-Rain of Sins-
-Trial of Fools: Ch 13-
Izuku blinked. Then he blinked again. Then, just to make sure, he blinked a third time.
But what he was seeing didn't change.
Instead of just running the program to set up his new device, his Laptop was also running its program to get into the big screen again.
Thankfully it didn't take as long this time, with a few clicks he just told it to input the one that had worked last time, and got in again.
The password hadn't changed, which meant he hadn't been discovered, but it was almost like the screen's control panel had turned off and then back on again.
"Huh." He blinked a fourth time. "Weird."
-Rain of Sins-
"Bravo Two, this is Eagle. How is the Mouse? Over."
Tanya reached a hand up and tapped the device in her ear, as the radio voice came in.
"This is Bravo Two. The Mouse is in its hole, Eagle. I repeat the Mouse is in its Hole. No signs of a Cat yet. Over."
She was in the system, and hadn't met any resistance.
But then, as she said that, her laptop- containing some of the most advanced hardware the PSC could provide, running the most advanced software available… flickered.
…
And then it did it again.
And then she lost contact with the camera feed, the security systems, as well as literally everything else.
Tanya began frantically searching for anything amiss, but with a few keystrokes she had access to everything again. None of her code had been touched.
"This is Bravo Two to Eagle. Do we have a second Caretaker working in the cage? Over."
The line on the other end was silent for a few seconds, before the com crackled back to life.
"Negative Bravo Two. We only put one Mouse Treat in the cage. Have you spotted a Cat?"
The message was clear. You're alone. Has Nezu spotted you?
"Negative Eagle." Tanay said with slight worry. "No signs of a Cat, the Mouse is still in its hole. Over."
She'd been kicked out of all her programs and access, but nothing had been changed or removed. It was almost like the system had done the equivalent of a digital sneeze.
She blinked and scratched her head.
That was weird.
-Rain of Sins-
"La Brava is everything alright?"
"Uhh, yeah everything's fine! I've got past their firewalls. The system thinks I'm an admin user now."
"Splendid!" Gentle laughed boldly as he finished off his tea. "With your help our entrance shall go down in history!" He gave her an award winning smile before walking off to return the glass cups, and leave a generous tip for the small-time tea shop.
But La Brava didn't respond, instead her eyes flickered back and forth as she scrolled down her computer screen, her brow furrowing deeper the longer she read.
Was it just her, or did some of this code look… different than the rest?
And what was with that restart? She'd done a test connection a week ago, and had gotten in fine, no system reset. The only reason something different could have happened was if there was something different in the system she was trying to break into.
She shook her head and focused on her task, she couldn't get distracted! Gentle was counting on her! She wouldn't let him down!
But still…
She frowned as she skimmed past a patch of code that was just in an ever so different style from the code around it.
It was weird.
-Rain of Sins-
Snipe tilted his head as the computer terminal in front of him decided to randomly reboot.
He wasn't exactly the most savvy with technology. He could work maintenance on a gun, but software was beyond him. Even so, he had the suspicion that trying to log in wasn't supposed to cause the computer to turn off and on again.
Usually this would be where he'd ask Nezu for help, but the Principle was out enjoying the festival.
In the end he just shrugged and resumed his business.
Weird.
-Rain of Sins-
All for One frowned as the entire UA software system flickered several times.
He just needed access to a few cameras to make sure Tomura could get in without getting detected. Why was dealing with this school always so difficult? And not even in the challenging sense, but the tooth-pulling and hair-graying type of difficult.
He sighed in annoyance.
It was all Nezu's fault somehow, he was sure of it.
-Rain of Sins-
The crowd cheered as ice and fire crashed against one another in yet another spectacular display of fury. Well, two thirds of the crowd did at least, the unfortunate minority pouted and grumbled about their vision being obscured by the giant fucking glacier that still existed.
The arena was in poor shape, the concrete was cracked in various places, had chunks blown out of it, and couldn't seem to decide whether it wanted to be frozen solid, or scorched black… And of course there was the giant iceberg taking up a fourth of the arena, restricting the amount of room the combatants had to work with.
