Chapter Text
Todoroki let out a deep breath. She’d won. She’d actually beaten him. Midoriya had actually-
“SHOTO TODOROKI AND IZUMI MIDORIYA ARE BOTH OUT OF BOUNDS! A TIEBREAKER MATCH WILL NOW BE HELD!” Announced Midnight, cracking her whip.
Shoto’s eyes went wide. He was still alive.
Midoriya shakily moved back to her feet and cracked her neck.
“I’m gonna be sore in the morning,” the tall girl muttered.
Shoto felt his mouth go dry as he watched her stretch. He’d accidentally burnt off the top of her gym uniform, so now his opponent was standing there in just a sports bra and sweat pants and… Wow. She was built. Shoto was definitely convinced she was All Might’s secret love child, she’d have to be with (beautiful) muscles like hers.
“Midoriya, do you think you’d like a shirt or something?” Midnight asked, having stepped off her podium.
“Huh?” The tall girl looked down at her figure. “Oh that! No, I think I’ll be fine ma’am. Plenty of pros have made do with less,” she shrugged.
Shoto felt his heart racing.
Why am I freaking out over Midoriya’s muscles? He chastised internally. Especially not when her face is just as cute. He added internally. His eyes went wide. “SHUT UP!” He hollered.
“Todoroki?” Midnight asked, a dangerous edge to her voice.
“Oh! Sorry! I was talking to myself I swear,” Shoto apologized.
The older woman shook her head. “Alright then, seeing as how we had one tie breaker last round, you two can either opt for the same event as Kirishima and Tetsutetsu, or we can spin the wheel again and try for a new challenge.”
Midoriya’s mouth became a thin line as she quirked her eyebrows. “With all due respect to my opponent, I’m not sure an arm wrestling match would be a fair fight.”
Midoriya flexed one of her arms for demonstration and Shoto almost felt his knees buckle. Shoto wasn’t sure why he was freaking out so much, he’d never thought much about women who were muscular before. Then again, he’d never thought much about women in general. I mean sure the girls in his class were all beautiful, but for whatever reason Midoriya was really making him-
“Todoroki. Your opponent has offered to compete with you in a different event, do you want to gamble on a new event or do you think you can win at arm wrestling?” Midnight asked, breaking Shoto from his thoughts.
Right! The match! Okay.
Well, quirks were clearly still allowed during the tie breakers too so he could use his ice to stay in place and his heat to make staying put more uncomfortable for Midoriya. She definitely had a strength advantage over him but if he played his cards right, he could get over that. (And holding her hand didn’t sound like a bad idea either.)
“No, no, I think I’ll accept an arm wrestling match.”
“You’re sure about that?” Midoriya asked, looking a bit confused.
She looked so cute like that. Like a big green St. Bernard puppy.
“Yes, yes, I am,” Todoroki answered.
Midoriya looked back at the crowd, her confused expression still apparent, then sighed. “If that’s what you want.”
“THE COMBATANTS HAVE AGREED TO AN ARM WRESTLING MATCH FOR A TIE BREAKER!” Midnight hollered. “THE COMBATANTS WILL BE GIVEN A TEN MINUTE BREAK TO RECOVER THEIR ENERGIES FROM THEIR INITIAL MATCH AND PREPARE FOR A NEW CONTEST!”
Shoto and Midoriya nodded before shaking hands.
“May the best hero win,” the tall girl whispered.
Shoto nodded in agreement. “May the best hero win.”
The two quietly walked back to the lockers. Shoto had a million thoughts going through his head.
An hour ago his only thought was spiting his father. Now his head was flooded with all sorts of things.
He’d just used his fire in a fight with someone else and not only was that person fine but so was he. He’d broken the promise he’d made to himself and… Nothing had come of it. The fight that had been a stalemate had ended in a draw. He was no better for denying his power than embracing it… And yet, he was pretty sure that if he’d used it from the start, he wouldn’t be put into a position where a tie breaker would determine his fate. He could’ve used his flames to heat the air and push her back. Or if he’d tried that ultimate move with both sides of his quirk earlier, she might not have had time to summon up her big smash before the end.
And on top of that, now he had a crush on his opponent.
Being a hero student had a lot of unique challenges.
Shoto took a deep breath. “I made it this far. Would that be enough?”
He chuckled.
“No. It wouldn’t,” he admitted.
He took another breath and conjured a small flame in his left hand and watched as frost formed over his left. He forced the fire and ice up his arms until they reached his chest. Shoto held the form for a good thirty seconds before dropping it.
He gasped for air.
“Okay. Okay. Not there just yet,” he sputtered out.
“We’d well past there if you’d actually bothered training!” Bellowed a new voice.
Shoto grit his teeth.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to treat your children like weapons and your wife like a brood mare,” the young man replied, venom dripping from his voice.
Endeavor let out a disappointed sigh. “Must you be so stubborn?”
Shoto clawed at his hair and groaned. He had been stubborn. He thought his reasons for being stubborn were understandable but his stubbornness had left an underdeveloped quirk (and underdeveloped emotions to boot).
“When this is over, whether I win or I lose, I’ll be your intern but under one condition.”
“And that is?”
“She’ll intern with you too.”
Endeavor blinked. “The tall green haired girl?”
“Yes.”
Endeavor mulled it over. The girl was very strong, with and without her quirk, though she was fairly reckless. Not unlike All Might. Courageous like him too based on the fact that she’d told off the number two hero to his face. It might be useful to have someone like her in his corner. Someone who could challenge Shoto. Sharpened steel against sharpened steel.
Still it was a bit strange for Shoto to- Endeavor smirked. “She is rather easy on the eyes, isn’t she?”
