Chapter 17

Chapter 17

The match between Bakugo and Midoriya ended with the hero team's victory. Watching Bakugo's furious expression, Kirisame silently postponed her plan to apologize to him.

Soon it was Kirisame's group's turn.

"This match doesn't feel like it's going to be easy either," Kirishima stared at the three people huddled together on the screen, discussing something. "A recommended student and the top in practical skills, and it's three against two."

"I bet it'll be disheartening to watch," Denki Kaminari said honestly.

The villain team had three people, plenty of time and manpower, so they could easily adopt a divide-and-conquer strategy.

"Ojirō-kun! Little Kirisame! I'm going to get a bit serious!"

The completely invisible girl, Toru Hagakure, waved her only visible hand in the air. "Take off your boots and gloves!"

...Ojirō was silent. Although this was necessary, doing it in front of two girls made him feel like whatever he said would be awkward.

Kirisame accurately caught her shoulder in the void. "Tō-tō, don't take off your boots just yet."

...Tō, Tō-tō?!

Ye Yin was stunned for a moment, then almost laughed.

Pfft—this tone and this nickname—she must have learned it from Meiyu...

Meeting Ojirō's equally confused gaze, Kirisame explained with difficulty, "I'm not sure about Shoji, but I've been beaten by ice-type abilities many times before, so I might have some experience."

"...Ah?" Two voices.

"This kind of ability has an advantage outdoors; it's very limited indoors," Kirisame recalled, shivering. "So when fighting indoors, they usually choose to first freeze the entire space, including everyone inside."

"Hey, no way..." Ojirō freaked out. "Can he really do that?"

"When Todoroki tested his stamina, he stomped his foot and froze a fifty-meter track," Ye Yin said in a low, ominous voice.

"..."

The three of them exchanged glances and swallowed hard at the same time. The transparent girl decisively stopped taking off her boots.

Outside the building, the hero team.

"I'll freeze the entire building in a bit," Shoto Todoroki originally wanted to solve things alone, but remembering the tone that man used when mentioning this Aizawa Kirisame, he decided to be cautious. "But I might not be able to freeze all of them."

"Let's figure out a plan. Let's try to take out one person first."

Shoji nodded.

"Then it's decided!" Ye Yin clapped her hands. "Ojirō-kun guards the nuclear bomb, Kirisame ambushes, and I'll launch a surprise attack!"

The two girls tapped fists.

"Eh? How does Kirisame always know where my hands are?" the transparent girl who had already taken off her gloves asked curiously.

—Because of temperature and wind, and "presence."

"Because I also have a hiding-type ability, I'm sensitive to that," Kirisame recalled the "hundred phrases girls like to hear" that the werewolf sisters mentioned at their last gathering and thought it was worth trying. "So Tō-tō, don't worry about your companions not finding you. If you're in trouble, Ojirō and I will help you."

Ye Yin, who was used to being forgotten by her companions when she didn't speak because of her Quirk, was left speechless.

Then Kirisame was hugged tightly by the transparent girl.

Even though she couldn't see anything, she could still feel the soft touch of the girl.

"..."

"Hey, Kirisame, why are you trembling?"

The new student Kirisame said seriously, "I'm so afraid Todoroki will freeze me into a popsicle."

She gestured, "You all be careful. Todoroki might be the type that, as long as a little ice scratches your skin, he can freeze all the blood inside you."

"Pfft—"

"Pfft—"

"Haha, Kirisame, you've been reading too many manga! Is Todoroki a demon? Haha—"

"..."

*You haven't faced Mr. Steven before.*

In the monitoring room, Mineta watched a pair of boots jumping on the ground, itching with curiosity to know what was being said over there.

The three, who had reached an agreement, disappeared in an instant—one could turn invisible, and the other vanished from sight after saying something, too. Ojirō, guarding the nuclear bomb, sighed.

Although there were three of them, because the other two were so good at hiding, he felt like he was alone.