Something that big wouldn't just disappear into thin air after all, what do you think this is? Loony Toons? Well, whatever people thought about the iceberg, the fight going on below was anything but what you would find on the saturday morning television…
Momo let out a war cry matched only by the roar of her gun as she skidded to a stop across the icy floor, her spiked boots drawing claw marks behind her as she barely avoided another wave of ice. Not for a moment did her finger leave the trigger of her gun, spitting out scorching flames and bullets that raked across the arena as she brought the righteous weapon to bear.
Shoto held his arms up to defend himself as the rounds crashed into him, the metal marbles hit much harder than the rubber rounds Momo had begun the match with, tearing through the thin layer of protection his sports uniform offered him, leaving countless bruises across his body. Some even broke skin as they bounced off, causing him to bleed slightly.
The onslaught that would have incapasitated any of their other classmates only lasted half a second, before a wall of ice shot up between them, cutting them off from one another.
Momo scowled and raised a hand to squeeze the trigger on the multi-purpose launcher she had equipped on her shoulder, ignoring the pain that lanced up her side as she did so from what was undoubtedly a broken rib.
The crowd cheered as the incendiary rocket exploded against the wall, reducing it to equal parts rubble and water. But as the wall fell, Shoto was nowhere to be seen.
Every instinct in her body screamed at her as she threw herself backwards, barely avoiding a wall of ice spikes that slammed into where she'd been standing, but one of them caught her upper arm as it slid by, ripping a huge gash in her leather armor and a sizable cut in her shoulder.
Momo spun to her left, where the attack had come from, bringing her gun to bear, but cried out in shock as a spear of ice the size of her arm shot past her head. It caught her launcher as it flew past, roughly yanking it off her shoulder and carrying it out of the ring.
Shoto stepped forward, intent to end the fight, but was forced back as a wave of napalm hit him, causing him to backpedal and focus on putting it out before it slowly began to eat through his resistance.
"WHAT A MATCH!" Present Mic's voice rang over the loudspeakers, barely audible over the crowd. "WE'RE TEN MINUTES IN, AND THE KIDDIE GLOVES ARE REALLY STARTING TO COME OFF AS THE CONTESTANTS KEEP ESCALATING!"
The two fighters gathered themselves as they once again faced off across from across the arena.
Shoto glared with eyes more akin to ships of ice than anything living, but there was a burning rage, barely held beneath the forced facade of calm.
"I won't lose." He muttered robotically to himself as he stepped forward, the ground freezing beneath him. "I won't let HIM win!"
Momo panted visible breaths as her lungs desperately pulled for air, completely unused to this sort of strain. She was exhausted, she'd never been in a real fight before with a real opponent, she was completely out of her depth, working with new tactics, and unused to this level of physical exertion… but.
"I can do this!" She whispered to herself, uncaring about the blood that dripped from the side of her head from where the spear had nicked her. She had a wide grin on her face from the adrenaline flooding through her system. She was having fun, she'd never felt more alive!
"I can do this!" She repeated as she stepped forward, laughter threatening to bubble past her lips. "I'm not weak! I'm not useless!"
"WHO'S GONNA WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!?"
The arena froze over, ice racing forward from Shoto's outstretched palm.
Momo squeezed the trigger and her weapon sang in hymns of jubilous praise, of righteous fire and furious metal.
The titans clashed and the entire coliseum shook as the crowd thundered in cheer. The ice crashed down with the might of a frozen hurricane.
But Shotot's eyes widened in surprise as the unending ice parted around Momo like the red sea had for Moses.
Fire and bullets, real bullets, crashed against the tide of nature with the hate of humanity, raging against the inevitable and clawing its way through the impossible by sheer force of will.
Step by step Momo advanced.
Step by step she forced her way through the unending wave of ice.
And every step Shoto's eyes widened even further in shock…no, in fear.
