Really?
...
REALLY?
ONE DAY out from it being exactly one year since the first chapter of this story went live? Well a) how time flies, and b) AZMUTH ABOVE, would I have loved to have gotten this chapter out EXACTLY one year to the day. That shit would've just been so neat and cool...
Eh, I blame real-life shit for getting in the way. Hate how it always seems to do that whenever I'm on a roll. And the absolute brain-wave... or rather brain-TSUNAMI of ideas for a new fic in a certain series starring a character with the first two letters of her name being 'A' and 'K'. Yeah, I blame those things.
Nothing I can say sans that other that I'm sorry, and that I doubt you'll want your time to be wasted any longer. Here's the alien-transformation counter that debuted in Chapter 4, counting which and how many times a certain Omnitrix-wielder has transformed AS OF THE END OF CHAPTER 5:
Jetray: 3
Four Arms: 2
Humungousaur, Spider-Monkey, Diamondhead, Upgrade, Swampfire: 1
Anyway, once you're done with this chapter, which I seriously hope you enjoy, hope you've got it in you to keep leaving your thoughts via review, or if you want to chat with me (about the fic, Ben 10 or MHA in general, or something else entirely, drop me a PM or look me up on Discord (name for it is on my profile), or better yet join my server (link also in profile, just take out the spaces). Any of those methods works out just fine for me, and I hope to chat with you soon!
N-EE-WAY, IT'S HE- CHAPTER TIME!
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"THE HERO TEAM… WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINS!"
Resisting the urge to openly wince at All Might's booming voice reverberating through the room, Gwen looked up at the monitors that had been showing off the battle going on over the last ten or so minutes. For a couple of seconds, the rest of Class 1-A looked up at them, no-one saying a word.
Kaminari was the first to break the silence, with a soft "Wait… what?"
A collective shuffling of disbelief at what everyone had just witnessed followed. A quick glance around told Gwen quite plainly that she wasn't the only one confused at what had just occurred, and they all had good reason to be. On one of the screens, Midoriya was unconscious, crumpled on the floor next to Bakugo, one of his arms bent at an angle that Gwen could SWEAR was making her own arm feel uncomfortable, in spite of her knowing it was fine. Up in the room where the prop-nuke was, shown on another monitor, Uraraka was on her knees, dry-heaving into a bucket that Iida had quickly gone and grabbed for her.
And speaking of, Gwen could see the clear disappointment in Iida's eyes, but absolutely nothing else wrong with him as he knelt over his fellow classmate to make sure she was alright… or as alright as she could be, puking like she was. Bakugo, on the other hand, was just as untouched, but visibly shaking with barely-suppressed… shock? Rage?
Either way, he looked like he was one wrong move away from taking the rest of the building down. Not that that would've taken much work, considering how ruined it looked.
"I guess you could say," Tokoyami spoke to the room at large, from his position in the corner of the observation-room next to Sero. "They lost the battle, but won the war."
"This class is intense." Asui remarked. Gwen found herself hard-pressed to disagree, as All Might dashed from the room.
The door swinging shut behind him seemed to be the catalyst for conversations the room over to immediately break out, almost all in reaction to what they'd just witnessed.
"So are we just gonna be moving to another building for the other fights, or are they actually going to repair this one? Seriously, U.A.'s budget is crazy!"
"Midoriya actually had a plan all along? That involved him breaking his arm again?"
"Mr. Aizawa isn't gonna be happy about this…"
"That's Midoriya's problem."
"Should we all start taking cover? Bakugo looks ready to do a one-man re-enactment of Hiroshima- OW!."
"Not funny, Mineta!"
Gwen resisted the urge to giggle as she refocused on the screen, watched All Might gently lifting Midoriya onto a stretcher being held onto by a pair of small wheeled robots, that whirred away towards the infirmary. She had to admit, it took a certain strength of will to be ready to break yourself like that, if it meant securing a win. Or a serious lack of self-preservation.
She could think of one person who'd probably make a joke or two about it, if that broken arm didn't look painful as all hell.
The sound of the door opening again made everyone jump a bit, and shut up immediately as All Might strode in, Uraraka tucked gently under one arm. After clearing a bench at the side of the room, he gently laid her down onto it, placing the bucket down beside her before stepping up in front of the rest of the class, who Iida and Bakugo silently rejoined with.
Though not many people seemed to want to stand all that close to Bakugo, with how he was still visibly shaking.
"Alright!" All Might called out, grabbing everyone's attention again. "While repairs are conducted upstairs-"
"Guess that answers that." Kirishima remarked, under his breath but still loud enough for most of the class to hear. "Geez…"
"we'll review the match!" the Symbol of Peace finished. "And a reminder to everyone: whether you win or lose, there's always something to be taken from an experience like this, as long as you're open to learning. Now, before I give my thoughts, anyone want to give theirs?!"
There was silence for a second. A few hands hesitantly raised, as if no-one was sure if they wanted to be the first to give their thoughts… but before All Might could pick anyone, Iida spoke up.
"I didn't expect Midoriya and Uraraka to employ the tactics they did." He spoke, slightly quieter and less rigidly than the volume and tone he usually spoke with. "And I was too rigidly focused on my own defensive strategy to realise that such moves were no longer the optimal ones to make. By the time that realisation hit me, it was far too late to make any other moves to keep Uraraka from claiming the weapon."
From her position on the bench, Uraraka let out a mixture between a moan and a grunt.
"I don't think anyone could have seen what Midoriya and Uraraka did coming, though." Sato remarked. "Pretty crazy out-of-the-box thinking from, even if it seemed to rely on… whatever he and Bakugo have got going on, to even work in the first place."
Bakugo's mouth twitched, his shadowed eyes narrowing a bit, but he remained silent. Whether Sato had sparked his ire with his words, or he actually agreed with them, Gwen couldn't tell from where she was in relation to him.
"Indeed!" All Might replied. "A hero must often think outside the confines of what others would consider to be common sense in order to succeed, but a truly great one looks before they leap!"
Gwen let out a short breath through her nostrils. If she had a yen for every time Ben could have followed that advice, she'd... probably be able to buy a decent meal at one of the nice restaurants her mother liked going to, or something.
"So in spite of the results," All Might continued. "I'm naming the MVP of this exercise to be... Young Iida!"
That earned a few raised eyebrows. Iida blinked behind his glasses, his posture instantly snapping back into its more rigid regular state.
"Not Midoriya or Uraraka?" Asui remarked. "Even though they won?"
"It's process of elimination." Yaoyorozu replied, immediately drawing everyone's attention. "From what we all saw, everyone else either forgot the spirit of the exercise, never cared for it in the first place or let personal vendettas cloud their judgement."
It didn't take a genius to guess who that last bit was aimed at. Bakugo immediately bristled, breaking the silence he'd carried ever since coming back into the room and turned towards Yaoyorozu, his eyes burning with barely-restrained anger.
"What'd you say?!"
"I think she was pretty clear." Gwen remarked, catching the explosive blond's attention. "Just as much as you are with whatever issues you've got with Midoriya, considering how you went off after him immediately after the timer started, without even trying to figure out any sort of plan with Iida. And that's not even considering what could've happened had you used such a powerful attack indoors had that fake-weapon been a real one."
