The stadium had learned the shape of its own noise by now. It rose fast to meet the board, hung on the names as they flared, and fell away to a steady hum that made the steel bones of the place sing. Two pairs glowed above the ring:
IIDA TENYA vs. TODOROKI SHOTOHARRY POTTER vs. BAKUGO KATSUKI
Present Mic leaned into the mic like a man at the edge of a cliff who'd decided falling would be a great story. "ALRIGHT, HERO FANS—THE SEMIS ARE SET! SPEED AGAINST THE ICE WALL, AND THEN—MAGICIAN VERSUS HOWITZER! DON'T BLINK OR YOU'LL MISS A SEASON!"
Up in the student section, Harry rolled his wrist until the ring warmed against bone, then let his hand fall to the railing. He watched Todoroki walk the tunnel with that careful, contained posture—power bottled and labeled, set on a shelf. On the opposite side, Iida bounced once, caught himself, checked the lace at his ankle for the fourth time, and then bowed at nothing in particular because he needed to do something with his certainty.
Ochako pressed a fist against her mouth. "He's going to run into a glacier."
"If anyone can turn corners on ice," Harry said, "it's Iida."
The gates rose. Steam from earlier repairs curled along the edge of the field and vanished.
Midnight's crop snapped the air. "Begin!"
Iida took the word as a green light. Engines howled and the tiles behind him cracked where his acceleration turned the floor into a suggestion. He crossed center in a breath, legs a metronome no one else could hear, and cut left to skirt the lane Todoroki had frozen in the morning.
Todoroki lifted his hand slightly and moved the ring under his feet three degrees toward winter. The first wall came up like a thought. It didn't slam; it arrived. Iida swerved, boots biting, engines flaring to adjust the curve. The wall grew into a ridge; a ridge became a shelf. By the time Iida had circled, the ring wore a crescent of ice like a collar.
"HORSEPOWER VERSUS PERMAFROST!" Present Mic cried. "CAN THE ENGINE OUTPACE THE ELEMENT?"
"He can try," Aizawa said. "Todoroki's not even using his left side. He'll win with placement alone if Iida doesn't force him to move."
Iida feinted and climbed, using a kick-step on the lower ledge. Todoroki extended the shelf beneath him, angled just so—not to knock him off, but to demand that his ankles make a decision his hips would hate. Iida dropped back, planted, and exploded into a shallow S-curve. The engines on his calves flashed white-hot; the sound turned from roar to scream. He cleared the second shelf by inches, landed on an un-frozen strip, and bolted for Todoroki's back line.
The ice answered in layers now. Ramp. Plate. Low wall. Each appeared just early enough to be inevitable and just late enough to be rude. Iida skidded hard, tried to kick-turn on a patch that wasn't there yet and found it there the instant his boot lifted—his balance stolen by timing.
Harry had the ridiculous thought that Todoroki was writing a sentence with punctuation made of terrain.
Iida's jaw set. He broke the rhythm with a dirty trick he'd earned the right to use: he kicked a shattered tile up into the air. Light flashed off it, and a scatter of glare chased across the ice like coins dropped into a fountain. Todoroki closed his eyes—no, he didn't; he recalibrated without blinking. But for a half-breath, his weight shifted wrong.
That was enough. "Recipro!" Iida barked, and the engines went from scream to something that didn't have a word. He crossed the last span like denial, shoulder tucked, arms tight to keep the air out of his way. He hit Todoroki's guard square. Frost dust plumed. The sound was a crack that lived in bone.
For a heartbeat the glacier gave.
Then Todoroki deepened his stance and let the cold go to work. It flooded the tiles at Iida's feet and climbed his calves like a cuff. The engines faltered, juddered, and hiccupped into silence. Steam rose off the metal and vanished into breath-white. Iida tried to push—tendons stood out on his neck—and the ice answered by not moving.
He stopped fighting it first. He bowed from the waist as far as the freeze would let him. "I concede."
Midnight's hand cut clean through the air. "Winner—Todoroki Shoto!"
