The buzz of the fluorescents in the Field Delta locker room was the only thing competing with the sound of Ibara's ragged breathing. It was nervousness. Pure and simple tactical nervousness.
She stood in front of the full-length mirror, but the image staring back didn't fit the girl who used to pray before every exam. The new suit had no white robes or golden edges. There was no excess fabric to wave majestically in the wind. It was a second skin of reinforced polymer, painted in an olive green so dark it looked almost black under the artificial light.
"I feel... exposed," she murmured, tugging at one of the magnetic straps on her shoulder.
From the bench behind her, Tokoyami looked up. He was adjusting his boots, with Dark Shadow floating around him, nibbling on an apple he had pulled from who knows where.
"You aren't exposed," Tokoyami said, his raspy voice bouncing off the metal walls. "You are optimized. There is a difference."
"Everything shows," Ibara insisted, turning to look at him. Her vines twitched, reflecting her discomfort. "Coach Midoriya said it was necessary to reduce friction and prevent my own branches from tangling in the fabric, but..."
"But you feel like an action movie villain," Tokoyami finished. He dropped his boot to the floor with a sharp thud. "Get used to it. Holiness doesn't stop villains, Ibara. Efficiency does."
Dark Shadow spat out a piece of apple and floated closer to Ibara, circling her head.
"I like it!" the shadow shrieked. "You look dangerous! Like a giant carnivorous plant! Raaaah!"
"You aren't helping," Tokoyami sighed, rubbing the bridge of his beak. "Control yourself. Today we face a professional who knows this terrain better than anyone."
Ibara looked at her hands. The gloves were new. Reinforced with ceramic plates on the knuckles and bamboo polymers on the palms to facilitate grip. She remembered the design session with Izuku two days ago.
Your hair isn't just for trapping, Izuku had told her, tapping the table with a pen. It's an impact weapon. Stop using it like a fishing net and start using it like a weapon.
Ibara clenched her fists. The material of the gloves creaked.
"The Coach was very specific," she said, more to herself than to Tokoyami. "He said mercy is useless if the habit tears on the first hit. Today I am not here to pray, Tokoyami-san."
She looked up. The green in her eyes shone. There was no longer any doubt. There was only a mission.
"Today I am here to prune."
The locker room door opened with a pneumatic hiss. Izuku was there, a tablet tucked under his arm and an expression that brooked no nonsense.
"Are you ready?" he asked, not stepping inside. "Kamui is already in position. Aizawa is impatient and Yu... well, Yu is worried about whether your suits look good on camera."
"We are ready," Tokoyami said, standing up. Dark Shadow retreated inside his cloak.
"Good." Izuku scanned them quickly. He walked over to Ibara and pulled on a loose strap at her side, tightening it with a sharp tug that knocked the wind out of her. "This was loose. If Kamui grabs you here, he throws you against a tree. Don't give him easy grips."
"Understood," Ibara said, catching her breath.
"Tokoyami," Izuku turned to the bird boy. "Light levels?"
"The forest is deep," Tokoyami replied. "Ideal for us. Problematic for control."
"Use that," Izuku ordered. "Don't try to repress Dark Shadow. Let him run, but keep the leash short. Ibara is your safety. If you go too far, she brings you back. Understood?"
"Understood."
"Get out there. And remember: Kamui Woods is fast, but he is wood. Wood breaks."
The monitor room was cold. Yu sat in the main chair, one leg crossed over the other, chewing on the tip of her thumb. Next to her, Rumi had her feet up on the control console, leaning her chair dangerously far back.
Aizawa stood in the corner, arms crossed, bloodshot eyes fixed on the multiple screens.
"They look ridiculous," Yu muttered, pointing at the screen where Ibara and Tokoyami walked toward the Field Delta entrance. "That suit on Ibara... it's too military. Where is the elegance? Where is the 'Maria' brand we were building?"
"The 'Maria' brand was losing fights," Izuku said, entering the room and connecting his tablet to the main system. "Elegance is for galas, Yu. This is combat training."
"I like it!" Mirko yelled, laughing. "She looks tough. She looks like she's going to kill someone. That's what I like to see."
"They aren't going to kill anyone," Aizawa grunted. "I hope."
"Kamui is good," Yu said, trying to justify her nervousness. "His 'Lacus Chain Prison' is almost inescapable in closed spaces. And Field Delta is basically his backyard."
