492A/N: Thank you to everyone who has favorited, followed and especially reviewed! You guys absolutely make my day xD
On to chapter two!
The Second Fault - Agility
It was one of those mundane exercise classes, where everyone donned their sports gear and went outside to stretch and warm-up. But being U.A., this daily class also consisted of muscle building, basic MMA, grading from a teacher, as well as customizable solo workouts. After the initial 15 minute compulsory warm-up as a class, the students were allowed to choose how to spend the remaining hour and a half, as long as they were doing something from the aforementioned list.
The girls had chosen to break away, traversing to the opposite side of the grounds as they always did, leaving the boys to rough-house and mess around freely.
Yaoyorozu had set up an elaborate jungle gym and was currently getting covered in the mucus-y slime that was Mina Ashido's quirk. Todoroki arched an eyebrow at the scene; Momo hanging upside down, about to say something when she got hit with a mouthful of ooze. The only theory he could put together was that she was taking his advice on her lack of physical prowess seriously, and had asked Ashida to throw projectiles her way until she could dodge flawlessly.
Sound logic.
He watched her get hit by two more relatively dodge-able slime-bombs, had she not been too busy worrying over being hit to start with. He'd have to mention that to her sometime; if you get hit, get over it and plan the next move. Yaoyorozu's grip faltered due to lack of friction and she ungracefully clunked to the floor, but she shot up almost immediately, clearly not able to maintain such an undignified position.
Todoroki felt a smirk pull at his lips. Yaoyorozu began to run her fingers through her jet black hair, in an attempt to remove the slime, but all it did was make the mess worse. He breathed out a closed-mouth laugh as she made a disgusted face, only to get hit with another ball of mucus courtesy of a hysterical moth girl.
"What are you laughing at, ya perv?"
A thick arm wrapped its way around his neck, slamming his head into a rock-hard chest. Reflexively, Todoroki grabbed the shirt of his opponent and, using his legs as a pivot, twisted and body-slammed Kirishima onto the sandy floor. Hard.
Todoroki straightened, dusted himself off, then ran a hand through his hair, absentmindedly reminding himself of a dark haired girl he was watching only moments ago.
"Jesus Christ man, remind me never to jump scare you again," Kirishima said, getting up and cracking his neck, not looking winded at all. He walked over to stand with the ice user, trying to see whatever he was looking at. "So, which one is it?" He asked, grinning toothily.
Todoroki gave him a sharp look. "Hah?"
That earned him a rough slap on the back, much to his utter irritation. "Aw c'mon! We were just having this conversation ourselves. Here, see?" Todoroki watched as Kirishima walked over to the gaggle of guys, who seemed to have started on nothing to utilize their time, probably expecting him to follow.
He didn't.
"Oy, Kaminari!" The electric ball of energy jumped over. "What's the score?"
'Score?'
"Yaoyorozu is in the lead with an average of 9.5, followed by Uraraka and Jiro with 8 and Tsuyu-chan with 7.5," The blond happily stated.
The redhead turned back to address him. "Care to file in your vote, Mr. Hot-'n-Frosty? We could really use a tie breaker."
Did he even want to know? "What for?"
Sero chose to help shed some light on the discussion. "What's your type? The bubbly ray of sunshine that is Uraraka, or deep, dark and sultry Yaoyorozu? Or maybe your tastes are rather unique and lie with the other girls?"
"What are you talking about?" Again, did he really want to know?
"The most attractive girl of our class!" Kirishima said happily. A flash of dark black hair flashed through Todoroki's mind again before his brain fully shutdown. Were they serious? The rock-head continued, elaborating. "Don't worry, we're not monsters. We already ranked the guys. You'd be a solid 8.5 if you lightened up a bit!"
The redhead was met with a blistering stare, but his beaming smile remained unfaltering.
Not registering the twitch in Todoroki's left eye, Kaminari entered the conversation. "Uraraka would be at 9, but Bakugo can't get off his tsun for long eno-"
Kaminari barely dodged a relatively large explosion erupting in the airspace to his right. "Die sparky!"
