A Hero's Dirty Work (Villain Deku / Vigilante Deku au)

Semifinals

Shoto Todoroki stomped his foot, sending out another wave of ice for good measure. The student he was facing from 1-B with the comic book quirk—literally named Manga—was quite impressive, but he wasn't enough of a powerhouse to combat Shoto's ice. On top of that, Manga was one of the kids Shoto had picked for the cavalry battle, so he was already familiar with the quirk's functionality.

Just like his previous match, this one didn't last long. Luckily, he was able to control himself this time. He winced as he remembered what he'd done last time; he needed to remember to do something nice for Sero to make up for it.

After melting his ice, Shoto went back to the student stands and sat with the rest of 1-A, minus Mineta. Apparently Michi had sent him to the nurse's office just before the tournament began. Surprisingly, he didn't get any shit from Monoma peeking over the wall, this time.

Actually, "Where's Michi?" Shoto asked. He hadn't seen him since his fight against Monoma, which had raised even more questions about what the hell was going on with Michi Hamasaki / Izuku Midoriya. Shoto couldn't wait to see Mina's face when she realized she admitted she had a crush on him right to his secret identity. For most people, there would be more pressing concerns when they found out that a missing child had shown up under a new identity and with a new face after being abducted by villains. For Mina, Shoto had no doubt that the first thing on her mind would be the confusing situation of Michi crushing on her while she rejected him in favor of his secret identity.

That was some Ladybug-level shit right there.

He turned his attention to the competition, pushing his questions to the back of his mind. The biggest threats to him now were Kacchan, Tokoyami, and Shinso. Michi was also dangerous, but he didn't think even Michi's combat expertise would be able to counter his ice without his gear.

On the other hand, Kacchan had just created an explosion last match that was nearly as big as Shoto's ice wave, Dark Shadow was incredibly fast, and he still didn't understand why Shinso's opponents kept helping him. It was obviously a brainwashing quirk, but he seemed to have a ridiculous number of activation methods that made it almost unfairly overpowered, and that was even from Shoto's perspective. Yeah, his quirk was extremely powerful, but if Shinso could just take over his mind, it was useless.

The next match was Shinso against Tokoyami; it seemed he would have one less opponent to worry about, after this. He hoped Tokoyami won. Fighting raw power with raw power was a less worrisome prospect than going against a mysterious mind-control ability.

Unfortunately, things didn't go his way. Almost as if he was just trying to show off the range of his abilities, Shinso taunted Dark Shadow as he dodged, slowly making the entity enraged. Then, when it seemed like it was all over for the lilac-haired student, he slammed his hand down on Dark Shadow after it made a pass at him, and it froze.

"Drag Tokoyami out of the ring for me," Shinso said calmly with his confident, almost bored smile still firmly in place.

"No! Dark Shadow, don't!" Tokoyami cried, trying to reason with his quirk as it began pulling him towards the boundary line. Dark Shadow didn't respond, not showing any reaction until the match was over and Shinso had won.

So his power even worked on quirks, huh? Did it work on animals? Maybe it was just an enhanced version of Koda's Anivoice, where it worked on humans too. Shoto hummed, glancing up at the tournament brackets. He needed to figure it out fast, because Hitoshi Shinso was his next opponent.

Unfortunately, he didn't have much to go on. Actually, he was pretty certain that the lack of information was an intentional ploy devised by none other than Michi Hamasaki, the same kid that was going to school with heroes and two childhood friends without them realizing it. Needless to say, it was a very good plan, and Shoto would need more time to figure it out than the twenty minutes he had.