Frantically he looked around for something, anything that he could use. He couldn't lose! Nat after he'd come so far! He couldn't lose to HIM!
In an instant the wave of ice cut off, and Momo quickly carved a path to Shoto- swapping back to non-lethal rounds as she drew close. But as she burst through Shoto dropped to the ground and placed his hand flat against the concrete floor.
The same cracked, busted up, concrete arena floor that had torn itself into pieces from shrinking and expanding as it rapidly flipped between extreme hot and cold, and which condition's hadn't been helped from being peppered with bullets and various levels of explosives.
Todoroki took a deep breath, and ice flooded the hundreds of cracks and crevices that had burrowed deep into the concrete floor. Then it expanded twenty fold.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Momo only had a moment to gasp as the floor ballooned out beneath them, before it promptly exploded, sending both her and Shoto flying.
Momo landed hard on her side, bruising her shoulder, and hitting her head as she rolled across the small lake of frigid water that had come from her melting her way through the ice wave.
Groggily she pulled herself to her shaking feet, dark spots dancing in the corners of her eyes, but she didn't concern herself with that. Instead she let out a long string of curses she'd only ever heard Bakugo say, as she realized she'd lost her gun, the fuel tube ripped and hanging limply from her arm.
Ice crunched as Shoto walked around a small pile of frozen debris, a furious look on his face, and his body mostly frozen from quirk overuse.
"Surrender." He demanded, his hand held out, shimmering with frost.
But instead of bowing her head like he'd expected, she pulled something off her belt, some sort of thin black batton tipped with two sharp metal tips on the end, and stabbed it into the ground.
Momo grinned like a maniac, and that was the only warning he got before she pushed the button on the handle, and electricity ripped across the wet floor. Momo, with her rubber lined boots was unaffected, Shoto however cried out in shock as his muscles forcibly constricted and caused him to topple backwards.
Flat on the ground, his muscles spasming and clenching, and unable to pull himself to his feet, Shoto panicked as he heard footsteps approaching, and hastily slapped his hand against the floor.
He was shot up, out of danger, as a pillar of ice erupted beneath him. The pillar lifted itself higher and higher, until it was easily 20 feet tall. Momo quickly summoned a small pistol from the tear in her sleeve, and launched another volley of mock-bullets, but they pinged off as Shoto surrounded himself in a ball of ice.
She only had a moment to be confused, before the base of the pillar began to rapidly expand in all directions. At this rate it would either trap her in ice, or force her out of bounds, all while keeping her flamethrower out of reach of the main spire- granted, she didn't have it anymore, but he was clearly smart enough to know she could just make another one.
Momo had to hand it to Shoto, for a plan cooked up mid-fight, it was rather clever.
Unfortunately, while he understood that she could pull out another flamethrower, he obviously didn't understand what even she herself was still struggling to wrap her mind around.
Momo had the perfect counter to anything, and the only reason she'd fallen so far behind everyone else, was that she hadn't realized what she had at her fingertips.
The pistol dropped to the ground with a thud, and slowly Momo pulled her thick glove off her shaking left hand, revealing blue tinted fingers. Light danced between her fingertips as her body fat and lipids were converted into pure energy and then reformed back into matter.
In only a few seconds, it was done.
Momo leveled the largest handgun seen since the chaos of the Quirk-Collapse at the middle of the ice pillar, bracing it with both hands. It was a somewhat ugly thing, with no obvious way to reload it, just a barrel, a handle, and a trigger. Single use.
Briefly, in the second as her finger pressed against the cold metal of the trigger, Momo considered to herself-
Was shooting a HESH round, as thick as her wrist, that was traditionally used against military heavy armor, attached to the front end of a mini-rocket, a bit overkill?
Nah. Not at all.
The middle point of the pillar exploded as the round made contact, and the entire top half of the thing collapsed to the side, crashing against the giant glacier, and leaving Shoto to tumble down the mountain of his own creation as his protective shell shattered, crashing down around him.