"DEKU WAS-!"
"Do you see anyone here disagreeing?" Gwen cut across Bakugo before he could finish screaming his retort at her. "Hell, I'd cut you some slack on that front because at least YOUR attack didn't hurt you like Midoriya's did himself."
Bakugo closed his mouth again, his teeth visibly clenched and audibly grinding against each other as he bit back whatever he seemed to be seconds away from yelling in Gwen's direction at full volume. He really looked like he was a second or two away from either punching a wall or exploding it.
"Uraraka's not innocent, either." Yaoyorozu continued, after a second's silence between Bakugo and Gwen stretched out into two or three. "Personally, I'd be making the case for her being the MVP, had she not lost concentration mid-battle, and if her final attack hadn't been as haphazard as it was. No sane hero would have even considered such an attack, had this been a real situation."
Another half-grunt half-moan escaped Uraraka from where she was lying. She made to sit up, but almost immediately laid back down, clutching her mouth and gulping unpleasantly.
"Iida, by contrast, treated the exercise with the hypothetical severity it deserved all the way through." Yaoyorozu remarked. "He had a strategy and stuck to it, never losing sight of his objective. Your only flaws were, as you said-" she looked over at Iida as she finished "Too rigid a focus on one single strategy rather than having any backup plans to resort to once things stopped working, and not realising such until it was too late."
There were a few seconds of silence as everyone took in what Yaoyorozu had said. Though as said seconds stretched out, Gwen found herself locking eyes with her.
She was gonna be fun to work with, she could tell that already.
"Couldn't have put it better myself, Young Yaoyorozu!" All Might called out, after clearing his throat. "The Hero Team may have won, but in a real-life crisis, such a gamble would have absolutely ended with more casualties than you'd want out of such a situation!"
"Yeah, I think we all got that, man!" Kirishima replied, earning a few nervous chuckles from his classmates. All Might blinked a couple of times, before clearing his throat again and reaching for the box with the lettered balls from earlier in.
"ANYWAY!" he called out, recapturing the class' attention in an instant. "MOVING ON! NEXT MATCH! RANDOM TEAM SELECTION TIME!"
Laying the box on the table, he reached into it with both hands and made his usual big show of rummaging around inside it for a few seconds before pulling a pair of balls out and displaying the letters displayed on them.
Gwen and Asui shared a look with each other, with the former rolling her shoulders a couple of times.
"TEAM B VERSUS TEAM G!" All Might called. "Alright, Team G, you're the heroes, and Team B, you're the villains: Young Asui, Young Tennyson, you have five minutes to head up and prepare! Young Sero and Young Tokoyami, please head to the exit, you'll be free to re-enter when Team B's five minutes are up. The building has been restored… mostly, and the prop nuke has been moved to a different floor! And both teams…"
Gwen, Asui, Sero and Tokoyami all looked over at All Might, as he stretched himself a little before letting out a breath.
"…please try to not cause as much destruction this time around." All Might spoke, a slight pleading tone entering his voice. "We can't afford to do that kind of repair job five times a day!"
Gwen, Asui, Sero and Tokoyami headed out of the room, and after ascending the stairs back to the building's ground floor and sharing a nod with the other team, the two duos went their separate ways.
"I find that somewhat hard to believe, what All Might said." Asui remarked, as she and Gwen headed up towards the upper floors, and began looking around to find where the prop-nuke had been moved to. "U.A. can roll out a small army of robots to get destroyed every year, but repairing a building a few times is what crosses the line, kero?"
"Not to mention I very much doubt we'll be doing this every day during our hero classes." Gwen remarked, pushing open a door and looking into the room, before moving on once she saw that there wasn't any prop-nuke inside. "I bet Ben and 1-B are in the middle of some different scenario right now, Asui."
"Probably." Asui replied. "By the way Gwen, you can call me Tsu if you want. It's easier."
"Fair enough." Gwen remarked, jogging down the hall and pushing another door open. "Found it!"
Tsu hopped over and flicked the light-swich, illuminating the room and revealing the sight of the fake nuke. Shutting the door behind her, she leaned against a nearby wall as Gwen moved a bit further into the room.
"We should probably know what we both can do, if we're going to win here." She spoke, prompting the orange-haired Tennyson to turn around. "I'll go first, if you want."
Gwen nodded, moving to lean against a nearby pillar.
"Yeah, go ahead."
"So basically, I can do anything a frog can." Tsu began. "Jump high, cling to surfaces-" She demonstrated by reaching up, laying her hand against a patch of wall above her head and pulling herself up off the ground, before dropping back down "and extend my tongue up to around twenty meters. I can empty the inside of my stomach on command for cleaning purposes, oh, and I secrete a toxic mucus… but it just stings a bit."
Gwen looked up, blinking a couple of times.
"That last one's… kinda specific."
"Yeah, I don't see it or the stomach-thing being all that useful, here." Tsuyu replied, shrugging. "But it's worth knowing either way."
"Well, consider it noted and known." Gwen remarked. "As for mine, hm…"
Here went nothing, Gwen thought, pausing for half a second before speaking again, raising one of her hands and allowing some pink mana to manifest as sparks within it.
"I suppose the best way of explaining my Quirk is that it's a conduit for life energy." She began. "I think over here, you call it chi, but it's essentially the main thing. I take in the energy from my surroundings, store it within myself, and let it out when I need it, in whatever manner the moment calls for. Shields, energy-blasts, platforms to stand on, extending my own limbs…"
Tsu's eyes were wide as she stared at Gwen for a few seconds.
"That's amazing." She surmised, her expression unchanging in contrast to the small smile that tugged at Gwen's lips.
"Thanks. Honestly, around the time that I first got my Quirk, a part of me thought it was magic. But I'm past that now."
"I can understand why, kero." Tsu replied. "Anyway, with our powers out there, you got any ideas for how to beat Sero and Tokoyami?"
"One or two…" Gwen nodded, turning towards one of the windows for a second as she thought, before turning back towards Tsu. "How are you when it comes to sneaking around?"
----- -----
Five seconds.
Five seconds was all Tokage could take of the sheer STENCH that Swampfire was now giving off before she simply gave in, detached her nose from her face, caught it in her hand and hurled it up and away, as hard and as far as she could.
"That is gonna freak someone out something crazy, if they come across a random nose lying on the ground." Ben remarked, rolling his green and red shoulders a bit. "Also… rude."
"'Rude' would be unleashing the stench of a thousand ultra-concentrated farts directly at me without ANY warning." Tokage replied. "Like… geez, Ben. Better hope you don't whip this one out while trying to get a deodorant endorsement deal."
"Okay, yeah, sorry." Ben, as Swampfire, replied. "But stench aside, we're surrounded by plant life of all kinds, and controlling exactly that happens to be exactly what I'm good at with Swampfire… so he's still the best choice for the job, here."
Tokage let out a sigh as she walked alongside Ben, cracking her knuckles.
"I'll take your word for it." She remarked. She opened her mouth to speak again, but before any more words could leave her throat, they both heard crackles through their earpieces, with Snipe's voice sounding off within.
