"The top 42 from this round will move on!" cried Midnight over the loudspeakers. "And now the main selection really begins! The press corp's going to be jumping out of their seats, so give it all you've got! Now on to the second event! A calvary battle!"

  The remaining students started buzzing with conjecture and anticipation.

  "Participants will, on their own, form teams of two to four members each and get into a horse-and-rider formation! The rules are fundamentally the same as those of an ordinary calvary battle—snag your opponent's headbands while guarding your own—but with one exception: each of you has been assigned a point value based on your ranking in the last event! Individual point values start at five from the bottom, incrementing by five each time. So the student who took 42nd place is worth five points, 41st ten, 40th fifteen…get it? But…our first place participant is worth…ten million points!"

  The attention of every competitor swiveled to zero in on Midoriya, who had taken first in the last event. Minoru, on the other hand, was surveying everyone except Midoriya. He wasn't sure if his placement in the last event would upset the formation of the teams. Although partnering with Shoji as he did the first time around was a possibility, he had to at least try to break up the super team that Todoroki was likely to form by asking Yaoyorozu.

  His motives were even (mostly) pure! They'd made a pretty good team during the first event. Him getting to ride her, well that was just a nice bonus.

  "Yaoyorozu!" he cried, worming his way between a pair of Class B students.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder, and he hurried her way. "Do you want to team up? We did pretty well in the first event together!"

  Yaoyorozu shook her head. "Sorry, Mineta. I'm teaming up with Todoroki for this event."

  Damn it! He was too slow. "Oh. That's cool." Aaaand he was inadvertently making bad puns. Real smooth.

  No time to mope, though; he'd have to fall back to his original plan: partnering with Shoji and Tsuyu, but doing it right. He dove back into the crowd and made his way over to the towering, masked figure of Shoji.

  "Shoji, Shoji!" he called. "Please be on my team! I'm too small to be part of a horse, but with your size and duplicate arms, you'd be able to hide my entire body, right?"

  Shoji's eyes sharpened in abrupt interest, and a mouth formed on one of his arms near Minoru's height. "Great idea, Mineta. But how will we capture any headbands?"

  "I've got an idea for that. Do you see Tsu—I mean Asui?"

  Shoji held up another of his arms, an eyeball forming at the end, and without a word, he scooped up Minoru and strode through the crowd, easily navigating his way over to a morose-looking Tsuyu. Why no one had snagged her was a mystery to Minoru; her tongue was a clear aggressive advantage, and she'd placed just behind himself and Yaoyorozu in the obstacle course.

  "Tsuyu!" cried Minoru. "Team up with Shoji and me! He's going to be the horse, and we'll hide between his arms!"

  Tsuyu's eyes lit up. "Oh, that's a good idea! Count me in!"

  Shoji placed Minoru on the ground, and he gestured them to come closer. "Do you think you can carry anyone else, Shoji?"

  The big heteromorph shook his head.

  "No worries, the three of us should be plenty to win this thing. But let's talk strategy."

  "We're going for Midoriya, right?" asked Tsuyu. "You can stick his team in place, and I can snag his headband with my tongue."

  Minoru shook his head. "You're right that you're our offensive power, but no. Gunning for Midoriya is a trap. There's what—" He did a quick mental calculation. "—a little north of 4,000 points between everyone's headbands except Midoriya's, right? So even if we snagged the 10 million points…heck, if we snag any of Midoriya's team's headbands, we'll have a massive target painted on our backs because that one headband is so arbitrarily high that even collecting every other headband wouldn't beat it."

  "So we go for the high value headbands other than Midoriya's then? Makes sense," said Shoji.

  "Close," said Minoru. "Except look at Todoroki and Bakugo; they're clearly not going to accept anything other than first place, which means they'll both be gunning for Midoriya hard, and that's bound to get ugly. And they've got a lot of the highest placed folks on their team."

  Tsuyu croaked a laugh. "Then we go after everyone who placed in the middle."

  "That's right," said Minoru with a slightly sadistic grin. "We're going to show Class B exactly why they need to fear us. There's only a two hundred point difference between Aoyama in 42nd place and Todoroki in 2nd, which means two of those Class B mid-runner headbands is equivalent to grabbing Todoroki's."

  "I'm convinced," said Shoji through one of his arm-mouths. "Let's win this thing."

  Minoru rubbed his hands together and gave his best villainous smile. "Oh, I fully intend to. Now, can you try forming a space around your back with your arms for Tsuyu and me to hide in? We need to figure out how best to manage offense and defense, and while we're doing that, I'll tell you about the two people we absolutely must avoid at all costs…"

  "Let's get a battle cry!" shouted Present Mic over the loudspeakers. "Here comes the starting signal! Blood begets blood in the U.A. grand match!"

