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Chapter 44: A Lesson in Humility
🕑 Added 2025-10-15 22:40:05 +0000 UTC"Incredible teamwork from applicants Uraraka, Shield, and Shiozaki to rescue a trapped comrade and neutralize the Zero-Pointer! That, ladies and gentlemen, is the true heroic spirit!"
Present Mic's voice boomed through the observation box, but the group barely registered it. They were all on their feet, knuckles turning white from how tightly they gripped the railing, glued to the glass overlooking the main screen.
"They did it…" Yu whispered. "They really did it."
"Damn right, they did!" Mirko roared, slamming her fist against the reinforced glass, a gesture of pure, unbridled emotion that made the panel vibrate. "Guts! That's what those girls have!"
Nemuri let out a muffled laugh, shaking her head in amazement. "I can't believe that was their strategy… it's insane that it even worked."
All Might released a breath he didn't know he was holding, a long, trembling sigh that turned into a smile of immense pride and relief. He leaned against the console, his normally tense shoulders finally relaxing. "She controlled the recoil… Young Melissa, she controlled it…" he muttered to himself, his voice thick with paternal emotion.
Izuku said nothing. He simply watched the main screen, where the scene was one of controlled chaos. A small, satisfied smile formed on his face. They hadn't fought the robot. They had fought for the person. They had understood the most important lesson without anyone needing to spell it out for them. Heroism wasn't about points, but about people.
On the screen, Ochako was already helping the purple-haired student to his feet, draping an arm over his shoulders. Melissa was on her knees, cradling her broken arm against her chest, her face pale, but her eyes shone with a look of fierce satisfaction. And beside her, Ibara stood tall, a serene and calm presence amidst the destruction, her vines gently retracting from the robot's shattered metal.
"Well, the exam is almost over," Nemuri said, crossing her arms and adopting a more professional tone, though admiration was still present in her voice. "They've done more than enough. Rescuing a teammate will give them more than enough points to pass."
"They should fall back," Yu agreed, her heart still pounding from the tension. "Find a safe place and wait for the siren. Melissa needs urgent medical attention."
But Izuku slowly shook his head. His eyes weren't on the overall scene, but fixed on the individual monitor following Ibara.
On the screen, Ibara said something to her new teammates. Melissa and Ochako looked at her, confused. Ibara gave them a small, respectful nod. Then, to the bewildered stares of everyone in the observation box, she turned around and, without hesitation, took off running, away from safety and the end of the exam.
"Hey, where is she going?" Mirko asked, raising an eyebrow. Her euphoria shifted to curiosity. "The timer shows less than five minutes. She should be hunting one or two-point robots to secure her spot, not running toward the center."
****
Ibara moved through the shattered streets with a grace that defied the uneven terrain. She ignored the sparking, broken-down robots and the exhausted competitors leaning against walls, out of breath. The sacred duty to protect the innocent had been fulfilled. Young Uraraka and Miss Shield were safe, and the soul in peril had been rescued.
Now, the mission remained.
She heard another series of explosions to her right, louder and faster than the robots'. The sound was sharp, that of concentrated fireworks, and each detonation was followed by the screech of twisting metal. Then, an arrogant shout cut through the air.
"75 points! Top that, you damn extras! Anyone else want some?!"
There he is, Ibara thought. The lost soul. The one whose pride imprisons him.
She turned the corner with a fluid motion, her feet barely making a sound on the rubble. And then she saw him. Katsuki Bakugo stood atop a pile of smoking metal scrap that, moments before, had been three three-point robots. A wild, almost crazed smile spread across his face. The smoke swirled around him.
"This exam is a joke!" Bakugo yelled. "I'm gonna be number one without breaking a sweat!"
He spun around, his red eyes searching for more targets, more scrap to turn into points. That's when he saw her. The girl with the vine-hair, standing at the end of the alley. She was just there, watching him with an unsettling stillness.
Bakugo narrowed his eyes. "Get out of my way, plant girl," he growled, leaping nimbly off his pile of scrap. Metal crunched under his boots. "I don't have time for weak extras who just stand around like idiots."
Ibara didn't move an inch. She simply tilted her head, a gesture of curiosity and an almost clinical pity. Her expression was serene, which seemed to irritate Bakugo even more. "I have come to offer you salvation."
Bakugo stopped dead in his tracks. He blinked once, twice, as if trying to decipher a foreign language. "What did you say?" His voice was a low, incredulous hiss.
