Chapter Text
“You’ll do.”
Hitoshi’s eyes flick towards the teen behind him. “Sorry?”
The teen makes a face, twisting oddly-pretty features. “Scrawny, aren’t you?” he mutters to himself. “Whatever.” Then, before Hitoshi can say another word, the teen grabs him by the collar and drags him over to a pair of students. Then, the clearly-insane teen shoves him forwards. “He’ll be the rider.”
What the fuck, Hitoshi thinks.
“Tail guy,” the teen continues, jerking a literal sword towards the startled hero course student, “Back left. The sparkly one’s on the right.” When neither moves, his lips pull into a scowl. “Well?”
The boy with the tail frowns after the teen lowers his weapon. “Why should we be listening to you?”
Crazy guy’s eye twitches, and he gestures towards Hitoshi. “I can’t do anything if my hands are busy holding his lanky ass up.”
Tail guy glances at Hitoshi, and then the teams around them. Clearly, he’s noticed that there aren’t exactly many options to choose from, now. Releasing his conflicted expression with a sigh, he replies, “Fine, then.”
Crazy guy clicks his tongue. “Good. Now let’s—”
“Ah, mon amie,” the sparkly boy interrupts. “Would it not be best if we were to introduce one another and our quirks?”
A pause.
“Why?” he asks blankly.
“So we can win?” Tail guy says, as if he’s questioning the other teen’s intelligence.
The other teen clicks his tongue. “I literally couldn’t care less if we win or lose.”
Tail guy’s expression twists, like he’s warding off an aneurysm. After a moment’s pause, though, he pastes on a smile. “I'm Ojiro. My quirk is Tail, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. It’s nothing special, really, but I’m good with hand-to-hand combat. I’m not sure how helpful that would be here, though.”
“Aoyama Yuuga,” the sparkly boy says with a wink. “My navel laser twinkles as much as I do. Of course,” he says, with a confident flourish that doesn’t at all match his next words, “It gives me a stomach ache if I use it for more than a few seconds.”
They both turn towards Hitoshi, curious, and he resists the urge to step back. “Shinsou,” he says flatly. Steeling himself, he adds, “My quirk is Brainwashing.”
Another pause.
“Ah…” Ojiro lets out. “Can you… elaborate?”
Hitoshi presses his lips together. He’d rather not, seeing as any one of them could—and likely would—spread the information around. Forget a trump card— he only has one trick up his sleeve, and he needs to milk it for all it’s worth so he can actually get somewhere in this event.
He could just brainwash them. It’d be feasible, but not perfect; he knows, full well, that his control can’t compare to the training of the actual user of a quirk. Plus, with two of them (presumably) focusing on short-ranged attacks, it’d be worryingly easy for any of them to break out of it.
“Who cares?” the crazy guy asks, impatiently waving his sword around. “He knows how to use it. And if he fucks up, I’ll just cover for him.”
Hitoshi eyes him, unsure of whether to be relieved or offended. “What about you?”
“Haganezuka,” he says, spinning around on his heel. “Let’s get a move on.”
“You haven’t—” Ojiro begins, only to fall silent when he marches off towards the center of the field. Slowly, he places his hands on his face and lets out a long breath. “Nevermind.”
How is this allowed?
Hitoshi squints up at the referee, Midnight, and sees that she looks nothing short of gleeful at his teammate’s violent display; Haganezuka continues slashing at a barrage of vines with reckless abandon.
“What the hell,” Ojiro mutters, then swipes his tail out towards the skeleton guy before he can further soften the ground. When they stumble, Haganezuka bares his teeth in a deranged grin. Hundreds of vines fall to the ground in a clump, while the owner grabs at her shoulder-length cut with wide eyes.
Hitoshi, on impulse, reaches outwards, finger hooking onto the rider’s headband. With one swift pull, 705 points are added to their score; before Haganezuka’s next slash reaches a full arc, their makeshift ‘horse’ draws back.
“Better put that on,” Ojiro says suddenly, gaze settling upon the headband. Hitoshi reaches towards his neck, only to pause when Haganezuka grabs his wrist.
“Swap them,” he says, gaze flicking around the field.
Hitoshi squints at him. He’d outright claimed that he didn’t care to win, and he doubts that he had a sudden change of heart.
Haganezuka turns his head, eyes narrowed. “Hurry the fuck up, before someone sees.”
“My bad, boss,” he drawls, raising his free hand towards their original headband. Annoyingly enough, it comes out with less sarcasm than he’d intended.
“In third, Team— whoa! Team Shinsou!”
“Guess swapping them was a good idea,” Ojiro says, catching his breath.
“C'était une idée magnifique,” Aoyama (probably) agrees, lightly patting Haganezuka on the shoulder. He makes a face at the contact, but lets him have his moment before he waves the other teen off.
Hitoshi’s gaze trails after him as he meets up with the other student from the Support Department. She makes wide, dramatic motions as she yammers on; Haganezuka, despite appearing to be the epitome of disinterest, is clearly listening.
It doesn’t escape him that neither of them used their quirks, even once, during the event—nor that Haganezuka had prevented him from doing so when he’d attempted to rescue a smaller chunk of their points.
“We'll proceed to the afternoon portion after a one-hour lunch break!” Present Mic calls out from the commentator’s booth, “See you, then!”
Haganezuka’s head turns, and Hitoshi averts his gaze. Whether or not he’d helped him on purpose hardly matters, anyway; he has a tournament to prepare for.