Right now though, they and Todoroki were enemies, and Venom had no plans of not taking full advantage of Todoroki hamstringing his own powers.
Without fire, there was little to fear from Todoroki.
...
If this had been a real fight, they would have had to fear impalement, but without that… Well, there wasnt much to fear for the two of them.
They would crush him with ease. Unless Todoroki managed to work through his issues and bring forth his flames during battle, this fight was as good as won.
---
Izuku stared in shock at the giant piece of ice that had seemingly materialized out of nowhere to encase Sero, going upwards, up far over the arena.
It was like someone had dropped an iceberg in the middle of the arena.
He couldn't see Sero, but apparently, the poor guy was immobilized at the epicenter of the suddenly appearing iceberg. In any case, he was declared the loser due to not being able to move.
Izuku stood by the railing, looking down as in a massive flash of flame the iceberg was turned to nothing more than water vapor.
He could feel his friends gazes on his back as he stared down in silence. They all understood, just as he did. He would have to face that enormous power in the next round.
After the whole ice mountain was gone, and the two guys had exited the ring, the next pair was 1-A's Kaminari against 1-B's Shiozaki Ibara, the girl with the thorny green plant hair.
It was briefly put on halt, however, as the girl apparently took great offense at being referred to as a thorny assassin by Present Mic, and called him out on it, proclaiming that as a hero, she was planning on dedicating herself to doing the work of "Our Lord Jesus", not to committing murders. Afterwards, she made a huge flowery speech about God's mercy upon criminals and the condemned.
Izuku, who had very little knowledge of Christianity, beyond some very vague memories of personal rituals his father had done, took her word for it.
Venom, on the other hand, seemed fascinated by her.
"So that's a Christian."
"You… You don't need to say that like she's an animal at a zoo."
Venom didn't answer. Instead, he just kept staring down on her, giving her speech.
"Why do you care about that anyway? I mean… Why would You care about that kinda thing?"
-It is our experience that if there is any truth to a planet's religious beliefs, then 9 times out of 10, it's to be found in the dominant religion of the planet. In this case, that would be the Christian God.-
Izuku stared at him, then turned his head back to look behind him, but none of the other guys paid him any heed, all were focused on Ibara.
As he replied, he did so with a whisper.
"What… What, you think there is some truth to… God?"
-That depends heavily on what you mean. If you're asking if we believe this possible God of man created the universe, then we would answer hell no. We've heard that claim far, far too many times by Gods across the universe to take it seriously. If there is some God that is the one above all others, we've yet to meet it.-
Izuku just stared at him in dumbfounded silence as he continued, his mouth open.
-On the other hand, if you're asking if some divine creature kickstarted your race's rise as sentient creatures, or made you whole cloth from scratch, then yeah, that's completely possible. That's not too out of the ordinary.-
Izuku continued to stare at him, before finally managing a weak reply.
"You're… Talking like… You've actually met Gods…"
This time it was Venom's turn to look at him dumbfounded.
-We have. We were created by one, remember?-
Izuku blinked. Oh yeah, that… Knull guy. Venom had been rather adamant that Knull was the true divine God of the Klyntar race, though to be honest, Izuku hadn't really fully bought it when Venom had explained his backstory to his mom.
He… Kinda had assumed Knull was just some super proto symbiote of some kind. The fact he had been killed kinda made that theory way more believable. After all, what kind of God could die?
Venom seemingly could sense, or at least guess what Izuku was thinking at the moment.
-He was a GOD, Izuku. You would have known that if you had ever been unfortunate enough to meet him.-
Below, Ibara finally stopped her speech, the battle finally began, and the proud follower of Christ crushed her blonde opponent in less than 10 seconds.
...
"So what do you think about Iida-Kun's chances?"
Izuku and Uraraka both sat at the front seat as they stared down at their friend walking into the arena to face Mei Hatsume.
"He's gonna lose, that much is obvious."
Venom's tone was harsh and dismissive, he still hadn't forgiven Iida for ditching them during the second round.
Izuku did not contradict him though.
Iida Tenya was one of the more impressive students of 1-A. He might not be in the absolute top of the class, but Izuku would have placed him firmly below the tops of 1-A. That was the problem though. He wasn't in the top of the class as far as battle abilities were concerned, and Izuku somehow knew, down to his bones, that Iida wouldn't win this next round.
Maybe it was some other, deeper sense than sight, or maybe it was just that he understood Mei's capabilities as she had shown them so far, while also knowing that she hadn't shown the full extent of her technology yet.
Either way, as the two combatants, entered the arena, Iida, tall and powerfully built, wearing a grave expression of seriousness. Mei with a new set of black lense goggles, and a carefree smile, suggesting she didn't have a care in the world.
She was a bit different than she had been in the second round of the tournament.
She had ditched the school gym jacket, and instead wore only a black top, which Izuku would have recognized as a sports bra if he had been more knowledgeable about such things.
Now that she wasn't wearing a jacket, Izuku now saw that from the harness around her stomach, a piece of machinery went up her back, looking kinda like a pseudo exoskeleton like spine.
She also wore that same set of steampunk looking gauntlets she had had on when last he spoke to her, only now both of them had cables connecting them to the metal harness.
She had also attached the plain metal Tobe to said harness as well. Other than that, she remained pretty unchanged. Her boots were the same, and so were both her metal arms and her harness itself.
It was a strange feeling looking down at her, knowing that this girl had come closer to his old goals of becoming a Hero despite being quirkless than he ever had.
Well, technically not entirely true. He still was quirkless, his powers instead coming from an alien source, rather than the next stage of evolution.
The point still stood though.
This girl had come closer to making his old dreams a reality than he ever had. In fact, he had pretty much abandoned the idea of quirkless people becoming heroes once he had gotten powers of his own. It was just now that he realized that fact.
He wasn't entirely sure how to feel about any of it.
...
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