Lucky for the electric hero, Bakugo, in an uncharacteristic act of mercy, didn't pursue the matter, and just chose to flip him a rude one before turning back to his weights. At least someone was focused.
Kaminari, expression back to relaxed as if he was never in life-threatening danger, turned back to the extremely paramount task of keeping the score. Todoroki chose to make his way over in the direction of the explosive hero, determining that to be a relatively safe zone from low IQ. He passed Midoriya on his way over, who offered him a quivering smile. He gave a curt nod in response.
"Iida refuses to vote for anybody, saying everyone is 'equal'," the blond mocked the last word. A not-so-small part inside Todoroki agreed. Everyone was not born equal. UA itself was proof of that. His entire life was encircled around the fact that people were not born equal.
He found a small piece of land far enough from the others and claimed it for himself, continuing his stretches. The sooner he warmed up, the sooner he could go to the specialized training quarters.
"Who did you vote for?" Kirishima asked.
"I was gonna go for Shiozaki," The blond happily replied. "I mean, clearly, her and I have this whole thing going on, after the sports tournament. But the guys said it had to be in our class. So I went for Jiro. She and I had a thing, too, before Shiozaki came into the picture."
'They're fools. Every last one of them.'
"You're all fools, every last one of ya."
Todoroki looked over at the gathering, wondering who it was that echoed his thoughts. It was…he couldn't remember his name. The little grape boy. Shoto felt a hint of annoyance at having shared anything at all with such a creature. He pushed his irritation aside and continued with his warmup, taking deep breaths in, then slowly exhaling. Just a minute more, then he'd leave.
"You people are undermining the queen, the model, the babe of the class- Momo Yaoyorozu!"
Todoroki inhaled too sharply and erupted into a coughing fit. Iida was over in a flash to thump him on the back, free hand offering a glass of water, which he took with some resignation.
"I mean, how does Uraraka even come close?" the little grape continued imploringly, not sparing Todoroki a glance.
"Well, I mean, sure, she's smoking hot," the blond decided to give his two cents. Todoroki gave a final, loud, throat-clearing cough. Kaminari continued. "But I just feel like she's too unattainable."
"Yeah, it's like, what's the point of looking at the Sun when you're just gonna get blinded?" Sero added. Todoroki took a sip of water and thanked Iida. Ever dependable. He never broke character, this one.
"Yeah," Kirishima decided to give his two cents. "So like, instead of grasping for air, might as well turn our sights to something more realistic."
"Although both of them have a really nice rack." Mineta put sagely.
There was a loud thud as Midoriya, dropped the weights he'd quietly been lifting, and in his flurry of indignation hardly noticed that they dropped barely half an inch from his toes. "G-guys, cut it out. You're all being extremely insensitive. And rude. I think this whole conversation is just pointless." His hands fidgeted nervously, but his voice remained steady.
The half-and-half hero gave an internal nod of agreement. There was a reason Midoriya had earned his respect.
"But dude, you already gave your vote for Uraraka."
Todoroki watched in mild interest as Midoriya's face turned a deep, dark red, his already fidgety hands now fumbling intensely, a steady stream of words tumbling out of his mouth.
"N-no, that's n-not what I-I-I-I-I...I m-mean sure….b-b-but I really r-respect her, both as a p-person and a hero." And then something within the All-Might protegé seemed to snap, and a steady stream of words began pouring out in an indecipherable jumble, at hardly half the volume.
"I mean, if you've partnered up with her, you'd understand what I meant. Not to mention, she's a really nice person. She's always smiling, and being with her makes you feel better, and if you ever feel sad or lonely or upset, she always knows what to say. So I really think there's much more to her than it is you guys are trying to say, and I really think it's wrong and I don't think she or any of the other girls would be very impressed-"
"Ah, you broke him, Kirishima," Sero said, Midoriya still chattering in the background. Kaminari chuckled embarrassedly, hand rubbing the back of his head.
