The start of the basketball match.
Niren.
The ball released by Uraraka fell downward.
Bakugo and I jumped at the same time.
He had the advantage of staying in the air longer.
I have the advantage of being a head taller. If I activate five markers at once, I won't lose in speed...
Almost flattened myself, but it was worth it.
I was quicker.
With great effort, I stretched out my arm and barely grazed the ball with my fingertips...
BOOM!
It felt like an angry little sun punched me in the gut.
The blast sent me flying back a meter, and I clumsily glided down, using the last remaining marker o̶n̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶t̶ to brake before landing, avoiding smashing my precious steel eggs.
It was even harder to keep my eyes on the ball the whole time.
Bakugo, clutching it in one hand, surged forward.
One hand's worth of explosions wasn't enough—he started falling, tried to catch the ball with his chin...
Setsuna, surrounding the blonde with multiple parts of her body, "locked him in" and knocked the ball free with a quick elbow strike.
She tossed it to herself, ready to catch it with her hand...
Katsuki roared, blasting Setsuna's pieces away, but couldn't reach the ball—he lost his height and crashed down hard on the floor near me.
I clapped my hands, marking my spots, and ran past him. Hope it didn't look like I was mocking him…
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mina scoop up some acid and skillfully fling it at the levitating hand holding the ball.
"Whoa-whoa!"
Tsuna dodged it, but she dropped the ball.
The ball flew ahead of me, caught by Iida racing past. He screeched to a halt, his sneakers squealing on the polished floor, hesitating—should he pass or take it himself...
Alas, Iida Tenya forgot a basic rule.
"Never turn your back on a psycho with grenades!"
Restless Bakugo exploded again, with such force that both the ball and Iida were blasted away.
The precious brown sphere spun up into the air...
And then things got dangerous.
Froppy, Tsuyu Asui, stepped in: from across the court, with incredible accuracy, she shot out her creepy Orochimaru-like tongue, snatched the ball, and flung it back like a trebuchet, a perfect three-pointer aimed right at our hoop!
I dashed toward the basket, Bakugo and Setsuna too...
We were all too late.
But it didn't matter—this was someone else's time to shine.
Hanta Sero bent his arms at the elbows and fired two tape strands into the air.
One veered left, while the other hit the ball squarely.
And… didn't stop it.
But—it slowed it down.
And the ever-present Setsuna swooped in again, dodging Katsuki's leap, and with a powerful strike, smacked the ball out of our penalty zone...
Sending it flying out of bounds.
"Great."
Some might see this as a missed opportunity.
I saw it as a chance.
It was just the perfect pass... for whoever could catch it, right?
Boosting myself with a push from both sneakers, I flew out of bounds after the ball, which was following a steep arc.
I zoomed past the stands, the entire first row gasping and shrinking back.
Well, almost everyone. Sitting at the end, Yui didn't flinch, her royal calm intact.
In fact, she extended her hand, and I gave her a high five as I ran by.
I love this girl!
The ball reached the peak of its arc and started falling...
...springing up and planting my right foot on the step of the next empty row, I launched myself toward the ceiling and back into the court...
...keeping my eyes fixed on the ball, I swung my arms like a butterfly swimmer, gaining even more height and moving left...
...stretching out my hands...
...crossing the ball's falling trajectory...
...and caught it!
As long as the ball hasn't touched the floor or, at worst, the wall outside the court, it's still in play, right?
Yeah, yeah, the rules of regular basketball are a massive stretch when it comes to superhuman matches! But that's something we should have thought about earlier, gentlemen.
Having already calculated the trajectory, I was now ready to dive down like a comet toward the enemy's penalty zone.
But there was a problem—the ball was slowing down, my hands were occupied, my markers on my legs and arms were already used up, and no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn't reach the hoop. Tokoyami had already summoned his shadow, covering the entire basket with its claws...
A no-win situation, huh? Asui's about to knock me out with her massive tongue, and I'm about to lose.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
I got new markers for my hands from my friend, the ball.
Falling, I threw the ball toward the basket again, over the greedy feathers of Tokoyami's shadow.
I watched it fly, rapidly losing altitude.
Of course, I missed—it was obvious it was going wide.
Right. And it hits the backboard. Bounces off.
And there, someone else will pick it up...
Plummeting a meter, I suddenly pushed off the air with my hands again—propelling myself under the basket.
I slipped beneath Dark Shadow's claws...