The arena let out a noise that wasn't just cheering. It sounded like respect putting its coat back on. Iida thawed, flexed, bowed again because he couldn't help it, and jogged off with that same proud stiffness that had gotten him into a thousand good kinds of trouble and would get him into more.
Harry breathed out. The ring hummed against his skin, as if remembering the cold.
On the floor, Todoroki glanced up at the board and then at the tunnel where the next name would walk out. He exhaled once, slow, fog clouding the breath in front of his mouth, and turned away.
Present Mic was already winding up. "AND NOW—THE BOUT THAT HAS THE COMMENTS SECTION ON FIRE! STRATEGY VERSUS RAW DETONATION! THE MAGICIAN—VERSUS—THE HUMAN BLAST FURNACE!"
"Don't call him that," Aizawa said.
Bakugo stepped into the light like a problem you couldn't solve with an apology—head tilted, eyes narrowed, palms spitting bored little sparks that made the hairs on nearby arms stand up. Harry came from the other side, robe hanging light, the cut of it clean despite the soot at one cuff from earlier. He looked like he'd organized his thoughts and put the extra ones away.
They met at their marks without ceremony.
Bakugo sneered, because that was a muscle he used as easily as any other. "No hiding behind smoke this time, magician?"
Harry's mouth twitched—not a smile, not not one. "I'll make sure you see everything."
"Begin!"
Bakugo didn't begin. He ignited.
The first blast took him low and forward; the second twisted him into a corkscrew; the third hammered down beside Harry's left foot. The combination turned the space in front of Harry into an argument about where the floor should be. Harry wasn't there when it decided. He'd stepped right, brought Aegis up in the same breath, and let the barrier drink the heat off the edges of the blast. It flared white-gold, hairline cracks spidering across the surface, then shed itself and blew away like glass dust.
Bakugo landed and grinned sharp. "Good. Don't bore me."
"Working on it," Harry said, and flicked Gale.
The wind he called wasn't a hurricane. It was a slap. It hit Bakugo at an angle that didn't hurt and did ruin the line he'd planned to take in his next step. He corrected midair with an instinct that might as well have been a quirk all its own, palms popping to find a new vector. The explosion boomed overhead, a fireworks blossom with no patience for celebration.
"BOOM ON BOOM!" Present Mic howled. "POTTER'S FEET STAY UNDER HIM—BAKUGO'S USING THE SKY LIKE A TRAMPOLINE!"
"Potter's mapping him," Aizawa said. "Watch his eyes. He's waiting to be wrong on purpose."
A blast drove Bakugo inside Harry's reach faster than the watching mind could track. Harry felt the heat like a hand on his cheek and let a card go under Bakugo's boot as he slipped left.
It burst into water.
Not a splash—an orb that unraveled into a spinning sheet, dousing nitro-sweat and licking up the crackle that trailed his palm. Steam leapt, thick and immediate. The tiny explosions that always lived at the edges of Bakugo's motion coughed and died.
"What—" someone in the fourth row said, and Mic answered them because he was everyone when he was working. "DID HE JUST WATER-BOMB THE BLAST? WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!"
Bakugo's eyes went wide for a heartbeat—surprise, then fury, then the grin again because a new problem was a treat. "Tricks?" he spat, shaking his arms to fling water. "I don't need ground to blow you up!"
He didn't wait to dry. He blew steam off himself in a hiss and launched. The veil of vapor turned the ring into a blur—enough cover for a lesser fighter to panic. Harry stepped into it instead and let it pass over his skin.
"You said no fog," he said, mostly to himself. "This is steam."
He couldn't see Bakugo. He didn't need to. He threw Slippery Floor at the place the footsteps should be, then kissed Lightning Shock into the same patch with a flick from the ring. The cards sang to each other like brothers who'd grown up in the same drawer.
Bakugo hit the wet and went to correct with a bang. The jolt arced through water, up bracer, into forearm. The explosion hiccupped into a pop. His muscles seized in a full-body flinch that threw him into an ungraceful skid. He banged off the barrier with a grunt, teeth bared in something that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't not one.
