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Chapter 50: The Three-Stage Rocket
🕑 Added 2025-09-28 18:32:31 +0000 UTCAfter the chaos of the scrap heap mountain, the course opened up to a dizzying abyss. A canyon at least fifty meters wide separated two plateaus. Rock pillars rose up between them, with a series of ropes stretched from one side to the other like a precarious spiderweb. It was The Fall.
“AND THERE YOU HAVE IT, FOLKS! THE SECOND OBSTACLE!” Present Mic roared over the loudspeakers. “A CHASM THAT WILL TEST YOUR COURAGE AND AGILITY! YOU CAN CROSS HOWEVER YOU LIKE, BUT IF YOU FALL, YOU’RE OUT!”
Todoroki didn’t even hesitate. He created an ice ramp that connected to the nearest rope and slid across it with the grace of an Olympic skater, barely losing any momentum.
Bakugo, as always, chose the loudest path. With a series of controlled explosions, he propelled himself through the air, leaping from pillar to pillar, screaming insults into the wind.
“TOO SLOW, HALF-AND-HALF BASTARD!”
Izuku’s team reached the edge of the chasm, their skating formation breaking apart right at the precipice. There was no pause for deliberation.
“We can’t waste time!” Izuku shouted. “Traversal plan! Momo, now!”
“Got it!” she replied.
With a fluidity that was already second nature to her, Momo created four high-tech grappling guns. They were compact, efficient, and connected to ultralight zipline cables made of a high-tensile polymer.
“Anchor to the pillars!” she ordered, passing a device to each of them.
“Lightening us up!” Ochako announced, quickly touching each member of the team, including herself. Their bodies felt strangely light, drastically reducing the tension they would put on the cables.
“Creating a distortion!” Toru said.
A subtle wave of light enveloped them, like hot air over asphalt. It didn't make them invisible, but it blurred their outlines, turning them into a confusing target for any competitor who might want to sabotage them.
They fired their grappling hooks. The hooks dug into the rock on the other side with four nearly simultaneous metallic thunks, and they launched themselves into the void. Their crossing was silent, fast, and deadly efficient. They were four shadows gliding through the air with perfect coordination.
It was then that a shrill voice and a whirlwind of smoke and metal overtook them.
“EXCUSE ME, FUTURE CLIENTS AND SPONSORS!! THE FUTURE IS HERE AND IT'S PASSING YOU BY!!”
It was a girl with pink hair in dreadlocks and a pair of protective goggles with zoom lenses. She was propelling herself through the air with a homemade jetpack that let off more smoke than thrust, but somehow, it worked.
“BEHOLD MY BABIES!!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, making sure the floating microphones caught every word. “MODEL 7 PROPULSION BOOTS WITH GYROSCOPIC STABILIZATION! AUTOMATIC WIRE HOOKS WITH A HYDRAULIC RETRACTION SYSTEM! AND MY FLIGHT PACK WITH IMPROVED FUEL EFFICIENCY! ALL AVAILABLE FOR LICENSING AT HATSUME INDUSTRIES! CALL MY AGENTS!”
“Who is she?” Ochako asked, bewildered, as they zipped across.
“Mei Hatsume, from the support department,” Izuku answered, his eyes fixed forward. “She’s… enthusiastic.”
The contrast between Hatsume’s individualistic, self-promotional display and their own silent, coordinated teamwork was so comical that Izuku almost let a smile slip.
They landed on the other plateau just as Todoroki and Bakugo were reaching the edge of the festival's final and most infamous obstacle: the Minefield. It was a vast expanse of churned-up earth, a field seeded with what looked like high-explosive mines.
“AND FINALLY, THE LAST BARRIER BEFORE GLORY!” Present Mic boomed. “A NIGHTMARE MINEFIELD! BUT DON’T WORRY, FOLKS, THESE MINES AREN’T LETHAL! THEY’RE JUST POWERFUL ENOUGH TO BLAST YOU SKY-HIGH WITH A SPECTACULAR SOUND AND A WHOLE LOT OF PINK SMOKE! WATCH YOUR STEP!”