As Todoroki pulled his gaze away, he was met with a face full of round, purple spheres, beneath which lay equally large eyes staring straight at him.
"Surely you agree with me about Yaoyorozu-san," Mineta proclaimed with a dramatic thumbs up, and a wink of the eye. "Aibou!"
The transition between expressing surprise to emanating a death glare directed wholly at the tiny boy was so fast it pulled a muscle somewhere between Shoto's eyebrows. His bangs had thrown a heavy shadow over his eyes, making them appear all the more vivid. That only deepened the furrowing and increased the severity of his scowl. Mineta suddenly questioned all life choices that had led to this moment as what appeared to be steam began radiating from Todoroki's left side.
"Warm-up over people. Spend the rest of your time constructively." Their homeroom teacher's drawl came blaring at them through the loud speakers.
With a huff at letting this rubbish get to him in the first place, Todoroki stalked away as fast as grace would allow him.
Momo excused herself from Jiro and Ashido wanting to try something out for herself in the solo training rooms.
"Sure! Just leave up the jungle gym, if you please." Ashido chirped. "It's actually really useful."
"I'll probably join you in a bit," Jiro had said.
And so Momo found herself in the center of the large, tiled room five minutes later, a baseball shooter lying a few yards away. She'd decided to condition herself with pain, and had gone for physical baseballs rather than the virtual reality U.A. offered - those were being used by Sero and Koda anyways. If she couldn't get herself to react quick enough, hopefully the pain of being hit would condition some reflexes out of her.
She switched on the ball machine and observed first the way the balls were shot out, watching the arc, distance, relative speed. After she felt she had grasped the pattern, Momo pumped out a few shields for practice. Finally, she was ready.
Momo got into position. A ball shot out and immediately she dodged, heart racing, feeling the hard sphere flick against the ends of her hair. That ball came out way too fast. Taking a deep breath, she straightened up, only to have a whoosh of air hit her cheek as yet another one flew past.
She grit her teeth, gulping down a gasp . 'C'moon Momo!'
Glaring hard at the machine, the creation artist braced herself, feeling beads of sweat begin to form at her temple. 'A shield. C'mon, it should be immediate, no delay!'
The glow of her quirk flashed over her forearm and the plate began to materialize. But the whirring of the machine cut across her concentration as it geared up for the next ball, and a flash of fear shot through her mind, and it showed in the flickering of the shield. 'No, I dropped focus; a kink! There's a kink in the-'
WHACK!
With a dull crunch, Momo found herself lying flat on her back, groaning in a dazed pain. Dully, she registered a thick, viscous heat begin to slowly trickle down her nose to her chin, and she coughed spastically when she tried breathing in through her nose. The ball had broken it.
'Of course it had,' she thought despondently.
Momo rolled over onto her side, the pain more a pounding throb in the front of her face. Clutching her nose with a numb hand, she heard the swish of another ball being released. Getting sucker punched by an inanimate object; a new all-time low. She slowly sat up and leaned forward. At least no one had seen her. Sero and Koda appeared to be engrossed in whatever virtual training course they had on and apparently hadn't heard what sounded to her like a resounding crack of her nose.
She sighed. Clearly practice was needed - such inadequacy could not be shown in front of the others.
"You're bleeding."
Her eyes flew open, pupils pinpointed in shock, and she looked up. Another ball whizzed past her head.
'Oh. Of course.'
Before she had time to even register her embarrassment, Todoroki raised his right hand and created a ball of ice. She had just dazedly thought of how beautiful it looked, glistening in his hand, when he shattered it into pieces. An inexplicable flash of anger flickered through her mind at him destroying something so pretty, but the feeling vanished almost instantly as he dumped the pieces into the small towel he'd been holding, and then knelt down in front of her, gently pushing the impromptu ice bag onto the break.
