After a month in Antarctica, Gray was finally used to living in this outpost. The work he assisted with was child's play, and everyone was used to seeing him. He even left the base more often.
The constant darkness didn't bother him too much. He read about the polar winter, but it was still weird to experience. However, Gray wasn't expecting any change. He assumed it wouldn't be as bad for him.
Then the horizon shifted.
It happened slowly enough that he almost missed it at first. The endless black outside the facility had gradually softened into a dark blue-gray around certain hours. Every few days, the light remained a little longer, and the stars became harder to see.
Gray had not realized how much he actually missed light until he saw it returning.
The constant night had never bothered him enough to complain. If anything, it had helped his training. But after more than a month without a proper day, he had started feeling the difference without noticing it. It was dark constantly, eating, working, training in the dark.
Now, seeing that faint glow along the horizon felt amazing.
Gray stood outside the facility longer than necessary that morning, staring toward the thin stretch of blue-gray light.
"Holy shit." Gray almost felt tears coming from his eyes.
He almost laughed at himself. Was he really crying over this? Mara happened to catch him. She smiled. She explained it was common. The constant darkness was physiologically tough for people to adapt to. It was incredibly difficult to get used to, even for veterans.
The sun itself still had not properly appeared, but it was only a matter of time.
Gray finished his work quickly that day.
It was the beginning of his second month of training, and he had something to test.
He had spent the previous month constantly increasing the difficulty of his exercises. He had started with a few strands in the water, then dozens, then fifty. After that came movement, squats, push-ups, lunges, and running. He even tried creating the complex structures under water.
Somewhere along the way, Gray had stopped testing his actual maximum.
Controlling strands while running had become more important than sitting beside the pond and simply seeing how many he could produce. He had reached the point where roughly three hundred strands could move beneath the water while he performed basic exercises without needing his full attention.
Three hundred had become his comfortable range.
If three hundred was what he could handle while doing other things, then what could he do when he actually concentrated?
Gray signed himself out, collected his equipment, and headed toward the basin.
The route was completely familiar now. He barely thought about where he was going, though the GPS remained clipped to his gear as always.
When he reached the water, Gray set his things aside and sat down near the edge.
For once, he did not immediately begin exercising.
He crossed his legs, rested one hand on his knee, and placed the other palm against the cold surface.
Then he took a slow breath.
"Let's see."
Ice slipped beneath his hand.
The first hundred strands came easily.
Gray barely needed to think about them. Thin white lines spread beneath the dark water and immediately separated into different directions. Some curled downward. Others moved along the bottom. Several rose toward the surface before turning away again.
Two hundred followed.
Then three hundred.
That was the point where Gray normally began adding another task.
Running.
Squats.
Push-ups.
Anything that divided his concentration.
This time, he remained still.
He continued.
Four hundred.
Gray felt almost nothing.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
Five hundred.
The water beneath him filled with icy strands weaving around.
Hundreds of narrow strands moved independently beneath the surface, crossing through one another without touching. Gray guided several into spirals while others circled the outer edges of the basin.
Six hundred.
The pressure finally began to build inside his head, but it was nowhere close to what he remembered from his first week.
Gray kept going.
Seven hundred.
Eight hundred.
That surprised him more than the number itself.
Gray had expected the difficulty to rise sharply somewhere around this point. Instead, it felt almost gradual. Each new strand added pressure, but the sensation no longer resembled trying to control hundreds of different arms.
It felt seamless.
He was no longer thinking about them individually.
Gray could feel the entire collection at once.
Nine hundred.
Gray opened his eyes.
The basin looked completely different.
Thin lines of ice filled the dark water in every direction. They twisted around one another, constantly moving without colliding.
He added more.
Nine hundred and fifty.
A thousand.
Gray stopped for a moment.
Then smiled.
"Seriously?"
He pushed again.
The number climbed a little higher.
One thousand and twenty.
One thousand and twenty one.
One thousand and twenty five.
By the time Gray passed a thousand strands, the strain became noticeably heavier. His temples began to ache, and maintaining perfect separation required much more attention.
But he could still do it. Gray stopped adding strands and concentrated on the ones he already had. More than a thousand lines moved beneath the water.
He changed their directions simultaneously.
The entire formation shifted.
Half the strands curved clockwise while the others moved against them. Some rose toward the surface, others descended, and hundreds crossed through the spaces between one another.
Some collided since it was his first time with this many. Some stopped moving, some faded, and he had to recreate them.
Gray watched for several seconds. His mind felt like it was stretching.