Todoroki moved forward cautiously, using a thin layer of frost that spread out in front of him to detect the temperature differences in the ground that gave away the mines’ positions. Bakugo, however, had no time for subtlety. He caught up to him, flying at low altitude with his explosions, his face twisted in fury.
“HEY, YOU SHITTY HALF-AND-HALF BASTARD!” he yelled, his voice booming across the field. “YOU DARED TO DECLARE WAR ON HER BEFORE ME!”
Todoroki didn’t turn around. “She and her team posed the greatest strategic threat. It was a logical decision.”
“LOGICAL?!” Bakugo roared, his pure rage finally erupting. “DO YOU THINK I’M WEAKER THAN ROUND-FACE?! ARE YOU IGNORING ME, YOU DAMN BASTARD?!”
“Yes,” Todoroki replied, his coldness like gasoline on a fire.
The resulting explosion was deafening. Bakugo launched himself at him, and Todoroki responded with a wall of ice. Their fight unearthed and detonated mines all around them, creating a hellscape of pink smoke, dirt, and ice shards. They were so consumed by their rivalry that they had completely forgotten about the race.
Izuku’s team stopped at the edge of the field. For all the other students arriving, the two leaders’ fight was just one more obstacle, an added danger. But for Izuku, it was a curtain. A distraction. A golden opportunity.
He turned to his team, the light of an impossible idea shining in his eyes.
“Get down,” he whispered, guiding them behind a rock at the edge of the field. “We can’t cross it on foot,” he said urgently, his voice fast as he watched the chaos Bakugo and Todoroki had unleashed. “So we’ll fly over it.”
“Fly?” Ochako asked. “None of us can fly, Deku-kun. And I can’t keep all four of us in the air for that long.”
“We won’t fly with our Quirks,” he replied, his eyes fixed on the pink explosions. “We’ll fly with theirs. Momo, I need a shield-sled. Big, concave. Use the structural memory of the robot scraps we passed, that titanium alloy. Make it as sturdy and aerodynamic as possible.”
Momo nodded without hesitation, her mind already processing the design. “Understood.”
“Ochako, Toru, I need ammunition.”
“Ammunition?” Toru repeated, perplexed.
“The mines,” Izuku clarified, nodding toward the field. “They’re our fuel.”
The execution began under the cover of chaos.
“Toru, create a distortion! Hide us!” Izuku ordered.
Toru held out her hands and wove the light around them. It wasn’t perfect invisibility, but an optical camouflage field that made them look like a simple heatwave, a blurry and insignificant shadow at the edge of the battlefield.
Under that cover, Momo got to work. The skin on her back glowed, and a large metal object began to take shape: a wide, low sled, with its front curved upward like the bow of a ship. Meanwhile, Ochako slipped toward the edge of the minefield. With exquisite control, she touched the ground right next to one of the mines. She made it float, lifting it from its hole with incredible delicacy and deactivating its pressure trigger. The mine, a metal disc the size of a dinner plate, rose into the air, and she guided it back to them. She repeated the process until they had a dozen mines floating silently beside them.
“Ammunition’s ready,” she whispered, her forehead beaded with sweat from the concentration.
Izuku took the mines and, with a surgeon’s care, began to arrange them in a specific pattern under the back of the sled. He created a nest of explosives, a makeshift engine of pure destructive power.
“I see…” Momo murmured, her analytical eyes deciphering the pattern. “The way you’re placing them! You’re going to focus the shockwave down and back! It’s jet propulsion!”
“Exactly,” Izuku confirmed, his voice vibrating with excitement. “But a single blast won’t get us all the way there. It’s going to be a three-stage rocket. Timing is everything. Every second, every action, must be perfect. Ready?”
The three girls looked at each other, then nodded, their faces a mixture of terror and absolute trust in their mad strategist.
“Everyone on board!” Izuku said. “On my signal!”
They climbed onto the metal sled and hunkered down, holding on tight. About a hundred meters ahead, Todoroki and Bakugo were still locked in their personal duel, completely oblivious to the madness brewing behind them.
