"Life begins

at the end of your comfort zone."

-Neale Donald Walsch

Todoroki's senses turned hypersensitive, and his concentration shone with a razor fine edge. If he had any thoughts to spare for anything beyond this moment, he could have told you that he had never concentrated so intensely before in the entirety of his life. But as it was, he was only focused on this moment and nothing more. The shackles of his consciousness were loosened, not at the bequest of another, but by himself.

More than just rejecting his father, or winning the tournament, he only wanted to fight him. And get answers to all of the burning questions in his mind. What did he mean when he said that his quirk was only his? What did embracing his power mean? He felt like he was so close to finding the answers to these questions, but so far away at the same time. The only solution he could think of was to fight.

And so, he threw away what his father would think of his actions, what he himself would think of his actions, and just let the power flow. It circulated smoothly and naturally, its faint but not burning warmth reminding him of cold, winter days curled up with a cup of hot cocoa.

More ironically, it reminded him of his mother.

It was odd, but he had recently started to associate her with fire. Not his father's, but a nice golden reddish flame that lit the way in the darkness. That lit his way. A flame so comforting, and so, so gentle. Fire can destroy, but it can also warm and soothe. It was as figurative as it was comforting, but he couldn't really bring himself to care at the latter.

Some things didn't have to be real for them to matter.

And her 'real' flame, well...

She had scalded him once, but that didn't stop him from remembering all the times she hadn't.

'I forgot something so basic. My flame is not my father's. Just like mother's 'fire' is her own. How could I forget something so important?'

He stared at the figure opposite of him, that had not moved even a centimeter since Present Mic had officially started the match. He was grateful for it, even though it was probably just a setup for another one of his (many) underhanded tactics.

Allen Bowman... was an odd person, even by the admittingly odd standards of Todoroki himself. He worked extremely hard in class, could always be counted on to have an answer (academically or otherwise), and had shown himself to be nice and friendly. And yet, despite all of those traits, he was cold. He had never seen him laugh or even crack a smile that wasn't a polite, neutral one.

Todoroki wasn't exactly one to talk about all of these things, considering he was practically the same, but... The one thing that felt most odd was that he seemed to relish suffering. Almost like he thought he deserved it. When they had to run to build stamina, when they practiced receiving blows from their classmates, and even when they had to go through the 'military-like hell final practice' as named by his classmates, Allen had shown no reaction typical of teenagers.

He hadn't let out a single grunt of complaint throughout the entire ordeal. Even he felt like his muscles were burnt out gooey rubber by the end of it. And he'd been subject to his father's rather... extreme training since the day he turned four. There wasn't any definite evidence that suggested that he thought he deserved it, that much was true, but it felt like it nonetheless. His gut instinct had been correct more times than it had not been. He would just have to trust in that.

He wasn't sure what skeletons lurked beyond his closet door, nor what he had been through in his life, but maybe... Just maybe, he could repay his kindness. Repay the injures. Repay the pain. Perhaps, he could become a true hero, and save people. From both themselves and other people. But he wasn't really all that good with words. He would have to get there eventually, but for now...

"Allen Bowman, I will fight you with my flames. I hope that this fight will help you, as it has helped me."

Allen reacted to words just as how he expected, which is not very much, but he could tell from the faint twitch of his eye that he was caught off guard. He responded in kind with an attack of his own, sending out several large bursts of luminescent flame. It was as if the fire was a king; a large body of red adorned with willowy wisps of molten gold upon its crest... A crown.

The sheer power and energy of the flame, the king, was... intoxicating. He knew of no other word that could describe it, in its majesty. But he knew somewhere that what he was getting drunk off of was not the power, (his fear of a man controlled by it certainly saw to that), but of the freedom. A deep, primal feeling that seemingly sprung up from his soul.

At that moment, he knew that no matter what happened in the future, he would never regret this moment.

Never.

And so he reached deeper and deeper, dragging out every bit of his power in shackles of his own making... and he released it.

A brilliant flare, much like the sun itself, lit up the arena.

But he knew his opponent was not one to be slain with only that much.

Sure enough, when the fire cleared, he was nowhere to be seen. He knew he should be more worried, should have felt adrenaline overflowing in each and every pore of his body, but all he could feel was some kind of twisted excitement and the return of his pinpointed concentration. Where would he appear next? What kind of attack would he utilize? Would it be his hand or his foot? Surely, his hand if he was going to use his quirk... No, he released electricity from his feet, so anything goes-

Todoroki Shouto had unknowingly entered a state of mind many martial artists sought to enter at no matter the cost.

Adrenaline, pain, and fear are all necessary to a certain extent. It gives people that extra boost, it lets people know that something is wrong, and it prevents people's ego from getting them killed. But if your body is as strong as granite, if your intuition is as fine as a razor's edge, and your wisdom is that of an old sage's, these functions that are supposed to help you survive become detrimental instead.

You begin to panic, your concentration begins to thin, and your attention is spread out as loosely as the number of misgivings in your heart.

Although Todoroki's body, intuition, and wisdom are not as refined as the martial artists of old, neither is his opponent. Both of them are merely teenagers. But the thing is, Todoroki isn't bad enough that the exclusion of such chemicals and feelings would become detrimental. He reached the true state that 'Allen' cheated with his quirk to get into. It just so happened that Allen hated this type of opponent the most, and it was the type he suffered against the most.

And so, when Allen fell from the sky like a comet, with his foot swinging down like a Sword of Damocles, Todoroki reacted. With a wave of bone-chilling ice that expanded rapidly into being. Allen's face furrowed into itself with a grimace, beating and pummelling the ice awkwardly with his leg. It was obvious to see he was more used to his fists. But despite the stiff, blundering mess of his movements, he managed to clear out all the ice that he sent in one wave, letting them harmlessly hit the ground.

But it wasn't enough. It was just one wave after all. Todoroki poured out more and more ice, and within a few seconds, a few lucky icicles that had gotten through started to freeze him whole. But Allen still had momentum and inertia on his side. His foot crashed into Todoroki's face as they were both sent tumbling to the ground.

Unfortunately, that little of a blow wasn't enough to faze Todoroki for long.

Todoroki shakily stood up, while Allen lay paralyzed in ice on the ground. Todoroki faintly heard the latter sigh from his resting place on the floor, luckily looking not all that injured. He took the opportunity to examine his eyes, and while they still seemed somewhat empty, there was a little spark of something that hadn't existed before. He wasn't sure whether it was good or bad, but hopefully, he took something out of this fight. Just as he had.

"...You're damn lucky that ice is a bad conductor of electricity. Ughhh, this is so frustrating. Couldn't you be like literally every other pro hero and have water powers? Seriously, I want to know why every single one has a water type quirk..."

He sighed once more in a surprisingly animated manner before called out to Midnight-sensei.

"I surrender."