Gray brought the strands together and began weaving. The process was slow at first. Several hundred strands shifted toward the basin's center while the others moved around the outside. Gray divided them into groups, then began crossing individual lines over and under one another.
The pattern gradually became visible. Gray leaned forward slightly.
A flat section of strands formed first.
Then the sides. The ice strands bent around one another, each remaining separate while contributing to the larger shape he was creating.
Gray increased the pace.
The structure rose from the water.
A basket.
It was simple in concept, but the construction was completely different from the way Gray normally created objects.
Usually, if he wanted a basket, he could simply create one directly. His experience and quirk allowed him to create detailed constructs already. Years of experience with Ice-Make Magic had given him an instinctive understanding of shape that most ice users would never have.
But this was a bit different.
He was not creating one solid object. He made it using the strands he controlled. Hundreds of separate pieces of ice curved around each other to create the walls. Others formed the base. Several dozen wrapped together to make the handle. He spent most of what remained of his training session trying to complete it. There were lots of mistakes, and, eventually, everything crumbled, and Gray took a breath. His muscles ached and he felt cold. He couldn't go any further if he still wanted to go back to the base.
Gray slowly rose up from the ground.
He heaved a sigh of relief. He was still happy with the progress.
The next week, Gray stopped chasing numbers and went back to his control.
The basket from his first attempt bothered him more than reaching over a thousand strands. He already knew he could create more ice. What mattered now was whether he could actually use all of it properly in a fight. But he wanted to practice
So he returned to the basin every day and practiced.
At first, the baskets were uneven. Some strands crossed incorrectly, others fused together, and entire sections collapsed when his concentration slipped. By the end of the week, however, Gray could weave hundreds of separate strands into a complete basket without allowing a single one to merge.
That was when the exercise finally clicked and he felt his growth. He continued on,
He was trying to create hundreds of individual pieces and make them behave like one object.This was far harder. It wasn't useful in combat, but it was great practice.
From there, his training expanded quickly. He created spheres, chains, weapons, knives, and other increasingly complicated shapes. Sometimes he deliberately unraveled them and rebuilt them into something else without letting any of the strands disappear.
At the same time, life around the outpost became much busier.
Since the polar summer was approaching, it meant the researchers could finally begin preparing for what they came here for. All the equipment that was in storage through the winter was brought outside, and set up. It was a busy time. Everyone was constantly moving.
Even Gray ended up helping frequently.
His actual administrative work was easy enough, and he finished quickly. His resistance to the cold made him useful outside. The other researchers regularly asked him if he could help carry equipment, and help them set up outside.
Gray was always looking for any excuse to go outside so this was perfect for him.
He even used those smaller trips as a little extra practice. While carrying equipment, a few strands of ice would quietly move beneath the snow. While waiting for someone to finish adjusting a machine, Gray practiced manipulating small pieces behind his back.
It wasn't as serious, but it still helped him.
FrostBITE also extended his personal training time again. Gray had spent more than a month following every rule, returning on time, and never giving anyone a reason to regret trusting him. Now that it was getting brighter out, his three hours turned to 4.
Gray used every minute.
When he returned to his pond, he no longer just sat down.
He trained while doing squats, push-ups, lunges, and eventually running laps around the water. Hundreds of strands moved beneath the surface while his attention remained divided between his body and his quirk.
Five hundred strands
Then eight hundred.
Eventually, maintaining a thousand while exercising was his limit.
Gray noticed another change around the same time. His senses expanded. He continued pushing himself, at one point Gray was sweating. The sweat was freezing as it made contact with the air. He pushed himself further and further.
By the end of his second month, Gray could maintain more than fifteen hundred strands while exercising.
He tested it one day while running around the basin.
Five hundred strands entered the water.
Then eight hundred.
One thousand.
Twelve hundred.
Gray kept running.
The pressure in his head slowly increased, but the strands continued moving.
Thirteen hundred.
Fourteen hundred.
Fifteen hundred.
The water beneath him was almost completely filled with thin white lines. Some moved in circles while others crossed in opposite directions. Hundreds rose toward the surface while another group moved along the bottom.
A few collided.
Gray corrected them without stopping.
Others snapped.
He recreated them.
That was the important difference.
Mistakes no longer destroyed everything.
His control simply adjusted.
Once he proved he could maintain fifteen hundred while moving, Gray stopped caring about pushing the number higher.
Instead, he started turning them into other objects as fast as he could underwater.
Meanwhile, time passed. They were reaching the end of September.
