Travel The Distance

Chapter 46

Our swords clashed periodically as Shoto and I put on a show for the bastards who watched us with satisfaction gleaming in their beady eyes. Every time Shoto and I got close enough to each other, locking our swords and pretending to struggle against the other's strength, we would whisper snippets of plans. They were half-baked ideas formed on a whim and with little thought put into them. They were desperate plans forged from a need to get out of the predicament in which we had found ourselves and actually do what we had set out to do. Kill Shigaraki and free Endeavor from his grasp.

The original plan, before we had set foot into the Kingdom and ultimately found ourselves duelling on the orders of our enemy, was to kill Shigaraki, free Shoto's family and put Touya on the throne. That plan had gone to shit. Not only was Touya aiding Shigaraki and betraying his family, but we had failed to save everyone Shoto cared about. The image of Rei Todoroki nailed to the pole in the centre of the city still haunted my mind. It was probably still plaguing Shoto as well. We couldn't follow our original plan anymore. We had known too little. We weren't prepared enough.

Yet again, Shoto and I were stood chest to chest with our swords locked together, putting on a show of trying desperately to force the other to yield. "We can't just charge at them, they'll be expecting that," Shoto muttered quietly, I observed Shigaraki and Dabi out of the corner of my eye, checking to make sure that they couldn't hear what we were saying.

"I know that dumbass," I whispered back, still keeping one eye on our enemies, "But we need to do something. We've already been at this for roughly ten minutes, they're not going to allow this to go on for much longer. Look, it's not that great of a plan, but what else can we do? We risk being killed whether we make a move or not? Would you rather go down trying to kill Shigaraki, or simply roll over and let him take over and kill more of your family?"

I twirled away from Shoto and left him to contemplate what I had just said. It wasn't fair in the slightest. Not the situation we were in. Not after my partner had to see the corpses of his parents hung on a wall just for the sake of it, to humiliate them both in death. But nothing about life was fair. Life was a bitch, then you died. The situation was unfair and we were desperate, we could do nothing but make frenzied attempts to live.

Shoto charged at me with his sword raised, he brought it down in an arc, I scarcely had time to raise my sword to defend myself. "Sorry. Look, I have a plan, but you need to trust me. I promise everything will turn out fine. It'll take too long to explain, just lose this fight, ok? I'll sort everything out from there. You trust me, right?" Shoto whispered in a hurry. His words blurred together in my mind, I could only pick out certain phrases from his frenzied whispering. Phrases such as 'You trust me, right?' and 'just lose this fight'.

Of course, I trusted Shoto, he was my destined partner, but lose the fight? Me? Lose the fight? Lose wasn't in my vocabulary, and Shoto knew this well enough, so why would he ask me to do something like that? Nevertheless, I trusted Shoto to have at least a somewhat competent plan.

I allowed my sword to be hit out of my hand. I didn't flinch when Shoto's blade came up to point at my chest, if I moved one inch I would be impaled by the blood crusted point. The only way I could communicate my scepticism to Shoto was through a harsh glare that spoke volumes about how much was riding on Shoto's plan.

"Well done, Little Brother," Dabi's harsh voice cut through the frigid air. I noticed Shoto flinch ever so slightly upon hearing Dabi call him his brother. Seeing the discomfort in my boyfriend's heterochromatic eyes made anger and possessiveness coil in my chest, though I couldn't act on them.