[The Fox and the Hare] Chapter 24 - Reveal (Patreon)

AN: new chapter up, enjoy!

Chapter 24 - Reveal

Two hours passed since the matchups had been announced, and Jiro was pulling at her short hair in despair.

"We're dead. We're so dead!"

Unlike his teammate, Naruto was much calmer than before. After getting over his initial surprise at hearing that he would be pitted against All Might, for some reason, the seemingly insurmountable obstacle in front of him lit a fire in his chest.

"We can't give up without even trying," Naruto said firmly. "We don't even have to defeat him, just escaping would count as a win for us too."

"Escape from All Might? How? Have you not seen any videos of him? He's even faster than a bullet train, it's impossible!"

"He can't be in two places at once. Hear me out..."

⁂

According to the schedule made by Eraserhead, Naruto and Kyoka were the last out of their class to take the practical exam. Although everyone had already finished their own exams, they were all gathered in the control room where the fight between All Might and their two classmates was going to be streamed. Uzumaki Naruto's incredible display of power and tenacity at USJ left a deep impression on the 1-A class. They couldn't wait to see how long he was going to last against the No. 1 Hero.

"Ohmygosh! It's starting!" Kaminari said and let out a girlish squeal of excitement. Although he was his classmate, Kaminari was a complete fanboy when it came to Naruto.

"For real, for real. I'm getting goosebumps!" Ojiro also said, his strong tail beating the air behind him.

"This is going to be so freaking awesome!" Kirishima shouted and punched his fists together.

"Poor Jiro! I'm almost scared to watch this," Mina said while biting her nails in worry.

"I hope All Might will go easy on her," Occhaco also said, her hands joined in prayer.

Todoroki was also watching the monitors unblinkingly. Now that Katsuki Bakugo had been expelled, Uzumaki Naruto was the only one he considered worthy of being his rival in his class. No, more than that, at this point, Naruto was more than just a rival. He was like a mountain that he wanted to surpass.

⁂

"We've got the forest battlefield. It looks like luck is on our side," Naruto said.

"Are you sure this is going to work? Just the air pressure coming from his punches will be enough to render all our tactics useless," Jiro said, unable to let go of her pessimism.

"I don't think he's going to use such big moves because if he destroys the whole forest, principal Nezu will have his hide," Naruto said, and the girl involuntarily snickered at the mental image of it. That little joke did wonders to ease some of her anxiety. "Moreover, he's going to hold back against us too. We're just students; he won't go all out against us because he doesn't want to seriously injure us or, worse, kill us."

With his sound reasoning, the girl did get some of her courage back. All Might's power and accomplishments were so intimidating that she had forgotten all about the limitations that were going to serve as a handicap for him.

"All right, let's do this!" she said in a strong voice, trying to pump herself up.

"Now that's more like it!" Naruto said with a grin and raised his fist.

The girl mirrored his smile as she bumped fists with him.

As she watched Naruto put on his white fox mask and leave, Jiro also put on a regular gas mask and started running towards her position while carrying a loudspeaker in her hand (both were devices that she had obtained from Yaoyorozu earlier that day).

⁂

"Is it really okay for you to engage All Might all by yourself?" Jiro's voice rang in Naruto's earpiece.

"Our quirks don't match up well if we're close to each other. Aizawa-sensei put us together on purpose to see if we've improved from the beginning of the year until now. Don't feel like you're not contributing enough - our strategy wouldn't be possible if not for you. Trust me on this, we'll both pass the exam with flying colours!"

He was speaking with such confidence that it was contagious, and Kyoka got swept up in his mood too.

When the horn signalling the start of the exam rang, Naruto pulled the pin of a smoke grenade and threw it on the ground. Then, climbed up in a tree and from there on, he started launching himself from one tree to another with such speed that it was impossible to follow with the naked eye. Naruto was in his element.

⁂

"What the heck?!" Kaminari unknowingly cussed out. He couldn't believe what he was watching.

