The stadium buzzed with a new, sharper energy. The brutal chaos of the cavalry battle had whittled the field down to sixteen individual contenders. The bracket glowed on the massive screen, a map of impending duels. The first match-up drew a roar from the crowd.
Kirigaya Hiro vs. Todoroki Shoto
A murmur of intense speculation rippled through the stands. The enigmatic, physics-breaking fox versus the scion of the Number Two Hero, a boy who could flash-freeze the entire arena. In the 1-A seating section, the class was on the edge of their benches.
"This is a terrible first match," Midoriya muttered, his analytical mind racing. "Todoroki's large-scale ice attacks are a hard counter to close-range fighters. But Kirigaya's mobility and those strange techniques…"
"He'll have to get in close," Kirishima said, cracking his hardened knuckles. "But how do you get close through a glacier?"
"He doesn't need to walk through it," Nozomi said from her seat, her golden eyes fixed on the arena below. Her voice was calm, analytical. "He needs to make the ice irrelevant."
On the arena floor, I faced Todoroki across the white concrete. The air was cold around him already, a faint mist curling from his right side. His heterochromatic eyes held no malice, only a frozen, intense resolve.
"Kirigaya," he stated, his voice flat.
"Todoroki."
Midnight raised her whip. "This is a one-on-one match, no rules except leaving the ring, immobilization, or surrendering! Make it beautiful, boys! BEGIN!"
Todoroki didn't waste a microsecond. He stomped his right foot. The air temperature plummeted. A tidal wave of jagged ice, as tall as a building and half as wide as the arena, erupted from the ground and surged towards me with terrifying speed. It was the same opening move he'd used in the cavalry battle, scaled up for a single target. A statement of overwhelming, indiscriminate power.
The crowd gasped. It looked like a checkmate in the first move.
I didn't run. I didn't summon my claws. I simply raised my open palm towards the oncoming glacier.
"Crystalline Resonance: Inversion."
A pulse of silver Soul-Flux, not a blast but a harmonizing frequency, shot from my hand and washed over the leading edge of the ice. The effect was instantaneous and bizarre. The ice didn't stop. It changed. The rigid, jagged structure turned fluid, then gaseous, transforming into a massive, billowing cloud of harmless, super-cooled vapor that rolled over and around me, dissipating into the air with a hiss.
The announcers were stunned and silent. The colossal, arena-covering attack had simply… evaporated five meters in front of me.
Todoroki's eyes widened a fraction. His understanding of the world—that his ice was an unstoppable force—had just been challenged.
I used his moment of shock. Not with a teleport, but with raw, enhanced speed. I shot forward, a silver streak across the now-damp concrete, closing the distance in a heartbeat. My right fist, wreathed not in claws but in a shimmering, compact field of distorted gravity—Gravitic Fist—aimed for his torso.
He reacted, throwing up an instant, thick wall of ice from the floor between us. My fist connected.
CRUNCH-BOOM!
The ice wall didn't just crack. It imploded, violently compressed into a dense, fist-sized ball of frozen slush before being flung backward by the released force, shattering against Todoroki's crossed arms and knocking him skidding back several feet. It wasn't fire that broke his ice. It was a fundamental manipulation of the forces holding it together.
In the stands, Ojiro commented, "He's not burning it! He's… un-making it!"
"Fascinating!" Midoriya scribbled furiously. "He's using that 'Soul-Flux' to interfere with molecular bonds or local force fields! It's like a universal counter!"
Todoroki steadied himself, a new intensity in his gaze. He launched a rapid barrage of smaller, sharper ice spears from multiple angles, trying to pin me down. I weaved through them, using Phase-Step Refractions to blur around the deadliest ones, each micro-teleport leaving a crack of displaced air. I was a ghost in a hailstorm.
He was adapting, learning. He saw my reliance on precise, short-range techniques. He stomped again, but this time, he didn't aim at me. He encased the entire arena floor around his own feet in a thick, spreading sheet of ice, creating a massive, slippery zone that reached to the very boundary lines. His play was clear: eliminate my footing, slow my impossible mobility, trap me.
