FIGHT DUB CLUB, Match 1
[PART 1: Fly, 'Cuz I Wanna Set You Free]
Back in the control station, the 16 students not participating in the current match watched. Cameras were placed around the simulation zone's grounds, allowing Majestic to grade the teams remotely and Class 1-D to cheer for their classmates.
Although some of them were trying to do more than cheer...
"I'm putting two thousand yen on Team Noah," Shinkan said, slapping a bill on the ground.
"Are you daft? Team Yui is led by someone with 1 year of hero training over us." Plus, they had more... aesthetic appeal. "I'll bet 2k yen on her," Inigo stated, slapping a bill on top of his.
"If she's so skilled, then how come she's not with the second years?" Asked Hailey, approaching the betting circle. Money flew from her pockets and landed in the prize pool.
"10k on Team Yui."
Inigo's face scrunched. "The hell? Didn't you just doubt her?"
She shrugged, simply replying, "Edie will carry her." Even if her friend wasn't on the hero team, betting on Yui was better than betting on the cow.
"Well, I'll take it. Anyone else wanna place their bets?" Inigo rubbed his palms, grinning at his classmates, who gave him odd looks.
"Y'know, why not?" Bobby said, "I'll put 20 bucks on Team Noah."
"How much is that in yen?"
"Err, Majestic-sensei, shouldn't you stop this?" Ashleigh asked. The teacher turned his head slightly from the camera feeds, looking at her from his peripheral.
"Ha! No, I'll let them be. In a way, they are training their battle sense by trying to predict the outcome of the coming bout."
Ashleigh furrowed her eyebrows and stepped back. 'If you say so...' She certainly wouldn't debate him.
'Battle Sense, huh?' Soujyuuro thought, briefly glancing at the betting circle. 'Between Suzuki, Atsushi, and Sagara-senpai... I don't know who to root for. But if it's a matter of data, then...' His gaze moved to the cameras, which showed the villain team searching the buildings. They had chosen to spread themselves into pairs. Kaylee and Christopher were in one building, Noah and Victor in the other.
"The hero team will win," Soujyuuro muttered with a hand under his chin. Jugo and Ashleigh caught his words and glanced at him, but their eyes moved back to the camera when Kyoda spoke.
"They found the first item."
[FIGHT DUB CLUB]
"Got it!" Kaylee cheered, raising the steel ball above her head. A moment later, she reached for her ear and activated the comms given to her for this exercise.
"Guys, I found the first one."
"Good job," Noah replied from the other building. "Victor and I have had no luck so far. Keep searching even if you find another; we don't know how many are in each location."
"Will do!"
A few meters away from her, Christopher also looked for their objective. The building was meant to simulate a supermarket, with three floors dedicated to displaying various products. Since they were the bad guys in this exercise, they didn't have to worry about property damage. So they thrashed the store as fast as possible, hoping to find everything before the heroes came.
Noah flew between cubicles in the other building, eyes roaming over everything. This place was meant to resemble a generic office. He didn't know whether that made it harder or easier to find what he wanted. Unbeknownst to him, he was making it harder on himself by not wanting to disturb the simulation building some poor Shiketsu janitor would have to clean later.
"Got one," Victor announced from the floor below his.
"Nice! Hey, Chris, how long do we have left?"
"Twelve seconds!"
Noah blinked. They probably wouldn't be able to find them all in time. "Christopher, Victor, get into position," He said.
The plan was simple. Christopher would copy the hero team's important quirks and serve as a short decoy. Victor would also serve as bait. He'd reinforced the buildings to make the hero team waste time and split their focus. Meanwhile, Noah and Kaylee would fly around the buildings and look for the items. After that, it was a matter of grouping up and leaving with Hifumi's quirk.
Christopher closed his eyes, the wind whipping around him. Before leaving the station, he copied Hifumi's and Jugo's quirks. The former was for the great escape, and the latter was to have some flight before the hero team arrived.
Back in the control station... the hero team waited by the ground floor's doors.
"Ten seconds left," Orochi declared, making Sora and Yui stand up. The gyrokinetic stepped ahead of them and thrust out his palm outside the building with a flourish of his robe. Soon, the clock hit zero, and their teacher declared they could begin.