"OOHH—SPARKS AND SOAP! POTTER JUST TURNED THE RING INTO A SLIP 'N SLIDE FROM HELL!" Mic yelped. "IS THAT—IS THAT LEGAL? YES IT IS! AIZAWA, IS THAT LEG—"
"It's fine," Aizawa said. "If he brings a mop later."
Bakugo blasted clear, steam coiling from his gauntlets, hair wet enough to cling to his forehead. He looked disheveled in a way that was purely aesthetic; every line of him still swung with deadly confidence. He licked water off his lip and laughed, low and delightful. "You're actually good, Potter."
"Good enough to make you sweat," Harry said, turning the ring under his thumb until it hummed.
They closed again. Harry didn't try to outpunch the sky. He angled Gale to bend Bakugo's arcs a fraction, ate blasts on half-built Aegis domes that failed and still saved his shoulder, slipped under the edge of one explosion and punished the landing with a Bind that snagged Bakugo's ankle for the exact amount of time it took for another blast to free it. The chain worked for a moment. Flashbang cracked above Bakugo's head; Gale shoved him as the light hit; he tumbled, hit hard, turned it into a roll through pure contempt for stopping, and came up with soot on his cheek and a cut along the ridge of his ear that he didn't seem to notice.
The crowd's sound shifted. It got teeth.
Harry felt something like a grin try to happen and didn't bother stopping it. He was breathing hard. The robe's Lightweight enchantment made his body move like it was an idea and not a fact, but ideas got tired too. The ring was hot now.
He didn't reach for Veil. He'd promised Bakugo he'd see everything.
The next exchange cracked the stadium quiet. Bakugo faked high and kicked the blast low. The shockwave lifted Harry's boots off the tile. He let it, tucked his knees, and pushed Gale under himself like a second floorboard. It caught, elastic and invisible. He skimmed, boot-soles sparking, toward the ring line—and away from it again as he angled wind and weight together like someone who'd practiced falling in a controlled environment.
Bakugo's grin sharpened. He hit the same shockwave again from the other side. The blasts met. The air made a sound like a door slamming in a palace of iron. A ripple ran through the stands, beverage cups ticking against rails like chimes.
"FINALLY SOME PUSHBACK!" Bakugo shouted over the tinnitus-y hum left behind. He looked wild now—hair seared into strange angles, gauntlets spiderwebbed with hairline fractures, sleeves blackened. It suited him the way ruin suits a storm.
Harry swallowed a copper taste and threw Water Sphere at his own feet. It burst and lifted a sheet of slickness into the path of the next blast. The explosion bit water and blew it into rain. Harry slid on the new layer and turned that slip into a side-step that got him out from under the follow-up. His heart felt too big for his ribs. He let it.
They were both moving on instinct now—Bakugo detonating angles that didn't exist until he minted them, Harry carving air into levers, braces, buffers. Cards flicked from fingers and were gone, not because they missed but because they were used up as soon as they touched the world. The ring's warmth crawled up his hand, a reminder and a tether.
Then came the moment that decided it, as moments insist on being.
Harry saw an opening. Not a mistake—Bakugo didn't make those, he made gambles—but a space that could be coerced into cooperation. He palmed a force card—not a normal Gale this time, but the heavier version he used sparingly. If he hit Bakugo with it as the other boy committed to a midair change, he could send him sideways into dead space, make him spend a blast on defense, and take the next piece of the ring for himself.
He flicked the card and kissed the ring to it.
Bakugo wasn't there.
He'd shorted the arc by a breath and a half and come up beneath the vector Harry had calculated. The explosion that hit wasn't at Harry's chest; it was at the tile under his heels.
The world flipped.
He went up and out, a leaf convinced it had been a bird a second too long. The Lightweight enchantment did what it had been born to do—it made him slow and made the air matter. He twisted in it, brought Gale underneath, and threw himself back toward the ring line with a shove that turned his stomach over. The crowd sucked breath like a tide turning.