Shoto’s face went pink. “GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!”
Endeavor laughed as his youngest son pushed him out of the locker room. His little boy had a crush. How adorable.
“Don’t worry son, I’ll offer your crush an internship,” the number two hero chuckled as his son somehow managed to shove him out of the room.
Shoto’s face was red with anger and embarrassment. “I hate you so much!” He hollered, slamming the door in his father’s face.
Endeavor looked back at the door perplexed but walked away all the same.
“And thank you!”
Endeavor snorted and kept walking.
—
“AND FOR OUR SECOND TIEBREAKER MATCH OF THE DAY, WE HAVE CLASS 1A’S VERY OWN ICE PRINCE, SHOTO TODOROKI!!!!!” Hollered Present Mic over the loud speaker as Shoto walked out.
“AND STANDING ACROSS FROM HIM, THE BABE WITH THE POWER HERSELF, IZUMI MIDORIYA!!!!!!”
“What power?” Aizawa asked, sounding perplexed.
“The power of voodoo!”
“Who-doo?”
“You do!”
“Do what?”
“Remind me of the babe!”
The intercom was silent as the arena erupted with laughter.
“Mic, what the fuck are you talking about?”
The arena started laughing even harder with even some of the staff chuckling along.
Midoriya and Miss Midnight were visibly trying to hold in their laughter. Shoto felt bad seeing that. It was probably a pop culture reference he wasn’t getting.
Midoriya smiled at him. “It’s from a movie called Labyrinth. I’ll show it to you sometime.”
Shoto nodded, a weak smile pulling at his lips.
“Alright then! Combatants! Link up!” Declared Midnight.
Shoto set his left elbow onto the concrete platform and held his hand out. He’d been toying with his quirk in the locker room so he was reasonably confident he’d be able to win the day. His confidence quickly faded when Midoriya did the same. He’d never given a great deal of thought to his hands but he did remember his sister taking his measurements for his costume, his hands were about 20 centimeters around. Midoriya’s… Were much bigger. The only pair of mitts he’d seen that were bigger were All Might’s, Endeavor’s, and Cementoss’s.
“On your marks… BEGIN!” Hollered Miss Midnight.
Shoto quickly began pouring as much heat as he could into his left hand without actually creating any flames. Not of resentment for his father anymore, just out of caution for not wanting to harm his opponent. Just making their palms sweaty at least, maybe like she was holding onto a hot stove at most.
Midoriya gave him a deeply unimpressed look and started to pull his hand downward.
Shoto’s eyes went wide with horror. He tried to press back against her hand while applying more heat. Still not enough for any damage that couldn’t be undone by running her hand under some cool water, but definitely enough to make her eyes water. Shoto also tried to protect himself more by covering the platform with ice.
Midoriya shook her head.
“I just los-”
Midoriya slammed his steaming hand into Cementoss’s concrete, leaving a large crater in it.
“You did, yeah,” Midoriya chuckled.
“IZUMI MIDORIYA ADVANCES!” Midnight hollered, raising the victor’s right hand
Shoto massaged his hand, soothing his now battered flame side with his ice hand.
“That was a good strategy by the way,” Midorya noted, holding up her left hand.
Shoto cringed with guilt at the sight of it. He was desperate so he went for a desperation move. Midoriya’s pale left hand was covered in a harsh pink from second degree burns.
“Midoriya, I’m so sorry!” Shoto apologized, shame filling every ounce of his soul.
“Hey man, I was fully prepared to break every bone in my hands during our initial match. It’s fine. This’ll probably be easier for Recovery Girl to fix up than that would have been,” Midoriya dismissed.
Shoto started to chew on his lip.
Midoriya looked at him confused again. “You look there’s something you want to say?”
“It’s just that… You telling me that this side of my quirk belonged to me and not my father, it really connected with me. It was something I’ve probably needed to hear for a long time and I appreciated that you would actually make the effort to break through my ice like that,”
“More like smash it.” Midoriya joked.
Shoto chuckled. “But more than that, you told me that you were here to win to make the people who support you proud, and you put that on hold to help me personally.”
Midoriya shrugged. “What kind of hero would I be if I didn’t go out of my way to help a kid in pain?”
Shoto nodded, smiling at her. “That’s a good point.”
“So is your way of saying you wanna be friends now?”
“I was kind of thinking it might be nice to go one step beyond that…”
Midoriya went quiet then opened her mouth to speak then closed it. “You- You want me to be your- Your girlfriend?”
Shoto could swear he could hear Miss Midnight gushing behind them while Cementoss was trying not to chuckle. Something about competition breeding young love. It left them both blushing.
“Um, y-yeah. Is that okay with you, Midoriya?” Shoto asked.
The big girl swallowed hard. “It… Is. Yeah, it is,” she answered, a shy smile pulling at her lips. “You can call me, Izumi.”
“Then you can call me, Shoto.”
“Alright then lovebirds, why don’t you go to Recovery Girl for any injuries and then rejoin your class in the stands until Midoriya’s next match. You’re holding up the show,” the R Rated Heroine teased, ushering the two of them off the stage.
“So what do you want to do now?” Izumi asked, taking her burned hand in Shoto’s ice hand.
“I want to watch you finish what you started and make your father proud,” Shoto replied, keeping his hand at around 18 degrees to soothe her injury as they walked towards Recovery Girl’s office.
Izumi looked at him skeptically. “You mean All Might, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
Izumi didn’t bother correcting him. Shoto wondered if his father’s interest in eugenics would outweigh his hatred of All Might, but pushed that thought to the side. All that mattered was being a good boyfriend for this kind, strong, and beautiful girl.