"Hero Team, roll out!"
The four students flew out of the building, propelled by a tunnel of altered gravity created by one of their ranks. Reaching the end of「Domain Master」's effect, they were met with the buildings' entrances.
Standing on the supermarket's roof was Christopher, copying Edith's quirk. He could sense a separate dimension in his mind's eye already. Now, he needed to test its maximum range.
"Hey, Gravity Boy, can you bring him here?" Edith asked. "If you can, I'll end this right now."
Sora shook his head. "He's outside my range. But I can close the gap between you. Step right there," he pointed to a spot near the entrance, "And you'll fly right to him. Also, it's Orbit—"
"We'll also need a tunnel to float inside the second floor," Yui stated, poking the office's entrance. Her finger was stopped by a wall of water without sinking in.
Orochi punched the liquid barrier, but it didn't even make a splash. "Tch."
"Ladies first~," Edith said, stepping into Sora's domain and rising to the air. Before she could reach him, Christopher flew away as if dragged by an invisible force.
"Shit," The Korean girl muttered, landing on the roof. He'd swapped to Sora's power before she could reach him. The copycat floated off the roof's ledge and reentered the building from a window.
"I'll keep chasing him!" She shouted down to her teammates.
"No, you idiot!" Yui and Orochi screamed, "He's leading you to an ambush!"
Sora clapped his hands, drawing his team's attention. "You two can go in now! Take three steps to the left, and my domain will carry you to the second floor." He jabbed a thumb at his chest. "I'll support Edith with my quirk, and you two search that building."
Yui paused for two seconds, then nodded. They didn't know how the villain team was divided between buildings, splitting in pairs was also a decent choice. But if they were wrong, two of them would have to fight against three, maybe four.
"Take this," The leader said, sending Sora a bunch of rope. "That'll help keep Edith steady when the copycat starts using your quirk on her."
She and Orochi stepped into Sora's quirk and soared inside the office. The hero team's only male dismissed his domain, created another tunnel —this time on himself— and flew to Edith's location.
Inside the office, the two girls found Victor walking around, looking for the third steel ball.
He turned to them and reached for his communicator. "I'm with Sagara and Atsushi," he alerted his team as they rushed at him.
After making those water barriers, he didn't have enough to escape cleanly. Well, they did warn Noah the plan wouldn't work for long, so hopefully, he wouldn't get points docked for this.
Yui rolled away from a jet of water while Orochi charged through it, ignoring how it slashed her shoulder and swinging her tails at three parts of Victor's body. He pulled back the streams he'd just launched and turned them into whips, blocking Orochi's tails, but they still spat a dark liquid at him. Victor twisted to the side, avoiding a punch from the Hydra hybrid. The poison splashed over his costume and the thin layer of water he wore as armor.
He discarded that part of his protection before it could mix with the poison and reach his skin, launching the contaminated stuff at Yui, who was about to attack him. The miasma splashed on a ball of crimson cloth, and Yui struck his shin with a kick.
It did nothing. The force was not enough to carry through his armor. But already, Orochi was moving to attack him again, tails biting the air. Victor tried to step back from the duo but almost stumbled from the cloth wrapping around his shin. More was reaching behind to attach to his neck.
The two girls jumped away as he countered with a last-ditch defense, sacrificing his armor into a nova of water. He ran away while they backed off, disengaging to absorb the water wall on the ground floor.
Above them, Noah clutched the third item. "Found another! Just one more, guys. Keep defending!"
"Easy for you to say!" Christopher screamed, running away from Sora and Edith. Kaylee accompanied him and tried to hold them off with energy blasts, but they flew away every time, using Sora's quirk.
The villain team was pulled toward their opponents. Christopher used his copy of「Domain Master」to create a repelling force turned against the hero team. The two gyrokinetics began their floor-tilting battle, making the objects around the room fly in every direction.
