Chapter 93: What Happened in the Haunted House?! Momo's Triumphant Return and Bakugo's One Sided War Against the Half and Half Bastard King!

Momo climbed the last step into the waiting area and barely had time to catch her breath before Mina rammed into her side with a hug that almost sent them both tumbling over the railing.

"YAOMOMOOOOO!" Mina squealed, squeezing her tight. "That was SO COOL! You didn't even MOVE and he just went FWOOOOSH! straight off the edge! How did you come up with that?!"

"A-Ashido-san, please, I can't breathe..."

"Let her go, Mina, she's turning blue," Ren warned from the bench, though the smile on his face made it clear he wasn't in any rush to step in.

Mina released Momo with a dramatic pout and Toru took her place right away, grabbing Momo's hands and bouncing on her heels so hard that her empty sleeves flapped around like crazy.

"You were amazing, Momo-chan! Seriously, amazing! When I saw all those fibers on the floor I thought 'Oh, smart move,' but then the smoke came in, and then the ramp showed up, and that's when I realized you had set it all up way earlier! It was like watching a super complicated chess game, except one of the pieces was zooming around with motors on its legs! I couldn't look away!"

"Thank you, really," Momo managed to say while she caught her breath and fixed her gym uniform. "Though I have to admit my hands were shaking the whole time, and if Iida-san's Recipro Burst had lasted one more second, my timing would've fallen apart completely."

"But it didn't, and you won," Ren said, getting up to greet her with a light pat on her shoulder. "And that, my dear Momo, is what matters most."

Momo's cheeks warmed up and she looked away while tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

"Thank you, Ren-kun."

"Congratulations, Yaoyorozu-san, kero."

Tsuyu's voice came from the other end of the room, and when Momo turned, the frog girl was already walking toward them at her usual calm pace with a damp towel draped around her neck and a small bandage on her left forearm.

"Asui-san!" Momo bowed her head slightly. "Thank you so much."

"Call me Tsuyu-chan, kero. We've been through enough together to be on a first name basis."

"Of course, Tsuyu-chan."

Ren's gaze drifted toward the bandage on Tsuyu's arm and the faint discoloration on the left side of her neck, where the burns from the explosions still hadn't completely faded.

"Hey, Tsuyu," he said, lowering his voice a bit. "How are you feeling after your match? Bakugo didn't hold back at all."

Tsuyu looked at her bandage and flexed her fingers without showing any discomfort.

"My body's tougher than it looks, kero. I've taken harder hits in training," she said with a shrug. "I knew from the start that Bakugo-kun would be a bad matchup for me. His explosions cancel out my camouflage the moment he figures out the distance, and his aerial mobility makes it impossible to control the space, kero."

"Still, you lasted way longer than most people would have."

"Maybe, kero," Tsuyu admitted while a small, almost invisible smile pulled at her lips. "I don't regret anything. I gave it everything I had, and that's enough for me."

Mina leaned in and wrapped her arm around Tsuyu's shoulders, giving her a squeeze.

"Tsuyu-chan, you were incredible! Seriously! Don't make that face. Bakugo's basically a walking combat machine, okay? Making it that far against him is already super impressive!"

Tsuyu nodded and accepted the compliment, then her round eyes settled on Ren again with an expression hard to read.

"Speaking of combat, Hayashi-kun," Tsuyu said while tilting her head a little. "I didn't know you could do all that with your telekinesis. Lifting half the platform and blocking Jiro-chan's jacks in midair without even looking at them isn't the kind of power I expected from you, kero."

And here comes the part where everyone starts asking questions I really don't wanna answer.

"I've been training," Ren said with a casual shrug that he hoped was convincing. "Aizawa-sensei's been working us hard."

"Mmh," Tsuyu hummed, not entirely buying it. "Though I already had the feeling you were hiding things, kero. After what happened in the haunted house, I realized Hayashi-kun is a lot more complicated than he lets on."

Ren's body temperature dropped about ten degrees.

No. No, no, no. We are NOT talking about the haunted house right now.

Momo blinked and shifted her attention from Tsuyu to Ren with curiosity.