His classmates were sharing his feelings too. Even the rest of the teachers present in the control room were watching the monitors with wide eyes.

"You sure he has a Fox Quirk, not a Gibbon Quirk? How in the world can he move like that?" Snipe asked.

Naruto's tree-jumping speed was so insane and precise that even the drone cameras couldn't keep up with his manoeuvres, and they had to fly from above and film him from a distance. He looked like a golden blur of light as he zig-zagged from one tree branch to another and dropped smoke grenades in his wake.

"He must've dropped seven or eight military-grade smoke grenades. Forests are environments with very low visibility already. Adding so many smoke grenades on top of it could be a double-edged sword because it will render both parties blind," Ectoplasm said.

"That's where Jiro's quirk will come into play," Professor Mic said. "With her echolocation, she doesn't need eyesight to distinguish their surroundings perfectly. It's a rather simple strategy, but it makes use of their quirks to the fullest without hindering each other."

"Will that work against someone like All Might, though?" Cementos asked.

"Principal Nezu, can you turn on the infrared mode for the cameras? The smoke is getting too dense for us to make sense of anything," Aizawa said.

⁂

"Not a bad strategy, Uzumaki-shonen," All Might said out loud as he walked boldly through the forest, seemingly not afraid of any traps or ambushes. "However, what will your plan amount to if I do this?"

After saying those words, All Might cocked his fist back and shouted:

"Smash!"

As he threw a punch, an unreal wind pressure was stirred by his fist, and all the smoke in a fan-shaped area 15 metres in front of him dissipated.

The Number 1 Hero turned around and was about to throw another punch to clear out the smoke in another section of his surroundings when the blade of a knife whirred past his thigh like a bullet, missing him only by an inch.

"Oi, oi..." All Might said in a low tone when he saw how the kunai that missed his leg pierced into the trunk of a tree so deeply that only its handle was still visible. "It looks like I need to get serious with you two."

⁂

"Ugh, I missed," Naruto said. "I need more precise instructions. Be as detailed as you can."

"Y-Yes, sorry! I'm on it," Jiro said in his earpiece.

Right after throwing his kunai, Naruto quickly jumped away from his place and broke into a run. And it was not a second too early because All Might's followed with a "smash" that not only cleared out all the smoke in the direction from where the blade had come, but the wind pressure accompanying his punch also flattened all the trees in its way.

"That was a close one! He's at 11 o'clock from your position, 9 metres away. There are two tree trunks between the two of you. He is guarding his front with one hand and covering his face with the other. It looks like he can't breathe well because of the smoke."

"Roger," Naruto replied, taking out another kunai.

⁂

"Shit!" All Might let out a cuss word as Naruto's second kunai did not miss this time around, burying deeply into his right thigh.

He pulled the blade from his leg and forced his muscles to temporarily shut close the wound.

'This is a terrific strategy,' All Might thought as he ducked and rolled on the ground to avoid another two knives.

He couldn't afford to continuously fire off his super punches to disperse all the smoke because he would become a sitting target for the fox boy's knife-throwing skill. But if he didn't clear out the smoke, Naruto would just continue to throw knives at him behind the protection of the foliage of the forest and the smoke.

Sure, if he used his full power, he could obliterate the entire forest section used for the practical exam with one punch. However, gravely injuring his students was the last thing he wanted, much less, God forbid, killing them.

'The problem is that this kid isn't the type of opponent against whom I can afford to hold back.'

But when Naruto threw another kunai at him and missed, All Might sprung into action.

'This is my chance!'

⁂

"You missed him this t-" Kyoka began to say in his earpiece but she suddenly cried out: "He jumped towards you! RUN!"

Unlike the previous time when he would just try to disperse the dense curtain of smoke and the thick foliage of the forest with his super punches, this time around, All Might chose to jump in the direction from where the kunai had been thrown at him.

"Detroit Smash!" All Might screamed as he fell from the sky and punched down explosively.

A deep crater appeared in the ground, and the wind pressure uprooted all the trees in a 10-metre radius, dissipating all the smoke in the surrounding area.

