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Abandoned: Humanity's Drift - Chapter 29 - shansome - 

Shinsou turned out to be a lean, purple-haired boy with huge eyebags. He stalked into the arena with long strides, not even sparing Midnight a glance as he immediately fixed his hate-filled glare on Shouto.

Huh.

All Shouto could get off his opponent was that he seemed to have a bit of experience. He didn't recognize him, so he must be from class 1-B-

"It must be nice, huh?" Shinsou suddenly said. "To be so blessed."

What?

"The famed Todoroki Shouto, son of Endeavor himself. You must have everything you could ever want with a dad like that, just right at your fingertips. What's that even like, by the way? Being that fucking rich?"

Shouto narrowed his eyes. So he was the envious type, then.

"I bet-"

Midnight's voice drowned him out. "Begin!"

Shinsou leaped out of the way of a line of ice and accelerated into a sprint, his erratic and circular path making him hard to hit.

"I bet you've never wanted for anything before," Shinsou continued as he ran, still with that same odd tone of bitterness. "With your spoiled background and perfect quirk-"

A small flurry of ice shards clipped Shinsou's uniform, tears forming in clean blue as the purple-eyed boy barely dodged them.

"-you're completely set to be a hero! You didn't even need to pass the fucking entrance exam!"

It was all nothing Shouto hadn't heard before. For the first fifteen years of his life, he was just 'Endeavor's son' to the media and practically everyone he met. 

And obviously, Endeavor had his fair share of haters.

But that didn't mean that the words didn't hit a nerve. Shinsou didn't know a fucking thing about him or his life, yet still had the gall to mock his determination and years of effort, to call him spoiled.

He must be trying to disrupt Shouto's focus- it wouldn't work.

Shouto moderated his hypothermia with practiced care as he mercilessly battered his opponent with ice. Shinsou had quick feet and impressive dodging ability, but if all he did was run and talk trash-

A tap of his right foot and frost raced out across the cement, freezing Shinsou's sneakers fast to the ground. The boy frantically tried to yank himself out to no avail.

A fierce scowl, more words lashing out like whips. "You're not even going to respond to me, huh? You really are Endeavor's son, I see- cold and arrogant enough to treat everyone else like trash!"

Shouto stilled, right fist clenching at his side.

And Shinsou smirked, finally getting his reaction. "You're just like him-"

Then he cut himself off abruptly with a harsh, visible cough and covered his mouth in obvious pain, his eyes going wide in a mix of anger and fear. 

People always took breathing air for granted, Shouto found. They were used to living every moment able to do so easily. Maybe sometimes that air felt more humid than usual or was a little too thin, or maybe it even had to be filtered through a mask- it was still their precious oxygen.

That is until the temperature plummeted and that healthy life gas became dry, unforgiving cold air. Now, simply taking a breath would irritate the airways and constrict the muscles there. That greedy gulp of air would cause tightness in the chest along with a burning sting in the lungs that contrasted heavily against the freezing cold still pressing on the skin. Prolonged exposure could even cripple vital organs.

Shinsou found all this out the hard way. He bent at his knees and choked desperately, his legs still trapped in ice. Untempered fists pounded helplessly against durable white as he tried and failed to escape.

His opponent had stopped finally talking.

A few long seconds passed before Shouto put him out of his misery, launching him clean out of the ring with a wave of ice. Shinsou landed hard on his back and tumbled across the cement, gasping for air.

And there the match ended, with his opponent never having used his quirk once.

Shouto glanced to the side to see Atlas suddenly in Midnight's spot, green eyes focused on him. He nodded to the hero before walking off the stage with his hands in his pockets.

What a disappointing fight.

Participants were given a ten-minute break to prepare for the semifinals. 

Shouto stood up from his seat and stepped over to the rest of 1-A.

He found all three of the other remaining competitors together, a cluster of classmates sitting around them. As he approached Jirou said something that made Midoriya tilt her head back and laugh loud enough to be heard from meters away, her violet hair falling to her sides. A snicker sounded from the floating blue uniform next to her, a familiar white glove resting casually on Midoriya's arm. Yaoyorozu's cheeks were dusted a light red, hands cupped over her mouth in an attempt to hide her own amusement.