Izuku took a deep breath. It was now or never.
“STAGE ONE!” he roared.
Ochako, holding an extra mine in her hand, had already made it weightless. On Izuku’s command, she canceled her Quirk. The mine fell with a metallic clink onto the pile of explosives he had prepared.
The explosion was cataclysmic.
A pillar of fire, smoke, and earth erupted beneath them. The sled, instead of disintegrating, was launched skyward with the force of a ballistic missile. A trail of pink smoke and debris marked its upward trajectory. They flew in a perfect arc, soaring high above the heads of Bakugo and Todoroki, who stopped dead in their tracks, their faces turned to the sky in an expression of pure bewilderment.
“WH-WHAT IS HAPPENING?!” Present Mic shouted, his voice cracking with surprise. “TEAM MIDORIYA… HAS JUST LAUNCHED!! THEY’VE USED THE MINEFIELD AS THEIR OWN ROCKET ENGINE!!”
The sled reached the apex of its arc and, for a moment, seemed to hang in the air. Gravity began to reclaim them. They started to fall.
“We’re going to fall short!” Toru yelled.
“Not yet!” Izuku shot back. “The trajectory is right! MOMO! STAGE TWO!”
Momo, who had prepared for this, already had a long metal pole in her hands. With incredible precision in mid-air, she thrust it out and struck one of the mines they had brought with them on the sled.
The second explosion, smaller but brutally effective, detonated in mid-air. The blast corrected their downward trajectory and gave them a second, violent push—a kick in the back that sent them hurtling directly toward the finish line.
“A SECOND MID-AIR EXPLOSION!! IT’S A TWO-STAGE ROCKET!! THEY’RE INSANE!! THEY’RE COMPLETELY INSANE!!”
They were now heading for the goal at suicidal speed. The stadium entrance tunnel was approaching at an alarming rate. They were going to crash.
“Ochako, get ready!” Izuku yelled, his eyes locked on their impact point.
“I’m ready!”
“STAGE THREE!”
Just one second before the sled became a projectile aimed at the concrete, Ochako placed her hands on the metal surface and activated her Quirk with all her power. She made the sled and its occupants completely weightless.
The momentum and velocity were still there, but the weight and impact were gone. Instead of a catastrophic crash, the sled shot through the finish line in an impossible silence, landing on the other side of the track with the softness of a feather. They slid a few more meters before coming to a stop. All four of them together. At the same time.
For the first time in his career, Present Mic was speechless. He could only scream what his eyes were seeing.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!! THEY’VE PASSED TODOROKI AND BAKUGO AND… AND THEY CROSS THE FINISH LINE… TOGETHER?! IT’S… IT’S…!! WE HAVE AN UNPRECEDENTED FOUR-WAY TIE FOR FIRST PLACE!!”
For a second, the entire stadium was stunned into silence. And then, it erupted. The roar that followed was the loudest of the day, a soundwave of pure disbelief and admiration.
On the track, the team climbed off the sled, exhausted, covered in soot and dirt. They looked at each other, wide-eyed. And then, they burst out laughing. Laughs of relief, of disbelief, of pure euphoria. Ochako and Toru hugged each other, jumping up and down. Momo leaned against Izuku, laughing until tears streamed down her cheeks.
Just then, Todoroki and Bakugo crossed the finish line, stopping short to take in the scene. Their faces were a picture of utter bewilderment. They had been so focused on each other that they had missed the race entirely. Helpless rage began to replace their confusion.
In the VIP box, Mt. Lady was standing on her seat, applauding like a maniac.
“FORGET THE COVER SHOOTS! FORGET MY AGENCY! I WANT TO SIGN ALL OF THEM! RIGHT NOW! THAT WAS THE BEST SHOW I’VE SEEN IN YEARS!”
In the commentary booth, Aizawa watched the team celebrate. An expression so unusual for him it could have almost been a smile crossed his face.
They didn't just win, he thought. They changed the game. They just proved to the whole world that four perfectly coordinated Quirks aren't just effective. They're capable of surpassing the two greatest prodigies of their generation. This… this changes everything.
