Chapter 10 ~ Thermal Siege
The artificial sunlight of Ground Beta reflected sharply off the bright, colorful costumes of Class 1-A. They stood gathered in the center of the mock city, a diverse collection of aspiring heroes waiting for their first true taste of practical combat.
All Might, towering over the teenagers in his massive, brightly colored Silver Age costume, reached one of his large hands into the yellow lottery box labeled 'Villains', and his other hand into the white box labeled 'Heroes'. He pulled out two small, colored spheres with a booming, theatrical laugh.
"The first match of the day!" All Might announced, his voice echoing off the concrete facades of the fake buildings. "Team B will be the Heroes, and Team I will be the Villains!"
He flipped the spheres around to reveal the names.
The Hero team consisted of Shoto Todoroki and Hanta Sero.
The Villain team consisted of Sakazuki Akainu and Mezo Shoji.
A murmur rippled through the gathered students. The atmosphere instantly thickened. Todoroki, standing quietly with his half-white, half-red hair, was widely recognized as one of the most formidable students in the class, having secured the second place in the physical apprehension test through sheer, overwhelming utility. On the opposing side, Sakazuki stood like an immovable monument in his pristine white suit and heavy, dark brown cloak, the undisputed victor of the entrance exam.
It was a clash of extreme elements before the first buzzer even sounded. Absolute, freezing cold against devastating, uncompromising heat.
"The Villain team will enter the building first!" All Might instructed, pointing toward a tall, five-story concrete structure down the street. "You have five minutes to set up your defenses and secure the nuclear payload. After that, the Hero team will infiltrate!"
Sakazuki did not offer a boastful smirk, nor did he stare down his opponents. He simply adjusted the brim of his crisp white cap, the black leather of his gloves squeaking softly, and turned toward the designated building.
Shoji walked silently beside him. The tall, heavily built teenager wore a dark blue mask that covered the lower half of his face, and his multiple, webbed arms hung calmly at his sides.
As they stepped into the cool, shadowed interior of the concrete building, Sakazuki evaluated his partner. He did not view Shoji as a mere classmate, but rather as a highly valuable, pragmatic asset. Shoji was quiet, disciplined, and possessed a sensory quirk that was fundamentally indispensable in a closed-quarters urban environment. Information was the lifeblood of any successful operation, and Shoji was a walking radar system.
They reached the top floor, stepping into the spacious, dimly lit room where the mock nuclear weapon—a large, papier-mâché cylinder painted with hazard symbols—rested in the center.
"How do you want to handle this?" Shoji asked, his voice muffled slightly by his mask. He raised one of his webbed appendages, morphing the tip into a fully functional, human-like ear to monitor the stairwell. "Should we set up barricades using the debris in the hallway?"
"Negative," Sakazuki replied, his deep, rumbling voice perfectly calm. He walked toward the center of the room, his heavy boots echoing off the bare concrete floor. He came to a stop a few meters in front of the payload, turning to face the single open doorway that served as the only entrance.
"Barricades merely delay the inevitable and obscure our own line of sight," Sakazuki explained calmly, adjusting the cuff of his dark red shirt beneath his white jacket. "Our objective is defense. We do not need to hunt them down. They are forced by the parameters of the exercise to come to us. Do not worry about engaging in physical combat, Shoji. Just focus entirely on sensing their locations and movements. Keep me informed."
Shoji nodded, understanding his role perfectly. He stepped back into the corner near the payload, morphing three of his arms into large ears and two into eyes, establishing a complete, omnidirectional sensory net over the building.
Outside, a loud, piercing siren cut through the air. The five minutes of preparation had expired. The match had officially begun.
For a few tense seconds, the building remained entirely silent.
Then, the ambient temperature plummeted.
It was not a gradual shift. It was a violent, unnatural drop that sucked the warmth right out of the air. The heavy steel pipes running along the ceiling began to groan and pop in protest. A thin layer of white frost rapidly bloomed across the concrete walls of the weapon room, creeping upward like a living, parasitic organism.
From the bottom floor, a terrifying, cracking roar echoed up the stairwell.
Shoji's morphed eyes widened in genuine alarm. Through his enhanced hearing, he could perceive the sheer, massive scale of the approaching threat. It sounded like a glacier was rapidly expanding upward, swallowing the entire structure in a matter of seconds. The sharp, jagged sound of freezing ice tearing through concrete and steel was deafening.
"A wide-scale attack from the start?!" Shoji said, his calm demeanor slipping as the frost reached the floorboards just outside their room. He could hear the ice surging up the final flight of stairs, a tidal wave of absolute zero threatening to freeze them solid where they stood.
Sakazuki did not flinch. His dark eyes remained fixed on the open doorway.
"Do not worry," Sakazuki said, his tone as steady and unbothered as if they were discussing the weather. "Just focus on sensing their locations. It will actually be much easier for you to track them if the entire building is sealed with a layer of crisp ice."
As the massive, jagged spikes of Todoroki's ice breached the top of the stairwell and surged violently down the hallway toward their open door, Sakazuki moved.
He did not raise his fists. He did not activate the terrifying, molten rock that had destroyed the Zero-Pointer.
Instead, Sakazuki simply brought his arms up, crossing them firmly over his lower chest in a dignified, imposing stance of absolute authority. He planted his feet squarely on the concrete. He took a slow, deep breath, and then released it.
The heavy, dark brown fabric of his cloak suddenly fluttered, whipped backward by a sudden shift in air pressure.