Shouto paused, suddenly awkward as he took in the blissful picture in front of him. It was almost like something out of those sweet comedies Fuyumi loved so much(five years was a terribly long time to be without movies, Shouto)- so purely happy that the words he prepared got stuck in his throat.

He couldn't disturb something like that. 

Instead, Shouto patiently waited a minute for the moment to pass before getting Midoriya's attention. Midoriya didn't seem surprised at his call- in fact, she seemed almost expectant, her smile not falling as she stood to follow him.

He led her to a silent hallway completely devoid of passersby and any listening ears before turning to speak. Shouto wasn't very good with words, or really communication in general. So he decided to simply be direct.

"You don't understand my vow," Shouto began. "Or why I made it."

Midoriya leaned back against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. "Are you talking about how you refuse to use your flames?"

"Yes."

"Yeah, I don't get it at all. It seems pretty dumb to me, to be honest."

Shouto's right eye twitched. "I see. Then Midoriya, do you know what a quirk marriage is?"

"Like, two quirks falling in love and..."

"Wh-no, two sentient quirks cannot currently form a legal union. A quirk marriage is when two families arrange a couple for the sole purpose of producing children with a particular quirk," Shouto explained. "This could be either to enhance one of the parent's quirks or to create a combination of the two."

"My father, Endeavor, is the Number Two Hero and an extremely powerful man. He has been a hero for decades and has the highest amount of resolved cases. But despite all of his work he has eternally been stuck at rank two- always below All Might. Endeavor cares more about that stupid ranking than anything else."

"So one day, he came up with a plan to finally surpass his rival. He found a woman with a powerful ice quirk and convinced her family to give her up through money," Shouto practically hissed, the familiar bitterness welling up inside him despite his best efforts. "It took three 'failures' before he finally created me- the perfect child, born wielding my mother's ice on my right and my father's fire on my left. After that, he just needed to put me through constant training so that I could be Number One and finally beat All Might as his tool."

His right hand left his pocket, rising up to trace the left side of his face. His scar was large enough to reach halfway down his cheek, an ugly red spot that hadn't faded with the passage of time. 

"Years of abuse...affected my mother and as I got older, my face only made me look more and more like him. On her worst day, I surprised her while there was a pot of boiling water within arm's reach." Midoriya's eyes widened in horrified realization. "And for that single moment, she didn't see me- she saw him. And that was enough to lock her away forever. That's why I refuse to let myself be a tool for that man."

"So you swore off his fire," Midoriya murmured.

Shouto nodded, glad she finally understood. "I'm going to become the Number One Hero with just my mother's ice and deny that man everything. It will be my mother's legacy, my mother's will that shines through on my path- not him or his destructive flames."

"But why tell me all of this?" 

"You're All Might's niece," Shouto stated simply. 

"...What?"

"You're-"

"No, I heard you. But I'm not related to him at all."

Shouto blinked. "Are you sure?"

Midoriya rolled her eyes. " Yes, I'm super sure that I'm not related to that giant blonde guy. He looks nothing like my dad!"

"Oh." He needed to cross that theory off the list, then. "Still, you're incredibly powerful and have similar abilities to All Might. Defeating you and winning this competition without Endeavor's flames will be a major step towards my goal and greatly piss my damn sperm donor off."

"I get why you decided to only use your mother's ice," Piercing green eyes focused on him. "But it's still the wrong choice."

Shouto tensed. 

"Don't get me wrong, I really want to punch your father in the face right now- several times. You have every right to hate him, Todoroki, but this is a terrible way to show it."

"Mid-"

"Let me finish," Midoriya cut him off. "You were born with two different abilities; fire and ice. You got them from two very different people, yeah, but they're still yours. Your fire and your ice are balanced together to maintain your body's temperature. You control when they activate and when they turn off. You're not her and you're definitely not him. Right now, all your doing is letting that piece of shit lock away half of your being-"

"So what?" Shouto glared at her. "I don't want his cursed quirk- I don't want this red half of hair and single blue eye or the face that's 'pretty despite my scar' anyway!"