"Team F and Team J are both outta the game. Repeat for all concerned: Awase and Rin, and Tsunotori and Bondo, are out!"
Ben opened his mouth to quip, but before any words could leave HIS throat, the undergrowth seemed to explode in a flurry of shards of bark and pine-needles, as Tetsutetsu came barrelling into view. A human-shaped steel wrecking ball in sneakers, his form gleemed in the sun as his black eyes immediately took in the sight of Ben and Tokage, who he instantly changed course to make a beeline for. A couple of seconds later, Ben reached up to catch a falling tree as it was drilled through by Kaibara, one of his arms spinning at blur-speed.
"Contacts, Ben!" Tokage called out, her legs splitting off from her torso and quickly moving around Tetsutetsu's body to head for Kaibara.
"Duck!" Ben cried in return, quickly readjusting his grip on the tree that he'd caught, hoisting it above his head and swinging it at Tetsutetsu. "Batter up!"
Tokage seemed to have caught the sight of Ben swinging the tree around before he even called out to her, and rather than duck, she merely floated over the space that the tree-turned-giant-bat occupied, and moved the rest of her body over towards Kaibara, who himself was jumping back, focusing more on keeping his own legs away from Tokage's disembodied ones so she didn't trip him up.
Tetsutetsu caught the sight of the tree coming at him a fraction of a second after Tokage did, and took the opposite approach: rather than attempt an evade, he raised his arms in a cross-motion to meet the tree head-on. And it worked, judging by how the swung trunk shattered into wooden shards upon contact with his metal form, upon which he didn't even flinch. Ben dropped the half-trunk the second he clocked that his attack had had zero effect, sending it flying across the woodland, being forced to take a defensive posture as Tetsutetsu ran towards him.
"Should've gone for the head, Tennyson!" he yelled out, throwing a brutal underhand jab straight at Ben's chest. "You weren't wrong when you said your costume didn't have to look all that hero-y, but that won't stop me from kicking your ass!"
Rather than attempt to dodge, Ben let the attack connect, travel straight through him and out the other side.
The metalhead's (literally) bravado momentarily vanished out of shock at what he'd just done, but before he could do or say anything, Ben brought both his hands down around Tetsutetsu's ears, stunning him for a couple of seconds that gave him the opening he needed to kick him away, towards Kaibara as he attempted to duck and weave around not just Tokage's disembodied legs, but her arms as well.
Jumping over one of her legs as it attempted to sweep his own out from under him, Kaibara reached out into the air and grabbed one of his opponent's arms in one hand, using the other to drill through the middle of the limb, breaking it in two and causing both sides of it to drop to the ground with a dull thud.
"Well, damn." Tokage muttered under her breath, pulling the side of her arm that originated closest to her shoulder back to herself, allowing a new version of the piece Kaibara had drilled through and rendered useless to reform itself over a few seconds, before reattaching the rest of her arm. "Guess I've got to chunk it up a- woah!"
She spotted the flicker of flame out of the corner of her eye, and quickly moved herself out of the way before she could get burned, with the short beam of fire striking the flying Tetsutetsu- who she hadn't seen thanks to being so focused on Kaibara- and sending him crashing through another tree.
"Watch it, Ben!" she called out as he came running over.
"Sorry!" Ben replied, reaching out towards Tetsutetsu with one of his arms and closing his fist for a couple of seconds, before opening it again to reveal what looked like a couple of yellow-green seeds. He quickly tossed them over at the metal boy's feet, with said seeds burrowing into the ground and causing what looked like vines to morph into existence and grow around his legs.
However, before they could fully take hold of him, bind him to the ground and restrain him from partaking any further in the fight, Tetsutetsu was back on his feet, wrenching the vines away from himself and rushing towards both Ben and Tokage.
"Scatter!" Ben cried out, rolling left. Tokage… literally scattered, splitting her entire body (or what was left of it, at least) into around two-dozen chunks and sending them all out in various directions, ensuring that the punch Tetsutetsu had thrown out while running would collide with precisely nothing.
She reformed a couple of seconds later, right behind him, but was forced to scatter all of the parts below the bottom of her mouth when she noticed Kaibara coming at her, both arms drilling and aimed at her chest.
"Think you can distract Kaibara?" Her voice sounded off within Ben's earpiece (which, thankfully, was still probably rattling around somewhere inside Swampfire's head), as an intense whisper. Though she needn't really have bothered with that, considering Tetsutetsu and Kaibara weren't too likely to have heard her anyway, given the former's yelling as he led the latter towards Ben. "A couple of seconds, that's all I'll need. Then we can deal with Tetsutetsu."
"Sounds like a plan!" Ben replied, dodging an attempt to drill through his shoulder by Kaibara and ducking a wide swing at his head from Tetsutetsu. Extending his arm out again and closing his fist, aiming it at a nearby tree, one of its branches suddenly grew out and morphed into what looked like a wooden rope that wrapped around one of the drill-limbed boy's arms, dragging him back towards the tree.
"Team G, that's it, you're done! Kamakiri Togaru and Komori Kinoko, you're both out! I did warn y'all that it wasn't a good idea to split up…"
Kaibara let out what sounded like a squawk of surprise at the sudden uncontrolled change of direction, and immediately converted the arm that the tree had grabbed into a drill to try and break free, but it was too late. That couple of seconds of distraction, focus on the wrong thing, was all that was needed for a couple of disembodied fists to come flying at him. The right one connected first, cracking him across the cheek and sending him directly into a punch from the left one, that landed squarely at the front of his face.
Still attached to the tree, courtesy of Swampfire, as he was, Kaibara stumbled backwards a couple of steps, his free hand reaching up to his face and his eyes widening as soon as he felt a rather warm, rather sticky and rather RED liquid trailing from his nose and down the front of his face. Though before he could let out any kind of verbal response to the realisation that he was now bleeding, he found himself flung forward again by the arm that the tree branch was still wrapped around, courtesy of Ben (who was still dodging Tetsutetsu's attempts to land a hit on him) raising his hand and clenching his fist in his direction again.
"Woah- crap!" Kaibara yelled, stumbling over himself as he was released from the tree-branch, while Ben jumped back a little bit more. "Tetsutetsu! Incoming!"
"Huh?"
Tetsutetsu was already winding up another punch, and running full-speed towards Ben, when the desperate declaration from his teammate met his ears. But seeing him half-thrown half-stumbling into his direct path was enough of a motivator to quickly change tack: cancelling his metal-mode and switching out a closed fist for open arms, diving towards his teammate and catching him as he went, rolling past and away from Swampfire and Tokage. The grey-haired guy came up with surprising grace and fluidity for someone who had literally been comprised of steel a couple of seconds ago, and after dropping Kaibara on the ground beside him, they both dashed away from Ben and Tokage without even a word exchanged between them.
"Or… they can just leave."
Ben looked over as Tokage's head and torso, quickly followed by her arms and legs, floated over and reattached themselves to each other, and she landed back on the ground beside him.
"Now THAT'S rude." She remarked. "They wouldn't have come last if they'd stuck around and got their asses kicked, so it wouldn't be THAT humiliating."
