Branching Paths

**Branching Paths, belongs to Kasumi12346 and it should not be edited or used without the author's permission.**

On one nice mid-spring day a group of students were sitting on a clear grassy field facing their teacher. There wasn't a tree in sight and the grass was very green. It was indeed a perfect day to be outside and Otohime Watatsumi was glad she planned this lesson this way instead of staying indoors. The students were abnormally alert, which was expected for not one of them had not heard of the rumors of the teacher that stood before them: Otohime. The Grey Hero who did things her own way and saved people her own ways. They were also alert because each and every one of them were fully aware of Otohime short and violent temper and every one of them were too afraid of her temper to dare to test her patience and see if the rumors about her temper were true.

She was in her typical hero outfit consisting of a long ragged cloak, white shirt, and short black pants. Her hair was a brilliant golden color and a pair of dragon golden wings sprouted out from her shoulder blades. Her golden dragon tail was swaying gently side to side and the golden horns sticking out of her head remained still. Otohime had a reason for being in her partial dragon form. For one it helped get her student's attention more effectively and for another she felt like she was going to have a panic attack half an hour ago and being in this state was helping keep the panic attack at bay. The last reason was this was no ordinary lesson.

Otohime had asked a teacher to meet her and fight her to give the students a chance to see how the two major types of hero would fight. The combat heavy and the support-based not to mention a chance to see how a Grey Hero fights. It had been only a minute since Otohime had arrived and the last students had finally arrived and had sat down. She sniffed the air and her draconic sense of smell caught the scent of a teacher coming her way.

His steps colliding against the hard metal ground alarmed the students of his arrival. As his essence became visible to those who planned to watch, a sudden burst of laughter emerged from the crowd of adolescents. Despite dealing with it for almost decade now, Osamu - The Tech Hero- was still annoyed by the obnoxious laughter of those who did not understand his suit. To him, the costume was like a piece of art that took months of trial and error to complete; it's design was flawless to the very last inch of fabric. But to the students, he was a man wearing an extremely tight suit with wires, goggles, and keyboards. "They just never get it...what I'm wearing is a work of art that simply transcends their mental capabilities." he thought, as his eye-wear blocked his displeased expression.

Eventually reaching only feet between him and the Grey Hero, Osamu greeted both the teacher and the class. He usually did not like to be put on display like this, especially since fighting is not his desired form of heroism. But part of being a hero is being put in situation you are not comfortable with and as a teacher he must show this to his pupils. "Greeting to all. For those who don't know I am the Technology Hero, Tech-no. Today, myself and the Grey Hero will show you two different forms of combat. As you have probably noticed, Otohime is a battle hero while I am a support hero. While she does have the upper hand in this situation we are here to show you, that this does not mean guaranteed defeated." Uninterested in answering any questions, Osamu walked to the simulated city, "I'll wait for your arrival."

Otohime waited a bit before following Osamu. She could have just as easily flown there, but she thought it best to keep as much of her abilities as she could a secret. The students didn't wait for Otohime to say anything, but stood up and followed behind her in silence. Obeying her very commanding presence. A couple of minutes later, Otohime found herself at the entrance of the training city. She took a deep breath as memories of when she first saw this place filled her mind. Back then she was a very mentally broken person. She had just escaped her hellish life as a lab rat and was far from recovered. Despite how broken her psyche was Otohime managed to pass the exam, but only barely. Otohime's tail twitched in agitation like it would whenever Otohime was trying to hold back a panic attack.

After a few seconds, Otohime took a deep breath to regain her composure and instructed the students to disperse to find a good place to watch. Her first steps into the training city was slow and once she was well into the training city she began to use all of her senses to find Osamu. She sniffed the air to find any trace of his scent, she stayed quiet and listened to try to hear his footsteps, and she looked around with her eyes as to not miss anything.

Rather than waiting on Otohime to arrive on the scene, Osamu took advantage of her delay and hid his presence. As a support class hero, he'd prefer not to face his target head until he either has a sufficient amount of data or it's completely necessary. As neither have been met, he carried out his plan. As the city is supposed to simulate a real life situation, it's filled with plenty of aromas that would help mask his presence, though probably not indefinitely.

In Osamu's eyes, the match started the moment Otohime walked into the facility. After finding a suitable location to camp out for the time being, Osamu began *his process*. Utilizing his costume as a supercomputer, Osamu quickly hacked into the city's cameras. There was no square inch of the city that was not surveyed by Osamu. His talent as a hacker is virtually unrivaled. Through his quirk and natural proficiency with computers, he is praised as one of the world's most notable. But his process did not stop there. As the one who designed UA's network and computer security system, it was a walk in the park to get into Otohime's file. He began to study footage, reviews, analysis, and other forms of data on his target to properly assess the threat.

