"Recovery Girl. May I speak with him?" Todoroki asked, his voice flat.
She sighed.
"Five minutes. He needs to sleep."
Todoroki nodded and stepped inside, the door closing behind him.
The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable.
Kaito forced himself to sit up a little straighter, wincing at the residual soreness.
"Todoroki."
"You asked me a question," Todoroki stated, not looking at him, but at the wall. "In the arena. You asked why I only use half my power."
Kaito remained silent, letting him speak.
"My fire is my father's power," Todoroki continued, his voice low and laced with a bitterness Kaito had never heard from him before. "Endeavor's. I swore I would never use it. I would become the number one hero using only my mother's ice, to spite him."
He finally turned his heterochromatic gaze to Kaito.
"You won with scraps. With powers that were never meant to be yours. You saw a weakness in my strongest attack and exploited it. You fought with everything you had, even things that hurt you." He paused. "It made me question my own resolve."
Kaito processed this. The weight of Todoroki's confession was immense.
"I don't have the luxury of refusing a tool," he said quietly. "My power is built on the strength of others. If I started deciding which Quirks were 'worthy' or 'clean' enough to use, I'd have nothing. I'd be nothing."
Todoroki was silent for a long moment.
"I see." He gave a short, sharp bow. "Thank you for the match. It was... enlightening."
He turned and left without another word.
Kaito lay back down, his mind reeling. He had wanted to win, to prove himself.
He hadn't expected to cause a existential crisis in his opponent.
He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, the door was opening again, and a whirlwind of noise entered.
"Dude! That was insane!" Kirishima yelled, his sharp-toothed grin wide.
"You were all, 'I'll just make it heavier!' and then BOOM! Ice everywhere!" Kaminari added, mimicking an explosion.
"You scared me half to death, ribbit," Tsuyu said, her finger to her chin. "Taking that hit on purpose."
Soon, most of Class 1-A was crowded around his bed, offering congratulations and recounting the match with loud, excited voices.
Even Bakugo lingered at the back, arms crossed, but he didn't sneer or insult him. His silence was its own form of respect.
Uraraka beamed at him.
"You were amazing, Sōma-kun! You really showed what strategy can do!"
Iida chopped his hand.
"A truly tactical victory! Although I must advise against such reckless self-endangerment in the future!"
Midoriya was practically vibrating, a notebook already in his hand.
"The way you used the Density Quirk wasn't on the target, but on the medium! It's a complete reversal of its intended application! And then using the ice spear as an anchor to close the distance! The synergy between Zero Gravity and your own pain tolerance was—!"
Kaito held up a hand, a small, tired smile on his face.
"Thanks, everyone. Really." The camaraderie was warm, a stark contrast to the cold of the arena.
They saw him not as a copycat, but as a classmate who had pushed himself to the limit for a win.
Eventually, Recovery Girl shooed them all out, insisting he needed rest for his next match. The room fell quiet again.
His next match.
He looked at the bracket Recovery Girl had left on the bedside table. The quarter-finals.
He had advanced. And his opponent was...
Sōma Kaito vs. Bakugo Katsuki
A cold dread, entirely separate from Todoroki's ice, seeped into him.
He had just fought a glacier. Now he had to fight a volcano.
Bakugo. Unpredictable, ferociously powerful, and blindingly fast. His explosions were pure, concussive force.
There was no clever trick to make them "heavier." There was no single weak point to exploit.
He was a whirlwind of offense, and his battle IQ was terrifyingly high.
He would have seen every move Kaito made against Todoroki, and he would already be planning counters.
How do you adapt to pure, unadulterated fury?
Kaito closed his eyes, the fatigue pulling him under.
The victory against Todoroki had been monumental, but it had come at a cost.
He was injured, drained, and had revealed a significant portion of his strategic hand.
And now, he had to find a way to do it all over again, against an opponent who despised his very fighting style.
Bakugo wouldn't be enlightened by a loss. He would be enraged.
The Price of Victory was the relentless, escalating challenge that came after it.
As he drifted into an uneasy sleep, his mind, even in its exhaustion, began to churn, searching for an answer in his archive of borrowed power, trying to find a combination that could weather the coming storm.