vessel of time › todoroki shoto

Chapter 4: The First Test

  "Oh, I'm Ochaco Uraraka, by the way!" The girl who approached me introduced herself.

  "I'm (Y/N), nice to meet you," I replied with my standardised answer whenever someone introduces themselves to me.

  "I'm kinda wondering what we'll be doing later though," someone else mentioned. Her hair which was perfectly jet black was tied into a high and spiky ponytail.

  "Yeah, being asked to wear this sports attire is a bit too sudden, especially on the first day of school," Uraraka replied. I quickly changed my clothes into the attire Mr Aizawa gave us before leaving the room by myself. The hallway was devoid of anyone, everyone else must be still changing, I guess. I immediately made my way to the assembly area that Mr Aizawa mentioned earlier and it seemed like I wasn't the first to arrive. Arata, the guy who helped me earlier on and many others were already there.

  "I heard we'll be doing some tests later," Arata said as he approached me. What made him think he could just approach me as if we're already friends?

  "Oh, really?" I looked at him and faked a smile before looking away again, does he not get the memo that I did not want to talk to him?

  "You used to smile and have stars in your eyes, y'know? Now you smile and have nothing but darkness in them," he said.

  "I don't think she likes your company," someone else nearby uttered. I turned to look at the direction that his voice came from, and it was him. The one who helped me up earlier on, the one with immense warmth in his hands. His voice sounded cold and harsh. Arata merely sighed before walking off. Thank goodness.

  Soon, more students started streaming in and eventually, everyone was here. Mr Aizawa started off by saying what we were going to do, and as Arata said, it was indeed a test. He didn't talk about it much and straight away got to it. The first one was a 50 metre dash. Everyone started queueing and waiting for their turn at the running track. Well, time to shed some blood. I took my penknife out and pushed the blade out.

  "(Y/N), what are you doing with that?" Uraraka, who was queueing behind me had to ask.

  "...It's my quirk," I answered without looking at her. When I use it later, I want to try something new. Whenever I use it, everyone gets affected by it, so no one would know I even used my quirk and no one would be able to see it in action. However, I've recently found out that I could control who would get affected and who would not, which means they could see the clock stop ticking, people stop moving, vehicles stop in their tracks, everything, right in front of their very eyes. I watched everyone. First, it was someone called Tenya Iida. His quirk was very interesting. He's like the human version of an engine which I guess that that's exactly what his quirk is. And then next was Bakugou and Midoriya. Bakugou used his explosion quirk to propel himself forward, as for Midoriya... He just normally ran without using any tricks.

  Next, comes my turn. I was against the guy who helped me. Nice. I sunk the penknife into my arm, making sure not to cut too deep. Of course, this attracted a lot of attention, even by my own opponent. His light and dark eyes were on the blood leaking out of my delicate arm. "3... 2... 1!" I pushed all my focus into my quirk. And then I felt it. I felt everything halting, I saw my opponent stop in his tracks just as he was about to use his quirk, I felt everyone's eyes on me, I heard complete silence. I looked around and I succeeded. Only my opponent was affected by the time pause, but not the rest of my classmates and Mr Aizawa.

  "Whoa.. What just happened?!" I heard one of them say. I felt my time running out as the cut I made was only a small one, so I jogged my way to the finishing line before resuming time.

  "0.1 second," the robot that was calculating our time said as soon as it detected me at the end line. Of course, my opponent was astounded as he realised what was happening. He pushed himself forward at rapid speed using his ice quirk.

  "4.2 seconds," the robot said as he passed the finishing line. Everyone else started talking among themselves, discussing what I had just done, completely ignoring my opponent's ice quirk which, to be fair, I found quite amazing.

  "What did you do?" He eyed me and asked.

  I couldn't help but look away from him. His eyes dug too deeply, it was as if he could even invade my thoughts. "I... paused time for you," I replied, before Mr Aizawa told us to return back to our places as we were blocking the track for the next two students. We walked off together. Oh, I still don't know his name.

  "I'm (Y/N), what's your name?" I asked him a little bit too nervously.

  "Todoroki Shoto." Was all that he replied. I nodded, taking note of it before we parted ways and waited for the rest to finish. Todoroki Shoto.. huh? Somehow, I felt that we could get along well enough.

Author's note

Yay, managed to release another chapter today!! Again, I had spare time so I may as well write a new chapter~ Hope you enjoyed this, and see you in the next one :)