Unfortunately for him, the fox boy was nowhere to be found. He had escaped.

"I'm turning on my earbuds' active noise cancelling. Use your sound attack now!" Naruto said in his earpiece and then he also flattened his fox ears against his head for good measure.

"Roger!"

Just a moment after All Might stood up from the crater that he had created, an ear-splitting sound blasted from across the forest and caught him full-on.

However, All Might was not recognised as the strongest hero for no reason. Kyoka's sound attack, which would have ruptured the eardrums of most people and driven them to unconsciousness, did little more than make him feel a little dizzy.

"I got you!" All Might laughed out loud and jumped against the powerful sound waves, rushing straight to Kyoka, whose location was now exposed.

But right as All Might was about to fire down yet another one of his super punches, he was momentarily stunned at the sight in front of his eyes: instead of seeing the frightened visage of the skinny and short-haired girl, a fox boy stood there grinning from one ear to another while covering his fox ears with his hands.

In that split second before landing, All Might's eyes fell on the very long cable coming from the back of the loudspeaker sitting at Naruto's feet and going several dozen metres away, to the place where Kyoka Jiro was connected to it with her earphone jack earlobes.

He had been bamboozled.

'I can still make it in time!' All Might decided as he punched at Naruto with just enough force to knock him out.

He planned to incapacitate him quickly and then rush after Jiro, who had already started running towards the exit. The girl would need 10 seconds at most to reach the exit, but, with his speed, All Might was more than confident in capturing her in time.

"What-?!"

Despite the tremendous speed of his punch, Naruto not only managed to easily avoid his powerful swing but he even jumped towards All Might with a flying knee, smashing it right into his left side.

Even as All Might puked a mouthful of blood from Naruto kneeing him as hard as he could into the wounded side of his body (the injury that he had gotten 7 years ago in his deadly battle with AFO), the boy did not stop his attack and threw the yellow cuffs towards All Might's forearm.

But, in a show of combat experience befitting his status as the Number 1 Hero, when it looked like Naruto was just about to succeed in cuffing him up, All Might smashed his head into Naruto's temple, sending him flying back like a broken kite. Leaving Naruto where he had collapsed, he turned around and rushed towards Kyoka.

Although he crawled up to his feet right away, that headbutt to his temple left Naruto so dizzy momentarily that he couldn't remember where he was. But he quickly got a hold of himself. He didn't want to lose. He had promised Kyoka that they would pass the practical exam with flying colours together.

Just as All Might turned around and lunged towards Jiro, a golden chain unexpectedly wrapped around his ankle.

The Number 1 Hero stumbled and fell flat on his face.

⁂

"WE WON! I CAN'T BELIEVE WE WON!" Kyoka Jiro yelled as she ran back into the forest and swept Naruto into a bear hug.

She was so happy that she was crying, especially after how close their victory had been. But she realised what she was doing after a few moments and quickly broke away. She was about to apologise for thoughtlessly getting into his personal space like that when her eyes fell on the four golden chains that were still protruding from his lower back.

"Naruto-san... What is that?"

When Naruto took out his Adamantine Sealing Chains to trip All Might, Kyoka had been running as if her life depended on it to pass the finish line. She had not had the time or leisure to look behind her. It was only now that she was finally seeing the ethereal golden chains coming out of his back.

While Kyoka was stunned with surprise, a pair of heavy hands fell on her and Naruto's heads and ruffled their hair roughly.

"Aaargh! I can't believe I let my guard down like that! I did think about the threat of your chains in the back of my mind, but I didn't think you'd actually use them now, at the very end, after you didn't take them out at all during our fight!" All Might said, torn between his feelings of happiness and pride at his students for beating him and frustration at himself for omitting such an important detail.

"But you won fair and square. Both of you! Congratulations! You've passed the exam!"

"Thank you for going easy on us, sensei," Naruto said, bowing to show his respect. It wasn't just empty talk. All Might did hold back a lot of his power for the sake of testing them in this practical exam.