As he was viewing everything on his unique piece of eyewear and navigating through the web through his costume, it appeared he was doing several weird dances that made the kids spectating through video recording burst into laughter. Aware of this, he could have easily turned off the footage, but this was suppose to be a learning activity thus he stayed on task.

Upon seeing that her opponent had yet to make an offensive move, Otohime decided to use this time to plan. She glanced around to observe and analyze her surroundings coming up with hundreds of strategies and theories of what her opponent could be doing right now. It didn't take long for her brilliant mind to come with these theories and strategies. Each and every one of them was solid in its own right. After strategizing, she looked up at one of the cameras. She could guess what Osamu was best at just by the appearance of his costume. She created a sphere of water and threw it at the camera just in case he was and ran around the city in an attempt to find and destroy cameras in the hopes of drawing her opponent out. She was a gray hero after. In the real world on a real mission property damage was not beneath a gray hero. As long as the job was done, people were saved, or prevented from being in harm's way is the first place a gray hero would do almost anything.

As the Gray Hero could not locate Osamu in sufficient amount of time, he was able to uncover a great deal information on his target. History, recorded events, test scores, etc; anything the school had on the Gray hero was accessible to the tech hero. With said information, there was many routes Osamu could take in attempt to exploit Otohime's weakness. The most obvious route would be to target her dark past and mental spike her. Usually, this would be the route Osamu would take; thinking quantitatively instead qualitatively. But in the past few years he has spent in U.A., he has developed a sense of compassion that was no present many years ago. Understanding this is an event for students, he decided bringing about her past would prove to be something traumatic for those watching thus he decided not to.

Instead, Osamu decided he'd play the long con. Once again cracking into U.A facilities, Osamu would break into the robotics department, granting him access to the entrance exams various robots. While he was aware that in due time, Otohime would be able to bypass these constructs of various size and abilities, he was hoping to buy some time in order to finish setting up his full scale plan.

Otohime had just destroyed her 20th camera when she felt a chill run down her back when pseudo-clairvoyance picked up on the approaching threat. She turned around to face the first robots to come into view and placed her hand on the ground. When her hand made contact with the ground, ice would spread out from her hand and lightly cover the ground around her in the attempt to cover the ground in a layer of slippery ice. The ice would spread for quite a long distance and after a few short moments the entire ground of the block Otohime was in was covered in ice. This would make it very hard for the robots to approach her because they will slip and fall on the ice whenever they tried to move. With the robots dealt with, Otohime would spread her wings and took off into the skies to gain an aerial view of the city and hopefully find Osamu.

Safely within the comfort of a random building, Osamu continued to assess the situation. "She seems completely unaware and struggling to find my position, this should spice things up." A few moment later, a ball of light pierced the sky. A trail of smoke lingered behind the ascending ball indicating its initial location. "Better get ready for her arrival."

Otohime turned her head in the direction of the trail of smoke and lowered herself on to the rooftop of the nearest buildings. Otohime's past had ingrained into her mind that nothing in life was easy and as such the current situation reek of a trapped. However, she knew that she couldn't just be cautious the whole fight. This was a lesson after all.

With that thought, draconic energy poured out of Otohime's body and thinly coating her skin. It compressed itself and transformed into dragon scales to provide Otohime with a thin yet very effective layer of protection. She felt the feral of a dragon grow inside her, filling her with fearlessness and resolve. Otohime bent her knees and leapt from one rooftop to another toward the smoke at speeds that would make her appear as a blur to the students.

In only a few short moments Otohime arrived at the farthest end of the trail of smoke. She dropped to the ground, ice spreading out from her feet to create a slippery surface of ice around her. "Does this mean you are ready to face me one-on-one," Otohime asked in attempt to get a response from her opponent to pinpoint his position. Otohime voice boomed loudly like the sound of thunder and traveled far thanks to her draconic lungs. "Perhaps you are too afraid and you will send more of your robots at me," Otohime continued. This time her voice was icy cold and filled with arrogance that would fill most with the desire to blindly rush out to put Otohime in her place because of how thickly it coated her voice. However, there was also a hint of control, surgical precision almost, that is normally absent from fighters who are arrogant almost as if this merely a ploy to get into his head and knowing Otohime it very well may be exactly that.

Rather than the response she was hoping for, an uncanny silence filled the air. It appeared Osamu had no intention of facing the experienced fighter head on - at least not yet. Shortly after her comments to lure him, a bright light began to pulse within a room of the building right closest to her. It continued to flicker almost instructing the gray hero to enter. What awaited her inside is unknown; it could be more robots, Osamu himself, or maybe something else; she'd have to enter to find out.