It was only through the years of tortuous training that Shoto was able to righten himself as he fell, turning it into a controlled slide assisted by his ice.
His limbs twitched, legs threatening to buckle under the combined strain of quirk overuse, exhaustion, pain, and the tingle of electricity that was still wearing off. But he refused to fall. He was nearing his limit, too much more and he'd be too frozen to move, the only reason he'd even lasted this long was because Momo's flames had helped him defrost. But Momo could remake all her lost equipment with a snap of her fingers, and be back to full fighting potential. He couldn't let that happen, he couldn't give her even the slightest moment of reprieve.
To fall was to give her that chance.
To fall was to fail.
He would not fail!
As Shoto reached the apex of a particular slope on the ice, he used his momentum to jump off, rearing his hand back as he leapt into the air. From his new viewpoint he could see it was just as he'd suspected, Momo had her hands together with the light of her quirk shining from them, she was trying to rebuild. But even while she was doing so, she had her eyes locked on the bottom of the glacier, where the rest of the debris were sliding to, assuming he'd be coming down with it, and obviously waiting to snipe him with whatever she was making.
Clever girl. But not clever enough.
Shoto threw his arm forward like a baseball pitch, hurling a piece of ice with an accuracy he'd trained years to refine.
The ice struck true, hitting Momo's hands and freezing her arms together.
He heard her yelp in surprise as he came down a decent distance away, making an ice slide to keep himself from going splat.
Shoto let out a ragged sigh, as he confirmed that he'd frozen her arms, and let himself finally relax. The match was as well as over.
"Surrender." He said as he raised his hand towards a visibly panicking Momo. "This is the second time I'm asking." His eyes narrowed dangerously. "There won't be a third."
Momo backpedaled, desperately trying to free her arms, and only distantly aware of Shoto continuing to talk in the background.
"I'd rather save as much as possible for the final round, so just surrender. You should have after my first attack. You're outmatched, and you're out of tricks."
At those words she froze, and Shoto lowered his hand slightly, believing she'd finally come to reason.
"Out of tricks?..." Momo asked aloud to no one.
"Yes." Shoto confirmed, only feeling the tiniest twinge of sympathy at the defeated look on her face- something he immediately crushed under the mental image of his father.
"..." The gears in Momo's head almost seemed visible, as a small war of emotions washed across her face. But then she blinked, and a cheshire smile blossomed on her face. "No." She whispered as she met him eye to eye.
"I'm never out of anything."
And then the entire area was consumed by a thick black cloud, and the stench of chemicals.
The smoke billowed out and Shoto found himself coughing uncontrollably as it hit him, tears stinging the edge of his vision as it burned his eyes.
"Screw this!" He hissed through uncontrolled tears, the gas stinging the inside of his mouth and nose. He knew how to defrost between the matches, he'd freeze everything, pour out every ounce he had to end this stupid match with so much ice they'd have to spend the rest of the day thawing it out!
Letting out a shout of rage Shoto moved forward, as his right foot came down, the world in front of him shook, frost billowing out and freezing the smoke in the air, causing it to fall to the ground in thick icy sheets. Following shortly behind him, his hand swept through the air, oxygen crystalizing behind it in a white fog, and the limb itself almost taking on a ghost like appearance as the temperature around it dropped so low that the light photons around it were slowly sapped of the energy necessary to move- the quirk clashing with the law of special relativity, stating that the speed of light is static and unchangeable no matter the reference.
But as the smoke cleared, Todoroki's eyes widened in surprise and fear as he stared down the largest barrel of the largest gun he'd ever seen.
The Momo that had gone into the smoke cloud wasn't the same one who came out, her cheeks were sunk, and her skin pale in an obvious overuse of her quirk. Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated as her brain was flooded with adrenaline, and her head light from malnutrition, exhaustion, and the hit from earlier. The back of her clothes had been torn open from creating something huge. And the frantic look on her face was made all the more extreme by the metal firing wire she held in her mouth in place of her frozen hands.
