39 Chapter 38 – Battle Trials (part 2)

Kyotaka's POV (this is the last chapter in her POV)

As we walked toward the building in which our battle trial would happen, I said to Hagakure, my teammate:

"Hagakure, we are against Todoroki and Shoji. Shoji will most likely grow ears on his arm using his quirk to try and locate us. Once they know where we are, Todoroki will probably try to freeze us without getting too close to avoid fighting us."

"But this won't work, my quirk isn't some sorts of energy blast but control over sound, so when the battle starts, I make us completely silent so that Shoji won't be able to locate us while making sound somewhere else to trick them into thinking we will be at the third floor while we are at the fifth one," I continued, explaining my plan.

It was evident that Todoroki was overconfident, so I planned to exploit that, he would try to finish this fast, thinking that he's stronger than me, and that would be his first and last mistake.

"What I want you to do, Hagakure, is to sneak up on Shoji, I will make you completely silent, and to bind the capture tape to him. I will take care of Todoroki. Okay? Any question?", I explained to the invisible girl what she would need to do.

It was a bad idea to put her against Todoroki, because he could use simply cover everything around him in ice and he would find her, so made her take care of Shoji.

I could see she was still a little surprised by everything I had said, but she seemed to understand the plan.

"Okay, let's do this! But are you sure you will be able to beat Todoroki, he's like, really powerful," she said, a bit worried about me.

"I'm very powerful myself, don't worry and focus on how you will beat Shoji," I reassured her.

Now that Hagakure knew the plan, it was time to put it in application. The first thing we did was to move the nuclear bomb to the fifth floor. Then, I used my quirk to put a temporary bubble of silence around my feet and around Hagakure's feet and hands, it would silence our footsteps and her hands for 10 minutes, while Hagakure removed her gloves and boots, making her completely invisible.

It was another application of my quirk, which was immensely useful in stealth situations, and it made my teammate almost impossible to find. The reason I didn't put one on my hands was that I often made sound from them with my quirk.

There were only a couple of seconds remaining before the start of the exercise, so I started to imitate to pairs of footsteps on the third floor to trick Shoji, once he would try to find us.

"AND…START"

I heard All Might give the start signal and used echolocation to know the position of everything in the building and boosted my hearing by a lot to be able to hear Todoroki and Shoji, even if they were five stories below me.

I saw? (using echolocation) Shoji transform part of his arms into ears and then heard him talk to his teammate.

"Both on the third floor, they will ambush us if we try to go there. Hagakure appears to bo near the door and will probably try to take out one of us if we go in. Honowa is further in a room."

"Get outside, it's about the get frosty in there. Our opponents think they're playing a defensive game, but it means nothing to me," Todoroki replied to him.

He then froze the entire building, getting a gasp from Hagakure that I quickly silenced. I used sound blast near our feet to destroy the ice before it could freeze us and signalled to Hakagure that she could go and try to capture Shoji.

Then, I left the building using a window on the fifth floor and, using sound blast to propel myself, I got down near a window of the third floor where I waited for Todoroki to arrive. All while being completely silent, as always. I also had stopped using echolocation and my hearing was back to normal, as I didn't need it anymore.

While I did this, Todoroki got up to the third floor and was searching for us in different rooms, until he went into a room with a lot of windows, the room I was outside of.

When he entered to room, I exploded all of the windows on the opposite side than the one where I was, distracting him and getting him to shoot ice blast toward them by reflex and to look at them, thus looking away from where I was.

Not giving him time to think, I created an extremely high frequency sound that I aimed at him that cause tremendous pain and a severe headache, but had no long-term consequences. He clutched his head and pain, again by reflex and before he could start to shoot ice everywhere, I used a powerful sound blast to launch him against a wall at a high speed.

He was momentarily stunned, in pain, and very confused, so when I used my quirk to mess up his sense of balance, he fell to the ground, hard.

Yes, I could do that, as the sense of balance came from the ears, so with the right frequency, I could disrupt someone's balance, but it didn't last long.

But it lasted long enough for me to quickly enter the room from outside the window, propelling myself with sound blasts and tie the capture tape around his ankle.

All went exactly as I had planned, with Todoroki probably not even realizing what really happened, it was that fast.

While I used a lot of moves in this fight, it was an extremely fast fight, it didn't even last five seconds from the moment I exploded the windows to the moment I captured him, so it was normal he couldn't react.

The moment I captured Todoroki, All Might's voice rang into the speakers.

"VILLAIN TEAM WINS!!!"

I was satisfied to know that Hagakure had been able to capture Shoji, but it wasn't really surprising. He didn't know I had a sound quirk, so he was probably relying on his ear to hear if anything went wrong, he definitely didn't expect a completely silent Hagakure, he probably thought she was frozen.

When I heard that we won, I removed all sound bubbles and high frequency sounds I was producing and helped Todoroki on his feet. He was very confused and it was readable on his normally expressionless face. I apologized to him, as the moves I had used had probably caused him extreme pain and confusion.

"Sorry, if my quirk caused you pain, I didn't go easy on you, but I can say the same thing of you."

He coldly 'hmph'ed me and he was clearly upset, but probably more because he lost than the pain I had put him through.

I walked back to where the rest of the class was watching, it was clear that they had a million questions to ask me, but first, All Might spoke.

"So, who do you all think is the MVP of this match and I want to hear what you think happened."

"Well, Kyotaka was clearly the MVP of this match, she defeated Todoroki, who was the biggest threat and formulated the plan that allowed them to win, although I am not sure exactly how…" Momo explained.

It was true that, from an outsider's perspective and without sound, it was very hard to tell what happened.

"Good, you analytic skills impress me, young Yaoyaorozu. Anyone as an idea how did Young Honowa managed to trick and defeat the hero team?" All Might asked.

"No one? Young Honowa, why don't you explain what happened."

"Well, you need to know that my quirk isn't an energy-based quirk, but a sound-based one. With that in mind, I knew that Shoji would use his quirk to grow ears and try to locate us, so I silenced Hagakure and myself, and made sound, footsteps, to be precise, at the third floor to make them think we were there," I started.

"I also knew that Todoroki would be overconfident in his own capabilities and try to finish the exercise as quickly as he could, so I wasn't surprised when he froze the while building, I was ready. To prevent being trapped by Todoroki's ice, I used sound blast to destroy the ice before it could get to my teammate and my feet."

"After that, I made Hagakure's footsteps silent and sent her after Shoji while I went for Todoroki. Once he was where I wanted him to be, I ambushed him, overwhelmed him with my quirk and attached the capture tape to his feet while Hagakure did the same with Shoji, I finished explaining what I had done during the Battle Trial and the rest of the class, including Shoji and Todoroki, were stunned.

I also heard Todoroki mutter "Damn, she read me like an open book" under his breath, and it was true. But it's not my fault if he was extremely easy to read. I had only known him for less than a week and I could already deduce what he would do.

I had to admit I was very observant and good at reading people, though.

After a short moment, questions came flying at me.

"So you have a sound quirk? Did you hide it?"

"You had predicted all the Todoroki would do?"

"Yes, I hid some aspects of my quirk as I suspected I would have to fight some of you at some point. Yes, I had deduced what they would do."

Fortunately, All Might called in the next team for the Battle Trial.

The next few battles were more uneventful, as most of the powerhouses of the class had already done theirs. Sadly, Kyoka lost hers, but it was understandable, she was against Momo.

Finally, the class was over. After All Might congratulated us and told us that we would receive our grades the next day, we changed back to our uniforms and headed back to our classroom, before going home. I was very mentally tired after everything that happened today.

And I dared hope for a peaceful day…