A suffocating, scorching wave of pure, radiant heat erupted from his body. It was not fire. It was not magma. It was simply the absolute, latent thermal energy of his internal furnace, pushed outward in a concentrated, invisible wave of blistering air.
The heat wave slammed into the approaching glacier right at the threshold of the doorway.
The result was instantaneous. The sheer, overwhelming thermal difference forced the ice to bypass melting entirely, instantly sublimating from a solid state directly into a thick, expanding cloud of searing white steam. The relentless forward momentum of Todoroki's attack died immediately, unable to push a single centimeter past the invisible, burning perimeter Sakazuki had established.
Standing a few feet behind him, Shoji gasped softly. He could feel the intense, oppressive heat washing over his face, a dry, desert-like wind that made his skin prickle and his lungs feel heavy. He stared at Sakazuki's broad back in awe. The boy had stopped a building-sized glacier without even utilizing the primary destructive aspect of his quirk.
Inside the dark, heavily monitored observation room, the rest of Class 1-A was plunged into a stunned silence.
The massive screens covering the wall displayed various angles of the building. Half the screens showed a completely frozen wasteland. The entire ground floor, the stairwells, and the lower corridors were encased in a thick, jagged prison of white ice.
"Whoa..." Kirishima whispered, his eyes wide as he leaned closer to the monitors. "Todoroki just froze the entire building in three seconds. He wasn't even aiming at them; he just wanted to capture the whole structure."
"But look at the top floor camera!" Uraraka pointed, her hands pressed against the glass.
The camera in the weapon room showed Sakazuki standing perfectly still, his arms crossed, his white suit completely untouched by the frost. The camera in the hallway directly outside their room was completely whited out, obscured by a dense, swirling vortex of heavy steam.
"Incredible," Midoriya muttered rapidly, furiously scribbling in his burnt notebook, his green eyes darting between the screens. "Todoroki used an area-of-effect attack to neutralize the targets and secure his footing, but Akainu countered it with pure, ambient thermal radiation. He didn't cause an explosion that could damage the payload. He just created a thermal wall. It's perfectly calculated defense."
"I can't see anything on the fourth-floor cameras anymore," Kaminari complained, squinting at the monitors. "The heat from Akainu is melting the ice in the upper hallways. The whole place is turning into a sauna. It's completely fogged up."
Standing at the back of the room, All Might watched the screens with keen, shadowed eyes. The sheer control demonstrated by the boy in the white suit was remarkable. He possessed a power built for mass destruction, yet he held it back, applying only the exact amount of force necessary to hold the line.
A few feet away from Midoriya, Bakugo stood with his arms crossed over his chest. His crimson eyes were locked onto the screen displaying Sakazuki. The blonde boy's jaw was clenched tight, a dangerous, competitive fire burning in his gaze. He wasn't talking, but his mind was furiously dissecting every single movement, every single tactical decision the boy in the white cap made.
Back inside the training building, the environment had shifted drastically.
The top floor and the corridor leading to it were completely engulfed in a thick, humid, blinding white fog. The intense heat radiating from Sakazuki's room was continuously melting the leading edge of the ice in the hallway, creating a localized weather system of heavy steam. Visibility was reduced to less than a meter.
Sakazuki remained in his stoic, cross-armed stance. "Report, Shoji."
Shoji closed his eyes. In the dense, blinding fog, human eyes were useless. But the ice that Todoroki had so confidently laid down to trap them had just become his greatest tactical flaw.
Shoji's morphed ears swiveled, filtering through the soft hissing of the steam and the dripping of melting water.
Down below, on the third-floor stairwell, he heard it.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
The unmistakable, sharp sound of heavy boots stepping on fractured, frozen ice. In the dead silence of the frozen building, the footsteps echoed upward like dry straw being crushed underfoot.
"I have them," Shoji whispered, his voice calm and precise. "Two targets. They are ascending the central stairwell. Currently approaching the fourth-floor landing. The steam is blinding them, but they are moving steadily."
Sakazuki lowered his arms. The heavy, dark brown cloak settled around his shoulders. He did not smile, but a glint of absolute, cold certainty flashed in his dark eyes. The enemy had willingly walked into a sensory deprivation zone, relying entirely on their initial show of force.
"They are coming," Shoji confirmed, opening his eyes as the crunching sounds grew slightly louder.
Down on the third-floor landing, the temperature was a jarring, uncomfortable mix. The ground beneath their boots was solid, freezing ice, but the air descending from the ceiling above was thick, humid, and increasingly hot.
Hanta Sero wrapped his arms around himself, shivering violently. His tape-dispenser elbows clicked softly as he rubbed his shoulders. "Man, this is crazy," Sero breathed, his breath pluming in the cold air, only to be instantly swallowed by the descending steam. "It's freezing down here, but it feels like we're walking into a boiling kettle up there. I can't even see the top of the stairs."
Shoto Todoroki stood perfectly still, his mismatched eyes narrowing as he stared up into the impenetrable white fog. His right side radiated a constant, freezing chill, keeping the ice beneath them stable, but he could feel the intense, oppressive heat pushing back against his domain.
The ice he had sent up to the fifth floor had been completely rejected. It hadn't just been broken; it had been erased, turned into the very fog that now blinded them.
Todoroki let out a slow, measured breath. He raised his right hand, a fresh layer of frost immediately coating his knuckles, ready to be unleashed at a moment's notice. He understood the caliber of the opponent waiting for them in the dark.
"This won't be enough to extinguish a volcano," Todoroki said quietly, his voice cutting through the hiss of the steam. He stepped forward, his boot crushing a small shard of ice. "Stay on high alert."