It was huge, an artillery gun that had never made it off the drawing boards of even the most ambitious military engineer, with a barrel that would look more at place on a naval ship, than on land.
For a moment, just a moment, time seemed to stop in the arena.
The air hung, cold and heavy, almost pressing down on their skin, and stinging their lungs on every breath.
The audience was standing, not a single person still in their seats as they all hung onto every second of the battle, many risking falling to injury as they leaned over the rails to see just that much more.
The arena floor was scorched and cracked, sitting in a pool of inch thick water that seemed to grow ever fuller from the melting ice no matter how much poured off the sides.
The giant ice glacier that had started this whole match pierced into the sky and towered over the coliseum itself, reflecting the sun's light into a brilliant light show that gleamed and danced above it all.
And a look of horror was etched across Midnight's face as she registered what was happening in front of her, her flag raised and mouth half open to force end the match.
…but it was too late.
Midnight's scream was drowned out by the crowd as Shoto's hand swung down, and Momo pulled the wire.
Reality froze, the world shook, the crowd screamed as a blanket of ice raced from the center of the coliseum all the way up the walls, and the arena EXPLODED as a incendiary high explosive round capable of devastating an entire countryside crashed point blank into a tidal wave of ice capable of drowning an entire city.
-Rain of Sins-
Izuku yelped in pain and surprise as he was knocked to the floor, and the ground beneath (and above) him shook as if a giant earthquake had hit the building. The maintenance tunnels cracked and deformed, lights went out, water pipes busted open, and warning sirens blared as pieces of the roof crashed to the floor and small streams of sand & dirt began flowing into the tunnels.
The entire structure groaned as the giant steel beams that reinforced the underground bent at the sudden pressure of a giant bomb going off directly above them.
It creaked, it groaned, it cracked and shuddered, but it held.
Izuku however, didn't care.
He gave one last glance to make sure the device he'd set up in the ventilation room was undamaged and still operational, but then immediately reached behind him and pulled the trigger on the tube containing his teleportation-quirk enhanced creation.
When the shaking finally subsided, it was to the fading of a gray foam.
-Rain of Sins-
The crowd was cheering, enraptured by what might have been the greatest UA festival match since All Might was a student. So loud that Jiro was practically tucked into a fetal position, Aoyama, Mineta, and Tsu helping to usher her out towards the medical wing.
The fact anyone could hear the crowd over the deafening ringing in their ears was a testament to just how loud they were, but Bakugo couldn't hear them. Instead they, and even that ungodly ringing from the explosion, were drowned out by the sound of his heartbeat thundering in his ears as he forced his way through the crowd, towards the edge of the wall.
"MOMO!"
That explosion had been massive. He was partially explosive resistant, but even he would have been hurt so close to such a detonation, there was no way she and Shoto weren't injured.
"MOMO!" He cried again, fear gripping his spine like cold skeletal hands after watching the second person he'd ever dared to call a friend disappear in a cloud of smoke.
But his words were unheard, downed out and suffocated by the crowd.
Not even the Pro Heroes security guards who grabbed him as he was about to jump the ledge could make out what he was saying.
"MOMO!"
-Rain of Sins-
Pain.
Wide aching pain that echoed from all around his body and wrapped it's way all the way down to his bones, a potential sign that they had been bruised. All over his front were hotspots of pain, undoubtedly from ice shrapnel that had been traveling so fast it had managed to impact him before the explosion's heat melted it.
It was pain. Pure raw and fresh pain… But it was nothing compared to what he'd felt in the past.
Shoto hissed and forced himself up off the ground. Coughing out frozen clumps of spit as he stumbled to his feet and took stock of his situation.
The round was over. It had to be, there was no way Momo could possibly still be on her feet after that, and even if she somehow was, she'd overused her quirk to the extreme. If she pushed it any further, she was liable to pass out.
As he dusted off his shirt, he mused how he'd probably need a new one before the final match. It was pretty torn up from the fight, and most of it was frozen solid, making it uncomfortable to move in.