"Your pride is a thorn that poisons your spirit," she continued, her voice serene and melodic. "I have received a sacred duty to help you remove it. It is a mission of purification."
For a second, a very long one, Katsuki Bakugo was completely silent. His brain, accustomed to processing threats, challenges, and violence, was desperately trying to analyze the weirdest, most condescending, and utterly absurd sentence he had ever heard in his life. Salvation? Thorn? Purification? Was this some kind of joke?
Then, his face contorted.
"Are you insulting me?" he hissed. Tiny sparks began to pop from the palms of his hands. "You…! DIE!"
He launched himself at her, a controlled explosion propelling him forward at a dizzying speed. He threw his hands back, preparing to unleash a concentrated AP Shot that could have demolished a concrete wall.
"That's it! It's over! He's going to kill her!" Yu screamed in the observation room, jumping to her feet and grabbing Nemuri's arm tightly. "Izuku, what have you done?! Stop the exam!"
"Shut up and watch!" Mirko ordered, her eyes locked on the screen, a wild grin on her face. She leaned forward, her excitement palpable. "This is gonna get good!"
Just as Bakugo was about to unleash his attack, only a couple of meters away, Ibara stomped her foot on the ground. The gesture was simple, almost delicate. A dozen thick vines, each as wide as an arm, erupted from the cracked concrete. They curved inward, weaving together at incredible speed to form a dense, defensive cocoon around her.
Bakugo's explosion slammed into the wall of vines with a deafening roar. The shockwave shook the camera focused on them. A cloud of smoke, steam, and green wood splinters filled the alley completely, obscuring everything from view.
***
"See? He pulverized her!" Yu exclaimed, her voice barely a whisper of panic. "I told you it was too dangerous!"
"No," Izuku said, his voice calm, almost disinterested. "He just took the bait. It's going according to plan."
****
As the smoke began to clear, the image sharpened. The wall of vines was charred and shattered at the point of impact, but largely intact. However, Ibara was gone.
"Where the hell is she?" Bakugo growled, spinning around, his eyes scanning the smoke, furious that his shot had missed. "Come out and fight, you coward!"
The answer came from above.
From the rooftops of the buildings on both sides of the alley, hundreds of vines fell, sealing the exit Bakugo had entered through. Simultaneously, others sprouted from the ground behind him, blocking his retreat. The windows and doors of nearby buildings were covered by a web of vegetation. In a matter of seconds, Bakugo found himself trapped in a makeshift structure of living wood.
Ibara stood on the edge of a rooftop, her silhouette outlined against the artificial gray sky.
"Aggression is the weapon of those who lack patience," she said, her voice echoing in the enclosed space of the alley.
"You damn extra!" Bakugo roared, turning to face the nearest wall. Small explosions erupted uncontrollably from his hands. "You think this cage of twigs can stop me? I'm gonna blow every single one of them to bits until there's nothing left!"
He began launching explosion after explosion at the cage walls. The vines burned, splintered, and broke under the force of his attacks. But for every one he destroyed, two more, thicker and stronger, grew to take its place from the ground and rooftops, now covered in sharp thorns.
****
In the observation box, Mirko was laughing her head off. "She caught him! She caged him like a rabid animal! This is amazing! The girl's got style!"
"She's not trying to stop him," Izuku said, his fingers drumming softly on the console. "She's wearing him down. Look at the sweat on his forehead. Bakugo's Quirk needs his nitroglycerin-rich sweat to create more powerful explosions. If she forces him to constantly use his power in a hot, enclosed space like this, without giving him a break, she'll exhaust him physically and mentally."
"It's a war of attrition," All Might murmured, impressed.
***
The confrontation, if you could call it that, was one of brute force versus absolute control. Bakugo, consumed by a blind rage, launched explosion after explosion, his frustration growing with every second he remained trapped. Each successful blast only revealed more vines behind it. Ibara, motionless on the rooftop, simply maintained the structure, repairing the damage with minimal gestures, waiting with infinite patience.
"Fight me, you coward! Come out and face me!" he yelled, his breathing becoming ragged, sweat beading on his forehead and soaking his shirt. The air in the alley was growing thick and hot.
"This is our fight," Ibara's calm voice replied from above. "And you are losing it. With every outburst of anger, your spirit weakens."