The ice crept towards my boots. I smirked.
"Earth-Step: Anchorage."
I channeled Soul-Flux downward. My feet didn't phase through the ice; they fused with it on a molecular level. Where I stood, the ice became as solid and grippy as granite, a personal island of stability in the frozen sea. I took a step forward, and another island formed under my foot. I was walking on the ice as if it were dry land, leaving perfect, non-slip footprints in my wake.
Todoroki's strategy was crumbling. His ice was no longer an environmental weapon; it was my pathway.
Frustration flickered across his stoic face for the first time. He unleashed everything. A storm of ice, not in waves, but in a continuous, swirling vortex of razor-sharp shards, filling the space between us—a blender of frozen death.
This was it. The wide-area, relentless attack. I couldn't resonate it all away fast enough. I couldn't phase through all of it.
So, I didn't try to avoid it. I met it.
Crossing my arms, I focused all my will. "Kinetic Mirror: Absolute Parry."
A perfect, hemispherical shell of shimmering silver energy encapsulated me. The incoming ice shards didn't bounce off. They stopped, frozen in the air just inches from my skin, their kinetic energy utterly siphoned and nullified. For a few seconds, I stood at the center of a glittering, suspended sculpture of my opponent's own attack.
Then, I released.
The stored kinetic energy of a hundred ice spears erupted outward from the shell in a silent, concussive WHOOMF of pure force. The air itself rippled visibly. The blast didn't carry ice; it carried the impact. It hit Todoroki like a physical wall, hurling him backwards off his feet. He slammed into the arena barrier at the edge of the ring, the breath knocked from him, a sheet of instinctive ice cushioning his impact at the last second.
He slid to the ground on one knee, panting heavily, a thin trickle of blood from his lip where he'd bitten it. The ice around the arena began to melt rapidly under the stadium lights and the residual heat of the concussive blast.
He looked up, his left side trembling slightly. Not from cold, but from something else—a deep, internal conflict. The ice had failed. His mother's power had failed. The audience was dead silent, waiting.
I stood across from him, the silver aura around me fading. "Is that all?" I asked, my voice calm. "Just the right side?"
Aizawa, watching from the teacher's booth, leaned forward. "He's challenging him."
Todoroki's hand clenched. Frost crawled up his right arm. Steam, faint and wispy, curled from his left sleeve. The air around him warped with conflicting temperatures.
In the stands, Nozomi watched, her expression unreadable. 'He's prying open a locked door,' her thought whispered to me through our link, a mix of approval and caution.
Midnight watched closely, her whip ready. The match hung in the balance.
Todoroki Shoto slowly, shakily, pushed himself to his feet. The frost on his right arm began to recede. A single, small, defiant flame flickered to life in the palm of his left hand, casting a warm, orange glow on his determined face.
The stadium erupted. The match was no longer just about advancement. The real fight was just beginning.
The flame was small. Almost pathetic.
But it changed everything.
The cold, absolute stillness of the arena shattered as heat rolled outward from Todoroki's left side. Steam hissed violently where fire met ice, fogging the battlefield in a swirling veil of white. The crowd's roar became deafening.
Endeavor shot to his feet in the pro-hero section.
His eyes were wide.
Not with pride.
With shock.
On the arena floor, Todoroki's breathing steadied. The tremor in his stance didn't disappear—but it changed. The fire in his palm wasn't explosive or wild. It burned controlled. Defiant.
"I won't lose," he said, voice hoarse. "Not as half of something."
Good.
That was the right answer.
I exhaled slowly, adjusting my footing on the melting ice. The UA sports uniform clung slightly to my skin now, damp with condensation. No armor. No cloaks. No tricks.
Just two students on concrete.
"Then show me," I replied.
Todoroki moved first.
He didn't repeat his mistakes.
