Controlee

82. New Term, New You

Rule 113: No good deed goes unpunished.

They thought they were doing something good. Maybe. That was what they told themselves at least.

***

Honestly, Otsuka shouldn't have been all that surprised that the term began with a fight. Ok, 'began' wasn't strictly the word. The term began with a talk from some third years, UA's current Big Three (the top three hero course students in third year), about a future opportunity called 'work studies'. It sounded a lot like the internships, only their provisional licenses meant they could get a lot more involved in the day-to-day activities and the work studies would last the whole term, meaning students would end up missing days of class here and there.

The issue was, the talk itself hadn't been the most interesting to certain students who proceeded to entirely tune it out. One of the Big Three, a bright and cheery blonde who introduced himself as Mirio, took that as a challenge. To demonstrate how useful work studies were, he wanted to do a one vs twenty-one battle, him against all of class 1-A at once.

So yeah, now Otsuka was in Gym Gamma with the rest of her class. Mirio didn't look even vaguely concerned by the numbers against him and that really should've been the first clue that 1-A stood no chance. She supposed they were only first years, he had a whole lot of experience over them, and the title of Big Three wasn't just for show. Still though, one vs twenty-one (or eighteen really, since Bakugou and Midoriya had got themselves on house arrest for starting a fight, and Todoroki wasn't joining in after he failed the licensing exam) weren't the kind of odds Otsuka ever wanted to face.

If someone had asked Otsuka before the fight started how she thought it would end up, she highly doubted she would guess her vs a naked boy, but here she was. In his defence, his permeability quirk (which was totally awesome and he used to the greatest advantage physically possible), didn't really distinguish between the floor and his uniform. So, while he only intended to sink through the floor, his uniform couldn't exactly sink with him so now he was naked.

They were kind of at a stalemate at this point. See, his quirk (as aforementioned) let him sink into the floor. What she hadn't mentioned before was that it also let him pop back up at high velocity, which had allowed him to play hide and seek with the class, sneaking up on each of them to take groups of them out at a time.

Being permeable and all, he didn't really make sounds for those with quirks like Jirou and Shouji to track, and there was nobody around who could see him through the floor (not that it was possible to see something when it was even permeable to light). The one thing he couldn't hide was his energy.

She'd been working with TT and Oboro to get her confidence back with the sensing mist and it was really coming in handy now. His body may have been permeable, but it was still there, there was still electricity firing through his nerves, there was still a signature that she could track. So hide and seek didn't work so well with her.

She only had seconds to figure out what his trajectory was as he came flying up through the ground towards her, but it was enough warning to get out of the way. He seemed intent on having the element of surprise on his side, because each failure only made him try again.

When he finally stopped, she figured it was because he'd realised the same thing she had: dodging him had to be a lot less energy than the repeated use of his quirk. If this was a war of attrition, she had the advantage.

He laughed, a hearty sound that honestly seemed like he was having a whole lot of fun with this. "You've got to tell me how you're avoiding me so well."

Otsuka shrugged, letting a ball of mist develop around her hand before she swiped it away like smoke. "Quirk thing."

She'd barely finished speaking before he was coming at her. Now, TT's training had seriously improved Otsuka's combat skills, but Mirio was a third year. She fought hard and she fought fast, but he was way beyond her level. It certainly didn't help that on the few occasions where a hit would've landed, his quirk made him permeable so she went through him instead. And every time one of her hits went through instead of impacting, he used it as an easy opportunity to counter attack.