"I've figured out Edith's range!" Christopher declared, ducking under a stray store rack. "It's about 10 meters!" It was a split-second estimative made before he entered the building, written on a notepad in his phone so he wouldn't forget. When he copied Edith's quirk, and she began to chase him, he could instinctually feel her reaching his range as the distance between them closed.
To banish any of them while keeping Hifumi's quirk, he would have to let go of 「Domain Master」, copy「Danger Zone」, and use it. However, by entering Edith's quirk range, he would start a battle of who would transport the other first. As the one with the least experience using this power, he didn't want to bet on his reflexes with it. Edith also wasn't straying far from Sora, so Christopher couldn't pick him off.
Edith sidestepped an energy blast. Her body floated off the ground, avoiding several more beams, then lurched to the side and smacked against a wall.
"Agh! Hey, keep your quirk steady!" She grumbled at her teammate.
"I've never had to fight another domain master before! I'm trying my best, okay!? "
"Try harder!"
Sora scowled. His greater experience with gravity control was the only reason she hadn't been brought into Christopher's range and gotten banished or that the villain team hadn't escaped the building yet. The rope Yui had given them had been handy in keeping their moves in sync, but Kaylee had destroyed it quickly in the fight.
Suddenly, said opponent dived to the left, stopping her assault on Edith.
"Oi, Kaylee! Are you really leaving me hanging here?!"
The green-haired girl went behind a balcony and left through a window a second later.
"I spotted the last one!" She revealed in their comms, reentering the building with a sphere in her hand and a blast aimed at Sora.
"Nice job, Kaylee," Noah said softly, flying away from strands of Yui's cloth. "Let's all group up in front of the supermarket, so Christopher can teleport us to the escape zone."
"Like I'd let you!" His opponent shouted, leaping and swinging twin cloth drills. The bunched-up material spread in mid-air, surrounding Noah.
After Victor ran away from them on the second floor, Yui and Orochi agreed to split up to gather visual info on all members of the villain team.
"They have all the items already. Don't let anyone get away!" The hero team's leader warned. Noah's wings flapped, getting caught in Yui's quirk along with his arms. The young man frowned and twisted his body, ripping his restraints apart with raw strength.
In the time he wasted breaking free, Yui reached him, jumping, grabbing his left ankle, and pulling him into an elbow strike to his gut. He winced, releasing light to blind her and gain some momentum. She shifted some thread into a quick blindfold, avoiding the flash and headbutting her opponent. Noah swung a leg in retaliation, but she sidestepped his front kick and moved behind him, having sneaked her bindings around his body while they traded blows. Grabbing him by the wings, Yui swung the boy around and slammed him over a desk.
Her instincts screamed for her to get away and her body obeyed, lunging to the side to avoid several rays of light. Noah groaned and fled from her, recognizing that he couldn't keep up at martial combat, even with his strength boost. With the cubicles surrounding them and the ceiling above, he also couldn't take advantage of his flight.
Below them, Orochi bulldozed through another water slash, her leg regenerating seconds later and sweeping Victor's. He had to discard most of his armor due to the poison swimming along with it, so the attack landed and took him off balance. However, he steadied himself by making a water platform to halt his fall. With its purpose fulfilled, Victor turned it into a set of spears and cast them toward Orochi.
Orochi took the hits and kicked her opponent with both legs, sending him several meters back into a liquid bed. Jumping to her feet, she swung her tails, sending poison flying, and charged forward to accompany her ranged attack.
Victor dodged the poison and swung a watery whip at her midsection. The Hydra girl stumbled to the right from the blow and struggled to get up, panting.
She had drained her stamina by relying on her regeneration, but it was the only way. Even at close range, Victor had incredible accuracy with his quirk. If she focused on evasion, she would never find an opening to attack herself.
Swaying to her feet, Orochi settled into a stance again.
Then, Yui came from upstairs and leaped with a kick aimed at Victor's face. He blocked it with his arms and tried to catch her shin but had to step back to avoid the cloth following her.
"I'll fight this guy! You go help the others!" Yui shouted, sending multiple red strings at Victor, which wrapped around his water constructs, and then at him.
"What about Noah?" Orochi asked, not taking her eyes off the blue-skinned boy, who used the water bubbles wrapped with Yui's quirk like they were wrecking balls taped to his wrists.
