Naruto In My Hero Academia - Chapter 43

Hurt.

Tsuyu’s entire body hurt when she started to open her eyes a little. She didn’t have a blurry memory or anything like that, she could clearly remember exactly what happened to her. She had lost to Naruto in their match, and had been put through the ringer. Tsuyu tried to sit up, but her body wasn’t responding to her commands, the most she was able to move was her head, and a little of her upper body. The blanket that was covering her shifted a small amount, until a hand grabbed it and pulled it back up on her, covering her up again.

“It will take another hour or two before you can move normally. Recovery Girl took your clothes off to wrap up your ċhėst. See?” Naruto lifted up the sheets in a way that Tsuyu would be able to see, but he wouldn’t. She tilted her head a little and glanced down, and while she was wearing pants thankfully, her shirt had been taken off in favor of bandages being put on her ċhėst. The arm Naruto kicked had a giant, nasty bruise on it, the bandages on her arm only partially covering it up. “I’m sorry, I should have held back a little.” Naruto dropped the sheet on her body.

He bowed to her, his forehead against the bed she was on.

“In the match between the Creation Queen and the Powerhouse of Sugar, Yaororozu takes the win!”

“You didn’t hold back, did you? Thank you.”

“Of course I didn’t hold back, you’re tough. I promised to show you the Frog Kata. Do you still want to learn?” Naruto asked her, partially the reason why he stayed with her while she was taken to Recovery Girl. If she wanted to learn his froggy way of combat, then he would teach her how to do it. Tsuyu turned her head to look at him, before she nodded her head.

“Yes… when you threw those attacks, you were able to hit me with invisible attacks… how?” Tsuyu really wanted to ask him that. She hadn’t been able to truly dodge any of his attacks that entire fight thanks to the way he had moved. “I never saw those second attacks coming.” Tsuyu commented with a blank face, though her face was always mostly blank to be honest.

She saw Naruto clench his fist, his right one, and the second her eyes were drawn to it, Naruto’s left hand covered her eyes before she was able to see it coming.

“When frogs hunt, they don’t always use their tongues. I noticed that a frog always jumps on it’s prey the second it looks away from it, distracted by something else. The way a frog moves their body also makes it harder for people to notice them.” Naruto spoke as he pulled his hand back from her. The Frog Kata was just a style that focused on diversions and strong, hard to track, attacks that followed them if a person was being simple about it. Tsuyu looked up at the ceiling and thought on Naruto’s words, trying to put them together. “It takes being still, and being active, and combines them to form rough, rugged movements with calm and smooth transitioning attacks.” Naruto explained it as he did it again.

Tsuyu saw Naruto jerk his left arm, and the second her eyes looked at it, for even a second, Naruto’s right forearm was against her neck. Her eyes naturally jerked back to where his other arm was, after the fact.

She understood it better now, but understanding it and doing it, or even avoiding it, were a lot harder.

“Now, watch as the redundant hero himself, goes against the face of tape!”

“Seriously, Present Mic should not be the announcer. He keeps giving people dumb titles.” Naruto complained with a grin.

Redundant, that was kind of funny.

“Naruto-”

“The match only lasted for a second, before Sero threw Kirishima out of the ring with a surprise tape attack! The quickest match yet!”

“Wow, Kirishima lost to Sero. Pretty sure Todoroki is going to finish Toru in a second too… no offense to her, but the gap in their abilities is too big for her to cross right now.” Naruto hated to admit it, but either Todoroki or Bakugo were the most likely people for him to fight in the final rounds. He was surprised that Sero was making it passed round 1, considering Kirishima was strong, he had never really paid much attention to Sero though. He must have been more skilled than he was given credit for, but a surprise tape attack wouldn’t work against whoever his next opponent was.

-Todoroki vs Toru-

“Where did she go?”

Todoroki froze a small amount of random stage as he looked around for Toru, he couldn’t afford to use any big attacks, since he could accidentally kill her, or freeze her completely solid. The second the match had started, the girl had pulled her clothes off and went completely silent. It was just like during the USJ attack, when she had apparently been in the same area as he had been, and he never even noticed her. The girl, when not running her mouth, was extremely adept at stealth when nȧkėd, thanks to her Quirk. He froze another small part of the stage in front of him, and quickly turned to do it again, trying to find the girl as quickly as he could. His ice wasn’t great at finding her though, because of how much of a risk it would be to accidentally kill or seriously injure her.

She was taking advantage of how easily his Quirk could kill.

That, or she was just lucky, and she had just planned to stealth him off of the stage.

‘I’ve almost got him.’

Toru’s shirt on the ground move a little bit to the right, and Todoroki used this as his chance. Instantly, his ice crossed the stage, and froze the jacket and everything to the fight of the jacket, up to a height of 2 feet. With her speed, there would have been no way for her to avoid that.

“Todoroki wins, after a surprisingly long match for him!”

‘If I used my other side finding her would have been… no… never in a fight.’ Todoroki thought as he got off of the stage.

“Hey Todoroki, I’m not frozen! Hello!”