"Combat Training Round Two! Begin!"

Kirisame lurked on the ceiling, releasing her fireflies, which slowly moved along the upper wall, barely showing a hint of phosphorescence under the corridor lights.

The short sword Shinano Tōshirō—the best hide-and-seeker among the Fujishirō family—was held in Kirisame's hand, and her figure briefly disappeared from the monitor.

Todoroki and Shoji entered the corridor one after the other.

"The nuclear bomb is on the fourth floor. One person is guarding it, and another is hiding on the same level. And one more..." Shoji frowned. "I can't sense the last one."

"I see. It'll be dangerous soon. Come in a little later," Shoto Todoroki instructed his teammate behind him.

Then he pressed his hand against the wall. Ice spread along his hand, swallowing the entire first floor in seconds and rapidly extending upward.

A sudden chill struck. Kirisame dismissed Imagin to drop straight down, avoiding the encroaching ice crystals. Landing on the frozen ground, she saw the pattern of Ying Wan's blade reflected in her eyes. "Here they come!"

Her two teammates leapt up upon hearing this.

After the first wave passed, all the visible space was covered in raging ice and snow. Shoji followed up, "None of them are frozen, but I know where the other one went."

...*As expected.*

Todoroki nodded to show he understood.

The cold turned his breath into white puffs. The boy's gray-black eyes, uncovered by his protective suit, were ice-cold.

Since his first move hadn't succeeded, a fight was unavoidable.

"Let's see who's stronger," Todoroki said.

At the stairway from the first to the second floor, Kirisame pulled herself back up, feeling the feedback from the fireflies. Through Ying Wan's one-way communication, she told Ye Yin and Ojirō, "They're coming."

Shoto Todoroki slowly walked up to the stairway entrance.

Based on feedback from his teammate, the sound that appeared earlier had vanished again after just one occurrence. Among the three opponents, Ojiro lacked concealment abilities and was likely staying back to guard the bomb; the invisible girl was probably acting as an ambush, and given the three-on-two situation, she wouldn’t stray too far from the bomb either—her position had already been pinpointed by Shoji earlier.

—So the one that briefly appeared and disappeared in that instant when the ice covered everything could only be Aizawa Kirisame.

According to their classmate Tokoyami’s account, Aizawa Kirisame had demonstrated the ability to walk along walls during practical exercises. For the sake of stealth, her attack would definitely come from...

Todoroki blinked at his teammate. Todoroki, who had been walking casually, suddenly changed his stance as his duplicate arm extended to block the opponent’s escape routes.

Above!!

The black-flame-wrapped blade came silently and suddenly out of thin air, slashing straight toward Shoji.

Even though Todoroki and Shoji had anticipated Kirisame’s ambush and attacked first, they never expected Kirisame to go straight for Shoji without hesitation. Barely dodging the swift, quiet strike by a hair’s breadth, Todoroki shoved his teammate aside as he awkwardly staggered backward. His bangs were sliced cleanly down the middle.

The opportunity was already lost, and staying any longer would be unwise. Without looking back, Shoji dashed toward the second floor.

Kirisame’s first strike missed; she dropped down from the air and looked up at the ceiling she had been on.

A thick layer of ice had already reformed beneath Todoroki’s feet.

*That was close.*

Both of them thought the same thing.

Kirisame watched Shoji leave, somewhat surprised that she had been located and ambushed in return.

If his duplicate ears also had enhanced hearing, then that meant she must have been exposed when she jumped down from the ceiling to dodge the ice...

She hesitated, but remembering the promise to her teammates before she left, the girl—accustomed to fighting alone—finally decided to trust them.

Two opponents were still waiting upstairs for him. Even if this strike didn’t succeed, that was fine. The problem now—

The boy opposite had a cold, stern expression.

—was whether she could stall this two-toned ice-using classmate long enough.

Shoji made his way upstairs, using his hearing to avoid Hagakure in the corridor as he hid to catch his breath. The situation was grim: Todoroki was tied up, and if he charged alone toward the bomb, he’d likely face a two-on-one fight.

