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Chapter 58: The Deity and the Fury
🕑 Added 2025-10-03 14:26:23 +0000 UTCThe seventh match of the first round was a lesson in brutality and tenacity: Eijiro Kirishima versus Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu. Steel against iron. It was less a martial arts match and more a collision of two anvils. They struck each other with unwavering ferocity, fist against fist, head against head, until, with a final, definitive clash of hardened wills, both fell unconscious at the same time.
"IT'S A DOUBLE K.O.!!" Midnight shouted after a moment of astonishment. "We'll hold a simple tie-breaker, like an arm-wrestling match, later on to decide who advances! Now, a short break before the last and most anticipated match of the first round!"
In the waiting room, the air was thick with anticipation. Izuku found Ochako standing by a window, staring at the empty arena. She wasn't nervous. She was terrifyingly focused, her mind already in the ring, visualizing every possible move.
"Ready?" he asked in a low voice, approaching her. Not as a superior, but as an equal.
She turned, and a small, calm, confident smile curved her lips. "I am. We've gone over the simulations a hundred times. I know his patterns."
"Remember your training," he said, his voice a coach's whisper. "He's the hammer. Strong, direct, predictably destructive. You're not the chisel that meets him head-on. That's what he wants. You're the wind. Flow around him. Wear him down, exhaust him, and erode him until his own strength breaks him."
"Don't worry, coach," she replied, and the gleam in her eyes was that of a storm about to break. "Today, the wind is going to become a hurricane."
She walked out of the room, her stride firm and determined.
In the arena, Bakugo waited for her, hands in his pockets, an expression of impatient arrogance on his face. The memory of his defeat in the cavalry battle, of being outmaneuvered by Izuku's team, burned inside him. This was his chance to reassert the natural order of things.
"Surrender, Round Face," he snapped, his voice a growl. "I'm not gonna hold back just 'cause you're a girl. I'll make it quick."
Ochako's response was a calm that unnerved him. She simply got into her stance, her eyes fixed on him, serene and analytical. There was no fear. No doubt. Only a contender ready for battle.
"THE FINAL MATCH OF THE FIRST ROUND!! THE MOST EXPLOSIVE MAN IN THE FESTIVAL, KATSUKI BAKUGO, VERSUS THE WOMAN WHOSE POWER DEFIES THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, OCHAKO URARAKA!!"
The bell rang.
Bakugo didn't wait. He launched himself forward, his body spinning, his right palm crackling with energy. It was his classic explosive right hook, the same one he had used to intimidate Izuku for years. A blow designed to end the fight before it began.
But Ochako wasn't Izuku.
Instead of retreating or blocking, she touched her own body to lighten its weight. Bakugo's explosion hit empty air. With her gravity reduced, Ochako had slid backward effortlessly, like a skater on ice, ending up three meters away, completely out of the blast's range.
Bakugo blinked, confused for an instant. "What...?"
"And Uraraka dodges the first attack with incredible agility!" Present Mic yelled.
The pattern of the fight was set: a deadly dance where Bakugo's fury crashed again and again against Ochako's graceful evasion. He would lunge, a barrage of direct explosions. She, with precise touches on her own clothes to alter her mass, moved with superhuman speed and fluidity. She slid, pivoted, and flowed around him, always staying just out of reach of his deadly palms.
"FIGHT ME, DAMN IT!!" he roared, unleashing a wider explosion to try and catch her.
Ochako used a pulse of repulsion from her hands, a technique she had been perfecting. The invisible wave of gravity didn't stop the explosion, but it deflected its trajectory just enough for it to whistle past her.
"It's useless, Bakugo!" she told him, her voice calm and even, a stark contrast to his furious panting. "Your movements are too wide. You telegraph every attack."
Frustrated, Bakugo tried to change tactics. He used a small explosion on the ground to unbalance her. But the instant her feet left the ground, Ochako made a small section of the concrete beneath him weightless for a split second. He landed badly, stumbling, his balance completely broken.
He couldn't land a single solid hit. The crowd, which had expected a quick slaughter, went from confusion to amazement. They were witnessing a bully being dismantled with a surgeon's precision.
