It's Not a Muskateers Reference!

Dodging Acid

Izuku walked out onto the areana a lot later than he had expected. It turns out, Kirshima and Testsutestsu's match ended in a draw, with both of them knocking each other out. That delayed the tournament by a bit, and when they woke up, the two of them would be having some sort of tie breaker.

Izuku shook his head dully. He needed to focus on his match!

Izuku stared Ashido down, trying to hide his nervousness, though he was sure that he was failing at it. His plan was to stay near the edges of the areana so that Ashido would try to push him out. Then, he would jump out of the way using One for All as a boost, which would hopefully put her off balance. Then, he could get her out of bounds.

He wasn't too sure on the plan - after all, while he had been practicing with his quirks with Aizawa, he didn't know if he could properly use it in battle. However, the only other plan he could come up with was too use Bakugou's quirk instead, and he didn't want to do that. Both because it was a stolen quirk, and because the explosions would probably freak him out.

Ashido grinned at him smugly, as if she was taunting him. Or perhaps she could see just how nervous he was, and took it as a sign that she would win. Maybe both.

"On one side of the field, we have class 1-A's dual-quirked student, Midoriya Izuku!! And on the other side, 1-A's acid-skating extrodinare, Ashido Mina!!" Present Mic anounced.

Izuku pretended not too notice how everyone booed at him, while they cheered for Ashido. It wasn't surprising really. After all, he was a villain, and she was a hero. No one ever cheered for villains.

That didn't make it hurt any less.

He shifted into a fighting stance, and she did the same, though their stances were different. Ashido's signaled to him that she was going to skate on her acid, just like he had planned for.

Midnight called the start of the match, and as soon as she did, Ashido skated towards him, flinging acid at him to make him back up and walk out of bounds. Izuku hadn't come up with a plan on what too do if she did decide on flinging acid at him instead of trying to push him out with her bare hands, so he had to make a split second decision.

He rolled out of the way, wanting to save quirk usage until it was absolutely nessacary. His control wasn't good enough to go around using it carelessly.

Ashido was able to manuver herself to follow him, and he realized that his plan wasn't going to work. There was no way that she was going to touch him, and she was too good at moving with her quirk to be tricked into sliding out of bounds so easily.

He would need to fight her head to head.

That would be difficult. She wasn't going to let him get close enough to fight her close-combat style, and there wasn't much he could do from a range, at least, not without using a quirk.

He started to circle around her, making it harder for her to attempt to push him out of bounds. For the most part, the acid on the floor wasn't a problem. Ashido had made sure it wasn't to acidic, so that way she didn't have to worry about destroying the areana before the fight was over.

He dodged the acid flung at him without too much of an issue, although he was pretty sure that it wouldn't hurt him too badly. Ashido was never really keen on using acid strong enough to badly injure someone, and Izuku had a decently high pain tolerance. However, he didn't want to test that.

"What's this? Midoriya isn't using either of his quirks!! Why do you think that is, Aizawa?"

"Stop trying to drag me into this."

Izuku ignored their voices, focusing on forming a plan. There had to be a limit too how much acid she could make, right? Most quirks that created something had a limit too how much could be made, since it's not like you can create matter from nothing.

But Izuku didn't know what that limit was. He could try to wear her out so that she didn't have enough acid to keep him at bay, but there was a chance that he would run out of stamina first, which wasn't something he wanted.

He could try to get close while she was still flinging the acid, though. It wasn't the safest plan, there was a good chance he'd get hit by Ashido's acid. However, his other options weren't much better. He could use One for All or Explosion to fight at a distance, which wasn't something he wanted to do, or he could wait until Ashido reached her limit, which could take who knows how long.

Attacking head on was probably his best option.

He stopped circling, and Ashido froze as well, as if him standing still was intimidating to her or something. The moment of stillness only lasted a second before Izuku rushed towards her, taking her by surprise.

She took a step back, flinging acid at him. He rolled underneath it, popping back up in front of her and grabbing her outstretched hand. He then used it too pull her off balance, and went to kick her feet when she did what seemed like a cartwheel to get away. "That's really cool..." Izuku mumbled. He'd have to watch the clip of their fight later - he wanted to learn how to do that.

She grined at the compliment, before remembering who she was fighting, "You're just trying to get me on your side, aren't you."

He didn't respond, as she had punctuated her statement with another glob of acid, which Izuku only barely managed to dodge. He ran at her again, but this time she expected it, and was able to get a hit on him, causing him too step back.

He got ready to attack her with an uppercut, but she was able to dodge it, and sent another glob of acid at him, which he dodged.

It went on like this for awhile, both making moves to attack the other, both of them swerving out of the way of the other's attacks. Sometimes one of them would manage to get a hit on the other. At some point, Izuku had forgotten that he was in the middle of a sports festival. He had drowned out all the sounds around him, focusing only on beating Ashido.

He wasn't sure how much longer this would last. They were both wearing each other out, and at this rate it was simply a race of stamina. Izuku had a lot of that, of course, but Ashido seemed to as well, and Izuku wasn't willing to bet on who had more.

He needed to end this, and fast. The best way to do that was to push her over the boundries. But they weren't close enough to the boundries to do that, and Izuku didn't feel comfortable getting that close to the border. She could end up pushing him off instead.

His best bet was too use One for All. He hadn't wanted too, with how bad his control over it was, but... He supposed that he had too try. Recovery Girl could heal him if it ended poorly.

He powered up the quirk, allowing it too spread throughout his entire body at a low percentage. The green electricity danced across his skin, and Izuku was almost entranced by it for a brief moment. Ashido took a fearful step back, unsure of what had caused the electricity but knowing that it couldn't be good.

Right, he hadn't used One for All like this in front of anyone else yet.

He dashed towards her, and pushed her as hard as he could, which seemed to be harder than he had expected, because she crashed into the stadium walls.

"Midoriya Izuku wins!!"

He stood on the areana, frozen stiff. The electricity around him died down to nothing. Ashido was escorted to Recovery Girl by some med bots, and Izuku looked away as they left. Hopefully, she wasn't badly injured...

One for All was one of the most powerful quirks in existance, he knew.

And yet, he still hadn't expected it to be that strong.

He looked down at his feet as he walked away from the areana, back to the stands.

He hoped she'd be okay.