Chapter 50!!!
...
The entire left half of his body ignited at once, heat slamming across the arena hard enough that nearby ice hissed and steam erupted around him. The stadium exploded with noise. Present Mic nearly fell across his own desk. "THE FIRE! TODOROKI'S FINALLY USING HIS LEFT SIDE!"
Endeavor stared down at his son, and for one instant something like satisfaction broke across his face. Finally. The power he'd spent years cultivating, the balance Shoto's body had been built to achieve, the other half of the quirk that should have belonged to him from the start.
Then satisfaction twisted into something angrier. His hand clenched against the railing. "You stubborn fool." The heroes nearby glanced over. He barely noticed. "All this wasted time. You could have done this from the start."
Below, Todoroki heard the shout, distant and distorted through the crowd noise, and didn't turn toward it. That mattered more than anything Endeavor could have said after it. His eyes stayed on Fushiguro, fire rolling from his left side, ice gathering beneath his right foot. For the first time all tournament, both halves of him existed together at once.
Fushiguro stared at him. 'There.' The frost was already starting to disappear. His breathing eased. His body temperature corrected itself in real time, the weakness Midoriya had exposed simply vanishing in front of Fushiguro's eyes.
Something shifted faintly at the corner of Fushiguro's mouth. "Finally."
Todoroki's gaze hardened. "You really wanted this."
"Yeah."
"You're going to regret it."
"Probably."
Midnight had already taken several steps further back from them.
Todoroki attacked, ice sweeping low with fire rolling above it at the same time. Fushiguro's eyes widened. 'Okay.' He vanished, and the flames passed clean over the exact shadow he'd meant to use for his next exit.
He surfaced farther out. Todoroki had already redirected, another mass of ice tearing across the ground, and Fushiguro jumped as Nue caught him, Todoroki's left arm already moving, fire surging upward and catching one wing badly enough to force a dismissal. He dropped for the arena, Todoroki's fire following him down, and his hands snapped together at the last possible second.
"Max Elephant."
The crowd reacted before it had even fully formed, a massive shape planting itself between him and the flames, trunk rising, water exploding outward to meet the fire head-on.
FWOOSHHH.
Steam detonated across the whole arena, the entire center vanishing behind white vapor
"FUSHIGURO IS NOW COUNTERING TODOROKI'S ICE WITH WATER!!" Present Mic shouted into the haze.
Inside the vapor, visibility disappeared completely. Fushiguro didn't need it. He could feel Max Elephant through his shadow regardless, and more importantly he could feel the heat moving through the steam.
Todoroki.
"Again." Max Elephant's trunk lifted and blasted water back through the haze. Todoroki's right hand moved on instinct, freezing the torrent mid-air into a broad formation spreading across the arena.
Totality sprinted across the fresh ice. Todoroki turned to meet it, fire bursting from his left side and incinerating it. Nue descended from above and got shoved off course by a wide wall. Toad's tongue snapped from the mist and got trapped in ice before Fushiguro could pull it clear.
He emerged from Max Elephant's shadow directly into Todoroki's blind spot, a punch landing before Todoroki fully registered him, flame roaring from the opposite side a half second later. Fushiguro ducked under it, leg sweeping, Todoroki jumping clear as Great Serpent burst up beneath him. Todoroki fired downward. The serpent twisted away and Fushiguro dismissed it before the flames could catch, Todoroki landing right as Max Elephant fired again, water and flame colliding into another wall of steam that swallowed Fushiguro whole the instant he stepped into it.
Todoroki turned. Too slow. Fushiguro's shoulder caught him and they skidded together across the flooded arena, Todoroki freezing the water underfoot and locking Fushiguro's shoe in place long enough to drive an elbow into his ribs. Pain shot through his side. Fire gathered in Todoroki's palm, and Fushiguro disappeared beneath the ice a fraction of a second before it discharged, the blast tearing across empty ground where he'd been standing.
Todoroki turned again. Fushiguro had already surfaced farther away. Both of them stood there breathing hard for a second, staring at each other.
Then Todoroki smiled in excitement for the very first time in a long time.
Fushiguro answered with one of his own.
The real fight had finally started.
Fire melted ice. Water smothered flame. Ice froze water solid.
Steam swallowed the whole battlefield in waves, every shift in temperature changing the available shadows underneath it, and Fushiguro adapted to each one as it came.
Totality hunted through the vapor. Nue struck from above whenever Todoroki's attention drifted. Toad pulled him out of attacks he had no other way to escape. Great Serpent smashed through the larger walls whenever it was worth the cost to summon it. Max Elephant kept turning whole sections of the arena into flooded, unstable ground.