The long twilight gradually became brighter and brighter. The sun finally appeared above the horizon, and Gray stopped what he was doing the first time he saw it.
After weeks of darkness, seeing actual sunlight felt almost ridiculous.
Gray enjoyed it. After a month of darkness, it was a welcome change.
The research teams were outside more often, his own training time had increased, and his training was going better then expected.
Two months ago, controlling three strands had given him a headache. Now he could control thousands without difficulty. He was set up perfectly. It was time to improve his existing techniques. That was the goal for his last month here.
–
Gray entered his final month in Antarctica with a completely different goal.
For the first two months, he had trained the foundation. His output had increased, his resistance to his own quirk had improved, and the strange connection he felt with his ice had developed far beyond what he expected. Controlling a few strands had once required complete concentration. Now more than a thousand could move around him while he ran without overwhelming his senses.
There was little reason to keep sitting beside the pond and chasing larger numbers.
It was time to see what all of that training actually meant in a fight.
The first day of his final month, Gray returned to his usual training area but walked past the pond. For this part, he need a wide flat space. Thankfully, that was almost everywhere here. The sun now remained above the horizon for long periods, casting light across the land. Research teams were becoming increasingly active near the outpost, however, Gray made sure to move far enough away so it wouldn't cause any problems for them. And the work day was over, so most of them were likely relaxing.
Gray stopped on a wide stretch of empty snow and looked around. This was as good a place as any.
He rolled his shoulders once and raised his hands.
"Ice-Make: Excalibur."
Ice surged outward.
Gray was experienced enough with this technique. He wanted to start with something he used alot. He expected the familiar ice blade to form in front of him, large enough to test his improved control but otherwise no different from what he had created many times before.
Instead, Gray froze.
A massive sword towered over him.
The blade was several times larger than he intended, its tip extending high above his head while its base carved into the frozen ground. More surprising than the size was the detail. Intricate patterns ran through the blade from the guard to the tip. Despite the size, the details were still finely carved into the sword. Layers of reinforced ice overlapped inside one another without clouding the weapon, while the guard had formed with details Gray had not consciously tried to create. It was completely on instinct. It formed almost instantly. His creation speed was leagues faster than before.
He stared at it.
"What the hell?"
Gray stepped closer to inspect his creation.
He had only thought about it for a brief instant before his body instantly created it.
Gray slowly raised one hand.
The enormous sword lifted from the ground into the air.
That should have required effort. Something this large normally demanded constant attention simply because of its mass, but the weapon moved almost naturally. Gray rotated it once through the air, watching the enormous blade pass over the snow before stopping exactly where he wanted.
A grin slowly appeared on his face. He was expecting good results from his training. But it was far greater than what he expected. It wasn't just from this training. It was the culmination of the effort he had put in the entirety of his life. The last two months were just refining what he had learned all his life.
The result stood in front of him.
A larger, cleaner, more complicated Excalibur than anything he had deliberately attempted before.
Gray laughed quietly before dismissing the sword. It slowly crumbled into the snow below.
The entire weapon broke apart.
Starting at the tip, the massive blade crumbled into thousands upon thousands of tiny ice particles. The guard followed, then the handle, until the huge weapon disappeared into a cloud of fine frost that drifted outward before settling across the snow.
His smile widened.
That was where the real training began.
Over the following weeks, Gray stopped treating his techniques as finished moves.
Every technique became something to take apart.
Something to rebuild.
He created ice shields and forced them to divide into dozens of moving sections while still protecting him. He launched spears at targets he created in the distance, altered their trajectories halfway through flight, and split them apart before reforming them from another angle. He created walls, shattered them deliberately, then took control of the fragments before they could touch the ground.
Gray began constructing training targets across the approved area, creating humanoid figures, moving obstacles, and thick blocks of ice positioned at different distances. He would surround himself with them and begin without deciding exactly how he planned to attack.
That was important.
A real opponent would not cooperate with whatever strategy he prepared beforehand.
Gray forced himself to react.
A sword flew toward one target and separated into strands before impact. Half continued forward while the others curved away and struck another target behind him. Gray raised a wall against an imaginary attack, then immediately broke the wall into hundreds of sharpened fragments and sent them in different directions.
Sometimes he deliberately turned away from his targets and relied on the connection instead.
That proved harder.
His awareness of his ice had improved tremendously, but it was not the same as sight. Gray could tell where his constructs were, how they were moving, and roughly what was happening around them, but he could not suddenly see through ice.
He adapted around that limitation.