"I know, right?" Ben replied, rolling one of his shoulders and raising a hand in the direction Tetsutetsu and Kaibara had ran off in for a couple of seconds, before lowering it again. "But, whatever. Point is, we're still standing, and in better shape than they were, thanks to you breaking Kaibara's nose… damn."
"Nah, I didn't break his nose." Tokage replied, immediately. "I've broken someone's nose before, it didn't feel like that. Probably just bruised it, or something."
There was a couple of seconds' silence between Ben and Tokage, as they began moving away in the opposite direction to where Tetsutetsu and Kaibara had gone.
"You, uh, gonna elaborate on that whole 'breaking someone else's nose' thing?" Ben asked.
"Hm… nah." Tokage replied, shrugging. "Maybe another ti- uugh!"
Ben blinked, noticing that Tokage's nose had regenerated onto her face, where it stayed for all of three seconds before the greenette- not even bothering with physically throwing it away, simply sent it flying off her body, up into the air and across the tops of the trees, where it disappeared from sight.
"Okay, seriously, what does Swampfire eat so I know to avoid it like the plague going forward?"
"I really don't know." Ben replied, shrugging himself. "I mean, I had some of that chicken fried rice from U.A.'s canteen right before this, but I don't think one portion of that is gonna make me smell like this… all over. I think Swampfire just… naturally smells like this."
Tokage audibly sighed, rolling her eyes as she stretched her arms behind her head while walking beside Ben.
"I guess." She replied. "To be fair, you do kinda look like the kind of thing that would come crawling out of a swamp, and I somehow doubt those places smell too good anyway."
Ben hummed in agreement as he moved a couple of steps ahead of Tokage.
"So anyway, what other transformations have you got in the- uh- what did you say it was called again?"
"Omnitrix." Ben replied, turning around and walking backwards as he spoke. "And yeah, I've got loads of guys stashed. I got a really fast guy that zips around on these wheel-like orb things on his feet, this… blind orange dog-like guy that can smell and hear really good, one that can fly, breathe ice and go intangible, this green gel- wuh!"
Ben almost fell flat on his back as, rather than making contact with regular ground, one of his feet sank unexpectedly INTO the ground, with a very sudden, very loud squelch. He only managed to stop himself from landing on his back by quickly sending out vines from his fingers to grab onto a nearby branch to pull himself upright, but while he was occupied with doing that, he accidentally put his other foot down next to the one that was already sinking, causing that one to sink as well.
"Aw, man!" Ben cried out, now fully balanced but still sinking, both of his legs up to his calves submerged in the quicksand-like material that had been masquerading as regular ground up until he'd stepped on it.
"Team E, tough luck, but you're out! Kendo Itsuka and Kodai Yui, that's it for y'all!"
"Honenuki…" Tokage muttered, splitting her legs and arms off from her body and floating them- as well as her head and torso- up into the air, above the ground that Ben was sinking into. "Come on, Ben, I'll get you out-"
"No, it's fine!" Ben replied, aiming his hands downwards and charging fire into them. "I can get out myself!"
"Ben, wait-!"
But before Tokage could fully dissuade Ben from what he was about to do, intense bursts of flame launched from his hands and onto the liquid-like ground. Though he was now up to his knees in it, Ben could feel himself moving upwards, out of the quicksand- but before he could get much further, Tokage quickly moved over, using one of her disembodied arms to grab Ben by the shoulder and shake him a bit.
"Dude, do you want to get us disqualified for burning this entire training ground down or something?!"
Ben froze mid-boost, steam hissing from his fingertips as he ceased attempting to blast himself out of the ground. That… didn't sound all that fun.
"Alright, alright." He replied. "Fine. Give me a hand."
"How about a whole-ass arm instead?" Tokage asked, bringing her arm around for Ben to grab onto, followed quickly by the other one. "Or better yet, two?"
Ben rolled his eyes as he reached out, grabbed onto both of Tokage's hands with his own, but as they began pulling him upwards, the sound of movement in the trees to the pair's right caught the attention of both of them.
"Crap." Tokage muttered, turning her body around and bringing her legs up, narrowing her eyes slightly as Honenuki and Shoda stepped out from behind the trees. Shoda looked rather pleased with himself, and Honenuki… Tokage couldn't see his face under the armour he was wearing, but she somehow doubted he didn't look similarly pleased under there. "Sorry, Ben!"
Ben let out a mixture between a grunt and gasp of surprise as Tokage's hands suddenly let go of his own, and moved closer to her body as she floated forward to confront Honenuki and Shoda.
"You're gonna need to try and get out by yourself for now!" she called back to him, raising her disembodied fists. "I'll hold soft-soil and Chubby off!"
"Hey!" Honenuki called out from under his armoured mask, before quickly making a swimmer-like dive towards the ground with surprising grace for someone wearing such a bulky costume. Tokage was faster, however, sending out one of her arms to grab onto one of Honenuki's legs as he descended into the ground. As he went about halfway in, she managed to grab him, but just the arm alone wasn't enough to hold back Honenuki's whole body for long, given how he continued descending in spite of how she attempted to pull him out.
Narrowing his eyes slightly at the sight in front of him, Ben knew it was time to get out of the sticky situation he'd literally stepped into, and back in the fight- fast. It was just good for Tokage that he- in fact- COULD think of another couple of potential ways to get himself out of here without her help. Quickly spying a tree not far off from where he was stuck, now up to his lower thighs, he reached out with one of his hands and extended a number of vines towards it, securely wrapping them around the tree's trunk.
After giving it a couple of quick tugs to make sure it was secure, Ben yanked at the tree with as much strength as he could conjure with one arm… and almost immediately had to move his other arm to catch the tree as it came loose from the ground- root system and all.
Okay, Ben thought while taking a breath, that might have been a bit overkill in terms of strength, from an alien that pushed over a whole-ass Highbreed weather tower. Time for a different tactic, maybe.
Remembering some old life-hack illustration thing he'd come across while going down some random internet rabbit-hole one night back in his home universe, he began slowly bringing one of his knees up, resisting the urge to cringe at the unpleasant squelching noises that met his ears from below with every couple of inches he felt his foot move.
Once he felt like he could move that leg relatively freely, he began slowly bringing the other knee up, glancing over at Tokage as he did so. He saw her flinging a flurry of finger-sized fragments at Shoda, zig-zagging them through the air and sending them at him at wildly different angles to make him have to try and focus on all of them at once- only for Shoda to quickly bring his hand around in a wide arc in front of him, swatting a couple of Tokage's fingers before they could hit him.
As he jumped backwards, the fingers that he'd managed to strike shimmered in the air for a moment, before they went flying off in the opposite direction to which Tokage was trying to send them, and MUCH faster than they had been going originally. One of them went flying off towards Tokage, who let out a yelp as she was forced to dodge her own middle finger almost poking her in the eye with the force and speed of a bullet.
"Okay, that's not fair- crap!" she yelled, almost losing grip on Honenuki- who was almost comedically thrashing around upside-down and partially-submerged in his own softened ground, trying to break free of Tokage's grip. "Uuugh... really should've worked out more before coming here!"