"That's why we chose him," Izuku said, typing commands on his screen. "They need terrain disadvantage. Tokoyami relies too much on ambient darkness and gets clumsy. Ibara plants herself in one spot and waits for the enemy to come to her. Kamui won't give them that. Kamui is going to hunt them."
"What is the calculated success rate?" Aizawa asked, not looking at him.
"Low," Izuku admitted. "If they fight like they usually do. If they fight like I told them... they have a chance."
Izuku pressed a button on the microphone.
"Exercise begins in three... two... one..."
Field Delta was a claustrophobic nightmare. Gigantic trees, grown with acceleration Quirks, rose like pillars of a ruined gothic cathedral. The canopies were so closed that sunlight barely reached the ground like fine golden needles, leaving the rest in perpetual gloom. The ground was covered in twisted roots and slippery moss that muffled footsteps.
Ibara and Tokoyami entered the zone. The temperature change was immediate. It was cold in there.
"Start!"
Aizawa's voice came through the hidden speakers, clear despite the vastness of the forest.
CRACK.
The sound of a snapping branch was the only warning. From a treetop to the right, something shot toward them.
"Look out!" Tokoyami croaked.
Dark Shadow lunged forward, intercepting the blow. The impact was brutal. The shadow deformed, pushing Tokoyami back a couple of meters. His boots scraped the moss.
"Damn it!" Tokoyami shouted, regaining his balance. "He's very strong!"
"Up!" Ibara yelled.
Kamui Woods moved among the high branches, jumping from trunk to trunk using his extensible limbs as grappling hooks and springs. He was a brown and navy blue blur, almost invisible against the tree bark.
"There!" Ibara pointed.
She remembered Izuku's voice in her ear, shouting at her in the gym. Attack. Be a whip. Don't wait.
Three of her vines shot upward, cutting the air with a sharp hiss.
CRACK.
The vines impacted the trunk where Kamui had been just a millisecond before. The solid wood of the tree exploded into splinters, leaving a deep mark.
"Wow!" Kamui Woods' voice came from another direction, higher up, to the left. He was laughing. "That wasn't a capture attempt, kid. You were going to hurt me!"
"Purification sometimes requires force," Ibara replied, her voice cold. She didn't stop.
She stomped the ground with her right foot. The excess vines sank into the soft earth and surged up meters ahead, exploding upward like bamboo spears, seeking the hero in the heights.
Kamui had to let go of the branch he was on to avoid being impaled. He fell in a free dive, twisted in the air, and fired his left arm toward another tree to swing away.
"I've got you!" Tokoyami yelled. "Dark Shadow! Black Ankh!"
The shadow covered Tokoyami like armor. He propelled himself upward, jumping into Kamui's movement arc.
"Slow!" Kamui mocked.
In mid-air, the pro hero split his right arm into five smaller branches, striking Tokoyami in the chest and deflecting his trajectory. Tokoyami crashed against a tree with a dull thud.
"Tokoyami!" Ibara shouted.
"I'm fine!" he replied, falling to the ground and rolling to his feet. "He's too fast! I can't lock on!"
In the monitor room, Yu put her hands to her head.
"He's destroying him!" she moaned. "Look at that! Kamui is playing with them. He is the king of that terrain. We should have put them in the urban zone."
"No," Izuku said, eyes glued to the biometric data flowing on his tablet. His finger traced Kamui's speed lines on the screen. "Look closely, Yu."
"What do you want me to look at? Tokoyami just ate bark!"
"Look at Kamui," Mirko intervened, pointing with a half-eaten carrot toward the screen. "Wood guy isn't laughing as much as it seems."
Izuku nodded. "Ibara isn't trying to catch him yet. Look at the ground."
Yu looked. The forest floor, where Ibara had been standing, was changing.
"She is limiting his movement," Izuku explained. "Every time Ibara attacks and misses, she leaves a vine positioned. She is seeding the minefield. She is cutting off his escape routes. Look at the surface tension of the wood Kamui is using... he is spending more energy dodging those lashes than attacking."
"Kick him, plant girl!" Mirko yelled at the screen, excited. "Don't give him a break! Rip a branch off!"
Down in the forest, the air felt charged. Ibara's breathing was steady, rhythmic. Her eyes followed Kamui's movement, but her mind was on the three-dimensional map she was creating in her head.
Kamui landed on a thick branch ten meters up.
"Nice try," the hero said. "But you lack coordination. You are slow. And in my forest, slow is fertilizer."
"We are not in your forest," Ibara said, her voice calm.
Kamui tilted his head, confused for a second.