"You'd mentioned a haunted house before." She frowned slightly while piecing the conversation together. "Does that mean you all went to an amusement park?"

AND THERE IT IS. The worst possible follow up question at the worst possible moment.

Ren opened his mouth while his brain ran through every possible answer at lightspeed, finding that absolutely all of them ended in disaster.

Okay, think. What do I say? "Yeah, we went to the amusement park and spent a lovely afternoon of wholesome friendship and innocent fun." That's technically true if you cut out ninety percent of what actually happened, because the other ninety percent involved me, four girls, a dark room, and a string of erotic decisions that somehow led to an orgy.

"It was just a small outing," he said, his voice impressively steady for someone whose soul was trying to evacuate his body. "Uh, a bunch of us went together before the festival, nothing crazy."

Nothing crazy. Just a fivesome with four classmates in a haunted house that I will NEVER be able to wipe from my memory, and the worst part is I can't even call it some big calculated move because it was literally an accident that spiraled out of control. It started with Toru being Toru, which, in hindsight, should've been warning enough for anyone with half a brain cell. Three of those four girls, well, three minus the invisible pervert who started the whole thing, are still waiting for me to talk to them about it...

Tsuyu looked at Ren without blinking, and he could practically feel her deciding whether or not to share details, because the frog girl was hard to read and you never knew what she was going to say until she said it.

"Hayashi-kun kept his cool even when things got... intense in there, kero," Tsuyu said after a moment. "That's what made me think he wasn't a regular student."

TSUYU, I'M BEGGING YOU TO STOP TALKING.

"Well, I don't scare easy," Ren said with a tight smile. "Haunted houses are pretty chill once you've seen real villains."

Momo frowned and brought a finger to her chin.

"I didn't know you'd all gone to an amusement park together. Was it during the free weekend before the festival?"

"Yeah, something like that," Ren answered while he prayed for this line of questioning to have a quick and painless death.

Because apparently I have very little willpower to say no to anything involving boobs. It stops being cool and becomes just... my life.

He sighed internally and let the thought settle.

And honestly, after all of that, after being in that situation with four girls at once, I realized something I wasn't expecting. The thrill faded fast, but the mess that came after didn't, because the conversations I still haven't had, the feelings I haven't sorted out, the way Ochako looks at me without knowing what we are now, all of it is still there waiting.

"Ren-kun?"

Momo's voice pulled him back to reality and he blinked, finding her standing right in front of him with her brows knit in concern.

"You did it again," she said. "You completely got lost in your own thoughts in the middle of the conversation."

"Huh? Did I? Sorry, I was just..."

"That's the third time I've noticed it today," Momo said while shifting from a curious tone into a worried one. "A hero losing focus in the middle of a chat is one thing, but if it happens during a real fight or a rescue operation, even a fraction of a second of distraction could mean the difference between saving someone or not getting there in time."

She's not wrong, and that's the annoying part.

"Maybe you should visit Recovery Girl after the tournament," Momo suggested, her voice soft but firm. "Just to make sure there isn't something neurological causing these blackouts."

The mental image of Recovery Girl running a brain scan on me and finding nothing but perverted thoughts and isekai commentary is funnier than anything else in this festival.

"I appreciate the concern, Momo, really," he said with a warm smile, "but it's an old habit, and I've been zoning out like this long before I got here. Trust me, it's not a medical issue."

"Got here" as in "showed up in this anime world from a completely different dimension," though she doesn't need to know that part.

Momo didn't look entirely convinced, but before she could press further, two soft warm shapes pressed against his back while a pair of seemingly empty sleeves wrapped around his waist.

"You're doing it again, Ren-kun," Toru cooed while resting her chin on his shoulder. "Getting lost up there in that big bald head of yours. What are you thinking about so hard, hmm?"

That the girl currently pressing her chest against my back is the same one who set off a chain reaction of sexual chaos in a haunted house and somehow walked out without a single consequence, while I'm stuck dealing with all the emotional fallout. That's what I'm thinking about, you adorable little menace.

"Nothing important," he said out loud.

Mina picked that exact moment to push her way into the middle of the group while bouncing on her heels.