"Team H are out, that's Team H out! Shiozaki Ibara and Shishida Jurota, y'all are done!"
Ben was less lucky, as Tokage's ring finger that Honenuki had sent away from him- presumably with his Quirk- struck him square in the chest, with enough force that he'd probably be sent stumbling backwards at least a couple of steps, were he not mostly submerged in the ground that Honenuki had softened out. But that didn't stop him from managing to successfully free his other leg from what felt like the bottom of whatever softened ground Honenuki had created.
That was step one done, at least.
"Nothing like a mid-fight swamp spa to relax the muscles..." he muttered to himself, leaning back and spreading his arms to create more surface area, allowing his body to float within the ground rather than sink into it.
"Glad you're having a good time over there, Ben!" Tokage sarcastically called out as she dropped her body below a redirected disembodied foot sent at her by Shoda, which broke a few branches as it flew through them before embedding itself within a particularly tall tree-trunk, with enough force to dent the trunk a good bit. "Think you can finish up over there and come help, anytime soon?!"
"I'm working on it!" Ben called out in reply, raising one of his hands and sending out more vines to wrap around the same tall trunk that Tokage's foot was still wriggling around in to try and get out of. "Okay... maybe hold back a bit this time..." he muttered to himself, slowly beginning to pull himself out.
And it worked: rather than the tree leaving its roots and coming down on top of Ben, he felt himself leaving the softened ground- foot by foot, meter by meter, he moved across the top of the soft ground and- after several seconds of slow movement, he hit the edge of the area that Honenuki had softened, and rapidly clamboured out...
And almost fell right back in, after getting unexpectedly clocked in the face by Tokage's disembodied foot, just as it itself came loose from the tree.
"Sorry!" Tokage called from several feet away, before Ben could even call out at her. "Nice to have you back, stinkbo- damn it! Ben, watch out!"
Looking around at Tokage, Ben immediately noticed that she wasn't holding onto Honenuki anymore... and Honenuki was swimming through his own softened ground towards Ben, with the speed and precision of a VERY hungry blood-smelling shark.
Thinking quickly, Ben extended vines out of Swampfire's hands towards the trunk he'd pulled himself out of the ground with a moment earlier, and yanked to pull himself off the ground and into the air, just as Honenuki reached where he'd been standing.
Yeah, no way he was gonna go through having to get his leafy ass out of that again. Not when- as he looked over- Tokage was trading blows with Shoda with a steadily-declining number of body-pieces to work with. Reaching out with his other hand to latch onto another trunk, he changed course to swing past Tokage and towards Shoda. The chubby ice-blue-haired boy widened his eyes at the sight of the humanoid plant literally flying towards him, and dived out of the way… but landing a solid hit on him wasn't Ben's goal.
Swinging past where Shoda had stood before he came flying at him, Ben reached out with one hand towards a trunk that had been right behind Shoda, holding on as he swung around a hundred and eighty degrees, before letting go and sticking out both his hands in Shoda's direction, just as the boy was getting to his feet and swatting Tokage's disembodied body-parts away like flies.
Vines sprouted from both of Swampfire's hands, immediately making for Shoda's hands and wrapping around them before he even realised Ben was behind him. Mentally cutting off the vines at his end once the other ends of them had done their job, Ben dropped to the ground, skidding to a stop behind Shoda and quickly tying the vines up, effectively binding Shoda's hands behind his back before he could even try and stop him.
"Nice moves." Tokage remarked, floating over as the body-parts she'd been using to annoy Shoda earlier floated back towards her, and began reattaching themselves. "That's some eco-friendly crowd control, if I've ever seen it.
Ben let out a chuckle, but before he could reply further, a wet sloshing sound caught his and Tokage's attention again, drawing them back towards the patch of softened ground that Honenuki had dived into earlier. Right as they looked, the armoured boy himself erupted from the ground like a swampy torpedo, making a clear beeline for his partner. Ben immediately reached up, vines already beginning to sprout from his hand, but Tokage was faster: just as Honenuki was jumping out of his softened ground, a flurry of small body-chunks left Tokage's body and flew at speed towards Honenuki's airborne body.
They battered into him, completely disrupting his forward momentum and drawing out a squawk of surprise from under the armoured mask as rather than dive for his restrained teammate in order to help him, he just stopped in mid-air and dropped straight down.
Without hesitating, Ben unleashed the vines he'd held back for a couple of seconds, wrapping them around Honenuki's fallen body even more securely than he'd wrapped up Shoda, and swung him around to deposit Honenuki next to him, taking the pair completely out of the exercise. And before either Ben or Tokage could take a breath to process what they'd just done, Snipe's voice sounded through their earpieces again.
"And that's Team C out. Honenuki Juzo, Shoda Nirengeki, outta the fight."
"Wooh…" Tokage sighed, floating down a little lower as some of her body-pieces moved to reattach themselves to her body, while some others simply swirled around her form as she looked down at the restrained Team C. "Tough luck, boys."
"Not our fault you have… such busted Quirks." Honenuki muttered, shaking his mask off of himself as he looked up at Ben. "Especially you, Tennyson. Also dude, geez, take a shower."
Shoda… had fallen unconscious from the Methanosian's sheer stench.
"I plan to, once we're done here." Ben remarked, as he made to follow Tokage's floating form away from the restrained pair. However, after a couple of steps, he stopped and turned. "And hey, you managed to catch me off-guard back there, so you didn't get completely wrecked. Be proud of that, at least."
Moving under a branch that Tokage grabbed and moved up to easily get under, Ben caught up with his green-haired teammate, who moved into what looked like a clearing just off one of the beaten paths around the training ground: it was quiet and shaded, the perfect place to hang out and take a breath.
"Don't mind standing guard while I try and regenerate some more of myself, do you Ben?" Tokage asked, dropping her body and pieces onto the ground and closing her eyes. "Don't want to be caught without any of myself ready when someone else decides to try and jump us."
Ben nodded, keeping an eye on the treeline at the border of the clearing as every moment or so, another chunk of Tokage's body that had been lost during the fighting popped back up where it was meant to. After a couple of minutes, her nose returned to her face… before it was immediately launched across the treeline again, this time within two seconds.
"Someone who doesn't know what your Quirk is is gonna be freaked out as all hell, if they just find a disembodied nose lying around on the ground." Ben remarked. "You know that, right?"
"Maybe." Tokage replied. "But the pieces just dissolve after a bit, if they don't return to me after long enough. Either way, I blame your stink."
"You've been pretty clear on that." Ben nodded, rolling his eyes before looking back at Tokage. "Hey, do you actually remember who's left? I know we took out Honenuki and Shoda just now, and two of the other teams got eliminated before Tetsutetsu and Kaibara came at us, so counting us that's… seven teams, yeah?"
Tokage hummed, as she reformed one of her lower legs, and reattached it to her knee as it regenerated.
"I remember a few teams getting called out as being out, while we were fighting earlier." She spoke. "Team G- I'm guessing Kamakiri went off on his own, he seems like the type- Team E and Team H, that takes us down to four: us, Team A, Team B-
"Team B, you're out! Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu and Kaibara Sen, you're outta the game!"
