Viridescent

Chapter Five: All P.A.Ls Must Die

Once Izuku, Ochako, Tenya, and Denki arrived back at the surveillance room following their mock battle, they were swarmed by several excited members of the class.

Eijirou was pumping his fists nonstop. "That fight was sick! All of your Quirks were so cool!"

"It's hard to believe you came up with a strategy like that to counter Denki's electricity," Hanta added. "I never would have thought of using a heat shield, or whatever Momo called it."

"That was awesome!" Mina exclaimed, bouncing to the front of the group. "I had you pegged as a quiet nerd, Izuku, but holy crap! I take it back, that was a Pro-class victory!"

The praise had him blushing furiously as he reverted back to his shy, introverted self. Tsuyu smiled at them. "You're still a quiet nerd, but you definitely have good battle instincts. It was kind of like watching a strategy game. Ochaco played a great support role, too."

Ochaco smiled back somewhat bashfully. "Well, I didn't do much...Deku thought of that whole plan pretty much by himself. He probably would have found a way to win even on his own!"

"Huh? N-no way!" Izuku stammered. "Th-that plan wouldn't have worked at all without your Quirk! Honestly, there's no way I could've won this without you! I-I can't use my Quirk very well in battle yet, s-so I wouldn't have been able to move those boxes at all without your help! The only reason my Quirk was effective at all was because you were there! I'm pretty sure that my Quirk was actually the worst one suited for this!"

Momo nodded. "He's right. Certainly, Izuku was the strategist of the team, but it's only thanks to Ochaco that his plan was effective at all. Without her Zero Gravity Quirk, moving those heavy metal boxes efficiently would have been impossible for him. Support roles are just as important, if not more so, than lead roles. What's a plan without the capability to pull it off?"

It was Ochaco's turn to blush from the praise, but her smile widened further. "When you put it that way, I guess you're right. Thank you!"

All Might cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "Well, Momo already went and said pretty much what I wanted to hear from everyone now that we can analyze the battle, but that's not to say there weren't any errors on the Villain Team's part. For one, you forgot to block the second door to the fifth floor."

"Oh, we did that on purpose," Izuku replied.

All Might blinked. "Really? Why?"

"Well, I knew that Tenya could move really fast with his Quirk," Izuku began, holding his hand up to his chin as he began to half-mutter, half-explain. "The door closest to us would've given him a clear line of sight to the weapon and I didn't know how fast he could go, so we blocked that one off in case he tried to sprint to us. I wanted to funnel them to the only other entrance to the fifth floor, but if we blocked them both off, they could have tried to break through either entrance and I didn't want to deal with that unknown factor, so we blocked off just one. I thought about trying to ambush them too, but since we blocked one door off, they would have expected that and it would have been really difficult to counter Denki's Quirk if we took the offensive, so I thought it'd be best to wait for them and act defensively."

Eijirou still looked perplexed. "That makes sense, but I still don't get something. Why was Ochako making three boxes float if Izuku was only using two for that heat shield thing?"

"That was one of my backup plans," he replied. "In case Tenya had some plan to build up speed and rush us faster than I could handle, I was gonna start throwing that box and the other ones blocking off the weapon at him. The ones I heated up could've hurt him too much. Plus if we had to throw lots of those boxes, they would've started taking up space on the floor and left him with less room to speed up. We didn't end up having to use it, but I didn't want to put all our eggs in one basket."