THE OTHER SIDE / s. todoroki ✓

seven. burning fires entangled with chilling cold

UNTIL THE SPORTS FESTIVAL, YOU HADN'T SEEN SHOTO'S QUIRK.

It was masked in mystery for you, but the duality of his appearance already told you he pertained two rather than one. And on the day of U.A's iconic festival, he had confided in you about the nature of his Quirk: Half-Hot, Half-Cold. Quirk marriages were a foreign concept for you but having learnt them second-hand from him, you now had a new-found soft place for Shoto in your heart. If he was an enigma of a teenager shrouded in mystery to conceal him from harm, you were slowly peeling back the layers of his protection, to initiate a more personal bond between you two.

The stadium is jam-packed, and you're sitting in one of the aisles next to Midoriya, who was mumbling incoherently as he scribbled words into his notebook. The loudness of the crowd was uncomfortable so you watched your green-haired friend write, idly reading over his words and handwriting which slowly deteriorated into short-hand wiggles. And then, he flicks over a few pages and out of the corner of your eye, you catch a glimpse of a page with very few scribbles on it abnormally, a page with your name on it.

You see the words, Quirk: Resurrection, Recently transferred, and take your eyes off it before you feed your curiosity anymore. Thankfully, moments later, Midoriya is called to take part in the final stage of the festival, which consisted of mostly Class 1-A and Class 1-B students.

You weren't due to take part in anything, for the last few days your Quirk had been particularly unstable, (the local graveyards were reporting stirring earth and hollow cries from gravestones), but rather you were on medic duty. So it's no surprise that Recovery Girl hobbles over to you with her syringe-shaped cane and pulls you by the ear like a doting grandma down to the bottom of the stadium.

You didn't really the point of yourself being there, that was until you spotted your classmate, Bakugo Katsuki yelling angrily at his opponent before beginning the fight. The flaxen blonde teenager scared you, alright. Actually, scratch that, scared was an understatement. That boy mortified you, because if he ever actually did manage to kill someone with that dangerous and powerful Quirk of this, you'd have to trail him in his wake and pick up the pieces and try to put them back together again.

For a moment, your mind drifts to the thought of killing someone. And soon, it's all you think about. The cheers of the crowds diminish and your sight momentarily blurs, shaky as if you were on an unsteady ship. You think about death, about it in all it's forms. The slow rotting decay of your mother, whose life dwindles as the organs in her body slowly stop functioning. The quick flash that which signifies the brevity of life, like the flame on an candle being put out. Murder. Suicide. Natural causes.

Your lips purse, so many ways to die. Death really is inevitable, you sigh.

Besides, was immortality any better? Your Quirk was the closest thing to immorality, not quite it but the power of resurrection was enough to overcome the nature of darkness.

And then, as Bakugo destroys his opponent, not literally, but leaves them charred around the edges and tinged with smoke, more people flock the ground and it is soon revealed why.

Shoto looks angrier than you have ever seen him, his eyes dance with fury, not quite the murderous raging flames of Bakugo, but as if he is corrupted by annoyance. He looks furious, as if riled up, and you can see the power of his Quirk surging through him, feel it's wrath just by looking at him. It doesn't terrify you, his power is destructive but so is yours, but you are feeling his pain and his hurt inside and it makes your suffer with him, somehow.

He looks as if with one goal, not even glancing to see you watching him with avid interest by the stands, but he looks straight at Hanta Sero, another member of Class 1-A. And then, the whistle blows, and it's all over just like that.