The lunch break was a blur of noise and adrenaline that Kaito barely registered.
He sat alone in a quiet corner of the prep room, a notebook open in front of him, but he wasn't writing. He was visualizing.
Todoroki Shoto. Quirk: Half-Cold Half-Hot. Currently only using the ice. Capable of large-scale, instantaneous freezing.
Primary threat: being immobilized instantly. Secondary threat: hypothermia. Close-range combat is unlikely; he'll keep his distance.
His mind ran through his archive, discarding options one by one.
Acid? Useless against a glacier. It would dilute, freeze.
Hardening? Would protect from initial impact, but the cold would seep through, and I'd be trapped in an ice tomb.
Frog? Mobility is key, but his ice can cover the entire arena. One misstep and I'm frozen.
Engine? Too much strain, and I can't control it like Iida.
Creation? Too slow, too draining.
He was running in circles. Every Quirk he had was a scalpel, and Todoroki was bringing a tactical nuke.
He needed a paradigm shift. He couldn't match Todoroki's power. He had to negate it, or use it against him.
An idea, dangerous and born of sheer desperation, began to form.
It relied on a Quirk he'd archived on a whim, one he'd never seriously considered using in combat.
It was a long shot. A terrible, painful, potentially disastrous long shot.
But it was the only shot he had.
"FIRST MATCH OF THE FIRST ROUND!" Present Mic's voice shook the stadium. "ON MY RIGHT, THE MYSTERIOUS STRATEGIST FROM CLASS 1-A, THE BOY WITH A THOUSAND TRICKS... SŌMAAAA KAITO!"
Kaito walked out into the arena, the roar of the crowd a distant hum.
His focus was entirely on the tunnel opposite him.
"AND ON MY LEFT, THE OVERWHELMING FAVORITE! THE POWERHOUSE OF CLASS 1-A, WITH ICE IN HIS VEINS AND FIRE IN HIS BLOOD... TODOROKI SHOTOOOO!"
Todoroki emerged, his expression a mask of cold indifference, his heterochromatic eyes fixed on Kaito with an unnerving intensity.
The temperature around him seemed to drop.
Midnight stood between them, her whip raised.
"Contestants, are you ready?"
Kaito nodded, settling into a low stance. He took a deep breath and focused inward. He had two slots. He loaded them.
Slot 1: Hardening. His reliable defense.
Slot 2: The Gambit. The Quirk he was betting everything on.
"BEGIN!"
The moment the word left Midnight's lips, Todoroki stomped.
A wave of ice, jagged and brutal, erupted from the ground and shot towards Kaito like a charging dragon.
It was faster than he'd ever seen, meant to end the match in a single, decisive blow.
Kaito didn't try to dodge. He couldn't. Instead, he activated Hardening, crossing his arms in front of his face and bracing for impact.
The ice slammed into him. The force was immense, like being hit by a truck.
He skidded backward, his hardened boots scraping grooves in the concrete.
The cold was searing, instantly numbing his limbs.
The ice crawled over his arms, his torso, his legs, seeking to encase him completely.
He was trapped up to his chest in a prison of ice, just like he'd seen in the obstacle course. The crowd gasped.
Todoroki began to walk forward, his breath misting in the frigid air.
"It's over. You can't move."
Kaito's teeth were chattering.
"You're... right..." he managed to grit out, his voice strained. "I can't... move my body..."
He met Todoroki's gaze, his grey eyes sharp and clear despite the cold.
"...so I'll just have to move yours."
He focused on his second slot. He pulled on the Quirk he'd archived from a Support Course student he'd met weeks ago, a boy who could manipulate the density of his own body, making himself incredibly heavy.
Kaito had only been able to copy one aspect: Increase Density.
He didn't use it on himself. He was already trapped.
He focused the power outward, through the point of contact where his body met the ice.
He poured every ounce of his energy into a single, concentrated command.
Become. Heavier.
The effect was not flashy. There was no light, no explosion.
But the massive glacier of ice that encased him and covered half the arena suddenly groaned under a new, impossible weight.
The part directly connected to Kaito, the very foundation of Todoroki's attack, became impossibly, hyper-dense.
With a sound like a mountain cracking, the entire ice structure shattered.
It wasn't a melt. It was a catastrophic structural failure.
The hyper-dense core collapsed under its own new weight, pulling the rest of the glacier down with it in an avalanche of shrapnel-like ice chunks.
Todoroki's eyes widened in shock as the ice he'd created disintegrated around his opponent.
He threw up an arm to shield himself from the flying debris.
Kaito stumbled forward, free, gasping as feeling returned to his limbs in painful, prickling waves.
The strain of using such a complex emitter-type Quirk in such a concentrated way was immense.
He felt like he'd just run a marathon. He'd maybe bought himself thirty seconds.
Todoroki stared, his mask of indifference finally broken.
"How...?"
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Check out my other novels "Awakening: Starting With The Villain System" and "My Infinite Mana System"