All he could do was avoid being discovered in the meantime and hope that Todoroki could take care of Aizawa and regroup.

The tall boy hid in a corner, thinking this.

In the monitoring room, the students didn’t know what to say after watching this sequence.

Compared to the previous group’s—Midoriya and Bakugo’s—frenzied, screaming, face-contorting brawl, the two currently fighting each had expressionless faces, yet their moves were one crueler than the other.

“They’re counter-ambushing each other like this? Amazing they all managed to dodge...” Kirishima patted his chest in admiration.

“Now the hero team is really in trouble. Their first strike didn’t succeed; it’s about to be two-on-one.” Yaoyorozu looked at the screen. “Judging by Ojiro’s and Hagakure’s performances, Kirisame-san likely has some unique reconnaissance and communication method that bypasses Shoji.”

Meeting All Might’s approving gaze, Yaoyorozu frowned. “He’ll probably be discovered soon.”

Downstairs, the one-on-one between Kirisame and Todoroki had already turned white-hot. In less than a minute, the small space was filled with shattered ice and crisscrossing blade marks. Half of Todoroki’s frozen combat suit had been broken off.

Todoroki scowled. A wall of ice collided with Kirisame’s short blade as he narrowly avoided the tip that had pierced straight through the ice. He felt a rare surge of frustration.

He had thought they could locate her position and that he and Shoji could take out Aizawa Kirisame with their ambush. But once she actually dodged, he realized she was too fast. Shoji’s bulky build and slower speed made him completely unsuited for fighting this kind of opponent.

Todoroki silently acknowledged that his teammate’s quick retreat per Plan B was a good move, but he also knew that the pressure was now all on him.

Meanwhile, as Yaoyorozu suspected, Kirisame had no intention of letting Shoji catch his breath. The sword patterns of Ying Wan and Hotarumaru flashed across her mind. “He’s at the third-floor corner.”

Ojiro and Hagakure stayed calm, simultaneously left their positions to converge on Shoji.

Todoroki’s communicator crackled with his teammate’s anxious voice: “I didn’t hear any exchanged words, but they seem to have found me!

*She has a communication method that bypasses Shoji.*

Upstairs, Shoji was directly above him. The situation was almost identical to that of the Midoriya-Bakugo fight.

The two-toned boy narrowed his eyes.

Jumping up to dodge another sweeping blade, Todoroki rolled to the ground and sprang up, slapping the ground as he rose.

With the same speed as when he had frozen the building, a layer of ice spread out rapidly.

“Dodge.” The voice in Shoji’s communicator was curt.

As they had planned, Shoji jumped on the spot. The ice swept under his feet instantly. The tall boy landed on the already-covered ice in a long-jump stance and, as expected, saw the pursuing Hagakure frozen.

Hearing his teammate’s update, this unexpected area-denial successfully froze Hagakure, who had found Shoji first. Todoroki instinctually looked up to check the opponent’s expression.

The answer came in a naginata strike.

In this cramped terrain where a long blade was clearly disadvantageous, she had switched to a naginata and swept it toward him. Todoroki hurriedly stepped back, but his back slammed into the ice he had just created.

*She deliberately forced me here!*

When Kirisame followed up with a short blade strike, the boy’s expression finally changed.

—He gave a nearly imperceptible smirk.

An ice pillar that had been quietly growing between them suddenly shot upward, aiming directly at Kirisame in midair.

The icicle’s clear tip grew closer.

—Kirisame, too, showed the first smile since the fight began.

In her hand, she had switched back to Iwatooshi.

Almost exactly like Bakugo’s move, she slammed the naginata against the ice surface, using it as a pole vault to leap over Todoroki and the ice behind him, delivering a ground-level slash from behind.

*...!!!*

This cleverly angled strike sent the ice wall and the off-balance Todoroki behind it flying into the air together.