Otohime raised her arm in the direction of the building and forced the water molecules in the air in the building to move and collide with one another and the building in the same way she would when using her pseudo-telekinetic powers. The resistance she would feel from the water molecules colliding with the stuff and walls in the building allowed Otohime to form a layout and image of sorts of what is in the building in her mind. Whether it was robots or Osamu himself Otohime will soon find out what awaited her in the building.

Meanwhile, the ice was beginning to spread at a quicker rate. In only a few short moments the ice had just entered the building the flashing light came from and it was beginning to climb up the walls and spread over the floors to try to overtake the building. The ice was also growing thicker and seemingly stronger at the same rate as it was spreading thanks to the draconic energy Otohime was flowing into the ice to fortify it.

"So that's how it works..." Osamu thought to himself, obviously spectating the sight from another location. With still so many unknown variables in play, there was no chance Osamu would strike in person...yet. Through her ability, the rooms outlook was revealed: displaying a empty room with several cameras and a device that was used to flicker the light. As her ice managed to reach the room, Osamu would activate his next plan.

Suddenly, from almost every location within the arena released a booming high frequency sound that would paralyze even those with damaged hearing. How Osamu was capable of generating such a deafening sound was simple; by accessing all the devices within the arena with speakers he had each of them release a high pitched sound in sync. Even the robots that had been frozen in ice were still able to release a significant sound and due to ice it would travel faster and with more range. Escaping the sound is almost inevitable. But rather than launching a surprise attack while she’d be presumably hindered, Osamu watched to see how she’d react.

Otohime's heightened hearing made the loud sound all the more painful and it even dazed her for a brief moment. She wasted not time in clapping her hands and in casing herself in a dome of snow that would not only dampen the sound if not block it out entirely, but hide from Osamu. Otohime's continued to ring for several until Otohime recovered from the sound. Within the dome of snow Otohime snapped her hands and used her aquatic powers to summon sub-zero rain to fall from the sky onto the surrounding area. The rain would break and turn off all electronics that were exposed to the rain. In addition, it would threaten to lower Osamu's body temperature to dangerous levels should he be within range.

Such a wide range attack was something the Tech Hero was not expecting. "So it seems we're both playing the role of the villain and not caring for the surroundings." he thought, as he was forced to adjust his strategy. While the robots were damaged externally due to the pouring sub-zero rain, internally they were still sound. Designed to endure tough situations such these, the robots were still active along with other devices that were underground or protected. "If were going for destruction then let me show you what real destruction is.." But as he was about to self-destruct these robots, he realized the chaos the destruction would bring to the other facilities.

"It'll be a few minutes before the cold gets to bad here, gotta finish this...."

The rain falling down from the sky wasn't just an attack, but as Osamu would soon find out, a way to find her enemy. Otohime closed her eyes in deep concentration and focused her ability to sense water on the rain following down from the sky. After a few moments of intense concentration, Otohime was able to become fully attuned to the rain. She could "feel" the movement of the rain, and most importantly, she could feel every disturbance the rain had. Otohime would use this latter fact to search for Osamu by focusing on what the rain was landing on.

After a few moments of searching, Otohime came up empty and yet for some reason her Prescience was telling her that her opponent may possibly in a place that the cold may reach him, but not the rain. Maintaining her focus on the rain, Otohime transformed all the rain falling from the sky in the vicinity into vapor. The gentle breeze would carry the vapor into the cars, buses, and buildings with open windows and doors as well as any other form of shelter that had neither such as bus stops. This vapor would not only expand the range of her senses, but it also very thick.

The vapor that wasn't being blown into shelters was collecting together to form a thick fog that would fully envelop the small neighborhood. It was so thick that it was very hard to see through and could very well blind her opponent. Not only that, but as the vapor was formed from the sub-zero rain, it was also extremely cold. The objects and hopefully the robots as well inside the fog began to slowly freeze and become brittle. Seconds after doing so, Otohime would touch the insides of the dome of snow that surrounded her and flowed draconic energy into it before cloaking herself in the draconic energy. The draconic energy fortified the snow, turning it as hard as steel in preparation for a potential attack.

Otohime could feel her breath slowly growing shallow. She was a direct fighter and was not used to using the full range of her quirk and it was beginning to show. Not that it mattered that much. This single act of blinding and slowly destroying the robots would put pressure onto Osamu and force him to react and Otohime was prepared for it.

The tensions were rising; this battle was becoming much more serious and wide spread than he anticipated, which is saying something as he usually takes most things under consideration. If this were a real battle, he'd definitely would have moved differently and possibly chosen different moves. Otohime is a true fighter, capable of much destruction and damage. Osamu, on the other hand was not much of a fighter, rather he was a strategist and support. He cannot thrive in this type of battle. Thus the time has come.

The speakers throughout the facilities were hacked. And a voice echoed. "I surrender!" Osamu's voice echoed. Some students were surprised, while others not as much. Once again his voice echoed, "I surrender"