Chapter 48: A Monster in the Ring
Todoroki's defiant scream at his father echoed in the charged air, a final, desperate act of rebellion. In that moment, the fight was no longer about the festival, or about winning. It was about everything. The roaring flames of his father's ambition, the quiet, pained tears of his mother, the feel of boiling water on his skin—it all coalesced into a singular, burning point of defiant rage. He would not become his father. He would win with his mother's power, or he would fall.
He let out a guttural yell and unleashed it all. His final, most powerful, and most desperate gambit. A colossal, chaotic mountain range of jagged ice, a tsunami of frozen fury, erupted from the ground and charged across the ring.
The sand-beast that was Gaara met the attack. It did not form a wall. It did not create a shield. It simply raised its massive, oversized sand arm, a limb that now seemed to possess a monstrous strength all its own. The arm met the charging glacier head-on. For a split second, there was a terrible, groaning sound of straining ice.
Then, with a slow, deliberate, and horrifyingly powerful motion, the sand fingers closed.
The glacier did not just stop. It was crushed. The massive spires of ice, thick as pillars of concrete, shattered into a million glittering fragments, imploding into a harmless cloud of ice dust that rained down over the arena.
"HE CRUSHED IT!" Present Mic's voice shrieked, a sound of pure, unadulterated disbelief. "HE CAUGHT THE GLACIER AND CRUSHED IT WITH HIS BARE HANDS!"
In the stands, Endeavor's face, which had been a mask of furious pride at his son's massive attack, contorted into a snarl of pure disgust. He slammed his hand onto the metal safety railing in front of him. The spot where his palm landed began to glow a dull, cherry red, the metal softening and beginning to melt under the sheer, incidental heat of his rage. The spectators seated nearby felt the sudden, intense wave of heat and scrambled away from him, their faces pale with fear. "Look at his face…" one of them whispered. "He's terrifying…"
Back in the ring, Todoroki was shivering violently, the frost from the overuse of his Quirk now creeping up his neck. He looked at Gaara's monstrous form, the sand arm slowly shrinking back to a slightly more normal, albeit still monstrous, size.
"What an ugly face you have now," Todoroki breathed, his words a mixture of pain, exhaustion, and cold contempt. "This is why Bakugo hates your presence so much, while the majority are just opposed in silence. Perhaps… it is out of fear of you."
The creature that was Gaara did not reply with words. A low, guttural, cat-like hiss ripped its way from his throat, a sound that was utterly inhuman. His sand arm elongated in an instant, becoming a whip-like appendage that he brought down like a hammer. Todoroki threw himself to the side, dodging just in time as the sand-fist shattered the concrete floor where he had been standing.
"Indeed," Todoroki panted, launching another, smaller wave of ice. "You're just a monster now, unable to even speak!"
The beast simply leapt. One of its legs had become a thick, powerful pillar of sand, and with a single push, it launched itself into the air, soaring high above the jagged ice spikes. The crowd let out a collective "WOAH!" as the cameras struggled to track the unnatural, predatory leap.
Tch! Todoroki thought, and in a last-ditch defensive move, he slammed his hands together, creating a thick, protective dome of ice around himself.
The beast descended. Its sand-claw struck the dome with a thunderous crash. The dome fractured into a web of cracks, and then exploded in a shower of glittering, slow-motion shards. As the ice-dust filled the air, a massive fountain of sand erupted from the point of impact, completely obscuring the scene from view.
The stadium held its breath. Present Mic was screaming questions into his microphone. "What happened in there?! We've lost visual!"
Slowly, like a curtain rising on the final act of a tragedy, the sand began to settle.
The image that was revealed stole the breath from every lung in the stadium.
There, in the center of the ring, stood the sand-beast. And held aloft in its massive, unyielding sand-claw, was Shoto Todoroki. The claw was clamped around his head, lifting him several inches off the ground, his feet dangling uselessly in the air. He was conscious, but dazed, completely and utterly defeated.
A profound, horrified silence fell over the world.
Midnight, her own face pale with shock, stared at the scene for a long, heavy moment before finally finding her voice. "Todoroki… is unable to move…" she announced, her voice trembling slightly. "The winner… is Gaara!"
The silence was broken by a roar from the crowd, a sound that was not one of celebration, but of pure, unadulterated shock. "HE DID IT!" Present Mic yelled, his own voice filled with a stunned awe. "THE UNBEATABLE SHOTO TODOROKI HAS BEEN DEFEATED!"
In the stands, the students of Class 1-A were frozen, their faces white. There was no joy, only a shared, horrified disbelief. Their classmate, the prodigy, the son of Endeavor, the one they had all assumed would win, had been so terrifyingly and completely dismantled.
But the horror was only just beginning.
Midnight, seeing that the situation was not de-escalating, spoke again, her voice now sharp and authoritative. "Gaara! The match is over! Release him! That is a direct order!"
The beast did not respond. It did not move. It simply stood there, holding the limp form of its defeated opponent. Then, slowly, the sandy, monstrous side of its face began to twist, its mouth pulling back into a wide, vacant, and utterly terrifying smile.
A new, colder wave of whispers spread through the stadium. "He's not listening…" "He's smiling…" "He's lost control."
In the announcer's booth, Aizawa's face was a mask of grim, cold resolve. He stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor.
"Aizawa, what's going on?!" Present Mic asked, his own voice now laced with genuine fear. "Has Gaara completely lost control of himself?!"
Aizawa didn't answer. He turned and ran from the booth, his capture weapon already beginning to uncoil from around his neck.
The final image the audience saw was the one on the giant screen: a close-up on the horrified faces of Uraraka, Iida, Kirishima, and the other students of Class 1-A, as they stared at the monster in the ring. The match was over, but they all understood, with a sudden, chilling certainty, that the real danger had only just begun.
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