"Alright, enough about doctors!" she announced and slung an arm over Toru's shoulders. "The match we're all dying to see is next, and Bakugo and Todoroki are about to go at it down there with everything they've got, so I am NOT missing a single second. Move it and find a good spot!"

The whole group pressed against the seats as the two competitors walked out to opposite ends of the arena below, the roar of the stadium swelling into a constant rumble.

Midnight strode to the center and looked over both competitors with her eyes lit up in delight.

"This is EXACTLY what I've been waiting for!" she announced while cracking her whip against the concrete. "On one side, the young man whose raw destructive power has pulverized every opponent in his path: KATSUKI BAKUGO! And on the other, the mysterious prodigy who's only shown us a fraction of his true abilities: SHOTO TODOROKI!"

"KILL HIM, KATSUKI!" Mitsuki's voice cut through the crowd noise from somewhere in the upper bleachers, drawing surprised looks from the spectators sitting around her.

"SHUT UP, YOU OLD HAG!" Bakugo yelled back toward the stands without even looking. "I DON'T NEED YOUR DAMN CHEERING!"

"BEGIN!"

Todoroki moved first.

His right foot slammed against the platform and a massive glacier erupted from the point of contact, raising a towering wall of ice that surged across the arena floor toward Bakugo at terrifying speed, while the frozen spikes climbed higher with each meter and cast long blue shadows across the platform.

The ice was enormous, easily the biggest opening attack Todoroki had thrown in the whole tournament, and it closed the distance between them in barely a second, but Bakugo was already in the air.

BOOOOM!

Both palms detonated at the same time behind him and launched his body forward in a glowing arc above the glacier, where the heat of the twin explosions melted the tips of the ice spikes in his path and sent streams of boiling water cascading down the frozen surface.

"DON'T THINK THAT CHEAP TRICK'S GONNA WORK ON ME, HALF AND HALF!"

Bakugo adjusted his angle with a quick burst from his right hand and dove straight at Todoroki while keeping his left palm charged and glowing orange, and when Todoroki raised another wall of ice to intercept him, Bakugo punched right through it with a detonation that shattered the barrier into a shower of frozen fragments.

KRA-KOOOM!

The shockwave sent ice shards flying in every direction and Todoroki slid backward across the platform from the impact, his left arm raised to shield his face before he planted his right foot to counterattack immediately and sent a second wave of ice across the ground toward Bakugo's landing point.

Bakugo touched down and leaped to the side with an explosion before the ice could reach him, skidding across the concrete while his palms left scorch marks on the surface, with a wide and ferocious grin on his face.

"Come on, COME ON!" Bakugo roared while launching himself forward with another explosion. "Is that all you've got?! I've watched you stroll through this whole damn tournament tossing ice at people who can't fight back, and NOW you're gonna pull the SAME crap on me?!"

"BAKUGO IS RELENTLESS! HE'S TEARING THROUGH TODOROKI'S DEFENSES ONE AFTER ANOTHER WHILE TODOROKI'S TAKING A DEFENSIVE STANCE!"

Up in the stands, Mitsuki had stopped yelling to watch with her arms crossed and her jaw set, because even she could feel it: her son wanted more than a victory, he wanted to drag the real kid out into the open.

"Stubborn brat," she muttered through her teeth.

On the platform, Todoroki's breathing had grown heavier as the frost crept up his right side from the constant use of his ice, crystallizing on his arm and spreading toward his shoulder while his movements slowed down and left his reactions half a step behind where they were at the start of the match.

"You're slowing down," Bakugo growled while landing on the platform a few meters from Todoroki with his palms smoking and his breathing rough, though his eyes were burning brighter than ever. "I can see the frost on your arm. I KNOW YOU'RE HIDING SOMETHING!"

Todoroki's left hand twitched, and for an instant, barely a flicker, the faintest flash of orange light appeared at his fingertips, sending a sudden spike of heat through his left side that locked Bakugo's gaze on him instantly.

"THERE IT IS!" Bakugo shouted. "USE YOUR FIRE, YOU BASTARD!"

But the flame died before it could take shape.

Todoroki clenched his left fist and snuffed out the embers while his jaw tightened.

