ShuraZero
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Chapter 52: The Ghost Hunt
🕑 Added 2025-10-03 13:08:35 +0000 UTCThe sound of the buzzer was the starting shot for a stampede. Thirty-eight teams, thirty-eight makeshift cavalries of ambition and desperation, launched themselves forward. But they didn't scatter. Like a pack of wolves that has located its prey, nearly a dozen of them turned in unison and charged straight for the strange human tower that was Team Midoriya.
"AND WE'RE OOOOOOFF!!" Present Mic roared. "THE CAVALRY BATTLE BEGINS AND, AS EXPECTED, THE FORTY-MILLION-POINT TEAM IS EVERYONE'S TARGET! THIS IS A MASSACRE!"
From his elevated position on Toru's back, Izuku had a panoramic view of the battlefield. He saw every angle of attack, every Quirk preparing to fire. His brain processed the threats at a dizzying speed.
"Hold your ground!" his voice cut through the air, clear and authoritative, a beacon in the chaos. "Maintain formation! Momo, prepare for emergency propulsion! They're coming from the right and left, but the first serious attack is coming head-on!"
"Who is it?" Ochako asked from below, her eyes fixed forward.
"Team Tetsutetsu, twelve o'clock!" Izuku reported. "Juzo's going for the ground! They want to immobilize us!"
The Class 1-B team, led by a steel-clad Tetsutetsu, was approaching at full speed. Juzo Honenuki, their rider, smirked and slammed his palm onto the ground.
"Not so fast, Class 1-A! Let's see you move now!"
The compacted dirt floor under Momo's skates instantly turned into a thick, sticky mire. The wheels of her skates sank, bringing their advance to a dead halt. They were trapped.
"They're stuck!" Tetsutetsu yelled. "Now!"
But Izuku had already issued the next command.
"Now! Momo, vertical propulsion! Ochako, lighten the base to zero-g!"
"Roger!" they both replied in unison.
The countermeasure was instantaneous. Momo, without losing her cool, sprouted two powerful turbines from the base of her skates, pointing downward. At the same time, Ochako, from her position, touched Momo's shoulders. The formation's base became completely weightless.
With a roar of power, the turbines ignited. Instead of propelling them forward, they lifted them in a powerful, controlled leap of nearly ten meters into the air. They escaped the mire with insulting ease, landing cleanly several meters away, ready to keep moving.
"AND TEAM MIDORIYA ESCAPES!!" Present Mic shouted. "TEAM TETSUTETSU ATTACKS FIRST, SINKING THE GROUND, BUT THEY RESPOND WITH A COMBINATION OF CREATION AND GRAVITY CONTROL! THEIR COORDINATION IS OUT OF THIS WORLD!"
"It's not out of this world," Aizawa corrected, his monotone voice a counterpoint to Mic's euphoria. "It's practice. They've identified their weaknesses, like a lack of mobility on adverse terrain, and developed specific countermeasures. It's logical."
"Don't let them land!" Kyoka Jiro shouted from the other side of the arena. She was straddling Koji Koda, using her jacks as stirrups. "Now!"
While they were in the air, vulnerable, Jiro's team seized the opportunity. She plugged her earphone jacks into her boot amplifiers and directed a concentrated sonic attack straight at them, seeking to disorient them and break their fragile balance.
"Sonic attack, three o'clock!" Izuku warned, anticipating the move. "Toru, light distortion! Deflect the waves!"
"Leave it to me!" Toru responded.
She extended her hands and, with a new and refined mastery, not only turned herself and the headband invisible but also projected her Quirk outward. She created a shield of refraction around them, a visible ripple in the air like a heat haze. Jiro's sound waves impacted the barrier and dispersed harmlessly in all directions.
"What?! She deflected my attack!" Jiro exclaimed, incredulous.
They landed with a smooth glide but had no time to breathe.
"Watch out, it's a trap!" Izuku yelled. "Team Shoji, at nine! He's not alone!"
From the shadows of the stadium wall, Mezo Shoji lunged at them. At first, it looked like a solo charge, a strange tactic. But then, the multiple arms on his back, which he had been using as a shell, burst open.
"Now!" came Shoji's voice.
Curled up and hidden on his back were Tsuyu Asui and Minoru Mineta. It was a perfectly coordinated ambush.
"Let's get 'em, ribbit!" Tsuyu croaked.
Her long, elastic tongue shot out like a whip, not toward the invisible headband, but at Momo's leg, trying to destabilize the tower's base. At the same time, Mineta, with a maniacal laugh, tore the purple spheres from his head and launched a sticky volley at them.
"Take this, you elite team! Grape Rush!"