Instead of overwhelming scale, he compressed his power. Fire surged along his left side in controlled bursts, propelling him forward while his right hand reinforced the ground with ice, creating explosive traction. He crossed the distance fast—faster than before—a hybrid technique born in real time.
Smart.
A wave of superheated air crashed toward me, followed by a spear of ice riding the pressure front.
I didn't phase.
I planted.
"Inertial Sink."
The Soul-Flux around my body has inverted direction. Momentum bled away from me, pouring downward into the arena floor. The fire blast hit—and flowed around me like water around a stone. The ice spear lost velocity mid-flight and shattered harmlessly at my feet.
Gasps rippled through the stadium.
Midoriya was already shouting, notebook forgotten. "H-He didn't block it! He nullified the transfer of force itself!"
Todoroki grit his teeth and pushed harder.
Flames erupted in a wide arc, not to hit me directly, but to control space, herding me toward the ring's edge while ice erupted behind me in jagged barriers. A funnel. A kill zone.
I smiled despite myself.
He was learning.
I raised my hand, fingers spread.
"Vector Bloom."
The ground beneath us fractured—not violently, but precisely. Invisible directional forces erupted in a radial pattern, each one redirecting motion instead of stopping it. Todoroki's fire curved unnaturally, bending upward into spirals that fed oxygen back into themselves, creating towering pillars of flame that looked spectacular—and useless.
The ice he launched ricocheted off warped vectors, rebounding back toward him.
He barely dodged, skidding back, boots scraping concrete.
Endeavor's jaw clenched.
"That technique…" he muttered. "That's not brute force. That's—"
"Control," All Might finished quietly.
Todoroki stood his ground, chest heaving. Fire burned steadily now along his left side, no longer trembling. Ice formed cleanly on his right, precise and deliberate. For the first time, both halves moved together.
"I won't let you invalidate this," he said, voice sharp. "This power is mine."
"Good," I said again—and meant it.
I lowered my stance.
The air around me changed.
Not heavier.
Quieter.
"Phase-Weave: Overlap."
My body flickered—not side to side, but layered. Afterimages didn't trail behind me; they occupied the same space, a fraction of a second out of sync. To the eye, it looked like I was both standing still and advancing at once.
Todoroki reacted instantly, launching a blast of fire directly at my center mass.
It passed through me.
Then hit me.
Then passed through me again.
The delayed overlap collapsed.
I was suddenly there—inside his guard.
My palm struck his chest, not with force, but with intent.
"Gravitic Null Pulse."
For half a second, gravity forgot him.
Todoroki's feet left the ground. His fire sputtered instinctively as his balance vanished. I stepped past him and released the pulse.
Gravity came back.
Hard.
He slammed onto his back, skidding across the concrete until his momentum carried him over the boundary line.
Silence.
Then Midnight's whip cracked.
"WINNER—KIRIGAYA HIRO!"
The stadium exploded.
Todoroki lay there, staring up at the sky, chest rising and falling. Steam drifted lazily from his left side. The flame in his palm flickered… then steadied again before finally fading.
I walked to the edge and offered a hand.
He hesitated—then took it.
As I pulled him up, I leaned close enough that only he could hear me.
"You didn't lose because you used your fire," I said calmly. "You lost because you just unlocked it today."
His eyes widened slightly.
In the stands, Endeavor had not moved.
His fists were clenched so tightly they shook.
Shoto hadn't won.
But he had chosen.
And for the first time, Endeavor realized something terrifying:
His son didn't need him anymore.
As Todoroki exited the arena, the crowd still chanting his name alongside mine, Nozomi met my gaze from the stands. Her smile was sharp. Evaluating.
'New abilities already?' her voice echoed faintly in my mind. 'You're accelerating.'
'You'll have to catch up,' I replied.
Her eyes gleamed.
The Sports Festival had stopped being a competition.
It had become a proving ground.
And this was only the first duel.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How was the first duel?
Perfect
or
Too much
The Sports Festival will take about three or four more chapters before finally ending.
Leave a review to help me write my book better, and don't forget to drop the power stones.
Peace out.