Todoroki answered every single one of them. He froze the ground under Totality's paws. Used fire to deny Nue any easy approach. Turned Max Elephant's own water into obstacles against him. Flooded likely shadow exits with light before Fushiguro could use them.
Fushiguro solved one problem. Todoroki created another. Todoroki changed the terrain. Fushiguro turned around and used the new terrain against him. Neither of them held real control for more than a few seconds at a stretch, and both bodies were starting to show exactly what it was costing them. Fushiguro's ribs burned every time he twisted wrong. One sleeve had scorched away entirely around his forearm. Several fingers had gone numb from cold. Todoroki's shoulder still spasmed occasionally from Nue's earlier hit, bruises spreading across his whole right side, his left arm holding more fire for longer than it ever had before.
The arena barely resembled the platform they'd started on. Present Mic had abandoned any pretense of composed commentary. "THEY'RE NOT STOPPING! IT'S A NON-STOP BATTLE FOR CONTROL!"
Fushiguro ducked behind the broken remains of an ice wall, his own breathing loud inside his skull.
'Need to end it.'
Across the field, Todoroki reached the same conclusion at almost the same instant, fire climbing higher along his left side while ice spread across his right. Fushiguro's eyes narrowed. Both at once. One huge finish. He looked around at what was left of the arena, water everywhere, most of it already frozen, steam still drifting across broken formations, shadow sitting underneath every one of them.
He saw the shape of it all at once. Hands together. "Max Elephant." One more time.
"Again?" Todoroki said.
The elephant fired, a full torrent crossing the field, and Todoroki raised his hand immediately, cold surging out to freeze the entire thing into one massive formation stretching through the center of the arena. He'd already answered this exact move once. Fushiguro dismissed the elephant the second the water froze, and Todoroki frowned.
'Why summon it just for one attack?'
Then he saw the shadow sitting beneath the fresh ice, and Fushiguro was already gone. Great Serpent erupted behind him. He blasted it with fire and it vanished before the flames landed. Feint. Nue screamed overhead, and a raised wall caught the electricity instead of him. Second feint. Totality came from the left, flame answering it before it ever made contact, gone before it landed too.
Todoroki's eyes went wide. 'He's not trying to hit me at all.'
He wasn't. He was setting something up, and Todoroki understood that a half second too late to actually do anything about it.
Fushiguro didn't give him time to recover from any of it.
He came straight out of the shadow at his feet, closing the last of the distance on foot instead of vanishing again, and everything he had left came with him at once.
Two winged shapes dropped out of the shadow at once, Well's Abyss split into a pair instead of one, and a tongue from each snapped around a separate wrist, not to pull him off balance this time but to hold his hands pinned wide before he could use either of them. The one on his left held on through fire the instant it caught, blistering and smoking where it wrapped, refusing to let go even as it burned. The one on his right froze solid within seconds against the cold radiating off that side instead, brittle and cracking, but still anchored long enough to matter.
Rabbits poured out of the ground around his ankles in the same breath, dozens of small bodies climbing and clawing up both legs at once, dragging his stance down and locking his feet to the spot no matter how hard he tried to plant them.
Great Serpent erupted from the shadow directly behind him and hit him square in the back before he'd finished registering any of the rest of it, driving him forward through his own collapsing balance.
Nue circled low overhead the entire time, lightning arcing down around the perimeter of it all, close enough to punish any attempt to break out sideways without ever needing to land a hit directly.
Todoroki was pinned in every direction at once, fire and frost both biting into the tongues that wouldn't release him, legs buried under a swarm that wouldn't stop climbing, a wall of electricity closing off every angle that wasn't already occupied by teeth or claws.
Fushiguro dropped into the center of it.
The first punch landed clean across his jaw. The second caught his ribs before he could fully recover from the first. A knee drove up into his stomach hard enough to fold him forward, and Fushiguro was already there to meet him with an elbow on the way back up, every strike landing because there was nowhere left for Todoroki to actually go. It wasn't elegant. It wasn't measured the way the rest of the match had been. It was six things happening to one person at the exact same moment, and for those few seconds Todoroki simply couldn't answer any of them fast enough to matter.
The stadium was screaming continuously now, no words left in any of it, just noise.
Fushiguro didn't let up.
Todoroki's arms were still pinned by the two winged shikigami, one clamped around each wrist, while Totality kept low at his flank and the rabbits crowded every open patch of ground around his feet. Nue circled overhead. Great Serpent's massive body coiled through the ice behind him, cutting off the last clean path out.
For the first time in the entire match, Todoroki had nowhere to go.
Fushiguro stepped in.
His fist buried itself in Todoroki's stomach.
