Chapter 47: The Beast Within
The scream echoed, and then there was silence. A profound, chilling stillness fell over the stadium, a vacuum where the roar of the crowd had been. Shoto Todoroki stood on his side of the ravaged ring, his breath pluming in the frigid air, every nerve on high alert. He stared at the seamless, silent sphere of sand, waiting. He had landed a decisive blow. The fight, he reasoned, must be over.
He was wrong.
A low, guttural growl, a sound that was not human, emanated from within the sphere. The ground began to tremble. Jagged cracks spread across the surface of the sand sphere, not from without, but from within. With a violent, concussive BOOM, the sphere exploded outwards in a shower of sand and shattered ice.
A cloud of cold, gritty dust filled the air. As it settled, the crowd gasped in collective, horrified unison.
Where Gaara had been, something else now stood. It was a grotesque, asymmetrical mockery of a human form. The lower half of his body was still clad in the U.A. gym uniform, but his entire left side and torso were encased in a thick, monstrous shell of sand. A massive, oversized arm, complete with vicious, elongated claws, had replaced his own. His face was half-hidden, his one visible teal eye wide and manic, while the other side of his face was a churning, sandy mask from which a single, massive, glowing yellow eye stared out with pure, unthinking malice.
"W-WHAT IS THAT FORM?!" Present Mic's voice screamed, cracking with a mixture of terror and awe. "A TRANSFORMATION?! IS THIS A HIDDEN PART OF HIS QUIRK?!"
Before he could finish, the beast moved. It lunged forward with an inhuman, animalistic speed. It didn't launch sand; it used its own monstrous body as a weapon. It slammed its massive sand-claw into the ground where Todoroki had been a second before, sending a shockwave that shattered the thick ice floor into a thousand pieces.
Todoroki, having leapt back just in time, was now on the defensive, his cold composure finally broken, replaced by a look of grim, startled disbelief. He sent a barrage of ice spears towards the creature, but the beast simply raised its massive sand arm, batting them away as if they were harmless insects. It then grabbed a huge chunk of the broken ice floor and hurled it at Todorokí.
The dynamic of the fight had been utterly and completely reversed. The hunter had become the hunted.
The sand-beast grabbed Todoroki by the leg with its monstrous claw and, with a guttural roar, threw him across the arena. Todoroki twisted in mid-air, creating a ramp of ice to cushion his landing, sliding to a halt just feet from the boundary line, his hair and clothes in disarray. He looked up, his eyes wide, just as the beast gathered itself for another charge.
He had no choice. He had to go on the offensive. He slammed his hands on the ground, unleashing another massive glacier, far larger than any before, a desperate attempt to encase the creature and end its rampage.
The sand-beast met the charging wall of ice head-on. Its sand arm swelled, growing even larger, and it met the glacier with a single, colossal punch. The sound of the impact was a deafening crack that echoed through the stadium. The front of the glacier fractured into a web of cracks, but its momentum was too great. The ice engulfed the creature, swallowing it whole, freezing it in place.
A plume of cold air escaped Todoroki's lips. He was panting, the overuse of his Quirk causing a layer of frost to creep up his own right side. "Why don't you just… calm down?" he breathed, hoping it was finally over.
But then, a deep, cracking sound came from within the ice. The beast broke free, shattering its frozen prison with a roar of pure rage. As Todoroki summoned another wave of ice, the creature did something new. Instead of blocking, the sand of its body seemed to liquify, surging forward and enveloping the ice attack completely. The sand particles swarmed, constricted, and with a horrifying, grinding sound, crushed the entire glacier into nothing more than fine, glittering powder.
A distorted, dual voice, part Gaara's, part monstrous growl, echoed from the creature, a terrifying, predatory smile spreading across its sandy face.
"Sand… Burial!"
The stadium was shaking with the cheers and screams of a terrified, ecstatic crowd. Gaara's shoulder was still bleeding, the dark stain a stark contrast against the pale sand of his monstrous form.
High in the stands, Endeavor's face was a mask of pure, unadulterated disgust. "He really is a monster," he snarled. "His place is in a prison. That form is an offense to the eyes." He then stood, his own body wreathed in flame, and roared, his voice carrying even over the noise of the crowd. "SHOTO! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! USE YOUR FIRE! USE YOUR LEFT SIDE AND INCINERATE THAT UGLY CREATURE!"
Present Mic, hearing the Number Two Hero's outburst, couldn't help himself. "WHOA, HEY NOW! ARE WE SEEING SOME HEATED FAMILY TROUBLE IN THE ENDEAVOR HOUSEHOLD, LIVE ON AIR?!"
The students of Class 1-A stared in horror, both at Gaara's monstrous form and at the words of the Number Two Hero.
But no one was more affected than Todoroki. He was shivering now, the frost covering half his body, his movements becoming sluggish. He heard his father's command, his father's disgusting, proprietary roar. And something inside him snapped.
He looked up at the raging sand monster, then his gaze shifted, looking past the ring, towards the monstrous, flaming figure in the stands. A lifetime of resentment, of pain, of rebellion, all came to a head in this one, single moment.
"Shut up," he whispered, his voice a hoarse, trembling rasp. Then, he screamed, his voice filled with a raw, defiant fury that stunned the entire stadium into silence. "SHUT UP! THIS IS MY FIGHT! KEEP UP YOUR DAMN ADVICE TO YOURSELF!"
He stood, at the absolute limit of his ice, facing an opponent who had lost all control, having just openly defied his creator in front of the entire world.
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