A sudden chill cut through the air.
Nagato's keen senses flared, and without thinking, he thrust his arm outward—propelling Toru her away from his side.
In a fraction of a heartbeat, he spun, turning his serious gaze the opposite direction just as the ground beneath his feet trembled.
A massive wall of ice erupted where he'd been standing, the structure splitting the battlefield in a spectacular, curved arc—a thick crescent, blue and opaque, dividing the ruins into a C-shaped barricade.
Nagato's lips curved into a small, impressed smile. "Impressive."
From behind the glacial barricade, Todoroki emerged.
His bi-colored hair framed his determined face as he stepped forward, frost lacing his boot prints. "I'll defeat you," Todoroki declared, voice tight.
Nagato cocked his head, a smirk hovering.
"Haha. But tell me—why do you always use your ice and not your fire? I thought your quirk was hot and cold?"
For a moment, Todoroki's eyes flickered. He hesitated, the icy edge of his resolve fraying.
"I… don't want to use his quirk. It disgusts me. I'll defeat you using only my ice."
Nagato's smirk faded, replaced by a faint chill in his voice.
"So you'd hold back? You mean to beat me with only half your power because the other half belongs to your father?"
He shook his head, expression growing somber as the light around him dimmed.
Quietly, ominously, Nagato's voice grew heavy. "Is that so?"
In an instant, he vanished—a streak of warped air and chakra. He reappeared behind Todoroki, hand cocked, before Todoroki's alarm even surfaced.
Nagato drove a fist deep into Todoroki's gut, the impact echoing with sickening force. Todoroki's breath was stolen from him; blood spattered from his lips as he flew backward, crashing brutally into a wall.
Concrete cracked, pain thundered across his core.
"You still gonna hold back?" Nagato's words cut like steel.
Todoroki gasped, fighting to stay upright—but said nothing.
Nagato's eyes narrowed.
"Tch."
He raised his hand, fingers poised like a puppeteer's. "Banshō Ten'in."
An invisible force seized Todoroki, wrenching him from the rubble and pulling him through the air.
Todoroki's boots scraped in vain, his arms flailing for purchase as he was drawn inescapably toward Nagato's outstretched hand.
But just as their paths were about to collide, Todoroki raised both of his hands—ice exploded from his palm, racing in a tidal wave.
The mass engulfed Nagato in an instant, freezing him in a seamless crystal coffin, the frozen wave streaming out and binding part of the building beyond in mirrored frost.
Nagato's pull stopped, arm encased, his form caught mid-action—statuesque.
Todoroki landed, frosty breath escaped his mouth.
"Did that stop him…?"
But a low, menacing crack resounded—a fissure running down the ice coffin.
Shrrrrrr—crack!
Nagato burst free, shards scattering like splinters of blue glass.
He stepped from the ruins with barely a scratch, eyes cold as winter.
"Know Pain,"
"Accept pain." he intoned, and as his words fell, they struck Todoroki not with force, but with sudden psychic weight.
Todoroki's world jolted.
Time stilled.
The training ground, the noise of the battle, even the air—vanished.
He was alone, suspended in a vision—Nagato's genjutsu.
Todoroki's senses reeled as the world slipped, reality bending and then snapping into chilling clarity.
He stood at the shattered gate of a home that was—his own. But it was wrong. The air was thick with dust and the pungent, copper tang of blood, the whole city was in Ruins.
Flames flickered in shattered windows; jagged black smoke clawed upward into a bruised, unfeeling sky.
Walls crumbled, glass glinted in ruin, and the garden was scorched into charcoal.
His heart hammered in his chest—he staggered, panic kicking through his veins like wildfire. "Oni-chan! Oka-san! Nee-san!"
Todoroki shouted, bolting towards the wrecked entrance, hope and terror warring in his mind. His own voice echoed, desperate and thin.
Inside, horror awaited.