Todoroki folded around it, breath exploding from his lungs, and Fushiguro caught him by the front of his uniform before he could sag. A second punch snapped his head sideways. Then another drove into his ribs. Todoroki tried to twist away, but the shikigami holding his wrists yanked his arms wider, leaving his torso completely exposed.
Fushiguro hammered a knee into his stomach.
Todoroki coughed, spit hitting the ice.
The crowd's roar had changed. This wasn't the distant exchange of enormous techniques anymore. They could see every hit.
Fushiguro could feel his own body screaming at him to stop. His breathing came ragged, his muscles trembling from everything he'd already spent, but Todoroki was worse. Much worse.
So he kept hitting him.
A hook across the jaw.
A short elbow into the ribs.
Another knee.
Todoroki's head dipped.
Fushiguro grabbed his hair and drove his forehead straight into Todoroki's face.
THUNK.
Todoroki's knees buckled.
Fushiguro released him and stepped back just enough to drive his heel into Todoroki's chest, but Todoroki's right foot slammed down first.
Ice exploded outward.
Fushiguro jumped back as jagged pillars tore through the ground between them, forcing Totality aside and swallowing the rabbits beneath a rapidly expanding sheet of white. The two winged shikigami still held Todoroki's wrists.
That was when Fushiguro saw his left side ignite.
Flames crawled over Todoroki's shoulder.
His right side froze harder.
Fushiguro's eyes narrowed.
Todoroki raised his head.
His face looked terrible. Frost had spread across the right side of his skin while the left had gone red from heat, steam pouring off him where the two temperatures met. His whole body shook violently, caught between extremes it had already been pushed through too many times today.
But his eyes were still focused.
"Get..."
The temperature spiked.
"...off me."
Ice and fire erupted at the same time.
The arena disappeared.
BOOOOOOM.
The explosion swallowed everything.
Ice detonated outward in enormous slabs as fire ripped through it from the opposite direction, instantly turning entire sections into steam. The winged shikigami were blasted away from Todoroki's wrists, forcibly sent back into the shadows as the technique broke under the force of the explosion. Totality vanished inside the whiteout, dissolving back into Fushiguro's shadow. Rabbits went flying in every direction before bursting back into shadow. Nue was thrown upward by the shockwave, wings folding around itself as it disappeared into the smoke and returned to the shadows as well.
Great Serpent's enormous body was ripped away from Todoroki and hurled across the arena.
The blast slammed into the stadium barriers hard enough to make them groan.
Midnight threw an arm over her face.
Present Mic ducked behind the booth.
Even Cementoss braced himself.
Then the explosion passed.
For several seconds, nobody could see anything.
Steam rolled across the arena in enormous clouds. Broken ice rained down from above, pieces smashing against the concrete one after another.
Todoroki stood at the center of it.
Alone.
His arms hung at his sides.
His chest rose once.
Twice.
Then his knees nearly gave out.
Todoroki caught himself, but only barely.
Something was wrong.
His body couldn't regulate itself anymore. He'd already driven his right side far beyond its limit earlier in the tournament, then forced his left side into the fight against Fushiguro. He's been rapidly freezing and heating himself over and over until his body couldn't keep up.
His breathing turned shallow.
His vision blurred.
His fingers wouldn't close properly.
Todoroki tried to raise his right hand.
It shook.
Ice formed across his fingertips, cracked apart, and fell uselessly to the ground.
His left hand came up instead.
A weak flame flickered across his palm.
It died almost immediately.
Todoroki stared at it.
"What...?"
The crowd had gone quiet.
He looked around.
No Fushiguro.
His eyes moved across the shattered arena.
Totality was gone.
Nue was gone.
The rabbits were gone.
Great Serpent was gone.
Everything had been caught in the blast.
Except-
Todoroki's eyes dropped.
His own shadow rippled.
His pupils shrank.
Fushiguro rose out of it behind him.
Todoroki started to turn.
Too slow.
Fushiguro's heel slammed into his back.
THUD.
Todoroki was launched forward, hitting the ground shoulder-first and rolling across broken ice. He tried to push himself up immediately, but his right arm collapsed beneath him.
Fushiguro landed behind him.
"You're done."
Todoroki gritted his teeth and forced his left hand against the ground.
Fire sputtered around his palm.
Nothing happened.
His body had stopped listening.
Fushiguro's hands came together.
The shadow beneath Todoroki exploded upward.
Great Serpent erupted from it.
The enormous shikigami wrapped around Todoroki before he could react, one coil locking around his waist, another pinning both arms against his sides. Todoroki jerked against it on instinct.
Ice crawled weakly across the serpent's scales.
