We weren't the first to try the million-point base—but we were the first dumb enough to walk straight into the fog.
From the stands it looked harmless. A pale dome of smoke clinging low to the stone, with a few glints of light pulsing inside it. No walls. No motion. Just… weather. Something the maintenance drones would clear if this weren't a game.But as we reached the ramp, the air went colder, thicker, wrong.
"C'mon," Sero muttered, fixing a tape line to the handrail. "Breadcrumbs."
Yanagi gave a dry laugh. "Breadcrumbs don't help if the maze moves."
I didn't bother answering. My tail twitched; even the echo of our footsteps sounded… smothered. The fog didn't blur the air—it swallowed it. By the third step the stadium's roar had dulled to a heartbeat somewhere outside the world.
"Visibility two meters," Yanagi said, voice too loud in the hush. "We'll just—"
A shape slid through the mist ahead. Human, definitely. Then it was gone.
"—keep calm," she finished, a little too fast.
We moved tighter. Sero's tape gleamed faintly off to the side, the only proof we weren't walking in circles. A breath of air brushed my cheek. I turned—nothing. My instincts screamed behind you a second before something small clicked near my boot.
Light burst—white, total.
I flinched, eyes squeezed shut. Heat scratched my lids; the afterimage painted the inside of my skull. We all staggered, half-blind, half-deaf.
"Trap!" Sero coughed.
No kidding.
Before I could answer, black ribbons whipped up from the floor, slick as oil, snaring his legs and yanking him down. He shouted and tried to tape-swing out, but every strip that touched the ribbons just… slid off.
Yanagi's quirk lifted the air itself, trying to pry him free. The ribbons tightened, creaking like leather.
Then something moved beside me—no, through me. A blur brushed my shoulder; a hand caught my wrist, used my own weight, rolled me clean off my balance. The floor hit my back before I knew which way was up.
"Sorry," a boy's voice murmured close to my ear. Then he was gone.
Midoriya. Had to be. No one else said sorry mid-fight.
I shoved to my feet. Illusions flickered in the mist—two, three, four silhouettes darting between each other. Every one of them looked like Midoriya. Every one wrong by a fraction.
Yanagi swore. "They're seeing us. Tracking us."
The fog answered with a low hum. Another click—another burst of light—and the world turned sideways again. Someone to my left started laughing. Not the nervous kind—helpless, uncontrollable laughter that choked the air.
"Tickle curse!" someone gasped. "What kind of—who even makes that?!"
We stumbled deeper, trying to regroup. The fog distorted every sound; someone shouted back! and it came from everywhere at once. Sero managed to cut the ribbons by firing tape in crisscrosses until friction burned them apart, but the effort left him shaking.
A low rush of air barreled in—a shockwave, not enough to knock us down, but enough to throw grit into our faces. Then another from the opposite side. The gusts were timed, deliberate. Herding us.
"Left flank!" I yelled.
Too late. Midoriya blurred out of the haze again, silent as a knife. He slipped between us, used Sero's shoulder as leverage, and flipped him flat in one breath. His eyes glinted green under the fog—calm, analytical, already thinking about his next angle.
He vanished before we could react.
"This is insane," Yanagi hissed. "He's not fighting—he's hunting."
The fog stirred around us. Somewhere behind, another trap went off—thump of air, a startled yell, then silence. The stadium crowd oohed, unseen, miles away.
I pressed forward, refusing to bolt. The tape line underfoot ended abruptly; I realized we'd been looping for minutes. "We're done," I said. "We can't even see our way out."
Then the mist rippled—one of Harry's traps triggering near the far wall. A gust flung a pair of 1-B students clear across the ramp. For a heartbeat, the veil thinned—and I caught a glimpse through it: shadowy figures moving in coordination, one stationary near the center, two smaller forms circling in perfect sync.
Midoriya, Harry, Uraraka.
The image vanished with the next surge of fog.
We tried falling back, but the exits kept shifting. The mist wasn't magic—it was designed. A maze built on acoustics and misdirection, guided by someone who could see everything from above.
Voices echoed softly. "Left ramp, two incoming," a faint whisper said—Harry's, maybe, carried on comms we couldn't hear. Midoriya moved exactly where it told him.
Yanagi's patience cracked. "Screw this." She hurled a telekinetic wave, blowing a corridor clear of fog——and immediately triggered a new trap.
Boom. Flash. Wind. Our team was flung backward in chaos. Sero cursed, clutching his head. The laughter girl wheezed somewhere behind us, still half-giggling.
We hit the edge of the arena gasping, coughing, eyes streaming. The crowd above was cheering now—half for the chaos, half for surviving it.
Sero tore off his tape harness. "We're not going back in there."
"Not yet," Yanagi said, voice thin but sharp. "We regroup. Next wave hits the perimeter together."
I wanted to believe her—until the ground shook.
Boom—BOOM—BOOM.
Explosions rolled across the field, tearing the fog apart in great shuddering bursts. A blaze of orange light flashed through the mist.
"NO HIDING, DEKU!"
Bakugo.
The veil split under the pressure, fog scattering in ribbons. He tore through the opening like a rocket, explosions erupting from his palms, laughter somewhere between fury and joy. Todoroki's ice followed from the other side, freezing the mist into white shards that shattered as they fell.
"Here come the heavy hitters," Sero muttered.
We backed off instinctively, giving the monsters room to collide. The million-point base was no longer a fortress—it was about to become the battlefield everyone had been waiting for.
The fog burned away under fire and frost, and for a heartbeat, we saw Midoriya through the chaos—steady, crouched, ready—while Harry's voice carried faintly from somewhere unseen:
"Alright, Midoriya… they're here."