Strewn across the ruined entryway were bodies—corpses that shouldn't be there.
His brother's headless body sprawled obscenely across collapsed furniture. His sister was pinned high on the wall, impaled, her blood running in black, syrupy rivulets down the faded wallpaper.
"No… No, no, no!" Tears carved icy trails down Todoroki's cheeks.
He staggered to the nearest wall , hands trembling , breath quickened. His chest moved up & down, instinctively drove his fist into the wall with all his strength, hoping—insisting—it would crumble in the illusion as if this wasn't real.
Instead, splinters dug into his knuckles, cold pain reaffirming reality. It was solid—unforgivingly solid.
A raspy, strangled sound—"Ugh…"—turned Todoroki's attention.
At the far side of the ruined parlour, deep red eyes glared from the shadows.
The form stepped forward, dragging something with it… No, someone.
His mother.
She dangled helplessly in the grip of the figure's hand—her throat crushed, her lower half missing, intestines trailing.
Her lips moved.
Blood oozed.
"R…run…Shoto…"
The figure twisted and, with a sickening crack, snapped her neck.
Her head lolled, lifeless, as he released her.
She fell to the ground with a dull, final thud.
Something inside Todoroki unraveled.
His scream tore the silence.
Waves of ice erupted from every limb—jagged, immense, an avalanche of loss and fury, driving the red-eyed figure back, engulfing the corpses, burying the world in violent, climbing, churning blue and white.
Soon, everything was cold, jagged with agony—a graveyard built from his own pain.
It would not stop. The ice kept pouring, growing, until the landscape was nothing but bleak, towering mountains.
Deep blue crept into black at the icy heart of this world.
The ice turned dark bluish-black around him.
He collapsed to his knees, breath ragged, limbs barely responding, eyes blinded by sweat and frozen tears.
He waited for peace, for silence.
But in that unbearable stillness, something moved.
Through a fissure in the ice, two red eyes began to glow again—malevolent, endless.
With a tremor and a rending groan, the heavy sheets split.
The figure stepped through, dusting shards from its inhuman skin.
"This ice won't work on me," the thing uttered quietly, each word a dagger of dread.
Todoroki crawled backward, horror pulling him away, but the being strode closer, looming. Without pause, it brought its heel crashing down on a prone head—
The skull rolled toward Todoroki—his mother's, mouth agape and eyes wet , shrivelled and pleading.
"NOOO!" Todoroki screamed, eyes squeezed shut—
And then, something changed.
The cold vanished, replaced by a roaring heat.
His chest burned, fury and sorrow merging into one desperate instinct.
He raised his hand and bellowed—
"BURNNNN!"
A torrent of flame erupted from his palm, black and searing.
The inferno poured over the Spector, burning the nightmare to charcoal in a whirlwind of black steam and choking ash.
Across the wreckage, the red-eyed figure only smirked, voice echoing in the smoke:
"So you finally did it."
Todoroki staggered, confusion fragmenting the world. "What…?"
Then, the illusion snapped.
Reality crashed back down—the taste of smoke replaced by sterile gym air, his vision filled with the staccato lights of the training ground, and the scorched, cratered floor beneath him.
He looked down, hands trembling, still raised—flames dying at his fingertips, black scorch marks burned into the ground.
His own ragged breath was the only sound; his mind spun with the lingering terror.
He fell on the ground with a thud.
Off to the side, Nagato blinked, tilting his head in mild surprise, unhurt.
"Nani? You fell asleep with just that little bit of genjutsu?" He shrugged, a mixture of disappointment and amusement softening his features.
"Kids these days are so soft."
He dusted off his hands and turned, sighing as he saw Toru, chained and struggling in the upper gallery, with Momo standing over her, resolute and pale.
Momo knew, seeing Todoroki's limp collapse, that her last hope was gone.
Momo's expression flickered .
She glanced down at Nagato, then released the chains, voice thick but clear:
"We lose."