The entire crowd was silent, their cheers for him ended as Toru’s pants, floating in the air as she waved them above herself, showed that she was several feet to the left of his ice. Todoroki’s eyes widened in surprise, shock, at the fact that the girl had been able to fool him into thinking she had just been clumsy and tripped over her shirt. Toru started to put her pants and shoes back on.

“After new information, it seems like the verdict will be redone! Toru wins due to Todoroki leaving the ring!” Midnight, just as shocked as anyone else in the stadium, shouted into a mic. She had put him as a favorite to win the entire thing, with a Quirk as strong as his was. It was hard to believe that he had lost to such a simple strategy, against a girl whose Quirk wasn’t exactly built for straight on combat.

“Change of announcement, Toru wins!”

‘… What… but… I was confident I froze her legs in place… Damnit… I need to take some time to cool my head.’ Todoroki growled in self-anger, he had allowed his annoyance with Naruto ignoring him, to cloud his judgement against Toru. When Present Mic had announced his victory, he had just taken it at face value, and neglected to check to make sure he had actually frozen her.

“I won… really… I WON!” Toru started to jump for joy, her visible pants showing her actions.

The crowd didn’t cheer, they were just mostly still in shock.

-With Naruto-

“… Ribbit…”

“I know, I’m surprised too… I guess luck is pretty important to being a hero… I guess.” Naruto didn’t know a lot of what happened, but he was pretty sure that Toru got super lucky there. He hadn’t expected her to pull a win out of her ȧss though, no matter how lucky she was. “Anyway, I’m going to go and watch them, I was just here to make sure you were okay. Take it easy Tsuyu.” Naruto rubbed the top of her head, and grinned down at her.

“You’re like a dad ribbit.”

“Pfffft?!” Naruto spewed the air he was breathing when she said that. He hadn’t been expecting her to saw something so off the wall like that. It was literally out of nowhere, but the girl just spoke her mind. “I’m sorry, what?” Naruto asked as he quickly tried to regain his composure.

She looked up.

“… or a brother. I thought you were really scary when I saw you. I was wrong though, you’re really nice. Whenever anyone asks for help, you always try to help them. You’re very dependable. You would make a very good big brother.” Tsuyu just spoke as she looked at him. Over the course of their time together in school, she had lost her opinion on him as this man who was unapproachable and scary. Now, it was hard to even relate her first impression of him as a big grumpy guy, to the kind and caring figure that took great care of others. ‘So adorable…’ Tsuyu thought as she watched Naruto’s cheeks turn red.

He forced himself to look away from her, but his eyes kept glancing back.

So this was his embarrassed face.

“Sh-shut up, you’re head must be injured more than I thought. I better get Recovery Girl back in here.” Naruto quickly got up and started to leave the room, as quickly as possible.

‘… Really adorable…’ Tsuyu couldn’t help the thought. She didn’t know that Naruto was this bad at accepting such genuine compliments from others that he wasn’t expecting. She could consider this her little revenge for him beating her up, she could, but she wasn’t going to consider it that. She was a little surprised when Recovery Girl actually came back into the room.

-In the Stands-

“Kaminari is surprisingly strong.” Kyoka pointed out as they watched Denki take Shoji down with a massive burst of electricity. Shoji had been knocked out almost as soon as the round had started, the round taking about 2 seconds from start to finish. It had taken them awhile to clear the ice off of the stage, but when the next round started, it had started off with a very bright flash.

“Shoji is unable to continue… but neither is Denki… ref?”

“Idiot…” Kyoka palmed her forehead, and she wasn’t the only one. Denki had short-circuited his own brain, so he was just walking around with his thumbs sticking up. With a dumb looking face, while Shoji was face down on the stage. “He’s so powerful, but he is such a glass cannon.” Kyoka was embarrassed for him.

His own power was his weakness, and overusing it caused him to become helpless.

“Got word from Midnight, it seems Denki will be announced the winner!”

“Feel sorry for the guy, he got the short end of the electric Quirk stick there.” Kirishima spoke, having returned to the stands after his own humiliating defeat. The second his match had started, Sero got him with a surprise attack by wrapping him with tape. Being a close range fighter, he had been taken by surprise and thrown out of the ring. “Tenya vs Bakugo… think Tenya stands a chance?” Kirishima asked around.

Mina was just pale and sweating.

“I don’t care about that… I fight Naruto in my next fight… I’m so going to get my face punches.” Mina was shivering in fear.

“… If you want, I’ve been watching Naruto fight, and might be able to help you with a strategy.” Izuku said as he held his notebook up. He didn’t know if it would help any, but since he met Naruto, the guy had been really cool. He had taken tons of notes about how Naruto fought, his Quirk, and the way he fought without his Quirk. He had originally thought of strategies to fight Naruto himself, not that they ever worked in the past.

Mina gave him a big hug, before she took the notebook.

“Thank you! With this, I might only suffer small injuries!” Mina had never been so happy to be in the same classroom as Deku the nerd before. “I’m going to go use the bathroom, just in case.” Mina stood up with a shiver.

Never hurt to be safe.