Viridian: The Green Guide

Chapter 112: Finality

Shouto tried not to look if Dabi was back in the stands, but ended up glancing toward where Fuyumi and Natsuo were sitting before he could help himself. He wasn't there, so either he'd gotten himself killed, arrested, or distracted and Shouto couldn't care less which one. Obviously. Why should he care about what happened to the long lost brother who never even bothered to reach out and then immediately did nothing but be annoying as soon as he was back in their lives? Still, Fuyumi and Natsuo wouldn't take it well if he died, so hopefully he'd just gotten bored and gone back to wherever he was sitting originally. Just for their sakes, not his. Obviously.

Kaminari hadn't spent nearly any time with the class since the second round, so if he'd spent that whole time running around, he had to be getting tired by now. Not that Shouto thought he would need that advantage to beat him, but it couldn't hurt. Kaminari was one of the strongest students in their class, so it wouldn't be wise to underestimate him.

Midnight was back to overseeing the matches now, and she cracked her whip as she called the beginning of the match, "I want to see both of you showing off the potential of youth this round, is that clear? Begin!"

Right off the bat, Shouto started with an ice attack, but Kaminari quickly melted his way out with just the heat of his electricity. This needed to be a ranged fight and Shouto wasn't an idiot, so he'd made sure that he wasn't carrying any metal when he walked out onto the field, taking away any opportunity for Kaminari wouldn't be able to use his magnetism to bring him into close range. Shouto's strength was long range fighting, so this was his fight and he was going to win it without using his father's fire.

Shouto kept throwing up icewalls as Kaminari tried to get closer, but he kept melting them as fast as Shouto could make them. Thanks to the ice walls, Kaminari hadn't gotten farther than a few feet closer to him, but he didn't look rushed at all and it was throwing Shouto off. He should want to end the fight quickly, shouldn't he? The longer the fight went on, the more tired he'd get and the more likely it was that he would get frozen by Shouto's ice. So why didn't he seem concerned?

"You sure you wanna keep doing this, Man?" Kaminari yelled. "It doesn't take a whole lot of electricity to create heat like this, so I'm good to do this all day. You're gonna reach your quirk's limit way before I will if we keep going like this and I kinda want a fair fight, dude, if it's all the same to you."

Shouto froze. So that was why he wasn't in a rush. He was planning on going until Shouto passed out from hypothermia, which would happen long before Kaminari generated enough electricity to overload his brain, unless...Shouto shook the thought from his head and hardened his determination. He wasn't going to use his old man's quirk. It didn't matter that the bastard was dead, Shouto could do this with just his mother's power, but he'd have to kick it up a notch.

He made as big a glacier as he could without overdoing it. His breath came out in a large white cloud, but it would be worth it if he'd caught Kaminari...which he hadn't, apparently, considering that his opponent was currently waving at him from the very top of the mountain he'd just created.

"That was really cool!" Kaminari grinned. "I wasn't sure I'd be able to stay in bounds if I used the stadium as a magnetic anchor, but I had to try, right, especially with an awesome move you just pulled. Your quirk is super powerful, dude."

Shouto felt a brief sense of pride until something occurred to him. It wasn't his quirk, it was his mothers...unless his fire wasn't his fathers. Just like Dabi had said, the bastard was dead and he hadn't seen his mom in years. He was so far removed from his parents that neither quirk had anything to do with them anymore, and he couldn't say that his ice was his quirk without saying that his fire was as well. Why was he still letting those ghosts hold him back?