In the VIP area in front of All Might, a man with red hair and a scar over his left eye watched with an unreadable expression, with his arms crossed over his broad chest.

Bakugo didn't care about any of that, he only cared about the fight in front of him, and right now the match was being wasted.

"YOU THINK I WANT TO WIN LIKE THIS?!" Bakugo lunged forward and shattered the ice wall with a double palm detonation that rained fragments across the arena, grabbing Todoroki by the collar of his uniform before he could react and yanking him close until their faces were inches apart. "I DIDN'T COME TO THIS TOURNAMENT TO BEAT HALF OF YOU! GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT OR DON'T EVEN BOTHER SHOWING UP!"

Todoroki's eyes widened for barely a fraction of a second before he shoved Bakugo back with a burst of ice that forced them apart, and both of them slid backward until they planted their feet at opposite ends of the wrecked platform, panting amid crushed ice and burnt concrete.

Ren watched the screen in silence.

Bakugo can yell all he wants, but you can't force someone to fight their own demons just because you want a better opponent, because that's not how it works. Izuku's not here to snap him out of it... and I don't think Inko has either.

Todoroki raised his right arm one more time and produced a thin and brittle ice around his fist that was only a shadow of the devastating attacks he'd opened with, his body trembling from the cold while the frost already covered most of his right side and made his movements clumsy.

Bakugo watched him and the anger in his expression turned into disgust.

"Fine," Bakugo said while raising both palms. "If you're going to refuse to take this seriously, then I'll end it myself."

He crossed his arms in front of his chest and started to spin, firing explosions from both palms in a rapid sequence to gain momentum until the rotation accelerated and turned his body into a whirlwind of orange light that warped the air around him with the heat.

"HOOOWITZER..."

The crowd held its breath, Present Mic gripped his desk, and Midnight planted her feet firmly against the platform.

"IMPAAAACT!"

Bakugo hurled himself at Todoroki in a spiraling column of concentrated explosive force, with the shockwave alone tearing chunks of concrete off the platform and flinging them toward the stands.

Todoroki raised one last wall of ice and poured everything he had left into it, but it wasn't enough. The Howitzer Impact tore through the ice and slammed into Todoroki's guard with all of Bakugo's fury behind the blow, triggering a massive detonation that shook the whole stadium and sent a column of smoke and debris shooting up into the sky.

When the dust settled, Todoroki was sprawled against the safety barrier well past the out of bounds line, with his gym uniform torn and his right side completely covered in the frost his own Quirk had produced, barely conscious.

Midnight raised her whip and cracked it against the floor.

"OUT OF BOUNDS! THE WINNER IS KATSUKI BAKUGO!"

The stadium erupted into deafening noise, but Bakugo didn't celebrate, standing in the center of the wrecked platform with smoke rising from his palms and his shoulders heaving with every breath.

"Tch," he spat while turning his back on Todoroki without looking back. "What a waste."

He stomped toward the exit tunnel, walking past the cleanup crew without saying a word.

In the waiting area, the silence stretched for several seconds before Toru let out a low whistle.

"Well... that was intense."

"Bakugo-kun's really something serious, kero," Tsuyu said quietly. "He won, but he doesn't look happy about it at all."

Momo folded her hands in her lap with a thoughtful expression.

"I think... he wanted a real fight and he didn't get it, at least not the one he was looking for."

Ren didn't say anything and just leaned back in his seat to fix his gaze on the screen, where the replays were already looping Bakugo's Howitzer Impact, keeping a single calm thought in his head.

Well... Bakugo isn't my favorite character from the anime, but the guy's a stubborn pain in the ass.

And now I'm in the semifinals, possibly destined to face him.

The tournament bracket updated on the screen above them and rearranged the remaining names into the final pairings, placing Ren's name in one slot and, directly across from it...

"Oh," Mina breathed while her yellow eyes went wide as she read the screen. "Oh boy."

Ren opened his eyes, looked up at the bracket, and felt his stomach drop straight to the floor.

The universe has a sense of humor, and that sense of humor is aimed right at my bald head every damn time.

The screen glowed brightly above the waiting area while every pair of eyes in the room locked onto the same four names; the semifinals were set.

*******

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