⁂

Kyoka Jiro was not the only one who was shocked by the appearance of Naruto's second quirk. The rest of his classmates bombarded him with questions the very moment they met. Although it was evening, close to the sunset, and he was supposed to finally go back home for the day, they wouldn't let him get away that easily.

"What the heck was that?!" Sero asked wide-eyed.

"It's my second quirk," Naruto said, rubbing the back of his head in slight embarrassment as he became the centre of his classmates' attention once again.

"How is it even possible for someone to have two quirks?" Yaoyorozu said in wonder.

"Doesn't Todoroki have two quirks too?" Naruto diverted the question towards Todoroki, whose unblinking staring was secretly creeping him out.

"Technically, it's only one quirk that allows him to control both fire and ice-" Yaoyorozu began to explain but her voice was drowned by the rest of her classmates who began to ask their own questions too.

"So what's with those chains? Are they like super tough? Or do they have any special abilities?" Kaminari asked, his eyes in the shape of stars as he looked at Naruto.

"It's similar to Aizawa's sensei's quirk," Naruto answered.

But that statement left his classmates in disbelief.

"Are you for real?"

"I can prove it," Naruto said before turning towards Sero, "Oi, Sero, can you make some tape with your quirk?"

"You're not going to do something weird to me with those chains, are you?" the boy said as he eyed the golden chains coming out of Naruto's back warily.

"Don't worry, it won't hurt or anything like it."

As one of the chains wrapped around Sero's forearm, to his stupefaction, he couldn't produce tape from his elbows anymore.

"I can't believe it! It's really like Aizawa-sensei's quirk! Oh, wait, I can make tape now?" he said in confusion when he saw that now he could still make tape even though the chain was still wrapped around his arm.

"I can choose whether I cancel someone's quirk or not. This way I can not only use them against villains, but I could also use them to support or rescue my teammates without cancelling their quirks," Naruto said.

Ever since All Might's visit to the Uzumaki family and their meal together, after he revealed to them that All For One was dead, Naruto no longer had any reasons to neglect his Adamantine Sealing Chains quirk.

Now that there were no deadly hidden threats to his family's safety, having such a powerful tool at his disposal and not using it at all would be downright idiotic. From the time he came back from his internship with Mirko until the start of the term exams, Naruto had not just studied for his exams. During that period of time, he had started training with his Adamantine Sealing Chains too, thus getting the ability to turn off their quirk-cancelling aspect at will.

"Oy! Isn't this quirk too hella op?" Kirishima said in disbelief when he heard Naruto's explanation.

"It's not as good as Aizawa-sensei's quirk. The chains can be avoided if you're fast enough, and their range isn't infinite either. Meanwhile, sensei only needs to look in your direction, and it's over. But the advantage that my chains have over his Erasure quirk is that they don't have a time limit like sensei whose cancelling ability stops when he blinks. So if I do catch someone with the chains, you could say it's my win."

"Jeez, man, you were already freakishly strong just with your weapons and your Fox Quirk which keeps evolving like it's nobody's business. But now you got yet another quirk on top of it? Talk about living in an unfair world," Mashirao Ojiro said with a shake of his head.

"Naruto-kun, forgive me for asking this, but I'd like to be direct. I'm always like this. If you had such a powerful quirk, why didn't you use it at USJ?" the frog girl suddenly asked.

Her question was something that everyone had been secretly pondering inwardly, but nobody had had the guts to voice it out aside from her. Mineta Minoru was killed, and Tsuyu herself had been mauled to near death by a shark-headed villain. Her torso was still bearing the scars left by those vicious shark fangs. If Naruto had had such a powerful quirk back then, he could have defeated Nomu right away and come to the rest of his classmates' rescue. Maybe, just maybe, he could've gotten there in time to save at least Mineta too.

"I couldn't use it back then. I'm sorry," Naruto said, showing a conflicted expression. "Until recently, my family was part of something like a witness protection program. A powerful villain had been after these chains since the time of my grand-grandmother."