Momo took it from his hand, the throbbing pain instantly calming to the cold, not really processing what was happening. Todoroki lifted the free end of the towel and motioned for her to take it and wipe away any blood from her face. After he was satisfied she'd comply, without a word, the half-ice hero got up and walked over to the ball machine and finally switched it off. Then he leaned against it and raised a single eyebrow.
Momo internally groaned, closing her eyes and slumping over to once again lie flat on her back, facing the ceiling.
"You should keep your head elevated during a nosebleed," she heard him say. Momo ignored him.
Why oh why was he here? Could the forces above never offer her some respite? Had she perhaps angered one too many people? Or had she maybe, kicked a can sometime, somewhere, which had caused a cascade of events, leading to a catastrophe of some sort that had possibly invoked this happening to her? As if she needed to look worse in his eyes.
And then Momo remembered her hair was currently coated in insect mucus and she let out a groan, audible this time. Why him, why now? She cranked her eyes open slightly, the ceiling spinning slightly.
When her vision finally cleared, it was to see Todoroki now hovering over her, arms crossed over his chest, wearing an impassive look. She gave him a leveled stare and opened her mouth to speak when instead a bout of coughs took over. She immediately sat upright, coughing viciously, clearing her lungs. When she opened her watery eyes she found Todoroki had crouched down as well, as if just waiting for an excuse to help.
He was looking at her in the strangest way, too. The boy was a good two feet away, but it felt much closer, like he was much larger, and it was oddly reassuring. There was so much to take in with him at that moment. Like the fact that he had taken off their sports gear's jacket, exposing a white t-shirt, which was damp with sweat from whatever workout he'd been doing. Like the fact that his equally damp hair had been haphazardly parted to the side as if he'd ran his hand roughly through it - a mess of red and white - to reveal part of his forehead, which she would eventually find incredibly attractive. Like the fact that he had the most perfect forearms. Yes. There was a lot to take in.
Still, for some reason, all she saw in that moment were his eyes. They were such a strange feature, telling two different sides of the same story. The dark grey one was intense (though when was he not), serious, showing that he was 100% focused on everything at that very moment. The blue one was gentler, so much more humane in the sense that it held some semblance of fear and nerves. Momo wondered if he knew just how expressive his eyes were. And she wondered if he actually cared as much as his eyes implied he did.
Feeling she could breathe again, she answered his unasked question. "I'm fine."
His eyebrows furrowed. He frowned in a way that made her decide she liked a worried Todoroki. He adjusted himself to sit more comfortably on the ground, getting tired of leaning on his haunches. "We should go to the nurse."
"No. No way," she said. "There's no way I'm telling anyone how I got into this mess."
He sighed. "You're so...vexing."
"What are you even doing here?" she snapped, thoroughly irked by this entire situation. The class usually dispersed at this point, and the only ones she'd usually see were Jiro and Ashido, only because they tended to practice together.
"I was in the arena. It's the room next door. Half the class is in there."
She blinked at this. "Half the class? I can't hear anything. How are they being so quiet?"
"It's soundproof."
Momo frowned. "So why are you here, right now, and not in the soundproof room?"
"It was getting too crowded," he said simply.
Of course. Of course he'd decided from being in a soundproof room to not at the exact moment the universe had decided she needed a crooked nose. She winced as the thoughts of her nose stimulated an especially painful throb. She sat upright, drawing her legs under her, back straight, chin up, just as her etiquette training had taught.
"What were you hoping would happen?" he asked.
She huffed. "I was trying to increase both the speed at which I create protection and the quality. I want to be able to do it without thinking. I thought being hit would help speed up my reflexes."
The look he gave her made her feel like she had soap for brains. "You don't need practice creating things, you're fast enough," he said. "You need to work on your dodging and agility-"
"My agility is just fine!" Momo snapped. She was met with another eyebrow raise and a snort.
"I can tell."
Ooh how badly she smear his face across the floor. Maybe he'd understand what a bloody nose felt like a bit more.
"Someone's found his sarcasm today," she quipped. He ignored her.
"Allow me to lend you some tips."
"Must be my lucky day."