It was a two-pronged attack, designed to immobilize and topple. But Izuku's mind was already two steps ahead.
"Combined attack! Ochako, repulsion pulse against the spheres, now! Momo, solvent for the skates, don't let anything stick!"
"Got it!" Ochako shouted.
She pressed her palms together and emitted a controlled wave from her Quirk. It wasn't to make the spheres float, but a more forceful application: she repelled them in mid-air with an invisible force, sending them back toward a surprised Mineta.
"Huh?! My own grapes!"
Meanwhile, Momo, without missing a beat in her skating, sprouted two small sprayers from her wrists. A fine mist of a fast-acting chemical solvent coated her skates, creating a surface to which nothing could adhere. Tsuyu's tongue struck the skate, but instead of gripping, it slipped off harmlessly.
"My tongue... it's slipping!" she croaked, surprised.
Team Izuku slid through the combined attack without a scratch, a perfect defensive machine that had neutralized three separate threats in under a minute.
Elsewhere in the arena, fury had a name: Katsuki Bakugo. His team, an offensive juggernaut with Kirishima as a nearly indestructible base, was bulldozing its way through the weaker teams, Bakugo's gaze fixed on the team moving so gracefully across the field.
"You're not getting away! That forty-million-point headband is mine, Deku!" he roared, preparing a massive explosion.
"Bakugo, wait!" Sero yelled, pointing to the side. "We've got company!"
Suddenly, a team from Class 1-B slid up beside them. Their rider, Neito Monoma, was smiling with an irritating superiority. With a fluid motion, he snatched a headband from a passing general course team, effortlessly adding their points to his own.
"Well, well," Monoma said, his tone condescending and mocking. "If it isn't the big star of Class 1-A. How foolish, obsessing over the preliminary round, don't you think? While you were all wildly using your Quirks, we were calmly observing from the back. We analyzed your limits, your personalities... It was a very logical team strategy, wouldn't you agree?"
"Get out of my way, you cheap copycat," Bakugo muttered, his eyes still locked on Izuku.
"Oh, the famous Katsuki Bakugo," Monoma continued, his smile turning cruel and sharp. He knew exactly which buttons to push. "So impressive. So strong. So good at getting captured by a sludge villain and needing All Might himself to come and save your hide. Tell me, how does it feel to be a famous victim? I heard you even cried a little."
The provocation was a surgical strike. A guided missile straight to the core of Bakugo's pride.
He stopped.
His entire team stopped with him. The aura of fury directed at Izuku didn't vanish. It refocused. It concentrated with such a laser-like intensity that the air around him seemed to grow cold.
Bakugo turned his head slowly, his red gaze locking onto Monoma with a promise of total annihilation. His voice, when he spoke, wasn't a shout. It was a dangerously quiet whisper.
"Kirishima."
"Yeah, Bakugo?" the redhead replied, sensing the dangerous calm in his leader.
"Change of plans. Forget Deku for now."
A savage, demented grin spread across Bakugo's face.
"We're going to annihilate Class B first. Every last one of them."
Izuku, from his watchtower, saw Team Bakugo's change of direction. He saw them launch forward with renewed fury, not toward them, but toward Monoma's unfortunate team.
"Good," he muttered to himself. "Bakugo's busy. Class B is playing the long game, distracting the strongest. I think we can take a breath and plan our next—"
He was cut off by a sudden change in temperature.
An unnatural cold spread across the ground. The air turned frigid. The ground around them froze in an instant, a layer of pure white ice that made Momo's skates screech dangerously as she fought to keep her balance.
Before he could give the order to jump, a massive wall of ice, taller and denser than any Todoroki had created before, erupted from the earth in front of them, blocking their path and isolating them from the rest of the arena.
On the other side of the translucent wall, a silhouette was outlined. Team Todoroki. They appeared skating across the ice, serene and formidable. Iida, at the base, was an image of contained power, his engines humming softly. Kaminari, at his side, grinned, sparks crackling between his fingers. And at the top, like an emperor on his throne, was Shoto Todoroki.
His expression was impassive, his gaze, an iceberg. His voice, as cold as the ice he commanded, echoed in the confined space he had created. He didn't address Izuku. He didn't address Momo or Toru.
He addressed the top of the formation directly.
"The children's game is over," he said, his breath forming a cloud of vapor. "The lesser wolves are finished."
His mismatched eyes, one a stormy gray and the other a turquoise blue, locked onto Ochako.
"Now, Uraraka."
He paused, letting the weight of his challenge settle.
"Hand over those forty million points."
The chaotic free-for-all was over. The main event, the duel between the two most powerful teams in the arena, was about to begin.