...almost "stepped" on the air, multiplying the force with my left foot—the one with a saved-up marker—and hurled myself higher, changing trajectory at almost a right angle...
...grabbed the rim with one hand...
...caught the ball bouncing off the backboard with the other...
...and slammed it into the hoop.
Slam dunk!
***
After my First Blood, we managed to score another point pretty easily, but then Katsuki completely lost it—and he came back strong! What was surprising was that his anger didn't stop him from playing; on the contrary, it made him play better! If only everyone had that kind of response…
He blasted around with his explosions just as well as I did, maybe even more mobile than me. His reflexes were something else, like straight out of a fantasy. And in the context of our match, one more solid advantage his quirk had was that it not only kept him airborne but also knocked everyone else away, preventing anyone from getting close enough to snatch the ball.
I couldn't help but feel a bit jealous—Niren Shoda has to physically push opponents for the same effect, but that's kind of a no-no in basketball…
Blond Bomb, aka Bakugo, even started making tactical moves and stopped ignoring the existence of his teammates. His first real display of teamwork, by the way. Heck, he even had Midoriya, whom he'd originally banned from the field, running around!
To be honest, I didn't like the way they interacted. Or rather... oddly enough, I couldn't find fault with Bakugo's behavior this time. He treated everyone the same way, except for a few teachers.
But Midoriya reacted to him like a beaten child.
Which would've been funny if it wasn't so sad and disgusting because, in reality, it was Katsuki who came off as the child.
This wasn't just because of his spoiled behavior but also his vocabulary: if adults in, let's say, an English-speaking country swear using actual curse words, the classic insults for little kids would be something like "poop" or "dummy." In Japan, kids at that age have similar phrases. But here, it's more like "die" or "shit."
Guess what Bakugo's language is full of?
"Agh, you shitty crap-handed moron! Where are you throwing the ball, you shithead?! Shut up and die! Just die already!"
Yeah, classic.
To be fair, I also think the word shit in my head, but, well, I think it in a different language... anyway, not the point.
With his self-centeredness, explosive temperament, and his deliberately disheveled clothes—besides those low-hanging rapper-style pants, he's usually missing a tie, and his shirt's always half-untucked—he's more of a spoiled child than anything else.
Sure, maybe some people saw him as a terrifying bully, especially with that amazing quirk, but to me, he just provoked an irresistible urge to mock him.
That said, regardless of how much of a little b*tch Bakugo might seem, they managed to catch up, and from then on, it was neck and neck, nose to nose... you get the idea.
On our side, it was mostly me and Setsuna carrying the team; Tenya wasn't doing too well at basketball—his maneuverability was a catastrophe. And Hanta had the hoop completely locked down with his tape.
Their side was being carried by Bakugo, who seemed to be pushing himself for a year's worth of effort, and Tsuyu, who had great range. Mina and Katsuki regularly wiped out Hanta's tape, forcing him to repair his "installation" with a string of curses. Tokoyami was a solid defender, slow compared to us but a regular block machine.
Kirishima and Midoriya were mostly just spectators. But they didn't complain—they cheered with the team when we scored and felt the loss with us when we didn't. Honestly, perfect teammates!
Then came the first injuries. First, Tsuyu, who leapt high to catch the ball—she has amazing jumps, as you know—got blasted by Bakugo and had to leave the game. Nothing serious, but she's always been cautious, as I've noticed.
After some hesitation, Ochako stepped in for her, swapping roles. Now, whenever we scrambled for the ball in the center, it was slightly slick with Tsuyu's frog saliva. I can't decide whether that's gross or... give me two of those!
Their team didn't get worse with the substitution; if anything, they improved—Uraraka didn't hesitate to use her quirk on both the ball and us. I wasn't spared from floating in zero gravity.
It's a weird feeling—no difference in external or internal pressure, no sensation of being physically lighter. It's more like you're inside an invisible bubble, floating harmlessly like "I'm a little cloud, floating, floating…"
After I clapped my hands and flew from one end of the court to the other, interrupting an attack, she wisely avoided lightening me again—not worth the trouble. So, there was only one occurrence of the "turbo-rocket Niren" moment.
But Bakugo copied my trick and ended up scoring two slam dunks. Bastard.
Then Midoriya bumped into Iida. Midoriya wasn't all that useful in the game, only touching the ball a couple of times... but I was sure that it'd be super helpful for him, given his talent for observing. He'd probably figured that out already.
