomi.
But not his previous 100%, no, now instead of the previous 8 users' strength, he could finally internalize his own stockpiled power and add it to the Quirk.
Now instead of 100% of All Might's strength, for barely a fraction of an instant, he accesses 100% of the 9th User's power.
100% of Izuku Midoriya's strength , which surpasses the legendary strength of even All Might himself.
Before he can realize what's happening he strikes Tsukuyomi and feels a direct hit.
All of UA shakes as if it were hit by an earthquake.
The entire arena erupts into dust and stone as the walls of the stadium crack.
This wind nearly rips spectators out of their seats but their clothes seem to tether them to the earth all on its own.
The sound temporarily deafened everyone and nearly permanently ruptured Jiro's eardrums as everyone tried to steady themselves, waiting for the dust to settle and reveal what remained after that attack.
Moments later the dust settles, and everyone sees the arena completely cratered, reduced to a pile of rubble.
Mirodiya is standing in the middle of it, holding his right arm, looking around at the destruction with a look of horror on his face.
He looks to where his opponent was just a few meters away, and doesn't see anything, then to where Ms. Midnight and Cementoss were, and only sees more rubble.
"Don't look so worried," Horizon's voice calls out from the far side of the arena as the last bits of dust settled, revealing him in his casual clothes with both hands up, Antibacterial Curtain at its current full strength with pieces of it missing and massive cracks across the structure.
And a clear trench in front of him from the force of Midoriya's attaching pushing him to the far wall of the stadium.
He drops the Curtain and shakes his aching hands for a moment while walking up to Midoriya.
"If I knew that attack would be so strong I would have warped you away instead of Tokoyami and the others, actually I think this is better since that attack would have carved a path through Musutafu at the very least," he looks around at the rubble. " But regardless, I had to warp Tokoyami away because he was losing, he's out of bounds. So congratulations De---, Midoriya, you won..."
The realization hits Midoriya like a train, not only had he won, but Horizon of all people congratulated him.
The crowd erupts into cheers as the faint sound of angry explosions can be heard in the distance as a certain bronze medalist isn't taking this turn of events well.
SHAMBLES!
Ms. Midnight, Cementoss, and Tokoyami, who now had his Quirk deactivated, are warped into the field of rubble to stand beside them.
Looking at the celebrating crowd Ms. Midnight frowns, "announcing the winner is my job you know," she tells Horizon.
"Well you weren't here, and I did it fast to get everyone past the whole destructive finale we just had," He gestures to the destroyed arena they were standing on, to which Cementoss just sighs.
Ms. Midnight raises her mic and begins speaking to the crowd, turning their attention back to her for the announcements.
"Now that the finals are over, we'll be taking a, hopefully, short intermission before the medal ceremony!" she says. "We'll be back to see these incredible students claim their prize for these hard-fought and incredible victories soon folks..."
The crowd erupts into more cheers as Midoriya and Tokoyami take it all in, they both know that the reporters will be waiting for them, and Tokoyami is the first to leave by strolling through the hallway to speak to them directly.
While Horizon, Ms. Midnight, and Cementoss are about to start discussing the state of the arena and the upcoming ceremony, instead of basking in the excitement of winning the gold medal and talking to the waiting press, Midoriya walks over to them and taps Horizon on the arm.
"Hmm, do you need something Midoriya?" Cementoss asks as they turn their attention to him.
"Yes actually," Midoriya says as he gestures to the mic in her hand.
"Oh, you have a message for the people, well I'm sure with you it'll be something quite cute," Ms. Midnight raises the mic to his mouth.
Midoriya doesn't take his eyes off Horizon as he speaks, and the entire world stops to listen.
"You said that if Kacchan won the gold medal you'd consider having a match with him, right?" Midoriya asks, and many, many people, already hate where this is going.
Ms. Midnight silently shakes her head, as if begging Midoryia not to do what she's sure he's about to do.
But he continues anyway.
"Well, I won the gold medal, so how about one more match before the Sports Festival ends?"
The crowd goes silent, waiting for Horizon's response.
He looks down at Midoriya and tilts his head to the side, then chuckles happily, "Do you have any idea how long I've waited for this, you're finally strong enough that maybe it'll be a bit of fun to knock you around..."
END CHAPTER---