  Minoru peered out of the front gap between Shoji's arms from where he crouched on the larger boy's back. Shoji was able to almost completely enclose Mineta and Tsuyu in a cocoon of skin, with gaps only at the very front and very back. Currently Tsuyu was stationed at the back while Minoru looked out the front; should one of them spot a likely target, they'd agreed to swap. Minoru was fairly certain that one of the Class B kids last year had stolen their headband because all three of them were facing forward; possibly the girl with vines for hair, since she could easily have manipulated her vines through the gap at the back when they were distracted with trying to steal Midoriya's headband.

  He still wasn't sure why he'd been so laser-focused on placing first back then. Honestly, he was a little disappointed none of his classmates had realized that Midoriya's point value made no sense aside from encouraging the students to inadvertently play to the crowd. Everyone in Class 1-A was a little too focused on the idea of "being number one" instead of being the best hero they could be.

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  Not that he'd been any different, he supposed. It had taken quite a few years before that drive was fully beaten out of him.

  "Formed your teams? Made your plans? Too bad if you haven't!" boomed Present Mic over the loudspeakers. "Here we go! The countdown to this brutal battle royale. Three!"

  Minoru leaned slightly out and took a good look at the teams to either side of them. During their quick strategy session, they'd agreed that he would wear the headband and serve as spotter.

  "Two!"

  The team with the Class B hardening Quirk user—Tetsutetsu, he thought he was called—was nearby. If Minoru was doing his math right, their headband was actually worth more than Todoroki's.

  "One!"

  "Shoji, head for the team with the girl with the green vine hair and the knock-off Kirishima. They're our first target."

  Shoji nodded.

  "START!"

  Pandemonium ensued as virtually everyone immediately began to converge on Midoriya's team. Unfortunately, that included the team with Tetsutetsu, and Shoji ended up chasing after them.

  "Mineta, a team is following us," said Tsuyu from behind him.

  "Okay, swap with me. I'll make sure they can't get too close while you take a shot at the hardening guy, then maybe we can try for our pursuers while we reposition."

  Minoru crawled around, bracing himself on Shoji's arms so he could look behind them, while Tsuyu moved to the front. The Class B team with the pretty foreign student was in hot pursuit behind them—Tsunotori, he thought. However, it was only a two-person team and if memory served, both placed low in the first round. "Scratch going after our pursuers, Shoji. They don't have enough points to make it worth it. I'll try to head them off and look for a better target."

  Minoru started tossing grapeshot towards Team Tsunotori, aiming more for the ground ahead of them than trying to stick it directly to the pair. Fortunately for him, they evidently didn't know about his Quirk and the centipede-looking horse of the pair stepped right onto one of them, arresting his movement and sending them crashing down onto several more grapeshot.

  Seeing Tsunotori immobilized, the team with the red-haired Kendo as the rider redirected from chasing after the team with the copycat Quirk user toward Tsunotori.

  "I missed!" said Tsuyu.

  "Leave them for now!" said Minoru. "Shoji, give Tsuyu a shot at the red-haired girl behind us, but watch out for my grapeshot!"

  Shoji pivoted, giving Minoru a look at the larger part of the field. Team Tetsutetsu had turned away from Shoji after successfully avoiding Tsuyu's attack and was engaging Midoriya's team. Midoriya started to sink into the ground due to one of their Quirks, but then suddenly their whole team went rocketing up into the air. Looked like the support item creator had joined them, and Midoriya was using her jetpack.

  "Got them!" crowed Tsuyu in triumph, and Minoru reached behind himself to snag the headbands she'd stolen and looped them around his neck.

  "Back toward the hardening team!" he shouted. "They're totally focused on Midoriya. I'll keep Kendo off us."

  Shoji once again pivoted, and Minoru started hurling grapeshot as fast as he could without getting them stuck to Shoji's arms. Kendo's team had been in hot pursuit, but they veered off when they saw the minefield Minoru was laying.

  "Shoji, to your left!" yelled Tsuyu and a moment later was handing Minoru another headband. "Got another one!"

  He looped it around his neck, and as they passed right next to a startled trio of Class B students he tossed several grapeshot, luckily landing a couple right near the feet of the lead student, a heteromorph with a strange-looking yellow head. The team stumbled right into them, and while they didn't go down like Tsunotori's team, they weren't going anywhere.

  "Clear behind us!" called Minoru to his teammates.