Tokage blinked a couple of times, before coughing.
"Nevermind, down to three: Us, Team A and Team D."
Stretching again, Ben grinned.
"Not bad."
"Well, considering I got in on recommendation," Tokage replied, smirking a bit. "And you broke the practical points record in the regular exam, I'd be disappointed if we didn't at least place in the top three. Hell, I'll be disappointed if we don't win outright."
Ben nodded.
"Yeah, same." He remarked. "I mean, with an insane… Quirk like mine, I should really be wre-"
Mid-word, Ben found something slamming into him from the right. An invisible wall of pressure, it felt like his entire body was being smacked by a battering ram made of… nothing. He managed to catch himself before slamming into the ground, quickly sending out a vine to wrap around a nearby tree and hold himself up, before pulling himself back to his feet.
'Ambush.' He thought, immediately looking over at Tokage, but before he could even open his mouth to say anything, she was leaping up and jumping away from what looked like a human-sized mass of darkness jumping out of the shadow of the tree she'd been leant up against. The mass, that Ben recognised as Kuroiro a second later, reached out to bear-hug her from behind, but her upper and lower body split away on instinct, leaving the black-clad student with only what he'd been able to physically touch, which fell apart in turn in his hands and almost caused him to fall over.
Disembodied as they were, and clearly fuelled by her startled state after almost being grabbed from behind, Ben noticed her legs stumbling away from her upper body. As the pieces from Kuroiro's hands reformed and reattached themselves to her upper body, Ben immediately lashed a vine out and wrapped it around one of Tokage's legs, dragging both of them across the clearing to meet her top half.
"Somebody order a butt to go, with a side of legs?" he asked, as Tokage's upper half awkwardly floated over.
Tokage didn't respond verbally, only sticking one of her middle fingers up at Ben as she reattached herself. She was still clearly holding back giggles, however, though they disappeared as Fukidashi- with his recognisable speech-bubble-head, emerged from behind the tree from whose shadow Kuroiro had jumped from, the Japanese characters for the word 'boom' (as far as Ben could remember, at least. Why did Japanese writing have to be so freaking hard to learn…?) printed across it. On the other side of the clearing, closer to him, Tsuburaba appeared from between a couple of trees, rolling his shoulders and looking VERY ready for the final fight of this exercise.
A couple of steps or so behind him, Yanagi followed, her arms oddly held at her side by the elbows with her hands dangling in front of her.
"Guess everyone else figured we're the favourites, now." Tokage remarked. "Of course they'd gang up on us."
Ben turned to face Tsuburaba and Yanagi, stretching his green limbs a bit.
"Good. We can end this faster." He remarked, before quickly igniting a pair of fireballs and tossing them in Tsuburaba's direction. But his opponent was prepared, quickly inhaling deeply and blowing out hard from his mouth. As he did so, something invisible seemed to shimmer in front of him for a fraction of a second, almost like the kind of cleaned glass a bird would unexpectedly fly into.
He could solidify air, Ben realised, as Yanagi then lifted up one of her hands and thrust it forward towards him. The barrier quickly flew forward, catching the fireballs that he'd thrown out and forcing them to fizzle out as they went, and still moving fast.
As the barrier came closer, Ben rolled to the side, calling out "Incoming!" to warn Tokage behind him as the barrier of solidified air flew over where he'd been standing a couple of seconds ago, before he tossed another fireball at Yanagi. She quickly brought both hands back towards herself, bringing the shimmering barrier back towards her before it came anywhere near Ben's teammate. It screeched to a halt just in front of her, before the fireball Ben had tossed could make contact, with it fizzling out just as the other two had.
So, the two of them had worked out some kind of combo-move with their Quirks, Ben thought, as he ducked another flying barrier of solid air that was generated by Tsuburaba's breath and sent his way by Yanagi. If they'd been able to figure that out that soon after Snipe had randomly paired them together, he supposed it was no wonder they'd gotten this far.
Just across the clearing, Tokage's legs scattered and broke apart, in response to Kuroiro surging from her own shadow, trying to grab her from below and behind to bring her down to the ground. Bringing the rest of her body up into the air a bit as Kuroiro fully emerged from the ground, she sent her scattered leg-fragments his way to try and knock him off-balance a bit, but he dived out of the way, escaping into the shadow of a nearby tree. She cursed under her breath and dropped, trying to reassemble her legs fast enough for her to neatly drop onto them and fully reform herself, but before she could even do that-
"SWOOSH!"
Massive floating characters that spelled out that word appeared to one side of her, generating a massive gust of wind that sent her fragments scattering out of the clearing like confetti, leaving her without legs. It almost sent her now-legless body flying as well, but she quickly grabbed onto a branch at the edge of the clearing, holding on for dear life until the wind died down, allowing her to float back into the clearing JUST before Kuroiro could jump out and grab her again.
Looking over to where she'd heard both the voice and wind coming from as she floated back into a well-lit spot, keeping herself high enough that Kuroiro couldn't come out of her own shadow and surprise her from below, she saw Fukidashi drawing in another breath… or at least she guessed he was drawing in a breath, it was kinda hard to tell since he didn't have a visible mouth.
Keeping the rest of her body at a distance from him, she sent out one of her entire arms at speed, aiming for Fukidashi's abdomen to knock the wind out of him and stop him from speaking. But as the hand at the end of her disembodied arm closed into a fist and went closer and closer-
"BANG!"
Tokage immediately regretted sending one of her arms and hands out that quickly, reflexively reaching up to cover her ears, but then realising seconds too late that she only had one hand NEAR her ears to cover them in the first place. Massive floating characters that spelled out the word Fukidashi had just yelled appeared in front of him for half a second before they exploded in a concussive burst, sending her disembodied arm flying away from him.
But luckily, before it could get too far, Ben caught it just as he jumped out of the way of a flying tree-branch thrown his way by Yanagi, neatly tossing it back towards her just before he got smacked across the face by a small, but dense, air-barrier blown his way by Tsuburaba. He almost toppled over, but managed to keep his balance and return fire with another fireball.
"Thanks!" Tokage called, catching the thrown arm in her other hand and reattaching it to herself. Luckily, Fukidashi's bang hadn't completely destroyed it. It only looked slightly singed… chances at he hadn't intended to let out that bang that early. "Both of these guys know their co-ordination." She remarked, over the comms. "They're good."
"Just makes us look better, if it takes two of them working together to even try and take one of us each!" Ben's voice sounded back in her ear, causing Tokage to roll her eyes. That wasn't QUITE how she'd put it, but she supposed he wasn't exactly wrong. "Got an idea to try and disable my guys, think you can come and help?"
"Give me a second!" Ben called out, ducking under a flurry of thrown sticks and twigs from Yanagi, planting a hand into the ground and sprouting a number of thick vines upwards from it, stopping another blown air-barrier from Tsuburaba in its tracks. Without missing a beat, he turned on his green-and-black heels and dashed over towards his floating teammate. But before he'd gone a couple of steps, he heard a yell from behind, and saw Kuroiro jumping up at him from the shadow he was casting into the ground right now, arms outstretched.
