Chapter 30:

Do Not Punch Him

My Hero Academia: Izuku's Ninth Ledger

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

✦

The floor forgot it was heavy.

Concrete shifted under my palms. Dust lifted in slow curls. A broken section of hallway, half a door, and a few hundred pounds of ruined U.A. property began to drift like the building had decided gravity was optional.

Bakugo's boots left the ground.

Mine did too.

For half a second, we stared at each other in shared disgust.

Then he blasted downward.

The explosion shoved him toward me.

Of course it did.

I twisted in the air, caught the edge of a floating slab with my good hand, and pulled myself sideways. His gauntlet passed close enough for heat to bite through the fabric at my ribs.

Pain answered from three places. Calf. Shoulder. Ribs.

Pride tried to be louder than all of them, which said unfortunate things about me.

Below us, Uraraka shouted something I could not make out. Iida answered with the kind of dramatic villain declaration a man should only attempt if he had excellent lung capacity.

The weapon room was still active. The match was still winnable.

Bakugo looked down once, read the open space under us, and snapped his left palm toward a floating chunk of concrete.

It spun at my head.

Not a direct hit. A bad angle. A forced dodge.

He had adapted to zero footing in three seconds.

"Stop dodging!"

"Terrible advice!"

He fired again, smaller this time, using recoil to correct his spin. Palms, hips, knees, blast, correction. The floating hallway made normal movement useless, so he turned useless into another route.

I hated how impressive it was.

I also hated that some old part of me expected the hit. Izuku's nerves remembered too much. Flinching was faster than thinking.

Bakugo came high, gauntlet angled toward my shoulder.

I flinched low before the feint finished.

His real strike went for my leg.

Expected did not mean safe.

I let his boot clip my thigh, grabbed the strap of his right gauntlet, and shoved off the floating slab with my left foot. No power. Momentum and bad judgment.

We spun together through dust. He snarled and drove his elbow back. It caught me under the ribs.

Air vanished.

The Ledger pulsed red at the edge of my vision.

[Impact tolerance exceeded]

[No taking hits: failed]

[Output instability rising]

No help. Accurate, though. Annoyingly accurate.

Bakugo's left hand opened near my chest.

Too close. Too much heat.

I had an angle.

One punch.

Three percent through my good arm would put him through the wall. Four would end the match. Five might break him in ways no teacher would forgive, and the worst part was that I knew exactly how to do it.

Power rose before I invited it.

Green light crawled under my glove.

Bakugo saw it. His eyes widened, not enough for anyone else to notice.

"Do it," he said.

Quiet. Almost calm.

Worse.

He wanted proof. A reason for ten months of Deku refusing old rules. A reason All Might's voice had gone too personal in front of the cameras. A reason the world had shifted under his feet and refused to explain itself.

He wanted me to hit him hard enough to make the lie simple.

My fist closed.

The thought came with the pulse.

Do not punch him.

Not because he deserved gentleness. Not because I was above wanting it. I wanted it so badly my stomach turned.

Do not punch him because the room was full of cameras.

Do not punch him because Uraraka was below us making the actual win.

Do not punch him because one clean shot would turn every bruise, every old flinch, every burned notebook memory into an excuse for using One For All like revenge with better branding.

My fingers opened.

I slapped my palm against his gauntlet latch instead and twisted.

The mechanism jammed. His blast misfired sideways, slamming us both into the wall.

My shoulder took the impact.

The scream stayed behind my teeth. Barely.

"No," I said.

Bakugo's face went blank with fury.

"No?"

"I'm not giving you that."

He punched me in the stomach.

No explosion. Just knuckles and years of ugly history.

I folded around the hit. Fair. Stupid. Fair.

"Don't act above me," he hissed.

"I'm not."

"You are."

He grabbed the front of my costume and slammed me against the wall again. The floating slab drifted away behind him. We were on the edge of the broken opening now, half weightless, half caught between gravity and Uraraka's field.

"You look at me like you already know the ending."

That caught.

Only for a fraction.

Too long.

Bakugo noticed. He always noticed weakness when it mattered.

"There," he said. "That look."

"You're seeing what you want."

"I'm seeing you lie."

His palm sparked near my throat.

All Might's voice crashed through the speakers.

"Young Bakugo, that level of force is not permitted at close range!"

Bad.

Too personal again.

Bakugo looked at the nearest camera, then back at me. His smile turned sharp and wounded.

"Young Bakugo," he repeated softly.

The class heard that. So did the teachers. Worse, Bakugo heard what All Might did not say: he had been watching us too closely, and not only as a teacher.

"How long?"

I did not answer.

"How long has he been watching you?"

Below, metal screeched.

Uraraka did not wait for my answer either.

"Iida!" she shouted. "Left side!"

Not my call. Hers.

I twisted enough to see through the broken floor. Uraraka had one hand on a floating desk and one foot hooked under a loose railing, using both like anchors. Three chunks of debris hung above the room, but not over the bomb. Over the route Iida would need if he chose to intercept her.

She had not made a pile.

She had made a choice.

Iida saw it a half second after I did. His engines flared.

