Author Notes: Heads up, I won't be able to post a chapter tomorrow
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"AND NOW THE MOMENT YOU ALL HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR. THE FINAL ROUND OF THE TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS. THROUGHOUT THIS EVENT, OUR TWO FINALISTS HAVE DEMONSTRATED THEIR POWER AND ABILITIES TIME AND TIME AGAIN. BUT WHO WILL EMERGE VICTORIOUS FROM THIS FATED MATCH?! OUR FIRST CONTESTANT IS THE ICE PRINCE HIMSELF, SHOTO TODOROKI! AND OUR SECOND CONTESTANT, THE MASTER OF LIGHTNING, KENJI ATOMA!"
If the crowd had been deafening before, the sound that crashed into me as I walked out onto the arena nearly ruptured my eardrums. But the energy was intoxicating, and I felt my heart pound in time with the chant echoing from the stands.
Looking across the arena, I stared at Todoroki, his face its usual unfeeling mask. But his multicolored eyes burned with an intensity that made my body tremble excitedly. Before I had redesigned my nervous system, my fight against Todoroki had been decidedly one-sided if I used my flux as an insulator to protect against his ice.
But now, my entire skill set had changed, and with my current level of mastery, which was almost nonexistent, it was a toss-up to see if I could overcome the ice age Todoroki would plunge me into.
"Kenji."
I looked into Todoroki's eyes as he spoke my name. "Out of all our classmates, you have always been the one I was least confident in defeating. Even now, I am unsure about the true nature of your quirk and the extent of your powers. But I will defeat you; my dearest dream demands it."
At the end of his proclamation, frost crept across Todoroki's skin as the air around him crystallized from the sudden drop in temperature.
"Oh yeah, and what dream is that?" I asked as my hair stiffened and lightning sparked between my fingers.
"To be the best," Todoroki stated, and I could feel the weight of his conviction, "I will become the number one hero. It was a fate decided before I was even born."
Bouncing on the balls of my feet, I grinned at Todoroki, "That's a lofty goal, but I think you got a real shot at it."
Todoroki frowned. "Are you mocking me?"
"Nah, man, I'm telling the truth." I insisted, "I can feel the sincerity in your voice."
Still, Todoroki seemed confused by my response, "You're acknowledging that I am better than you?"
"Fuck no!" I retorted with a barking laugh as I grinned, "My dreams don't stop at the rankings! They don't dictate what a true hero is!"
Todoroki stared at me, "So what does?"
"Being a hero means putting everything on the line to save even a single soul. It means accepting that your life is no longer your own—it belongs to something greater. It rests in the hands of those who know your name and whisper it in desperation, praying you'll be there in their darkest hour." As I stated my proclamation, the air around me cracked and hissed, "That is the design of a Hero, one you are obligated to fullfill with every fiber of your being! Anything less and, in my eyes, you don't deserve to call yourself a hero!"
For a moment, Todoroki was silent as my words echoed through the stadium, picked up by the sound system and amplified. Then his lips twitched a flicker of alien emotion across his face, "I'm sorry, but today I'll have to prove that your dream, is a false one."
"FIGHT!"
'Impossible Technqiue, Fulgur Autarch'
With a clap of thunder, a halo snapped into existence around me, and my will quickly spread through the domain. At the same time, Todoroki slammed his hand against the ground, summoning a small mountain of ice that rocketed across the arena.
The glacier expanded at a visible rate as it rushed towards me, freezing everything in its wake and eventually spilling over the platform's edge. Razor-sharp spires of crystal water formed and shattered under their own weight, eventually building up a fine but razor sharp white mist of ice crystals that rushed ahead of the glacier.
Staring down the cataclysmic scene, my neurons and eyes began to glow, casting my surroundings in an eerie purple light. I then disappeared, moving faster than the naked eye could follow as I rushed to meet the ice mountain before jumping into the air.
The moment my feet left the ground, the glacier erupted, growing up to track my ascent, but it lagged. When I reached the apex of my flight, the glacier was still several feet below me.
Holding out my right hand, I closed my eyes and focused, diving into my recent memory with perfect clarity. With my mental processing speed and capacity, my brain functioned more like a computer, able to store every bit of information picked up by my senses and recall it at any time, allowing me to relive a particular moment over and over again.