The more ice he spread through an area, the more information he had about his own position within it. If one of his strands struck something unexpectedly, he noticed. If an object interrupted a path he knew should have been clear, he felt the change through the sudden resistance and loss of movement.
It was not some supernatural sixth sense.
It was feedback.
His quirk created the ice. His nervous system controlled it. Months of repetition had trained his brain to process that control with an efficiency it had never needed before. What had started as a faint feeling of grabbing his ice with his mind had developed into something far more useful. Gray could fill an area with his constructs and maintain an instinctive awareness of where his own creations existed inside that space.
Gray gradually incorporated more of his old techniques.
Some translated easily from magic to his quirk. Others had always been awkward because Ice-Make Magic and a biological quirk were not actually the same thing. His memories gave him the knowledge, but his new body still had to recreate the results through a completely different mechanism.
One technique in particular had always irritated him.
"Ice-Make Unlimited: One Sided Chaotic Dance."
Ice erupted across the field.
Dozens of swords formed first, followed by dozens more.
Then hundreds.
A swirling chain of ice connected the weapons as they appeared, spreading outward across the training area. The technique had always been one of Gray's larger offensive attacks, overwhelming an area with blades while freezing whatever became trapped inside its path.
But in this world, there had always been a problem.
The swords were too independent.
Creating hundreds was easy enough.
Actually controlling every sword after creation was not.
Previously, Gray had been forced to compensate by sending the entire technique in broad patterns. The chain determined most of the movement, and the swords followed it. Effective, but rigid.
Now Gray stood in the middle of the formation and felt every weapon.
His eyes widened slightly.
Hundreds of swords hung around him.
Not one felt lost.
Gray moved his hand.
The formation exploded into motion.
The first wave shot forward, but instead of following one path, the swords separated. Several dozen struck targets directly ahead while another group curved sharply to the right. More climbed into the air and descended from above.
Gray turned.
Another hundred swords changed direction with him.
The chain connecting the technique no longer acted as a restraint. Gray broke sections of it apart and rebuilt them elsewhere, using the links to redirect groups of weapons instead of forcing everything to follow one route.
A target stood behind one of his ice barriers.
Gray sent thirty swords toward it.
Before impact, they separated into hundreds of strands.
The strands flowed around both sides of the barrier, crossed behind it, and reconstructed themselves.
The swords struck from behind.
Gray laughed.
He created more swords.
This time, he did not keep the shapes identical. Some swords were long and narrow. Others became heavier blades intended for direct impact. Smaller weapons filled the spaces between them. Gray changed several into spears midway through their flight before breaking another group into strands and sending them beneath an obstacle. It was the new version, suitable with his current strength.
The name One Sided Chaotic Dance suddenly felt more appropriate than it ever had before.
To anyone standing on the other side, it would look chaotic, however, it was anything but that for gray.
He knew exactly where every sword was going.
Gray continued until his breathing became heavy and the familiar chill started creeping deeper into his body. He could have pushed farther, but this was enough for today.
He lowered his arms. The hundreds of swords hovering in the air went still.
Then Gray released them.
They all broke off into motes of ice before falling to the ground.
Gray remained standing in the middle of it.
It's been two months .
He had come here because he needed a change. His training was becoming stagnant. It was the best decision he could've made.
He laid down, looking over at the sky. The entire world seemed frozen. It was quiet and serene. Gray breathed it in, appreciating the peace. He organized his thoughts. Middle school was coming to a close and high school was going to be starting soon. He had already decided to go to hero school. But, this whole time, he didn't even know what he wanted to go for. At first it was just so he could continue getting stronger and be able to use his quirk. But now, is it still the same? Suddenly, Natsu came to mind. He had a simple goal and he followed it through. Knowing him, he was probably out focusing everything into training without thinking about anything else. He was a little envious of that. He smiled.
Gray sat back up and slapped his face to bring himself out of this stupor. He had his whole life now to think about those things and he didn't have to do it now. For now all that mattered was getting into U.A. The deadline for the entrance exam was getting closer.
The thought excited him more than it had before.
He already knew Shoto would be there. Natsu was training his butt off and he was surely pushing his limits during these final months. Gray was one hundred percent sure Natsu would get in. And U.A. High school was supposed to gather the smartest and strongest students from around the country. Gray was itching to fight them.
He had a new resolution.
There was no point in thinking about things like what he would do as a hero now. He would simply go with the flow and take it one moment at time.
His mind seemed to clear up. A cold wind passed across the training field, moving through his hair as Gray looked toward the distant horizon.
He smiled. It was just getting started.