The hero team duo had to leap away from a water sledgehammer that cratered the ground. "He ran away. Now go make it a 3 v 3!"
Nodding to her leader, she ran to the ground floor and alerted the rest of the team, "Tanaka, Lee! Watch out, Noah's coming your way!"
Yui ducked under a bunch of water shaped like a morning star and sneered at Victor. "You won't run away, right?"
Victor kept a stoic visage, but his eyes shined with amusement. That had been the plan once, but now that Yui had graciously gifted him some rope to make chain weapons with...
"Only if I have to."
'But I probably won't,' Was left unsaid.
"Urk!" He suddenly coughed, dropping to one knee. Alarmed, he looked at her with wide eyes. "What'd you do to me?" He questioned, sending his constructs to ward her away.
"Me? Nothing. It was all Orochi's poison."
'But I never touched that...' Victor thought before losing all strength and falling to the ground. The last thing he saw was Yui's sharp grin.
Hero Name:「Capture Cloth」
Quirk:「Red Thread」
Type: Emitter
Description: Yui can produce a textile-like material from her body that links bound targets, telepathically or physically! The nature of the link is determined by the binding's strength.
Just as she hadn't known about the freshman's quirks, they didn't know about hers. Victor using her threads to make a chain weapon would be neat if she wasn't linking the poisoned water with his body.
"I captured Sigurd. Let's pincer them, Orochi. Tanaka, make two domains, so we can get in from two different spots."
[PART 2: See The Light]
The battle didn't change for the duo inside the market once Kaylee appeared with the last sphere. If anything, they just focused on Christopher harder.
However, they began to get pushed back once Noah came in and defended Christopher with his light rays. The winged boy's assault and Kaylee's firepower steadily destroyed everything in the room, not giving Sora ammo to move with his domain.
Then, Orochi came from a window near Noah.
Christopher realized Sora must have altered his domain's target to bring her and shifted the direction of gravity to pull Edith closer to him.
Sora quickly reestablished his domain inside the room and neutralized the force affecting his teammate. However, she still had some momentum left.
A beat passed. 15 meters between the two students who could use「Danger Zone」. Noah was busy with Orochi, so Kayle was the one to launch an energy beam at Edith.
The pig-tailed girl was ready and kicked off one of the remaining platforms. She had somewhat adapted to the changes in gravity, so her next move would finish this battle if the timing was right.
"Throw me at them, Orbit!"
Sora did not hesitate. It wasn't a matter of trust between teammates; he just got so hyped by hearing someone call him by his desired hero name that he didn't think.
Instead of canceling Christopher's force, he added to it, pushing Edith into the copycat.
13 meters between Edith and Christoper. He and Kaylee saw this would come down to reflexes, to whom banished their target first. And as the most experienced with that power, Edith had an advantage.
The Mirror Devil let go of Sora's quirk, copying「Danger Zone」. Closing his eyes, he activated Hifumi's quirk to appear between Edith and Sora. Calculating their positions beforehand, he knew he was 11 meters away from the former and 4 from the latter.
Sora had made a mistake. Having Edith close to him was the only thing keeping Christopher from targeting him. If he was going to enter a battle of reaction time, then picking off Sora before that was the optimal choice.
The original domain master shimmered away, banished into Christopher's「Danger Zone」. Now, he would have to open his eyes and contest Edith.
But then, The Mirror Devil was transported before he could finish blinking. The villain team lost their perfect win condition.
"Heh." Edith exhaled, smiling at her opponents' shocked faces.
Christopher had also made a mistake. He had respected the distance between him and Edith during the entire battle, keeping 15 meters away from her at all times. 5 meters beyond her quirk's range, which he calculated as soon as he copied it. It was a precaution since the constantly changing gravity would make a smaller distance too risky for him. The plan in his head was to avoid a battle of reflexes, using Kaylee's help to wear her down until they got all the items.
10 meters was indeed Edith's natural range. But she also had a pair of gadgets to extend「Danger Zone」's reach to 12 meters. The copycat had lost when he decided to loosen his safety measures.