"STOP DODGING LIKE A DAMN BUG AND FIGHT ME!!" he screamed, his frustration turning into blind rage.
In the commentary booth, Aizawa watched with silent intensity.
"She's not running away, Mic," he said, his voice a low murmur. "She's dictating the pace of the fight. She's forcing him to use bigger and bigger explosions, draining his stamina and overheating the glands in his palms. She's exhausting him physically and mentally. Uraraka is in complete control of this fight."
Bakugo, utterly enraged, humiliated by his own powerlessness, lost his patience. Strategy, restraint—it all went out the window. Only rage remained.
"IF YOU WON'T STAND STILL, THEN I'LL DESTROY THE WHOLE DAMN FLOOR!!" he roared.
He unleashed a barrage of massive, indiscriminate explosions. He didn't aim them at her, but at the ring itself. The concrete shattered, sending up clouds of dust and chunks of debris. His goal was simple: limit her mobility, trap her on uneven terrain.
"LET'S SEE YOU DANCE NOW, BITCH!"
The ring became a field of craters and sharp rocks. The air filled with thick, gray smoke.
But this was exactly what Ochako had been waiting for. It was the final piece of her plan.
As she dodged the blasts, her secret plan went into action. Hidden by the smoke and chaos, her hand was a blur. With quick, discreet touches, every piece of debris that Bakugo's explosions launched into the air—every slab of concrete, every rock—she made it float.
She didn't let them fall. She collected them.
Slowly, silently, a dome of dozens of tons of concrete and steel formed above the arena, suspended in the sky, hidden from everyone's view by the dense cloud of dust.
Bakugo's bombardment ceased. The smoke began to clear. He stood in the middle of the ruined ring, panting heavily, his arms smoking. He scanned the haze, searching for his opponent. He saw her on the other side of the ring, standing, completely unharmed.
He smirked, a grimace of arrogance and exhaustion. He thought he had her cornered. "Out of tricks, Round Face? You're trapped now."
Ochako didn't answer. She simply tilted her chin upward, signaling for him to look up.
Confused, he raised his eyes.
And his expression crumbled.
As the smoke cleared, it revealed a nightmarish ceiling. Hundreds of rocks, slabs, and fragments of the ring floated above them, a firmament of destruction waiting for a single command to fall. Her Meteor Shower.
A wild, desperate laugh erupted from Bakugo's throat. "YOU REALLY THINK THAT TRASH IS ENOUGH TO STOP ME, ROUND FACE?! I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT REAL POWER IS!"
He aimed both palms toward the sky. Nitroglycerin-like sweat dripped from his hands. He poured all the frustration, all the rage, all the humiliation of the fight into one, definitive attack.
"HOWITZER IMPACT!!"
A massive, concentrated, and utterly devastating explosion roared skyward, a column of fire and force designed to pulverize every last piece of debris and prove his absolute superiority.
Ochako was waiting for exactly that. It was the final move in her checkmate.
Just as Bakugo's explosion roared toward the heavens, she focused. Not on all the debris. Just on one piece. The largest slab of concrete, a chunk from the center of the ring that weighed several tons.
She used the upward force and shockwave from Bakugo's own explosion to propel that single slab even higher, well above the reach of the main blast. The Howitzer Impact pulverized most of the smaller debris into a harmless shower of gravel, just as he had planned.
But the anvil was still there.
While Bakugo was momentarily blinded by the light of his own explosion and thrown off balance by the brutal recoil of such a massive attack, Ochako brought her fingertips together. Her face was a mask of lethal calm.
"Release."
The gigantic slab of concrete regained its full weight directly over Bakugo's head. It wasn't a shower. It was a death sentence.
Bakugo, his eyes still seeing spots, looked up. Pure, primal panic replaced the fury on his face. The shadow of the anvil swallowed him. He had no time to dodge. More importantly, he had no energy left for another explosion of that magnitude.