Finally, after nearly two minutes of relentless assault, Bakugo saw what he thought was an opening. A section of the vine wall to his left seemed to weaken, thinner than the rest. With a cry of triumph, he focused all his remaining energy into one massive explosion.
"DIE!"
The blast blew the wall apart, creating a sizable hole. Without wasting a second, he leaped through it, landing on the street outside, panting, his arms aching, but with a victorious smile on his face.
"See, you damn plant? You can't contain me! I'm…!"
He stopped short. The street wasn't empty. It wasn't an escape route. While he had been trapped, Ibara had been busy. She had transformed the entire area into her personal domain. The ground was covered by a carpet of slowly writhing vines. Thick tendrils hung from the walls of buildings and from lampposts, still and menacing.
"The entire world is a garden," Ibara's voice said, and this time it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. "And in my garden, I decide what grows and what must be pruned."
That's when the ground attacked.
The vines on the ground shot upwards. One wrapped around his ankle, tripping him. Another grabbed his left wrist as he tried to catch himself. He blasted them away with a growl, but there were too many.
"Get off me!" he roared, struggling with an increasingly desperate fury as more and more vines attached to his legs, his waist, his other arm.
"She's playing with him," Nemuri said in the observation room, her voice a mix of awe and pure amusement. She brought a hand to her lips. "This is almost cruel."
Finally, Ibara exploited the key weakness Izuku had pointed out to her during their brief training session: Bakugo's absolute reliance on his hands to attack. Two swift vines coiled with pinpoint accuracy around his wrists and pulled with relentless force in opposite directions, stretching his arms out to his sides.
Immobilized. Exposed. Vulnerable.
A much thicker vine emerged from the ground in front of him. It rose up and at its tip, like a flower opening, Ibara appeared, emerging from the vegetation. She stopped just centimeters from his face. Her expression was perfectly serene, a stark contrast to Bakugo's face, which was red with fury and exhaustion.
"The lesson is about to begin," she said, her voice barely a whisper.
What followed was the most systematic, pious, and utterly mortifying humiliation in the history of the U.A. entrance exam.
First, with an almost insulting delicacy, a thin, nimble vine slithered down his arm, unbuckled the straps of his grenade-shaped gauntlets, and lifted them away, placing them gently on the ground several meters away.
"The tools of anger only hinder the path to enlightenment," Ibara murmured solemnly.
Then, another vine wrapped around his ankle and, with a gentle but unstoppable tug, lifted him off the ground.
"What are you doing?! Put me down, you crazy plant lady!" he yelled, kicking uselessly in the air, his body spinning slowly. "I'm gonna kill you! I swear I'm gonna kill you!"
The vine kept rising. And rising. It carried him above the rooftops, past the structure she had built, up to the tallest lamppost on the main street. And there, with calm and care, she left him. Hanging. Upside down. His arms were still pinned to his sides by two other vines, leaving him completely defenseless.
****
In the observation room, the silence was absolute and heavy for three full seconds.
Then, Mirko collapsed over the console, howling with laughter. She pounded the surface with her fist, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I can't believe it! I-can't-believe-it! She actually did it! She hung him up like a Christmas ornament!"
Yu covered her face with her hands, but her shoulders were shaking as she tried to stifle a laugh that sounded halfway between hysteria and horror. "That's horrible… well, not that horrible."
All Might just stared, dumbfounded, his proud smile replaced by an expression of utter stupefaction. "Young Midoriya… this... I believe this is somewhat concerning."
****
Down on the street, Ibara wasn't finished. She made a single, thin, elegant vine, with a single, perfect white flower at its tip, grow from the ground until it was floating in front of Bakugo's inverted, fury-congested face.
"May this experience help you reflect upon the virtue of humility," she said, her serene voice a contrast to his seething rage. "Behold the world from a new perspective. I shall pray for your tormented soul."
With a final, immaculate nod, the vines supporting her retracted into the ground. She turned and walked away with calm steps, leaving Katsuki Bakugo, the explosive prodigy, the self-proclaimed future number one hero, hanging upside down from a lamppost, defeated, by a patience and a pity so profound it was utterly mortifying.
Just then, the final siren blared, its shrill sound marking the end of the exam.
In the observation box, Present Mic cleared his throat, trying to regain his composure. His normally booming voice sounded completely baffled. "Well… uh… ladies and gentlemen… time… has, uh… run out. The U.A. entrance exam has… concluded. Please remain in your seats while we process the results."