Noah grimaced. Christopher didn't have any items, so they could still flee with one of the objectives complete. However, it wasn't the victory he wanted. He'd wanted to escape with his entire team, so he came to support them instead of leaving the exercise.
"Christopher got taken out!" He said in the comms to warn Victor, who was still in the other building. "Let's all retreat!"
Kaylee scowled as she saw Noah soar between Orochi's tails, moving to a window. They could still turn this around! Without Sora to pull them in or push her, Edith wouldn't be able to reach them as she did with their captured member.
Noah left the building, but his teammate stayed. She was tired of running away from the smug bitch on the other team.
Outside, the young man found Yui climbing to the second floor with a red rope. He could also see a bulge in her utility belt compartment. She had taken Victor's item, possibly even defeated him for it.
And Kaylee wasn't following him.
What to do? Victor could be tied up with Yui's quirk, so if Noah freed him, he could rejoin the battle and change the tides. But would Kaylee hold on while that happened? What if Victor was passed out instead?
Frowning deeply, Noah swapped courses to the office building, finding Victor crawling towards the exit. The poison hadn't been enough to take him out completely, but he couldn't participate in this match anymore. The boy lifted his teammate and dropped him near the escape zone, giving him one of the steel spheres.
"Leave the match, Victor. I'll help Kaylee."
Victor groaned, nodding and crossing the red line on the pavement. The villain team's leader soared again, rushing toward his remaining teammate.
Inside the supermarket, Kaylee kicked away a tired Orochi, fried Yui's threads, and leaped a second later to escape Edith's range. She floated outside the building and moved in a circle, bombarding the hero team trio with blasts from every entrance.
Edith transported her team away, letting them avoid the onslaught. Rolling forward, she rose and ran to a random window, leaping from it and summoning one of them by her side. Yui reacted quickly, sending ropes of her quirk to swing from the window's ledge, carrying Edith under her free arm.
"Urk!" The Korean girl grunted as they landed roughly.
Kaylee grinned, charging up her attack at the downed girls.
Noah appeared by her side, wings flapping. "Let's go, Kaylee. You have two items, so you shouldn't be so reckless."
Kaylee grunted, then produced the two steel spheres, handing them to Noah. Her other hand was still burning bright with energy. "Then take them and escape. Yui still has the last one! If we leave with one member captured and one item left, it's not gonna be much of a victory. I'll get it back!"
"She's baiting you into staying," Noah countered, "Edith can take Yui and the item away as soon as she wants."
Edith brought back Orochi, who dashed at the flying duo along with Yui. Another bait. They were leaving Edith's range, practically taunting Kaylee into fighting barehanded.
That was the last straw for her. The green-haired girl fired at Edith.
Guh!" Her target couldn't dodge that one, crashing on her back.
"Now we have an opening!"
Kaylee dived with a lariat aimed at Yui.
"Kaylee!" Her leader screamed in alarm, then gathered light to launch at Orochi. What he really wanted was for them to leave. But abandoning her while he escaped with the remaining items wasn't heroic in his mind, so he would support her even if they lost for it!
Yui hopped to the left, avoiding Kaylee's arm and sending a thread to pull at her exposed wrist. The Binding Hero almost got thrown off her feet for her maneuver, having underestimated her opponent's raw strength.
Meanwhile, Noah tackled Orochi away from the action, rising a second later and aiming a ray at Edith, who was starting to get up. The Korean girl turned on the pavement, making him miss by a small margin. Orochi punched him on the temple, punishing him for turning away from her to prevent Edith from rejoining the battle.
Kaylee jumped with a boost from her quirk. Yui tried to stop her by binding her leg, but she couldn't muster enough force to drag her down. The flying girl rained destruction on the hero team.
Edith finally rose and managed to dodge in time, but Yui, in the epicenter, crumpled on the ground.
Kaylee fell down a second later, having the damage she dealt reflected by Yui's cloth around her arm and leg.
"No!"
Struggling to hold back Orochi's fists, Noah could only watch as Kaylee disappeared from his vision. The headstrong Hydra stomped on his foot and bit at his wings with her tails, preventing him from flying away.
