Echoes of Vapor (Shoto Todoroki)

02.13

PART 13

BURN

Ryou's fight against Iida came up sooner than he thought. He paced around his waiting room, gripping an almost-empty water bottle in his hand, nervously wringing the plastic. The only sound in the room was the sound of Ryou's anxious footsteps and the shrieking protest of the plastic bottle that Ryou held.

Iida was, without a doubt, far faster and far stronger than Ryou was. Ryou wasn't oblivious to this fact, which is what had him feeling so nervous about his upcoming fight, which would start in about a minute. He could hear the sound of the excited crowd as Present Mic geared them up to watch another fight.

Ryou, in all honesty, had no clue how he was going to win this fight, but that definitely did not mean that he wasn't going to try his damned hardest to win.

Upon hearing Present Mic's request for both opponents to head onto the field, Ryou took a deep breath, before exiting the room. As he walked, he shook off his nerves, steeling himself mentally.

As Ryou exited his tunnel, he had to shield his eyes from the sun which was far brighter than the lights inside, listening nervously to the loud cheers of the crowd, which was excited to see the competitors.

"Both of these competitors are fierce fighters, but only one can remain standing! Who will it be... Iida versus Ryou!!"

Ryou gulped down the last of his fears, cracking his neck and stretching out his back as Iida did the same on his side of the field.

"START!!"

Almost immediately, Iida activated whatever ability he used in the cavalry battle. Seeing it in battle earlier made Ryou naturally fearful, which made this burst-attack one that he had fortunately been preparing for. With steam that he had been storing in his mouth, he fired at the ground, propelling himself into the air and dodging Iida's advances.

Iida, who had been aiming to grab Ryou, stumbled a bit, turning his attention up to Ryou. He had a fierce look on his face, which Ryou returned back ten-fold.

Ryou didn't really use this aspect of his quirk that much, but he began to create as much fog as he could into his mouth before releasing it all onto Iida, essentially creating a smoke screen that hindered Iida's vision greatly. Ryou held back a chuckle as he watched Iida's glasses fog up, rolling onto the ground to break his fall.

Ryou was already making more fog, keeping his mouth open to keep fog on Iida to obscure his vision.

Suddenly, all of the fog began to get... sucked in?

Ryou's brows furrowed in confusion until he realized that Iida had begun to spin around in rapid circles to disperse the fog. Once Iida regained his bearings from spinning around so much, he shot towards Ryou like a bullet.

"How the hell- How're you not dizzy," Ryou breathed, caught off guard by Iida's unphased demeanor.

Iida smiled smugly, "It's a side effect of my quirk," Was all that he provided. Iida's quirk made him so insanely fast that Ryou hardly had time to dodge. Ryou clenched his jaw as he willed his body to get out of the way, and almost succeeded.

Almost.

Iida grabbed onto Ryou's leg, which Ryou wasn't able to move out of the way, fully intent on dragging Ryou out of bounds.

"What intense speed! Not even ten seconds into the fight and it looks like Iida is about to drag Ryou out of bounds! Ouch!"

Ryou grit his teeth, hissing in pain as the skin on his back dragged against the ground as Iida dragged him, surely leaving scrapes for him to have to get healed later. Instead of accepting defeat, Ryou twisted his body as hard as he could, digging his fingernails deep into the ground, forcing Iida to let go of his leg.