He might have made it. He almost did.
The next blast didn't touch him. It touched the air a foot from his shoulder and shoved that air hard. The push stole the last of his return and slid him an arm's length farther than he owned.
He hit outside the line. He tucked the landing out of sheer stubbornness and still rolled, robe hissing over grit, shoulder and hip barking protests all the way.
BZZT—OUT.
The sound cut through the stadium like a verdict. Present Mic didn't start screaming for two full beats, which in his time was a week. Then: "AND—OUT OF BOUNDS! YOUR WINNER—BAKUGO KATSUKI! WHAT A MATCH! WHAT A—WHAT—WHAT DID WE JUST WATCH?!"
Harry lay on the mat with the ring's heat in his palm and the ceiling's light in his eyes and a laugh trying to climb up his throat because losing and living sometimes felt weirdly the same in the first second. He sat up, breathed, and pushed to his feet. The world had a tilt for a moment and then remembered how to be flat.
Bakugo was panting when Harry reached him. Not a little; a lot. Sweat left clean lines through the soot on his face. His hair looked like it had tried to escape his skull and given up from exhaustion. His gauntlets were cracked along the plates. One sleeve had melted at the edge and fused into a shape that would make the support department sigh.
He didn't smirk. He didn't crow. He looked at Harry with pupils still too big and said, "You almost got me."
Harry wiped a wet smear from his cheek with the back of his wrist and found his voice steadier than he'd expected. "Almost means I can do it next time."
Bakugo's mouth crooked. He looked away like the lights were too bright. "You better have more of those stupid cards."
"I will," Harry said.
They passed each other like weather systems that had decided not to combine yet. Recovery Girl clucked under her breath at both of them and waved Harry toward a chair with a look that wasn't a request. He sat, let her dab at a scrape, and stared at his hand until the ring cooled.
In the stands, the sound was a layered thing—Bakugo's name shouted by people who liked winning loud, Harry's by people who liked being surprised, commentary layered on top like garnish. Ochako sprinted the length of the row and skidded to the rail. "You were amazing," she said, eyes huge. "Like—like a storm that studied."
Harry huffed, which was the laugh that didn't hurt. "Working title."
Midoriya arrived with his good arm in a sling and the other hugging a water bottle like it might run away. "I didn't even see some of those cards," he said, half awe, half accusation, all delighted. "When did you—?"
"Homework," Harry said. "Late."
Kaminari leaned over the rail from two rows up and yelled, "DID YOU JUST ELECTROCUTE A PUDDLE INTO A BOOBY TRAP? BRO."
"Language," Aizawa said without looking up.
The bracket made its last redraw for the day, lines tightening until they were a single thread with two names at either end.
FINALS: TODOROKI SHOTO vs. BAKUGO KATSUKI
Present Mic found a whole new octave. "THIS IS IT! COLD FRONT VERSUS FIREWORKS! WE STARTED WITH A PACK—WE'RE DOWN TO TWO! STAY HYDRATED—STAY SEATED—NO, STAND—YOU KNOW WHAT, JUST—SCREAM!"
Harry stood carefully. The ring on his hand felt like an object again, not a pulse. He flexed his fingers and felt where the edges of the glove had rubbed under sweat. Todoroki passed him in the tunnel with a nod that could have meant anything and probably meant exactly what it looked like: acknowledgment. Harry returned it.
Bakugo, walking the other way toward the call, glanced back. They didn't say anything. They didn't have to. The conversation would wait until later, when yelling wouldn't be work.
Harry slipped into the shadow of the arch where the field opened to the world and let the noise press against his back like a wall he didn't mind. He had lost in a way that didn't feel small. He had made the crowd ask a question. He had made Bakugo look like a bomb after a war—still ticking, scorched around the edges, proud of being here.
He curled his fingers around the ring once, a promise to himself with no witnesses, and then loosened them.
"Next time," he said, and let the arena swallow the words so they could grow.