"Oh, no you don't!"
Ben swivelled around, grabbing Kuroiro by one of his arms with one hand and bodily throwing him away, towards Tsuburaba and Yanagi, while throwing a fireball his way with the other. Kuroiro was halfway-submerged in another tree's shadow, on the other side of the clearing, when the light of the fireball being flung his way lit up the area, eliminating the shadow and forcibly ejecting him from it. It seemed neither Tsuburaba or Kuroiro expected that, considering how the latter flying upward resulted in him smacking into the former, with the pair of them collapsing all over each other in a heap.
"Give me some vines, stinkbug!" Tokage cried, as soon as Ben got close enough to her. Ben immediately obliged, bringing out a collection of vines from one of his hands, which Tokage quickly grabbed and pulled off of him with one of her hands. Detaching both of them, she grabbed either end of the vines and thrust her hands forward towards Fukidashi, who breathed in again. But before he could call out, Tokage lifted her hands- and the vines- up far above the speech-bubble-headed boy, out of any potential danger, even when-
"BANG!"
Half a second after the word left his throat, Ben immediately clasped his hands down around Tokage's ears, protecting her as she moved her hands back down. Even when the large characters appeared and exploded again, the rest of her body was only flung backwards into Ben's body, which held firm.
As Tokage's hands- with the vines still firmly grasped in them, descended and quickly rushed towards Fukidashi, he seemed to notice them coming and- after seeming to figure out what their plan was, took in a deep breath in seeming preparation to let out another onomatopoeia-related yell, but rather than any words coming out, he suddenly started coughing. Bending over, he almost felt to his knees, clutching his throat and almost retching.
Tokage didn't stop, however, wrapping the vines around the back and front of Fukidashi's head, covering his mouth so no sound could come out. Panicking, Fukidashi flailed around, grabbing at the vines wrapped around his face while running around, but there wasn't anything he could do.
"And that's that, Team D are out of the fight!" Snipe called out, through the ears of all that were left in the fight. "Kuroiro Shihai and Manga Fukidashi, I repeat, Team D are done! Two teams left, now!"
Looking up, Ben noticed that Tsuburaba and Yanagi had- jointly- taken down Kuroiro, having him restrained under what looked like an air-barrier pressing down on his body, and looking over at Ben and Tokage as they heard the announcement from Snipe as well.
"Time to finish this in style, Ben?" Tokage asked, floating over to him as her legs began to reform beneath her torso. Grinning, Ben cracked his knuckles as he looked over at Tsuburaba and Yanagi.
"Always." The Omnitrix-wielder replied, smirking and shifting into a running stance. "Everything you've got, send it out!"
Grunting, Tokage did just that, splitting her entire body sans her head and upper torso into pieces and sending them off in front of Ben, who took off running at Tsuburaba and Yanagi right after them. The pair of them immediately moved to defend themselves, sending out a number of solidified air-barriers and throwing them at him at speed.
As Ben ran, he was able to gauge where the barriers in question, and their movements, were by all of Tokage's body-pieces slamming against them: dodging to the left of one as Yanagi twisted to try and get it to hit him, hopping over another- crap, Yanagi had flicked it up to trip him up mid-jump- he didn't even try to land on his feet to try and dodge the third, rather he just dropped- rolled under it- propelled himself up with vines from his feet and over a fourth, ducking under a fifth after landing properly…
Ben's eyes flicked between Tsuburaba and Yanagi as he got closer and closer, quickly caught between the choice of who to go for… but as Tsuburaba coughed mid-breath, a half-formed wall sputtering uselessly out of his mouth like a sad puff of fog in reaction to Ben's stench once he was up-close and personal, it seemed like the decision had been made for Ben.
Already winded and out of breath as he was, it only took one quick punch to the gut for Ben to send the air-barrier-blower down like a ton of bricks, leaving only Yanagi remaining. She looked from Ben, to Tokage as she reformed her body from the parts she'd been slamming against Tsuburaba's barriers beside Ben, back to Ben, to her teammate groaning and clutching his stomach in the grass… and lifted her hands.
"I'm done." She spoke emotionlessly, for the first time that day. "No way I'm beating the pair of you on my own."
There was silence for a few seconds, during which the Omnitrix beeped a couple of times, after which Swampfire disappeared in a flash of light. When the light cleared, all that was left was a slightly sweaty, somewhat out-of-breath and very human Ben.
"Team A surrenders!" Snipe called out, over everyone's comms. "Tsuburaba Kosei and Yanagi Reiko have the honour of being runners-up for this exercise, and Team I wins!"
Ben grinned, taking a breath as Kuroiro got to his feet, and Fukidashi finally got the vines off of his head, a very clear '#* %!' displayed on his speech-bubble-mouth.
"Never in doubt." Tokage remarked, as she finally landed on her feet and offered a hand up to her teammate, grinning. "Nice one, Ben!"
"Likewise." Ben replied, grinning as he swung at Tokage's hand with his own in a hi-five. Though when they connected…
"Ahhh, oh my god!" Tokage yelled out, her hand immediately collapsing on contact with Ben's. "Ben, Jesus Christ, you blew up my haaaa-ahahaha!"
Ben simply let out a sigh, rolling his eyes and turning away from Tokage- who had almost doubled over laughing at her own practical joke. He couldn't help but let out a small chuckle himself: he had a feeling that would be coming.
"Alright, y'all," Snipe called out through the comms, again. "Everybody, make your way to the front gate you came through when we first started. We're gonna have ourselves a little debrief once you're all back. Quick, quick!"
----- -----
"Ribbit."
Asui was thanking her lucky stars that the 'sticking to surfaces' part of her Quirk was almost whisper-quiet while she utilised it.
With practiced ease, her fingers and toes within her gloves and boots, she crawled along the wall while travelling away from the stairs that led down to the second floor from the third (which was the floor that the prop-nuke had been hidden on).
"You can stay quiet while crawling around on walls, right? …Nice, that'll make following our opponents around easier. People don't look up very often, you know."
That was the gist of Gwen's plan, so far. Head out from where the weapon had been stationed, scout around the lower floors to try and find Tokoyami and/or Sero- as they'd just been released into the building to try and track them and the weapon down- and report their movements back to Gwen if she found them.
With how the corridors and building at large were lit, both naturally and not, staying close to the ceiling was her best option stealth-wise, regardless of Gwen's remark about people looking up. She'd spotted a fair few scorch-marks from Midoriya and Bakugo's battle earlier on her way down that, under the right circumstances, would be useful to hide in. However, they were concentrated in one place, as well as close to the ground, so they weren't all that useful here, likely best avoided.
…
Footsteps.
Asui immediately flattened herself against the wall, right as she came up to a corner. Her ears straining a little, and her eyes squarely focused on where she'd heard them coming from, she didn't move a muscle: only watched as her team's opponent's- Sero Hanta and Tokoyami Fumikage- strode around the corner, right under where she was without looking up.
She saw Sero briefly folding his arms, rubbing at the tape-dispensers that served as his elbows as some kind of nervous tick, while Tokoyami's Dark Shadow was out and ready, watching their six.