Anyway, Iida got the worst of it in the collision. He tried to brake, but his speed and the slick floor didn't mix well. He veered off and headbutted into the bleachers.
"Izuku," I whispered while the girls fussed over Tenya, who'd cut his eyebrow and was dramatically playing the role of a dying hero in the arms of a beautiful lady. "Why aren't you using your quirk? Now's a good time to try. Feel the Force, Izuku!"
My green-haired companion slumped, missing the reference.
Yeah, he's definitely not Yoda yet…
"I... still can't use it without getting hurt," he admitted, which I already knew. "I mean, you already know that. And I'm afraid I'll hurt one of you... plus, Recovery Girl told me to get injured less. I'm there too often."
"But why are you always trying to use it at full power?" I frowned. "Look at Katsuki. He can scale his explosions. Iida can adjust his speed in different 'gears.' And I can... increase my strength to varying degrees, as you know. Why not try boosting yourself by, I dunno, ten percent?"
"But I don't know how!" he burst out, raising his eyes in frustration. "I've tried so many times, but it's like... like a wild river that I can't control or limit! I've tried so many times... even with the egg-boiling thing, and…"
"Oh, come on, that's not true."
"What do you mean, Niren?"
"You managed to channel all that overwhelming power into a single finger, Izuku! To use your analogy, you 'built a dam' and isolated that 'river'!"
"Well, yeah… but I broke my fingers every time…"
"I get that. But since you're comparing your power to a river… maybe you could evenly spread the strength you've 'dammed up' in your finger across your whole body? What's the surface area of a finger? Less than one percent, I bet. They say a palm is one percent of your body surface, so…"
I stopped.
Midoriya had blue-screened and was rebooting.
I could only shrug and smile quietly to myself.
Not that I knew for sure whether it would work or not—maybe there was something similar in the anime, but I simply didn't remember. The only thing I recalled was the green lightning around Izuku and the fact that he started fighting with his legs instead of his hands. Oh, and the gloves he used to shoot air blasts—yeah, that too. But how exactly he mastered his powers? I forgot.
But he did master them! Over time, of course. And pretty late, honestly—what I was certain of was that even during the Sports Festival, which is happening next month, Izuku was still breaking his fingers. In that world. But not in mine.
As for my suggestion, it's pretty reasonable. Power regulation is like a basic option for almost every quirk I know. Seriously, nearly everyone—Mina, Kirishima, myself, Setsuna, Yui, Tokoyami, and many others—can choose to go all out at ten, fifty, or one hundred percent. Approx, of course. Only Toru and mutants like Mashirao seem to be exceptions, and even that's debatable.
The guys finally handled Tenya—brilliant Momo whipped up some cotton, bandages, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol (her skills never cease to amaze me; she's simply indispensable)—and our hero was given an honorary seat in the bleachers.
But now, we were down a player.
"Anyone willing to help out our team?" I played the "audience assistance" card. I didn't want to end the match prematurely—we were leading, but typically you play to thirty-three points. Plus, I was having fun. "I can't promise insurance or full-time benefits, but we do have a subscription to free first aid from certified specialists!"
The crowd chuckled, but no one volunteered.
A shame...
"Get your asses off the bench and onto the court!" Bakugo roared. He turned toward the gym exit: "Hey, you! Half-and-half! Stop hiding and come prove you're worth something! Or are you too scared?!"
"You should be a carnival barker," I quipped.
"Shut your damn mouth! I'm winning this damn match, and I'm beating you!" He lunged at me, glaring into my eyes with his bloodshot pupils. He was drenched in sweat, breathing heavily, and his very presence was unpleasant in every sense. "You don't get to make any shitty excuses about having an incomplete team!"
Well, no one else volunteered…
"I find you organoleptically unpleasant..." I mused. "However…"
"What'd you say?!"
"…there's a seed of truth deep within your words, wise chihuahua."
While the wise one processed that, and Izuku, snapping out of his daze, let out a nervous giggle, I took a few steps toward the opposite bleachers and addressed Shoto, who sat in the last row, right by the doorway, watching us with his usual impassive stare:
"Bakugo's right about something. You wouldn't be watching if you weren't interested in testing your strength, right? I think," let's see how long those markers on the clock hands have been ticking... "forty-three minutes is enough time to gauge how many strong opponents are among us. And since you're still watching the match... are you in, or what?"
I almost added, "Come on, Clark Kent, show us what you're really made of," but caught myself, realizing they wouldn't get the reference. Ugh, what kind of barbarians surround me…