A flicker of fire followed.
Both died almost immediately.
Great Serpent tightened.
Todoroki sucked in a strained breath.
He tried again.
Nothing.
His head dipped forward.
Fushiguro stood several feet away, breathing hard enough that every inhale hurt, one hand still maintaining the technique.
"Midnight."
She was already moving.
Midnight's eyes swept over Todoroki, the trembling hands, the unfocused stare, the frost still clinging to one side of his body, the angry red skin on the other, and the complete failure of either half of his Quirk to produce anything substantial.
Todoroki tried once more to move.
Great Serpent held him completely still.
Midnight raised her arm.
"THAT'S ENOUGH!"
The stadium fell silent.
"Todoroki is unable to continue!"
One heartbeat.
Then her arm swung toward Fushiguro.
"FUSHIGURO WINS!"
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then the stadium detonated.
Present Mic practically threw himself over the front of the booth.
"HE SURVIVED THAT?! FUSHIGURO DISAPPEARED INTO HIS OWN SHADOW BEFORE THE BLAST COULD HIT HIM, WAITED FOR TODOROKI TO BURN THROUGH EVERYTHING HE HAD LEFT, AND CAME RIGHT BACK OUT BEHIND HIM!"
Great Serpent loosened immediately.
Todoroki dropped to his knees.
Fushiguro dismissed the shikigami before he could fall any farther, and Midnight was already crossing the arena toward him.
Fushiguro watched Todoroki for another second.
Then his own legs finally gave out.
He dropped onto the ice, sitting there with his arms hanging over his knees while the stadium screamed around him.
Standing could wait a little longer.
...
Across the arena, Todoroki remained on his knees where Great Serpent had released him. Midnight had already called for the medical team, though nobody seemed particularly eager to make him move yet. His body was still trembling from the strain, frost clinging stubbornly to his right side while heat radiated from the left.
A small flame flickered weakly over his left hand.
Todoroki stared at it.
He'd used it.
Really used it.
Not because his father had demanded it. Not because somebody had forced him to prove anything. He'd been cornered, beaten down, and seconds away from losing, and when there had been nothing else left, he'd reached for everything he had.
It still hadn't been enough.
Fushiguro eventually forced himself upright. His legs protested immediately, but he ignored them and crossed what remained of the arena until he stopped a few feet from Todoroki.
Todoroki noticed him.
"You happy?"
Fushiguro frowned. "About what?"
"You spent the entire match trying to make me use it."
"Oh." Fushiguro glanced at Todoroki's left side. "No."
Todoroki stared at him. "No?"
"You almost cooked me alive."
Silence.
Fushiguro rubbed at the burn along his cheek. "That part sucked."
A sound escaped Todoroki before he could stop it. Somewhere between a breath and a laugh. His ribs immediately reminded him why that was a bad idea.
Fushiguro looked down at the weak flame still trembling above Todoroki's palm.
He'd pushed Todoroki toward it because he'd needed him fighting at full strength. Because beating somebody who'd decided beforehand that half his own ability didn't count would've meant nothing.
Whatever Todoroki did with it afterward wasn't his decision.
"You used it when you needed it," Fushiguro said.
Todoroki's expression tightened.
"My fire."
"Your Quirk."
Todoroki went still.
Fushiguro didn't mention Endeavor. He didn't mention Todoroki's mother or pretend that one fight had somehow untangled everything behind the way Todoroki looked at his own left hand.
He just shrugged.
"What you do with it now is up to you."
"But... It was fun to fight against someone as strong as you."
Fushiguro turned and started toward the tunnel.
Todoroki remained where he was.
His eyes returned to the flame.
His father came to mind.
So did his mother.
Years of training. The scar over his eye. All Might on a television screen. The boy he'd been before spite had become tangled so tightly around what he wanted that he'd stopped knowing where one ended and the other began.
But there was something else now.
The memory of being trapped beneath a swarm of shikigami, Fushiguro's fist driving into his ribs, his body screaming at him to do something.
And the fire answering.
His fire.
The flame flickered once.
Todoroki closed his hand.
It went out.
For once, extinguishing it didn't feel like a refusal.
...
The tournament board changed one last time.
FINAL
FUSHIGURO MEGUMI
BAKUGO KATSUKI
Bakugo was already on his feet, whatever irritation he'd carried over his automatic advancement gone completely, replaced with something closer to anticipation. "Finally."
Fushiguro looked toward him from the arena. Their eyes met across the whole stadium.
This rivalry had been waiting since the very start of the school year.
Now there was nobody else left standing between them.
One match. One winner. And neither one of them had any intention of settling for second.
...
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