'Guess you were right, Gwen.' She thought to herself, slowly unsticking one of her hands from the wall and raising it to her ear, tapping the comm and murmuring in as low a voice as she could muster. "Found them on the second floor. They're moving together, just south of the stairs up to the third."
"Copy that." Gwen's voice came through Tsu's comms, loud and clear. "Thanks, Tsu. Stay on them, but don't engage. Not until we're able to come at them together."
More on instinct than anything else, Tsu nodded… before realising a second later that Gwen couldn't see her.
"Got it." She replied, into her comms. "Ribbit."
Keeping her eyes on Tokoyami and Sero, she didn't move at first, only watching them until they were all the way past her and some ways down the corridor before she began moving, keeping up to the ceiling to stay as out of sight as possible, while focusing on making as few sudden movements as possible, to keep the chances of alerting Dark Shadow (who let out small grunts and growls with every movement he made behind Tokoyami) as low as possible.
To be honest, she wasn't surprised that Gwen's assumption that Sero and Tokoyami would stick together ended up being true. In spite of the plan that they'd had during their fight against Bakugo and Iida, Midoriya and Uraraka splitting up had bred near-disaster for the pair of them (relative to the exercise, at least), so she doubted it'd be something any of the other teams (hero teams, specifically) would really want to try and emulate. Especially since Bakugo and Iida splitting up HAD bred disaster for them.
Though on the other hand, she and Gwen had split up in service of THEIR plan, so what did she know?
And speaking of her transfer-student teammate, she couldn't help but think that she was going to get on pretty well with her, going forward. She seemed pretty level-headed, like her, and she had to guess she was VERY smart. One kinda had to be, if they were to score 98.8% on a written exam, in a language that they hadn't grown up speaking.
Hell, Tsu had been speaking and writing in Japanese her entire life (it was the ONLY language she knew, semi-regrettably), and she'd only managed an A-grade of 86.3%, so it probably wouldn't be lying to figure that Gwen was on another level, smarts-wise. Just like her Quirk- or how she'd described it, at least- was on another level.
"They're at the stairs to the third floor, still going as a pair." Tsuyu whispered, pausing as she watched Sero and Tokoyami pause at the bottom of the stairs, briefly confer with each other (she was too far away to hear what they were saying), before Sero headed up first, with Tokoyami following a couple of steps behind.
"They heading up?"
"Yeah, they just did."
"Got it." Tsuyu heard Gwen letting out a breath through her side of the comms. "Keep me posted. I'm heading down."
"Copy." Tsuyu whispered, before crawling along the wall towards the stairwell just as Sero and Tokoyami left her sight. When she got close enough, she jumped over from one side of the wall to the other, keeping as quiet as possible as she stuck to the new wall and continued up the stairs, just as Sero and Tokoyami reached the top of the stairwell, and after a couple of seconds, turned left.
As she followed, she saw Sero brushing the tape dispensers on his elbows, almost like a nervous tic. She saw Dark Shadow darting around behind Tokoyami's body, trying its best to see any potential ambushes from behind coming, in spite of how dark it was.
"...building layout's kinda weird." Tsuyu heard Sero saying to Tokoyami, as the latter slowly pushed a door open and looked inside. "But we can't be too far."
"Indeed." Tokoyami murmured, turning around and shutting the door behind him. "But we must remain alert."
Tsuyu could barely resist grinning, pulling back slightly as Tokoyami retreated from the room he was checking, shut it behind him and continued down the corridor he was going down with Sero. As the pair of them continued further down, towards what looked like a four-way crossroads.
A crossroads of corridors that Tsuyu remembered navigating on her way down while looking for Sero and Tokoyami in the first place. The easiest way to get across the third floor quickly, and pretty damn hard to NOT have to navigate if you were even just walking around the floor.
"Hey, Tsu?"
Tsuyu almost dropped off the wall out of sheer surprise at how suddenly Gwen's voice came through the comms into her ear.
"If you're still following Tokoyami and Sero..." Gwen's voice spoke in Tsu's ear. "I'd consider covering your eyes."
Tsuyu hesitated for a moment, letting out a breath before pulling back. Taking one of her hands off of the wall so she was only holding on with her feet and one hand, she slowly pulled her goggles down over her face, adjusting them a little bit to make sure they were secure over her eyes.
Taking another breath, she moved closer to Sero and Tokoyami as they came closer and closer to the centre of the crossroads. And the second that Sero stepped into the area between all four branching corridors, what looked like a pink circle began softly glowing.
Sero immediately jumped backwards, slamming the visor on his hero costume down over his face, right as the pink mana-circle on the ground went off like a flashbang grenade, sending both Sero stumbling backwards a bit from the sound, Dark Shadow reeling from the flash of light, and Tokoyami recoiling at both.
"Showtime." Gwen's satisfied voice came through the comms, right as Tsuyu looked up to see her teammate standing in the corridor directly opposite her, the same mana that she'd set off as a mine-of-sorts seconds earlier glowing within her hands, and solidified into a platform under her feet that disappeared half a second later, allowing her to drop down to the ground.
Sero was the first to recover, and as soon as he clocked Gwen in front of him, he lunged, tape spraying from his elbow-based dispensers in her direction. But before she was even close to threatened, Tsuyu had pounced. Twisting in mid-air, she swung her leg around and caught Sero squarely in the side, sending him into the wall with enough force to crack his helmet and visor, the latter of which fell apart to reveal his face as he coughed and gasped from the sudden attack, clearly stunned from what had just happened.
Tokoyami had taken slightly longer to recover, and any possible attempt to assist his teammate failed before he could even try it as Gwen sent out a mana-based extended hand to grab Dark Shadow from one hand, and a slightly more mundane mana-tendril with the other to wrap around Tokoyami and drag him in close to her.
"Not good against light, huh?" she remarked once her bird-headed opponent was close enough for her to quickly wrap the capture tape around his body, pinning his arms to his sides.
"It's a... known weakness, of mine." Tokoyami replied, letting out a breath as he bowed his head. "We were bested by your... very, superior strategy."
"Your general aesthetic didn't make it hard to guess, to be fair." Gwen replied, looking over at Tsu and Sero, the former of whom had the latter wrapped up in her tongue as she quickly bound him.
"THE VILLAIN TEAM… WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINS!"
Gwen rolled her shoulders, smirking as she heard All Might's voice roaring through the building. After releasing Dark Shadow from her clenched mana-fist, she moved to undo the capture-tape around Tokoyami's main body, just as Tsuyu relaxed her tongue from around Sero's body and allowed it to retreat back into her mouth, before doing the same.
"Nice moves, partner." Tsuyu remarked, hopping over to Gwen and offering up a fist, which Gwen gladly bumped. "Well, guess we should head back down to see what everyone thought of our match."
"Yeah, guess we should." Sero remarked, his eyes shifting from Tokoyami and Dark Shadow- the latter of whom looked vaguely like he was blowing a raspberry at Gwen before retreating back into the former- to Gwen and Tsuyu as they headed off. "I'll be SHOCKED if you two get worse marks than Midoriya and Uraraka, geez..."