"Tokoyami, now!" Ibara ordered. "Press him on the flank! Force him down!"
Tokoyami smiled. "With pleasure. Dark Shadow! Release!"
The forest darkness was absolute. Dark Shadow fed on it. He grew. He expanded. He was no longer a shadow the size of a person. He was a monster three meters tall with claws like scythes.
"RAAAAARGH!"
Dark Shadow's roar made the tree leaves vibrate. He launched himself at Kamui with a ferocity that was not human.
Kamui opened his eyes under his mask. "Shit!"
The hero jumped back just as a black claw shattered the branch he stood on, ripping the tree almost from its roots.
"Too strong!" Tokoyami shouted from the ground, clutching his head with both hands. His knees shook. "I can't... he's overflowing! The darkness is too much!"
Dark Shadow turned, looking for anything that moved. His eyes shone with a wild madness.
Kamui saw the opening. He landed on the ground, a few meters from Tokoyami.
"An out-of-control Quirk is a weakness, kid," the hero declared, his tone shifting from mocking to professional. "Dangerous for you and for your allies."
His right arm transformed. The wood split and intertwined.
"Lacus Chain Prison!"
The branches shot out, ignoring Ibara to launch directly toward Tokoyami's small body. He was going to end this by capturing the weak link while he dealt with his own power.
"It's over!" Yu shouted in the monitor room. "He's going to capture Fumikage."
Izuku smiled slightly. "No. Now it starts."
In the forest, Ibara saw Kamui ignore her. She saw the branches heading for Tokoyami.
"No!" she shouted.
Her vines whipped backward. Toward her partner.
Two thick vines, covered in dull thorns, wrapped around Tokoyami's waist and arms with brutal force. They lifted him a few inches off the ground and anchored him against the trunk of a tree behind him.
Tokoyami gasped from the pressure. "Ibara! What...?!"
"Don't fight the darkness!" Ibara yelled at him. Her voice lost all monastic calm. "Coach said it is a tool! Use it! Stop being afraid! I've got you!"
She tightened the vines, physically stabilizing Tokoyami, giving him an external anchor point so his mind could focus.
"You are the master of the shadow, not its victim!" she roared.
Tokoyami felt the stability of Ibara's vines keeping him grounded, preventing Dark Shadow's recoil from knocking him over. He stopped fighting his own shadow and closed his eyes for a second.
He opened his eyes. "Dark Shadow! Defense!"
Dark Shadow, still wild and monstrous, responded to the change in intent. He interposed himself between Kamui and Tokoyami just as the Chain Prison arrived.
BOOM!
Kamui's wood collided against the solid darkness. Splinters and black energy flew. The impact shook the ground. Kamui stopped dead, his branches struggling against Dark Shadow's claws.
"What?!" Kamui was surprised. He had expected to hit flesh, not a wall of reinforced shadow. He was immobilized for a second, pushing against Tokoyami's defense.
Ibara seized that second. The only second that mattered.
"JUDGMENT!"
All the vines she had scattered across the ground during the chase, all the "misses" she had let fall, activated at once.
The ground around Kamui Woods came to life.
Dozens, hundreds of vines rose vertically, creating an instant cage. They intertwined over Kamui's head, blocking the light, blocking the exit, blocking the air.
A dome of thorns and green wood closed around Kamui Woods and Dark Shadow. The shadow retreated just in time, leaving the pro hero sealed along with several trees inside a tight vegetable sphere.
"Now!" Ibara shouted.
She clasped her hands in a violent prayer gesture. The dome contracted.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Kamui could be heard inside, trying to expand, trying to break the cage from within with his own branches.
"Damn it!" Kamui's stifled voice was heard. "It's tough!"
Every time he broke a vine, two more took its place, fed by Ibara's desperation and adrenaline.
"I can't... hold him... much longer," Ibara gasped. Sweat dripped down her forehead, getting into her eyes. Her hands shook violently, extended toward the cage, pouring every gram of energy she had into maintaining the pressure. "He is very strong!"
"Surrender, hero!" Tokoyami shouted, his voice hoarse. Dark Shadow was floating above the dome, ready to strike if Kamui popped his head out. "You are trapped!"
Inside the dome, Kamui Woods was in an impossible position. His branches pushed against the green walls closing in on him. He could break the cage, yes. But he would have to use his special move at max power. He would have to burst outward with lethal force. And there were students on the other side of those walls.
If he broke the cage with full force, the splinters at that speed would be shrapnel. He could seriously injure the girl.