"What's the job of a hero, Todoroki?"

The sudden question caught him off guard, and he answered instinctively. "To save people." 

Midoriya gave him a small smile for that. "Yeah. Now, say you hold up your vow and become a hero who only ever uses his ice."

She raised her hand and light followed, little bits of magic floating through the air. Exquisitely detailed snowflakes drifted down from the ceiling and glowed a bright, beautiful white in the dark hallway.

"You're certainly strong, strong enough to capture most villains even if you limit yourself so much. That ice attack you used against Sero was far more powerful than anything I thought I'd ever see from a hu-student."

"But someday, Todoroki, you're going to face an opponent you can't beat with just your ice." Her voice darkened, low and firm in a solemn promise. "Maybe they'll be immune to cold temperatures, maybe they'll carry flames that melt away your quirk, or maybe they'll simply be too powerful to freeze. But when you fight them and refuse to use your fire, refuse to break your vow-"

The snowflakes simultaneously fizzled into nothing.

"You're going to get yourself killed, along with everyone you were trying to save. You can't deny half of yourself forever. So please, abandon that self-destructive vow and become a hero for some other reason other than proving a point to that asshole- he doesn't fucking deserve it."

Shouto stared at her, a swirl of emotions rising up in his chest. There were too many of them to make sense of, anger and confusion and what if burning him up-

He clenched his jaw and forced it all back deep down, a familiar chill freezing his body. "No. No, that'll never happen- I won't let it. My ice will be enough to defeat everyone in my path. I'll become so powerful that I'll never need those damn flames!"

His words hung in the air heavily, weighing down the space between them. 

"Alright," Midoriya tilted her head. "Then prove it, Todoroki. Beat me and win the sports festival with just your ice, and show me it's the only ability you'll ever need. If you can, that is."

And with that bold challenge, Midoriya pushed herself off the wall and casually strolled back into the arena.

Shouto's expression hardened as he stared after her. 

He would.

To absolutely no one's surprise, Midoriya got into the finals; knocking Hagakure out of bounds within a minute in a fierce display of magic and physical prowess. 

Shouto's opponent, though, would probably take a little longer to defeat.

Yaoyorozu Momo was intelligent, trained, and highly versatile. Unpredictable.

Shouto took his hands out of his pockets, fingers tapping along the pants of his gym uniform. His mismatched eyes stared into his opponent's black ones from across the field.

Midnight raised her whip.

Yaoyorozu looked nervous but calculative, a determined expression over her elegant features. Her arms were already raised and ready to create something. Would she make a gun first? A shield? He had no way to know. 

However, Shouto knew that Creation relied heavily on time and concentration. Meaning his best strategy-

"Begin!" 

Instantly, ice spikes shot up from below his opponent. Yaoyorozu leaped back, her eyes wide, and they skewered the half-formed piece of metal falling out of her arm. Pink sparks fizzled out.

-was simply disrupting her focus.

Shouto forced her on the defensive from the start. Ice shards raced through the air and crashed against her hastily made shield. Pillars popped up at intervals to trip her up. eruptions of ice aimed to throw her out of bounds, the frozen-over concrete took away her footing, and small blocks tried to catch her from behind. 

He did all of this with delicate flicks of his right hand, cutting precise strokes through the air as if he were the conductor of an orchestra.

Yaoyorozu simply didn't have the time to create anything large or complex, constantly forced to dodge the unrelenting barrage of attacks. She was only able to gain a brief window to make a disposable shield or a small weapon here and there, and her thrown projectiles couldn't even make a dent in his barriers.

Soon, Shouto had her cornered at the edge of the ring, the grey baton left in her hand barely fending off his ice. A stomp of his right foot and a wave of ice as tall as her stomach sped towards her, easily enough to knock her out of the competition-

A pole formed out of Yaoyorozu's foot at the last second, shoving itself between her and the ground to propel her high into the air and escape the frost below.