"Hero Team, your trajectory is noted!"

"Then move!" Uraraka yelled.

He did. Exactly where she made him go.

Bakugo followed my eyes.

His face changed.

"Round Face."

He released me and blasted toward the hole.

I moved after him because pain made people stupid and I was people.

The below 1% rule was not enough.

My calf buckled before the burst finished.

The Ledger flashed again.

[No airborne recovery]

[Ribs compromised]

[Shoulder load unsafe]

Still no solution. Just red text naming the mistake while I made it.

I caught Bakugo around the waist anyway.

He twisted in my grip. His palm came back toward my face.

"Get off!"

"Busy."

"She won't make it."

"She doesn't need you to decide that."

He snarled and tried to blast us both sideways.

I let my knees fold.

His grip, my weight, and Uraraka's field all disagreed about which way down was. For half a breath, Bakugo lost the line he wanted. I hooked my foot behind his ankle and shoved off the wall with my bad leg.

The pain was immediate and mean.

We fell through the hole together.

"Deku!"

"You wanted answers!"

We dropped into the weapon room in a mess of dust and broken concrete.

Iida stood near the mock bomb with one arm raised in villainous warning, glasses crooked from whatever Uraraka had already done to his dignity. Uraraka floated two desks, a ceiling panel, and what looked like an entire light fixture above him.

Her face when she saw us fall was terrified.

Also furious.

"Not there!" she shouted.

Right.

Her debris was not aimed at the weapon. It was aimed at Iida's path. If I ruined that by landing in the wrong place, I was not helping. I was just another object she had to work around.

I slammed my good palm against a floating panel and shoved myself away from the centerline.

My shoulder objected with language.

Bakugo saw the opening and kicked toward her.

Uraraka did not look at me.

She did not ask permission.

She touched the release.

Gravity returned in pieces.

The light fixture dropped first, not onto Iida, but into the space that would make him brake. The panel followed at an angle. One desk fell just enough to force him to choose between charging the bomb and catching hard furniture before it shattered across the floor.

Iida chose safety.

Of course he did.

His engines roared as he cut sideways, one hand out to intercept the panel, the other reaching for the light fixture.

Uraraka rolled under the falling edge, slapped one hand against the mock weapon, and shouted, "Got it!"

The buzzer sounded.

"Hero Team wins!" All Might announced.

For one beautiful second, everyone stopped.

Then the light fixture hit the floor.

The crash made all four of us flinch. Uraraka landed on her back, laughing breathlessly.

Iida froze with one hand outstretched, face caught between horror and admiration.

"A highly unorthodox maneuver."

"I'll take it," she said.

"It was not praise."

"Still taking it."

I pushed myself upright on one elbow.

My shoulder vetoed the motion so hard I had to lie back down.

Bakugo sat a few feet away in the rubble, staring at his half-jammed gauntlet latch. The room's cameras turned toward us.

Aizawa would love that.

All Might's voice came through the speakers, bright in a way that fooled nobody who knew him.

"Combat exercise concluded! Please proceed to the observation room after medical confirmation!"

Medical confirmation.

Polite phrasing for stop damaging my successor in front of everyone.

Bakugo heard it. His gaze snapped from the speaker to me.

There was the cost.

Not just bruises. Not just a calf that kept shaking or ribs that made breathing petty. All Might had put concern into the room, and now Bakugo had another piece of evidence he could turn into a weapon.

Uraraka crawled over to me.

"Do I ask if you're okay?"

"You can."

"Are you?"

"Deeply no."

"Great. Honesty. Terrible timing."

"Working on both."

She offered a hand. I took it with my left. She tried to pull. I tried to help. My leg spasmed.

We both failed.

Iida appeared on my other side.

"Allow me."

"As a villain?" I asked.

"As a classmate."

That shut me up.

He and Uraraka got me standing, which was not dignified but did keep me from becoming a permanent feature of Ground Beta. Bakugo stood on his own.

Of course he did.

He brushed dust from his costume, looked at Uraraka, then at Iida. Last, me.

"You set that up?"

Uraraka answered before I could.

"I did."

Two words. No apology in them.

Bakugo's jaw tightened.

He had wanted the match to prove a simple thing: Deku lied, Deku got power, Deku needed to be cracked open until the truth came out.

Instead, Uraraka had won the objective. Iida had been outmaneuvered because his virtues had constraints. And I had refused to punch him when he asked for it.

No simple answer.

He hated that.

So did I, a little.

We limped toward the exit under the cameras. Uraraka stayed close enough to catch me if my leg quit. Iida walked on my other side without making a speech, which was possibly the kindest thing he had done all day.

Behind us, Bakugo's voice cut low through the dust.

"This isn't over."

I believed him.

My phone buzzed before I could answer.

One message.

Unknown number.

Midoriya Izuku. Report to Faculty Room B tomorrow morning. - Aizawa

Bakugo saw the screen.

Then he looked at me.

His smile came back, slow and sharp.

"Looks like I'm not the only one asking."

My calf shook. My ribs hurt. My shoulder burned where I had chosen not to hit him.