He was forced to use a second, desperate, massive detonation, using the last of his power reserves. The blast shattered the slab moments before it could crush him, but the overexertion was brutal. A cry of pain escaped his lips. His arms, which had endured two of his most powerful attacks in a matter of seconds, trembled visibly, covered in burns and small fractures from the recoil. He was exhausted. Vulnerable.
And in that precise instant, Ochako, who had already lunged forward under the cover of her own trap, appeared before him like a ghost.
He tried to raise his arms for one last, pathetic defense, but he was too slow. His muscles wouldn't respond.
Her hand, without aggression, without anger, landed gently on the center of his chest.
"Got you," she whispered.
She activated her Quirk. Katsuki Bakugo's body became weightless. With a simple, almost casual push, she sent him floating helplessly out of the ring's boundaries, his body tumbling uncontrollably through the air.
Ochako cancelled her Quirk. Bakugo landed with a dull thud outside the arena. He was on his knees, panting, his arms bleeding from the strain, but above all, he was defeated. In shock.
"Katsuki Bakugo is out of bounds!!" Midnight's voice rang out, filled with awe. "The winner... is Ochako Uraraka!!"
The stadium, after a second of stunned silence, erupted in the most thunderous ovation of the day. They had witnessed an impossibility. A strategic victory of incomparable beauty and brutality.
In the exit hallway, a furious Bakugo ran into Izuku, who was waiting for him.
"YOU!!" he roared, his voice cracking. "THAT WAS YOUR DAMN PLAN, YOU FUCKING NERD!! YOU PLANNED THE WHOLE THING, DIDN'T YOU?! EVERY DAMN STEP!"
"No, Bakugo. You're wrong," Izuku replied, and his calm was the final insult. "I taught her the tools. I showed her how to analyze an opponent, how to use her environment. But the strategy, the execution... the plan to break you using your own rage against you was entirely hers."
He stepped closer to him, his green eyes devoid of fear.
"She analyzed you. She read you like an open book. She saw you as a predictable hammer and built a strategy around you. You underestimated her. And you lost."
Izuku walked away, leaving Bakugo alone with the bitter, crushing truth: he had been outplayed, not by a trick, but by the superior skill of Ochako Uraraka.
He found Ochako just as she was coming out of her own tunnel. She wasn't celebrating. She was standing, looking at her hands, a slight tremor running through them as she processed the magnitude of what she had just done, of the power she had unleashed.
"That was... intense," she whispered, not looking at him. "I almost feel like I went too far. That last attack..."
"You didn't go too far, Ochako," he interrupted, his voice filled with overwhelming pride. He sat next to her on the hallway bench. "You were dominant. There's a huge difference."
She finally looked at him, doubt and fear in her eyes. "But what if I become someone who enjoys hurting people? What if that power makes me...?"
"That power is yours," he said firmly, taking her hand. "It isn't good or bad. It's a tool. And today, you used it with the precision of a master craftswoman to defeat an opponent no one thought you could beat. You shouldn't be afraid of it. You should be proud of it. I'm proud of you!"
And with those words, joy finally broke through her defenses. Izuku stood, lifted her into his arms as if she weighed nothing, and with a boost from his Assimilated Quirks, he jumped, soaring several meters into the air inside the tunnel, spinning with her in an impromptu celebration.
"You did it! You did it!"
Ochako, startled, let out a laugh—the happiest sound he had ever heard in his life—and held on to him.
Just then, Momo and Toru came running down the hall.
"Ochako-chan! You were...!" Momo stopped, taking in the scene with a brilliant smile.
"That was amazing!" Toru shouted.
With astonishing speed, Momo's hand glowed and she created a small device. She aimed it upward and pulled a trigger. A shower of bright, colorful confetti burst over Izuku and Ochako as they landed softly.
Momo and Toru joined them, wrapping them in a chaotic, happy group hug amidst the falling confetti.
"Best fight ever!" Toru exclaimed.
"A flawless tactical execution," Momo added, tears of pride in her eyes.
Izuku held Ochako tighter, surrounded by his team, by his family. She had faced her own fury, and not only had she won. She had claimed her power as her own. And that, Izuku realized, was the greatest victory of all.