Huh.

Yaoyorozu wound her arm back and hurled her baton down at him. Shouto casually raised another ice barrier to block the projectile.

But instead of stopping short as expected the baton punched straight through his ice and into his shoulder, shock and pain mixing together as he was nearly knocked off his feet. The thrown weapon fell to the ground, faintly glowing with pink mana.

The ring was still right behind Shouto- his endurance was all that had saved him from losing right then and there. 

Yaoyorozu seemed to suddenly gain a second wind, hitting the ground in a fluid roll and sprinting towards him with a satisfied smile. There was a new bo staff gripped tight in her hands, its edges lined with more reinforcement magic.

Like a fool, Shouto had been completely lulled into a false sense of security. Her quirk should've been far faster and more effective than that early display. He had just assumed that was the extent of what she could do, that his initial strategy was all he would need to beat her. 

For a moment there, Shouto had been ridiculously arrogant. Just like him, as that damn purple-haired boy put it.

Unacceptable. He needed to be more cool and collected.

Shouto thrust forward his right hand and a huge ice block slid into Yaoyorozu's path. Simultaneously, twin lines of spikes curved around to strike at her back. 

Grey metal flashed as his opponent battered the first obstacle. Shards of shining white flew in every direction as she seamlessly twisted to cleave through the threats coming from behind her. 

This time Shouto properly analyzed his opponent, probing her with varying amounts of ice from every angle.

Yaoyorozu fought with careful, controlled movements. She managed her quirk's stockpile efficiently, utilizing and reinforcing weapons only as needed. She hadn't made anything other than blunted knives and batons since she landed that first hit on him, her staff enough to defend against most of his attacks. 

Shouto debated pulling out one of his large-scale moves, but if she created something to counter he would be far worse off. Heaven Piercing Ice Wall would no doubt end this fight, but it still took him quite a long time to recover from it afterward.

Yaoyorozu had years of training, judging from her skill with a variety of weapons. But the longer Shouto watched the more he noticed that the black-haired girl in front of him was critically inexperienced in actual combat. She was just a little too stiff in her stance, her grip on her staff was too tight, and most of all she wasn't really trying to hurt him- that baton earlier could've been aimed at a dozen better places.

In the nearly two minutes since their match had begun Shouto hadn't actually taken a single step. He'd attacked, definitely- the white structures littering the arena made that clear enough- but he was still standing at the same spot he had started from and was easily battering his opponent from range. So despite how smoothly Yaoyorozu was tearing through all of his ice, she was the one leaping, swinging, and expending all of her stamina over the battle.

And moreover, her entire focus was on the structures coming at her- she wasn't even keeping an eye on him. Just like he had underestimated her earlier, Yaoyorozu had assumed that all he could do was lazily throw ice around.

So as soon as he saw an opening, a powerful wave flowed under Shouto's feet and propelled him forward. He skated as fast as he could across the ice, facing surprised black eyes within seconds.

Yaoyorozu was a little taller than him, Shouto noticed, probably because of all that hair. 

His opponent panicked and swung her staff at him- a mistake. He caught it in his right palm, freezing the metal solid and shattering it into pieces just as his other fist slammed into her jaw.

A solid hit.

Powering through, Yaoyorozu twisted with the movement and aimed a roundhouse kick- at his left side, interestingly enough. He blocked it with his forearm and lunged with his right hand, watching her dodge desperately and pull something long out of her shoulder. 

She knew that a single touch of his right arm would counter her weapons. And if he froze her directly she'd be trapped and unable to do anything at all. 

So Yaoyorozu formed a simple, brown whip, its small end lashing out faster than Shouto could catch. The additional reach kept her safe from his frost and the skilled girl could curve her attacks at nonsensical angles to strike at his left side. The whip wasn't sharp, but when reinforced it stung heavily against his thin gym uniform. 

"Brilliant," Shouto murmured, speaking for the first time since the fight started. The fact that Yaoyorozu had even mastered a whip, of all things. 