  "Hold still for a moment, Shoji!" said Tsuyu and Shoji skidded to a halt. A moment later she was handing Minoru yet another headband. "Oh, that hardening guy didn't like that at all!"

  "Hold tight!" said one of Shoji's mouths one of his arms, and Minoru braced himself against a pair of arms as Shoji took off running at an angle away from the team they'd just stolen the headband from. There was an impact against the flesh between his sets of arms, and Shoji staggered. "That girl with the vine hair really packs a punch!"

  "Just run!" grunted Minoru. "We're holding on."

  "Not that way!" shouted Tsuyu. "Todoroki's surrounded and I don't want to find out what happens to a frog when it's struck by lightning!"

  Minoru jolted again as Shoji took off running towards the edges of the match. It was barely in time. Although he was being bounced around pretty badly, Minoru caught sight of Todoroki behind them pulling an insulated sheet around the bulk of his team while Kaminari let loose with a massive electric shock.

  Oh crap, he was reaching toward the ground with a rod of ice he'd manifested with his right hand! "Jump, Shoji!" shrieked Minoru. "Ice incoming!"

  A massive sheet of ice spread outwards from Todoroki, and Shoji just barely managed to vault into the air as it drew near. If they'd been any closer and immobilized by Kaminari, that would have been it for them. Unfortunately, although they escaped being immobilized by the ice, Shoji's legs still slipped out from under himself and Minoru found himself pressed in a sudden hug as Shoji collapsed and slid several feet.

  "Sorry," grunted Shoji. "Minoru, Asui, you both okay?"

  "Call me Tsuyu," said Tsuyu faintly.

  "I'm alright, too," Minoru chimed in.

  Shoji spread his arms out and carefully levered himself to his feet, giving Minoru his first unobstructed view of the playing field since the event began. Todoroki was facing off with Midoriya and Bakugo was in some sort of weird explosive slap fight with the Quirk cloner.

  He made a snap decision; the class power-houses could fight it out for first and second. They were taking everything else. "Shoji, Tsuyu, we're going after everyone stuck in Todoroki's ice. Call out if you see anyone gunning for us!"

  Shoji took off at a slow jog as he enclosed the pair on his back in his arms once more, likely due to the now-uneven footing, and Minoru resumed his position at the back of their little trio to watch out for any attackers while Tsuyu started trying for headbands from every team they could get close to. Although the team with the brainwasher attempted to get close to them multiple times, they successfully avoided him, and after what felt like barely a minute a countdown started over the loudspeakers until at last…

  "TIME'S UP! Let's see who the top four teams are right now!"

  The students involved in the calvary battles who could still move slowed to a stop, many of them unconsciously looking upward towards the loudspeakers where Present Mic's voice was emanating.

  "In first place, Team Todoroki! In second place, Team Bakugo! In third place, Team Mineta! And in fourth place, Team Mid—huh?! Whoa! Team Shinso?!"

  As Shoji helped Minoru and Tsuyu down from his back, Minoru glanced over at Midoriya, feeling conflicted. He'd done it. He'd made it into the final event, but at the cost of one the classmates he admired most. And indeed, Midoriya was collapsed on his knees looking as if he was in abject despair. He was pretty sure Midoriya would be alright once they announced the final event and he realized that they only had fifteen of the sixteen students they needed to complete the bracket, but still.

  Weirdly, Todoroki was looking unhappy as well, despite stealing and keeping the 10 million point headband and landing himself in first place.

  "Great job, guys," said Tsuyu, pulling Minoru from musing about his moody classmates.

  He turned to face Shoji and Tsuyu with a smile that felt like it was practically splitting his face. "That was all you two. Way to go Shoji, Tsuyu!"

  Shoji shook his head. "We wouldn't have come up with that strategy if it weren't for you. And you were right about that Shinso guy. I kept an eye on him, and he didn't have any headbands at all until the very end of the match, and then people were literally handing theirs to him as soon as he got close."

  Minoru was saved from needing to try and justify his knowledge of Shinso's Quirk by the loudspeaker. "We'll proceed to the afternoon portion after a one-hour lunch break! See you then!"

  I'm old enough that I saw the original X-Men movie when it came out, and those early super-hero movies…well, they had some pretty rough writing in places. A certain bad line has stuck with me all these years, and given Tsuyu has frog powers and runs afoul of Kaminari's electric attack in canon…well, I just couldn't help myself. If you caught the reference, congratulations! You're as nerdy as me!

  Next chapter, we're on to the 1-v-1 battles. How well will Minoru do?!