Chapter 26: Fists of Steel, Tears of Frustration, and a Quest for Seasoning.
The brief intermission to clear the monumental glacier from the arena did little to cool the crowd's feverish excitement. The first round had delivered on every promise of drama and spectacle. Now, as the platform was being meticulously repaired by Cementoss, the side-matches began, each one a crucial story in its own right.
The first was a contest of pure, unadulterated grit: the arm-wrestling tie-breaker between Eijiro Kirishima and Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu. They met in the center of the ring, clasped hands, their hardened skin grating like stone. There was no complex strategy here, no psychological warfare. It was a simple, primal contest of will and sinew.
"This is the embodiment of manliness!" a spectator roared, a sentiment echoed by thousands.
Kirishima's face was a mask of strained determination, veins standing out on his neck. Tetsutetsu's steel-like features were contorted in a grimace of pure effort. For a full, agonizing minute, their hands remained locked in the center, trembling with the sheer, immense pressure. Slowly, with a final, guttural roar that came from the very core of his being, Kirishima slammed his opponent's arm onto the table. He had won. But as he looked at the exhausted, smiling face of his rival, there was no gloating, only a deep, profound respect. They had tested each other and neither had been found wanting.
Saitama, having successfully liberated his chips, was now facing a new, deeply personal challenge. The salt & vinegar flavor was disappointingly weak. It needed more salt. His journey through the public concourse thus became a quest for a simple salt shaker, a mission he undertook with a quiet, solemn focus that the competitors below could have learned from.
He was wandering behind the spectator stands, checking the condiment stations of various food stalls, when the next major match began. He could hear the roar of the crowd and the booming voice of Present Mic on the loudspeakers. He glanced up at one of the many monitors broadcasting the event.
"IT'S THE MATCHUP WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR, FOLKS! THE UNYIELDING EXPLOSIVE POWER OF KATSUKI BAKUGO VERSUS THE CLEVER, GRAVITY-DEFYING STRATEGIST, OCHACO URARAKA!"
On the screen, Saitama saw the floating girl from the entrance exam. She looked small in the massive arena, but her expression was anything but. It was a look of fierce, unshakeable resolve. Her opponent, the angry blond kid, looked as furious as ever.
The fight began, and it was immediately, brutally one-sided. Bakugo was a whirlwind of motion and violence, unleashing a relentless barrage of explosions that forced Uraraka onto the defensive. She couldn't get close.
"She's outmatched," Saitama muttered to himself, shaking a promising but ultimately empty salt shaker he'd found on an abandoned table.
But then, he noticed what she was doing. Every time Bakugo unleashed a blast, kicking up smoke and shattered bits of the ring, she was touching her fingertips together. She wasn't just dodging. She was collecting. Her strategy was brilliant and daring: use her opponent's own destructive power to create a massive cloud of floating debris, a homemade meteor shower to be dropped on his head.
The crowd, however, didn't see the strategy. They just saw a big, powerful boy relentlessly attacking a smaller, seemingly helpless girl. The boos began to trickle in, growing into a wave of disapproval. "Hey! Stop bullying her and just push her out of the ring!" someone shouted. "Play fair!"
Suddenly, Aizawa's tired voice cut through the stadium's speakers, overriding Present Mic. "The person you're calling a bully," he said, his voice cold and sharp, "has acknowledged his opponent's strength and is doing whatever it takes to win. He is not letting his guard down for a second precisely because he sees her as a worthy rival."
As if on cue, Uraraka released her attack. The sky above Bakugo filled with a deadly storm of jagged rocks. It was a beautiful, desperate, all-or-nothing move.
Bakugo just looked up and smirked. He raised a single hand.
The resulting explosion was colossal. A single, perfect, upward-facing Howitzer Impact that vaporized every single piece of debris in a blinding flash of light and heat. The shockwave alone was enough to knock Uraraka off her feet. She tried to stand, her body trembling, but collapsed, unconscious.
Saitama watched the scene on the monitor. He had seen countless battles, countless monsters, countless heroes. He processed the scene with his usual, brutally simple logic. "The floating girl had a good plan with the rocks," he thought. "But the angry kid's explosion was much bigger. I guess the bigger explosion wins." He completely missed the heart-wrenching story of her courage, the subtle tale of his respect. To him, it was just a matter of bigger versus smaller.
He finally found a ramen stall with a full salt shaker. As he carefully sprinkled some onto his bag of chips, he was completely oblivious to the quiet, poignant scene playing out in the stadium's corridors, where a defeated but resolute Uraraka was on the phone with her father, tears streaming down her face as she promised to become an even stronger hero.
Saitama took a bite of a newly-salted chip. "Ah," he said, satisfied. "Much better."
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