Once Shinobi, Now Hero

Chapter 9: Rush

A nervous breathe escaped Midoriya. It sounded more like a shiver as he watched Todoroki lay unmoving on a bed of ice. Did he lose? At first, Midoriya hadn't been sure what to expect, but as the match went on, Todoroki had made it clear enough that he was plenty strong enough to contend with Hatake. He was able to keep him at a distance, force him to move according to their plan and pin him several times.

Honestly, he'd been the only one of the entire class of twenty to do so. It was an impressive feat. Still, a part of Midoriya knew it wouldn't be enough. It had been why he was so focused on the match, besides from Todoroki's mindset.

"He lost?" Uraraka muttered in between a breath. Seemingly, she too was also in disbelief.

The words from her seemed to wake the rest of the class up as they all began to voice their opinions. Most that weren't as perceptive had thought that Todoroki was a pretty good counter to Kakashi's style of fighting. It wasn't wrong fully, Kakashi did mostly fight with hand to hand from what they seemed and only used his quirk to enhance that. But they didn't look underneath all that. And no one was probably more suited to looking underneath than Midoriya.

He might be a nervous wreck most of the time, but when it came down to it, he was much more observant than most. He'd come up with about 10 theories on how Kakashi liked to fight, and seeing this fight now, he felt like one was more likely than the others.

Kakashi had been holding back the entire time.

He was subtle about it. It took him nearly 19 fights to figure it out, but it was very apparent that he was holding back. No one had been able to push him like Todoroki had. No one had been able to force him to make mistakes, like literally stopping himself from reacting to something in a certain way and suddenly change out of nowhere for no reason. It had happened twice, more than enough times for him to not write it off as coincidence.

Then that begged the question of why he was doing it? Why would he hold himself back like that? It didn't make any sense to him. Was Todoroki right?

"I can't believe it... wasn't he winning?" Mina asked.

"He was..." Tokoyami had cut himself off, shooting silence. He wasn't sure but something about the fight wasn't right.

The lightning that had been constantly surging around Kakashi had faltered with a deafening zap. The reason for it become clear to him immediately as he nearly collapsed, catching himself on his hands and knees. He'd run out of chakra.

He wasn't surprised. It was bound to happen fighting twenty opponents at once while holding himself back. He was going to run into one of them who was going to challenge him. Still, using this much wasn't good at all. He had one opponent left to fight which was the top of the class. If he was already huffing and puffing now he'd hate to see what would become of him during that fight. Though he could just quit, now that he thought about it. Second place was as good as it would get and he supposed having the attention of first place would bring too much of it. Though with all his actions during the fight he knew that regardless of his place, he'd still be on watch from the school. He wasn't too thrilled about it but honestly, he maybe could've gotten away with losing early matches. He wasn't sure.

Wobbling, he finally fell on the ground fully, barely catching himself with his elbow. He felt dizzy again. He had to stop using all of his chakra like this.

His ringing ears picked up the sound of talking but much of it felt far away and it felt as if he were listening through a tube. He looked up, ignoring his doubling vision while blinking rapidly to get rid of it quickly.

When his vision cleared, he couldn't believe his eyes. A couple of meters away from him was Todoroki. But he was no longer laying down unconscious. He was sitting up, staring into his eyes with wide eyes, looking as if he were scared or startled. But that wasn't all, surprisingly, his chakra was inside of Todoroki silently sparking around him in small doses. Nothing major but it was the fact that some his chakra was inside of Todoroki. But he was confused about how that could be. No here was born with chakra or even had a chakra network. How could it be possible for someone who never had chakra to hold it?