"And you call me sarcastic," Todoroki countered, blowing a quick breath upwards, stirring strands of hair which had fallen into his eyes. "What you should be doing, you'll be pleased to hear, is something similar-"
"Oh praise the lord, whatever would I have done if it wasn't-"
"But without using your quirk," he pushed on without stopping. "And I would have suggested something more difficult to dodge than a linear projectile, but you're struggling enough with that, so-"
"Oh whatever," she snapped. Momo could tell he wasn't about to let this go. Time to change tactics. "As if there's nothing you have trouble with."
He seemed to think about this for a while. "Not really. No."
"Your modesty humbles me."
"I'm being serious."
"I can tell," she said, echoing his words back at him.
"Well, they say you're often blind to your own shortcomings. So enlighten me. What do I lack?"
Momo was struck with the suddenness and weight of this question. Quite honestly, that was her issue entirely; the boy had absolutely nothing wrong with him. Down to his skin, he was faultless, where she clearly wasn't and it irked her beyond belief. How was one supposed to compete with that?
She lowered the damp towel off her face, wondering if the bleeding had stopped, when his hand caught hers and pushed it back.
"For the swelling," he explained. The heat she felt on her cheeks was just her body's reaction to the cold ice. Definitely. That's all it was. "You should probably get it checked as well. Just in case it is broken."
He stood up and held out a helping hand. "Your personality," she blurted, and he blinked.
"Excuse me?"
"You asked me what was wrong with you," Momo refused to look at him as he pulled her to her feet, realizing the irony of her words just as he was helping her. She immediately started walking away. "So I'm telling you. Your personality."
"I fail to see what my personality has to do with my fighting ability," he said, catching up to meet her pace. She had to agree with that. So she simply shrugged. "So you're admitting that I have no flaws."
"No, see, right there. Your overconfidence. It's so solid and so big that you don't even realize; it's pride!"
"It's fact," he replied stoically. She threw her free hand up disparagingly. He continued though. "I've never thought of personality as something that could affect the outcome of a match. It's always about your own ability."
"Doesn't explain your match against Bakugo though."
He instantly froze at that. She could tell she'd hit a nerve, and Momo felt a smirk spread on her face as he let out a small 'Tch' under his breath. Momo – 2, Shouto – still 4 (maybe 5, what with the whole 'keep your head elevated' thing).
"He was just stronger than me."
"That's not what I mean," she said. "Your personality was holding you back."
There was a permeating silence after this, where Todoroki simply let her words sink in. For a while, all that could be heard were the rustling leaves in the wind and the crunch of their shoes against gravel as they walked, and Momo wondered if she had maybe hit a sore spot.
But finally, he spoke. "Perhaps. Or maybe he'd have won anyway."
"Are you saying you aren't infallible? That someone is better than you?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying."
She'd meant to be snarky, to get him riled up for some elusive reason, but he simply agreed with her. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. His expression had regressed into something untouchable, his hands stuffed deeply into his pockets and it looked like he'd rather be anywhere else, having any other conversation. But what piqued her interest was that he had admitted that he could have lost a match. Like he wasn't good enough, when he kept putting out and even proving that he was.
Shouto Todoroki was proving to be far more complex than she'd have ever believed him to be.
He surprised her even more when he continued. "And that's why I continue to train. I suppose everyone has room to improve," he flexed his shoulders, rolling one first, then the other, eyes closed nonchalantly, as if he'd never been in doubt of himself. "You should consider yourself lucky, Yaoyorozu. Not everyone knows exactly where their weaknesses lie."
"True," she said, not batting an eye. "Some people even believe they don't have any at all."
Todoroki let out a breath of what she had to assume was laughter, despite him still remaining smile-free. "As long as you don't take it for granted," he said, a lightness to his voice. At that, she smiled.
They had walked halfway to the main building when Ashido and Jiro came running up to them, expressing worry. It took Momo a good 3 minutes calming them down, and when she'd finally turned to tell Todoroki she was okay to walk from here, he had already gone.