“Once you’re in the air, it’s harder to make ice, isn’t it?”

His vision blurred, and the next moment, he was grabbed by the collar and slammed from midair to the ground.

His back hit the scattered ice shards hard. Kirisame pinned his stomach with her knee, while her short blade stuck into the ground beside his head.

Her hat flew up and then fell back down, covering half her face. The hem of her coat, lifted by the wind, and her black hair fluttered down slowly.

Todoroki felt surrounded by his opponent’s presence.

Their breaths mingled. Beyond the pain, all he could perceive was her golden eyes, so close.

Even if I didn't use the capture tape, you probably know you shouldn't move around, right?

—The teacher left.

Not expecting that Shoto Todoroki's opening move could be used a second time, it took two minutes to deal with this ice-using classmate. So what about Toru Hagakure—

Kirisame, who had been so anxious that she directly split the ceiling with a single slash, jumped up and was stunned.

...What happened here?

It... it feels kind of awkward.

Toru Hagakure had already freed herself, apparently having abandoned her boots. Shoji was holding her shoes, the exposed half of his face faintly red, not knowing where to put his hands and feet.

White capture tape was wrapped around Shoji's body, and Ojiro hadn't even had time to put his tail down.

The air was very quiet for a moment.

The transparent girl hopped to put on her shoes.

"It's like this... after you left, we suddenly had an idea," Ojiro explained.

"I was the bait~ Ojiro-kun was the ambush," Toru Hagakure said with a slight shiver, her tone peculiar. "Then when Shoji tried to catch me, he was ambushed by Ojiro-kun, but he dodged it."

Kirisame listened to their words, trying to reconstruct the situation.

Shoji and Ojiro were locked in a fierce battle, while Toru Hagakure took off her shoes nearby, waiting for a chance to ambush.

...No problem there, a reasonable choice.

Perhaps Kirisame's bewildered gaze was too obvious; Toru Hagakure, who had already put on her gloves, changed their position in the air.

Kirisame thought that gesture probably meant covering her face.

"The ground was frozen and too slippery... and I didn't have shoes, so I accidentally—"

"...You slipped?!" Ojiro was shocked. "I thought you did it on purpose—I was thinking what a beautiful dodge!"

"..."

"...So that's how it happened. Toru Hagakure did a quick acrobatic dodge to avoid Shoji, and then while he was caught by my tail, she tied him up with the tape," Ojiro briefly concluded.

"Shoji is super gentle! After it was over, he was afraid I'd get cold and helped me get my shoes," Toru Hagakure praised.

No problem with that. Kirisame looked at Shoji in confusion.

...So why are you blushing?

The tall young man silently covered his face, thinking about the soft sensation on his arm from when they brushed past each other.

So when Shoto Todoroki came up, full of frustration and aching all over after hearing that the enemy team had won, what he saw was this oddly quiet scene.

—But as it turned out, he was there to break the scene.

"Pfft—hahahaha." Her gloves and boots curled up together, apparently Toru Hagakure had failed to stifle her laughter.

The two boys stared at him, dumbfounded.

After a moment, Ojiro turned to Kirisame. "...That's too harsh, don't know when it'll grow back."

Shoto Todoroki belatedly touched his hair.

—The handsome young man with half-red, half-white hair now had his bangs cut evenly, looking like a classic Watermelon Taro bowl cut.

"Oh my god, Little Kirisame, fighting you is terrifying—you even cut his hair! Hahaha—"

Shoto Todoroki: "..."

Only after the three had laughed enough did they notice Kirisame's similarly reddened forehead.

"I was going too fast and couldn't stop, I bumped my head into his ice," the girl explained stiffly. Toru Hagakure somehow detected a hint of grievance in her flat tone.

Amid the sound of teammates laughing and holding their stomachs, the bang-haired boy and the red-forehead girl exchanged a glance, momentarily forgetting the outcome of the match and the heavy burdens they carried.

Each of them raised a faint, almost imperceptible smile.