He glanced down, and noted with a frown that he'd been tossed to the very edge of the arena, only a scant foot away from being out of bounds.
He glanced to his left, towards Midnight, to see her coughing and wheezing, waving the dust and smoke away from her. Maybe she'd been taking a deep breath when the explosion happened? Hopefully she'd recover soon so she could call the match.
He glanced to his right, towards the crowd, and saw… more or less what he anticipated. Everyone was going wild, cheering, taking photos, throwing hats in the air.
All except one.
Endeavor stood at the edge of the arena, in the exact same spot he'd been in before the match started. His gaze was flat, unmoved, and his mouth was upturned in the slightest beginnings of a sneer of what could have been in anger, disappointment, disgust, frustration, or any combination of the four.
Shoto raised his head higher in response, turning his nose up and glaring at his father.
He'd show him. He'd win this tournament and show him that he was wrong. He didn't need his father's quirk, and could still succeed using only his Mom's. Moreover, he'd succeed, and deny his father what the man wanted most. He'd succeed with only his Mom's quirk, and force his father to realize that he, his quirk, and all his effort had been worthless.
Yes he would crush his father's pride, the thing he valued most, and prove to him that his training, his methods, his breeding, had all been worthless. He'd dash everything the man had spent the last 20 plus years working on, and then… then and only then, could he go to his Mom and beg for her forgiveness.
Shoto turned his gaze from his father and smiled dreamily at the thought.
…
And then the smoke exploded out on his left as Momo came barreling out of it, like a bat out of Hell.
She was battered, her body covered in bruises, cuts, and blood, her clothes torn and stained red, and her hair was singed, the far most ends of it smoking with an ember glow, giving her an almost ethereal outline, that matched well with the frantic but determined look on her face.
Shoto tried to pivot, but it was too late, she was already to his direct left, the side he couldn't use his ice from!
Her hands were still bound by ice, but she didn't care, and as she ducked low, a metal pole shot out of her shoulder, growing longer and longer with no sign of stopping.
Shoto, being so close, was hit in the gut with enough force to send him airborne.
He was pushed up and over the white line barely visible under the ice and soot.
no.
He fell, crossing the end of the concrete and above the grass surrounding the arena.
No!
Everything up to that point raced through Shoto's mind. The way his mother had looked at him in fear before she scarred him. Everything his father had made him suffer. What his father had put him through one he began his rebellion, what all he'd put himself through and how hard he'd pushed his limits to make sure he'd never need that man's quirk.
NO!
And across the arena, Endeavor's sneer morphed into a smirk.
NO! NOO NO N ON NOn N ONoNN! !N N !NOnO!
The entire coliseum was bathed in red light as flames burst forth from Shoto's left side, spilling out in an all-consuming wave like a dam that had been filled past the breaking point for years and finally broke open.
The flames hit Momo point blank with the force of over a decade's worth of suppressed power, sending her hurling off the other end of the arena, smoking and screaming, before cutting off as she smashed into the colosseum wall.
Shoto landed in the grass, physically unharmed, but mentally reeling as he frantically gasped for breath, employing every tool he had to desperately suppress a full on panic attack.
He'd used his fire. He'd used Endeavor's FIRE!
His hand snached up and grasped over where his heart was as he struggled to pull in air.
Heusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfireheusedhisfire
In his delirious state he didn't even notice the medics rushing towards him, or Aizawa leaping down from the announcer's box and rushing towards Momo, a familiar explosive blond hot on his heels.
"U-Uh, well-" Present Mic's voice came over the speakers, much more restrained than usual- "the rules state that 'out of bounds' is defined by touching the floor outside the white line, and since Todoroki hit the ground after Yayorosu, he technically wins. So everybody talk about that while we take a 30 minute break."
The match was officially over, and the crowd cheered again.
But this time the only one Shoto could hear cheering was Endeavor.
-End Chapter-
-Arc: Trial of Fools: End-