He had no obligation to share his family history with them, but he felt the need to explain why he had not taken out the chain at all in the past. He didn't want his classmates and friends to think that he was a selfish asshole who would rather let other people die for no other reason than hiding his trump cards.

"What do you mean by that?" Ochaco asked befuddled.

"There was a villain who could steal other people's quirk-" Naruto began to say, only to be cut off by his classmates.

"No way!" several of them exclaimed at the same time.

As far as they knew, quirks couldn't be stolen or passed on to others. It was common knowledge.

"I'm not lying. You can ask All Might if you don't believe me," Naruto said. "Until about a month or two ago, I had never used this quirk willingly. My mother has the same quirk too, but she has only recently registered it with the Hero Public Safety Commission. Until a few weeks ago, it was a complete secret. Actually, not even my father knew about mom's quirk or mine."

"Come to think of it, I've heard rumours on the internet about someone who could supposedly take away other people's quirks and gift them to others..." Kaminari said while scratching his chin.

"But I thought that was only an urban legend!" Yaoyorozu said.

"I thought so too," Kaminari said, shrugging his shoulders.

Quite a few of them had heard about those rumours on the internet too, but they had not taken them seriously. After all, the internet was not lacking in all sorts of urban legends and conspiracy theories. If one were to take all of those seriously, they would be treated like a crazy person by their peers.

"What changed now? Why did you decide to reveal your quirk to the world?" Tokoyami, who had been silent until then, asked.

"You know that I almost died too against that bio-engineered creature at USJ, right? If Mirko had arrived a second later, I would've died. But I still didn't use my chains. I had long since been ready to die rather than putting my parents' lives at risk."

His classmates had nothing to retort against that. They had all watched the video of the battle at the USJ more than once, and they knew Naruto was telling the truth. He had been only one second away from death, yet he had still refused to use his quirk. They could also recall how Naruto had almost quit UA High as well after the USJ incident due to his worry for his family's safety, being afraid that the villains might target his loved ones in the future.

"But I found out a few weeks ago that the villain who had been targeting my family has died. So I don't have a reason to hide them anymore. Now, I can finally give it my all without holding anything back. I can finally focus on getting stronger without anything to worry about."

With their curiosity sated, the 1-A students finally stopped pressing Naruto with their questions and started packing their things to go home.

Due to his large and bushy fox tails, Naruto took a longer time than the rest of the boys to come out of the shower. By the time he was finally done drying his tails with a big tower and dressing back in his uniform, he was the only one left in the locker room.

When he came out of the locker room, however, to his surprise, a blond-haired boy was waiting for him by the door. It was his classmate, Yuga Aoyama.

"Yo, are you okay?" Naruto asked.

The reason for his question was that, due to the peculiar ability of Fox Quirk's sense of smell, he could feel a strong scent of anxiety and fear wafting off from the boy.

"Um, I wanted to congratulate you for passing the exam," Aoyama said with a smile, but his voice was shaking a little.

Naruto looked at him weirdly. He had not interacted all that much with Aoyama until then because his flashy and flamboyant style and especially his self-centred behaviour every day kind of put off most of his classmates, Naruto included.

"Ah, thank you," he uttered, not knowing what else to say.

"I want to-, um," Aoyama said, but then, all of a sudden, his scent changed from one of fear to one of despair. Fear was still present, but the despair he felt was overwhelming.

"Oi, dude, are you alright?" Naruto asked in worry when he felt the abrupt shift in his emotions and stepped closer to him.

"Ahaha, I'm alright!" Aoyama said, forcing himself to laugh as he took a few steps back. "Sorry for taking up your time, Naruto-kun. See you later at the training camp. Au revoir!" he said and winked before running away, not giving Naruto any chance to probe him any further.

"What's with him?" Naruto said to himself. He was completely weirded out by his strange behaviour.

But, as he started walking home, the thought of his little sister jumping in his arms when he returned banished all thoughts about Yuga Aoyama from his mind.