His weakness: being a hero. He couldn't risk it.
The alarm sounded, cutting the tense air.
"TIME!"
The effect was instant.
The vines fell inert. The dome dissolved into a rain of dead vegetation.
Ibara fell to her knees, breathing hard, hands resting on the moss.
"God..." she gasped. "That was..."
Dark Shadow shrank instantly, becoming a small, docile, and ashamed shadow under Tokoyami's cloak. The bird boy ran toward Ibara.
"Are you okay?" he asked, offering an arm.
Kamui stepped out from among the remains of the cage. He looked a bit disheveled. He had leaves stuck to his helmet visor and his wooden suit had pressure marks. He brushed some splinters off his shoulder with an irritated gesture, but then stopped.
He adjusted his helmet and looked at the two students. There was a long silence.
Then, the pro hero walked toward them. Tokoyami tensed, but Kamui only extended a hand toward Ibara to help her finish standing up.
"I have splinters in places I didn't know I could have them," Kamui said, his voice sounding metallic but amused.
Ibara accepted the hand, embarrassed, her cheeks burning again.
"I am very sorry, Mr. Kamui. It was... the heat of the moment. I didn't mean to squeeze so hard."
"Don't apologize," Kamui laughed. He let go of Ibara's hand and clapped Tokoyami on the shoulder. "You forced me to consider using my special move to get out of there. And I had to stop because I knew if I did, I would send you to the hospital. That is called Checkmate."
Kamui pointed at them with a wooden finger.
"In a real situation, that doubt you caused me is time gained. Time for backup to arrive, or for civilians to escape. You put me in a situation where winning meant hurting you. That is dirty tactics. I love it."
The sound of quick footsteps on dry leaves interrupted them. Izuku ran into the clearing, holding two water bottles and a towel over his shoulder.
"Ibara! Tokoyami!"
He reached them, scanning them visually for injuries.
"Heart rate?" Izuku asked immediately, without greeting. "Muscle pain? Ibara, your hydration level dropped drastically in the last thirty seconds."
"I'm fine, Coach," she said, accepting the bottle he pushed against her chest. "Just... dizzy."
Kamui turned to the green-haired boy, crossing his arms.
"You are the famous assistant?" the hero asked, looking Izuku up and down. "The brain behind the operation?"
"I am their coach, yes," Izuku replied, handing the other bottle to Tokoyami and pulling a cooling spray from his pocket to spray Ibara's forearms. "An honor, Kamui-san."
"The honor is mine, kid," Kamui said, tilting his head to the side, watching how Izuku worked. "She almost ripped my leg off with that initial whip. I didn't expect that aggression from her. And the way they used the bird boy as live bait while she mined the terrain..."
Kamui shook his head, smiling.
"It's a ruthless strategy. Effective, but ruthless. Did you teach them that?"
Izuku finished applying the spray and straightened up, looking the hero in the eye.
"I taught them to survive," Izuku said calmly. "Villains don't stop because you are a student. They had to stop reacting. They had to attack."
"Well, they did," Kamui admitted. He leaned in a little toward the students, his tone full of professional respect. "Good job. You turned a gardener into a warrior. Not bad for a Tuesday morning."
In the distance, Yu's voice was heard shouting through the megaphone from the control room.
"Hey! Stop chatting! Camera three looks blurry, I want a victory shot! Repeat the final pose!"
Kamui rolled his eyes under his helmet.
"Your boss is a headache," he muttered.
"She is," Izuku agreed with a half-smile.
Ibara drank the water, feeling the cold liquid bring her back to life. Over the rim of the bottle, she looked at Izuku. He was discussing something technical with Kamui about the tensile strength of vines versus oak wood.
She remembered the fear she had in the locker room. The feeling of being exposed. Now, with the sweat cooling on her skin and the respect of a hero in her pocket, the suit no longer felt like a costume. It felt like a tool.
Her eyes shone with something more than gratitude.
"Thank you, Sensei," she whispered, so low only Tokoyami heard her.
The bird boy nodded, taking a sip of his own water.
"Yeah," Tokoyami said. "Holy Fury. I like the name."
********
Author's Note:
Hey everyone! If you thought I abandoned my MHA fics, don't worry—I definitely didn't. I just had to hit pause briefly to focus on some other projects. Right now, new chapters are going up only here on Patreon. My goal is to build up a 30-chapter backlog. As soon as that buffer is ready, I'll start releasing chapters every single day on the regular public sites again