Suddenly, I was in the past as Bakugo's rage allowed her to tear through the fabric of reality and pull on the very concept of explosions. Even though I wasn't the center point, I could still feel the tiny universal truths seeping into physical reality.
The split second that passed in real time slowed down to almost an eternity as my mind contemplated and analyzed, searching for the concept I was looking for. Over and over again, strings of calucations that would have stretched over the course of miles were built up and crumbled as I attempted to form a bridge. I failed over and over again, I failed hundreds of thousands of times, but with each failure, the distance I crossed increased.
A million attempts passed in an instant, then a hundred million. I was well on my way to a hundred billion when I felt something click somewhere within the convoluted string of calculations that no longer resembled anything close to arithmetic. A single unidentifiable digit changed, causing a cascading event that saw everything before and after it fall into place.
My eyes snapped open as understanding rippled through my body, and I stared at the wall of ice rushing up to crash into me.
Holding out my hand, I could feel the freezing cold pouring off the mountain, but I didn't pull back or move to avoid the rising avalanche. Instead, my arm flared as a bolt of lightning traveled down my limb and out of my hand, striking the ice, which didn't even melt.
For a moment, it seemed as if nothing had happened, but suddenly, the unstoppable force of nature came to a sudden halt. Then, with a clap of thunder, a series of glowing purple cracks appeared throughout the glacier, as if the ice had somehow frozen lightning itself and trapped it within. But the stillness was an illusion.
'Impossible Technique: Fulgur Resonace'
With a thought, I triggered the stored energy within the conductive current, and the glacier imploded with a bang and a flash of brilliant purple light. Ice flew in every direction, and a plume of powderized snow leapt into the air that sparked with bands of purple static leaping from one molecule to the next.
I dropped through the plume of snow like a boulder, unbothered by the freezing cold. Emerging from the other side, I grinned down at Todoroki, who stared up at me with wide eyes.
I taunted him with my grin, wondering if he could prove my dream wrong. How could he refute it after seeing my design?
Fulgur tendrils erupted from my back before zigzagging through the air down toward Todoroki, who snapped back into action.
From beneath Todoroki's feet, a pillar of ice sent him skating backward a moment before lightning rained down on the area, shattering the foot-thick concrete tiles.
Landing on the ground, I softened my impact with a quick burst of electricity as I waved my arms, maneuvering my tendrils like a puppet master, directing them to grab the loose chunks of concrete.
Like thin, spindly fingers, lightning wrapped around the tons of concrete, lifting them off the ground before sending them flying.
Todoroki skated across the desolated wasteland that was the arena, avoiding the meteor storm that rained down on him. Sometimes, he was forced to conjure walls of ice to defend himself, which shattered on impact.
When the last of my improvised ammo disappeared, my eyes locked onto Todoroki, tracing his path before flooding my body with electricity as I pushed off the ground and vanished with a flash of lightning.
The moment Todorki managed to avoid the final concrete meteor, he turned around and found me hovering before him. My fist, encased in lightning, was already rocketing towards his face. I could practically feel his perception of time slow down, and for a moment, I wondered if I was going to see the fabric of reality tear apart once more when I realized something.
The look in Todoroki's eyes changed, a reluctant resignation, and in the next instant, stinging cold around the ice prince became a sweltering heat as he raised his left hand which was engulfed in flames.
At that moment, I realized that Todoroki hadn't been using his full quirk, 'Control over both ice and fire...complete control of thermodynamics...such a powerful design.'
However, my awe was quickly replaced by a deep-seated hatred, 'And such a waste of potential.'
Todorki's flaming hand shot up and unleashed a sea of fire at point blank range. However, with a thought, I hardened the air around me, preventing them from moving, which stopped any heat from reaching me.
Todorki's flames rolled up and around my domain, allowing me to pass through unscathed.
Todoroki's eyes widened as he watched me emerge completely unscathed, and as he looked into my eyes, I conveyed all the disdain I felt for him in that moment, "If only had you fulfilled your design, perhaps then you would have had a chance to discover your own flaws."
Before Todoroki could respond, my fist slammed into his jaw, and I watched as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body went limp. With a soft thud, Todoroki hit the ground with me looming over him, my eyes burning with righteous conviction as the crowd roared and Midnight announced me as the victor.