A small hint of red entered his opponent's cheeks, her whip pausing for a half-second. "Ah, thank you."

He needed to destroy that whip. 

Shouto sent multiple ice pillars towards her in a line. Her current weapon was nearly useless against the obstacles, forcing her to dodge-

And nearly fall, her feet sliding on the still frozen cement. 

Shouto finally reached out and grabbed her whip, ice running down the length of the weapon to destroy it. Once again, his left fist flew out to strike in the opening and caught her hard in her stomach. 

Yaoyorozu stumbled back with a wince, her empty hand shooting towards his face in return. He tilted his head on reflex and a taser formed out of her palm, its crackling tips just grazing Shouto's scar. 

His mismatched eyes widened at the near-miss. Too close.

A small burst of spikes forced her to leap back, knocking the electric weapon out of her hands. But his opponent already had something new- a small can with strange indents along its side.

Yaoyorozu yanked something out of the top and threw the grey object at him. 

An explosive! The flash of panic made Shouto instantly form a thick ice dome around him, layered spikes far more durable than his usual shields.

But there was no impact. Instead, his ice brightened for a moment, light poking through just as Shouto heard an ear-splitting bang that was louder than anything he had ever imagined. 

A rush of dizziness forced Shouto onto one knee, his hands flying to his ears. Some kind of sonic weapon, one incredibly strong even muffled by his ice. 

Shouto breathed out cold mist, regaining his bearings through force of will. While he was still safe in his ice structure he needed to think of a new plan-

Heat. 

A sudden, burning heat that warmed up Shouto's freezing body in a blissfully horrible way because he wouldn't dare desire fire over ice yet at the same time couldn't deny the reduction of his quirk's side effect. He hadn't lost his ironclad control, meaning the heat was coming from outside.

Shouto broke a wall and dove aside just as his little ice dome melted away in flames.

He turned to see Yaoyorozu gripping a large flamethrower tight in both hands and anchored to her neck with a black strap. There was a can of fuel on her back, and she casually aimed the weapon toward his face.

Damn it.

All Shouto had time to do was create an ice shield in front of him before flames were crashing against it and licking at his arms. 

The output wasn't nearly as much as Endeavor's fire but for a surprise attack, it certainly did the trick. Shouto froze more and more ice into his shield, at first struggling to defend. 

But as the seconds passed he soon overpowered the encroaching flames- his temperature control was superior to her hastily created weapon. The fire had the benefit of chasing away Shouto's frostbite, granting him strength.

He gritted his teeth and pushed his frost further, pillars of ice forcing through the fire to reach the nozzle of her flamethrower. Soon, the powerful weapon was useless.

Shouto leaped into the opening to grab Yaoyorozu's shoulder and in a burst of chill, she was completely encased in ice, with only her neck and above free. 

And with that, it was over.

Yaoyorozu let out a long sigh, visible in the freezing air. The smile on her face wavered, but she didn't lose any of her new confidence as she spoke, her teeth chattering.

"That really was an excellent m-match, Todoroki-san."

Shouto nodded to his opponent in agreement. 

It certainly was.

Notes:

Shinsou vs Todoroki is a pretty terrible matchup for both of them. Todoroki because Shinsou is going to poke at his trauma and numerous issues and also presents someone who's put in almost no effort, and Shinsou because Todoroki's default is to just never respond to anyone unless he has to(especially if they're being irritating). Todoroki also has far more experience and Shinsou needs to rile up the cold silent guy enough to speak while being spammed with OP ice attacks. Todoroki just isn't the kinda person to sit and have a conversation. The cold air thing is something I'm surprised isn't mentioned more often, I mean freezing temperatures are no joke guys. Yikes.

It's pretty obvious at this point that I love writing Momo- she's just so fun. You can assume the flashbang she makes is a watered-down version because of how fast she made it and the fact that she's not trying to permanently injure her opponent's hearing and vision. That said, please tell me if I got anything wrong there.

The next chapter is Akari vs Shouto and probably wrapping up the tournament. I'm surprised this arc has gone on this long, really...