"Finish it, Edith!"
The last member of the villain team was captured.
"Match Over!" The Heroics Teacher declared.
[FIGHT DUB CLUB]
After the match ended, Edith returned all the students she'd teleported. It was a bit awkward since Christopher was in the middle of blinking before getting banished, so he opened his eyes and activated Hifumi's quirk, bringing him all the way back to the simulated supermarket. But once he caught up to the rest of his team, they entered the control station to be judged by Majestic.
Inside, they saw a small commotion around the betting circle.
"Give me back my money, Myoga," Hailey asked, eyes narrowed.
"Huh? I already gave it to you, we won the bet! Let's go, Team Yui!" He whooped, spinning an arm around.
"You gave me 8 thousand when I bet 10 thousand. Give me the rest."
"That's your half of the prize pool! Not my fault we didn't have enough people betting."
Ashleigh, Jugo, and Soujyuuro watched the bickering from a few meters away.
"You could have won if you put money in your hunch, Imai-kun," The blue-haired girl said.
"Yeah," Jugo agreed. "I didn't believe you when you said Kaylee would lose, but that was totally lame! She had to play keep-away most of the match because of Edith's quirk. That was so boring. I hope I never have a battle training against her."
Soujyuuro nodded. "I didn't expect that play with the gadgets by Edith, but I had assumed she would win against Christopher because of the difference in experience. And with Noah making his team draw the heroes inside a closed space instead of making a skirmish out in the open... that was also the ideal battlefield for Sora..." Thinking he'd rambled too much and feeling like he patronized the two people near him, he faked a cough. "A-Anyway, it was just a hunch."
"I mean, it's still a better reason than whatever was going on Shinkan's or Bobby's minds. Why didn't you join them in the bets?" Ashleigh asked with a small voice, looking at Hifumi separating Hailey and Inigo.
Soujyuuro turned to her with his regular stone-faced expression, and she had to hold back a flinch. He noticed her building discomfort and looked to the side.
"... Not my style. Just believing in them is enough for me."
'Huh. That's kind of cool.' Her mind said.
"I didn't do it because I had no money," Jugo added.
'Less cool, but understandable.'
Majestic paused the video recordings of the recent match and turned to the teams. "I forgot to mention it before, but the feedback and grades from these exercises will only be given tomorrow. This is so we don't exclude students sent to the infirmary between the bouts, like Victor, who is recovering from poison. And also, so I have more time to analyze what I saw and give an unbiased score."
"But I can still make a few short comments. Hero Team, all of you did well by thinking of a plan to counter the enemies' abilities. But you almost lost by being greedy and baiting one of them into extending the fight. One of you also caused a lot of collateral damage inside the supermarket. Overall, you captured 3 villains and prevented 3 items from being stolen. Good job."
"Villain Team. Your plan was naive. In a battle, winning while holding back requires a gap in skill or power on the winner's side, which you didn't have. By trying to avoid the struggle that our profession requires us to deal with, you lost 3 members and only stole 1 item. However, I acknowledge that this subpar strategy was pushed by your leader, so the loss in points won't be as harsh for most of you."
"This is the last period, so anyone who fought can leave; if they want. But I recommend you stay and watch your classmates."
None of them chose to leave, taking seats around the control station. The Laser Hero nodded, grinning wide. "Good choice. Now, for the second match, we have...!"
[Hero Team]
Hoge Nyoro (LEADER)
Soujyuuro Imai
Ashleigh Katsuragi
Kyoda Hiro
==V E R S U S==
[Villain Team]
Chihiro Mitsurugi (LEADER)
Son Jugo
Minerva Kim
Maxine Nguyen
"Once again, each team has 1 minute to strategize. Get to it!"
"Good luck, guys!" Jugo chered, waving at them and walking to his team.
Ashleigh turned to Soujyuuro, her face anxious. "Do you know where Nyoro is? I don't remember seeing them once since the Battle Training started."
"I'm also curious about that," Kyoda asked, approaching them.
Soujyuuro's lips thinned. He hoped he could contribute more to this match than being a teammate's radar.