Chapter 11: Magma and Ice
The concrete walls of the mock weapon storage room felt heavy with anticipation. The thick, white steam rolling in from the hallway had turned the fifth floor into a stifling, humid sauna. Visibility was severely compromised, but in this specific tactical scenario, human eyes were entirely obsolete.
Mezo Shoji stood perfectly still near the right-side wall, his large, muscular frame tense. Three of his webbed appendages were morphed into highly sensitive, oversized ears, pressed lightly against the cold concrete to pick up the micro-vibrations traveling through the building's structural frame.
"They have reached the fourth floor," Shoji whispered, his muffled voice barely breaking the soft hissing of the ambient steam. He closed his human eyes, isolating the auditory data. "They are moving steadily. It seems they are heading toward the secondary corridors to bypass the main stairwell."
Sakazuki stood near the papier-mâché nuclear payload. His broad shoulders shifted beneath the heavy, dark brown cloak. The enemy was attempting a flanking maneuver, seeking to utilize the building's complex layout to avoid a frontal assault. It was a standard, logical tactic for an infiltration unit.
It was also a tactic Sakazuki was about to permanently revoke.
Without a word, Sakazuki turned and walked out of the payload room, his heavy boots making no sound as he descended the short flight of stairs to the fourth-floor landing. The hallway here was a network of heavy metal doors leading to various side rooms and alternative ventilation shafts.
He approached the first metal door on the left flank. Slowly, with deliberate and practiced precision, he raised his right hand and grasped the fingers of his black leather glove with his left. He pulled the glove off smoothly, revealing his scarred, calloused hand. He carefully folded the dark leather and tucked it safely into the inner pocket of his white suit jacket.
He did not ignite his entire arm. He required a scalpel, not a bomb.
Sakazuki raised his bare right hand, extending his index finger. The tip of his finger instantly transformed, glowing with a blinding, intensely concentrated cherry-red light. The localized heat was staggering. He pressed the molten tip of his finger directly against the heavy steel hinges of the door.
The metal shrieked. A sharp, violent hiss echoed in the corridor as the steel melted instantly under the focused magma, fusing the door permanently to its frame in a shower of bright orange sparks. He dragged his finger down the seam, creating a flawless, impenetrable slag weld in a matter of seconds.
He moved to the next door, repeating the clinical, destructive process. Then the next. He worked with the terrifying efficiency of an automated industrial machine. Door after door was permanently welded shut, the melted steel glowing a vibrant, furious orange in the dim light.
Within two minutes, every single flanking route, side room, and alternative pathway on the fourth floor had been completely sealed. He had systematically eliminated the variables. There was now only one operational path remaining: the central corridor leading directly to the final staircase. A perfect, unavoidable chokepoint.
Satisfied with the structural modification, Sakazuki retrieved his black leather glove from his pocket and pulled it back over his right hand, adjusting the cuff so it sat perfectly flush against his dark red shirt. He turned and walked back up the stairs to rejoin Shoji.
A floor below, the temperature was a jarring, uncomfortable contradiction.
Hanta Sero rubbed his arms aggressively, his teeth chattering slightly. The lower three floors of the building were a frozen, jagged wasteland, trapped in a state of absolute zero. However, as he and Todoroki ascended the stairs and finally stepped onto the fourth-floor landing, the biting cold abruptly vanished.
"Man, what is going on with the climate in here?" Sero muttered, wiping a sudden bead of condensation from his forehead. The air on this floor was not just warm; it felt thick, oppressive, and heavily baked. "It went from a freezer to an oven in the span of one staircase."
Sero raised his arms, aiming his tape-dispenser elbows into the hazy corridor ahead. He attempted to fire a long strip of tape to scout for tripwires or traps, but the moment the tape extruded from his elbows, it drooped pathetically. The severe humidity and the scorching ambient heat radiating from above had completely ruined the adhesive compound. The tape slipped uselessly onto the concrete floor.
"Great," Sero sighed, shaking his arms. "My quirk is basically useless in this humidity."
Shoto Todoroki did not respond immediately. His mismatched eyes were scanning the corridor ahead. The heavy white steam obscured the far end of the hall, but something else caught his attention. Through the haze, he could see the edges of the heavy metal doors lining the side of the corridor.
The seams of the doors were glowing. A faint, pulsing orange light cut through the white fog, accompanied by the distinct, acrid smell of freshly melted and cooling steel.
Todoroki stopped walking. His expression, usually a mask of calm indifference, tightened into a sharp, analytical frown. He observed the welded doors, then looked down the single, long, unmodified corridor leading straight to the objective. The realization hit him with absolute clarity.
"It seems our enemy is looking for a direct fight," Todoroki said quietly, his breath no longer pluming in the air. "He sealed off the entire floor. We are being funneled into a single, inescapable path. Get ready."
Sero swallowed hard, his nervous gaze drifting down the long, steam-filled hallway. A sudden, vivid mental image flashed in his mind—the imposing, broad-shouldered teenager in the pristine white suit, the dark cap casting a shadow over unblinking, merciless eyes.
"A direct fight with that guy?" Sero whispered, a genuine tremor of apprehension bleeding into his voice. "Are you serious? He doesn't even look like a high school student. He looks like a veteran military school graduate, man. He's going to crush us if we walk straight into a chokepoint."
Todoroki's right side flared with a fresh layer of frost, his dual-colored hair shifting slightly in the heavy air. "Then we simply won't walk into it."
Up on the fifth floor, inside the payload room, the trap was set.
Shoji stood near the front wall, his morphed ears pressed firmly against the concrete. He held up his hand, communicating entirely through tactical finger signals. Three fingers. Then two. He pointed toward the floor, tracing a line that indicated the heroes were moving down the central corridor, exactly as Sakazuki had orchestrated.
They are coming, Shoji signaled.
Standing a few meters back, Sakazuki acknowledged the silent report with a slow, measured nod. Time to welcome them, he thought, his posture straightening. He kept his eyes locked onto the open doorway, waiting for the two figures to emerge from the steam.
Shoji kept his ear to the wall, tracking the micro-vibrations of their footsteps. But suddenly, the rhythmic pacing stopped.
Shoji's human eyes snapped open, widening in sudden, pure alarm. The vibrations completely changed. It was no longer the sound of footsteps. It was a deep, structural groaning, a massive buildup of pressure coming not from the hallway, but from the solid concrete wall directly beside him.
"Damn—!" Shoji yelled, throwing his arms up defensively.
He didn't get to finish the warning.
The concrete wall adjacent to the doorway violently exploded inward. A deafening, catastrophic roar of shattering stone and tearing rebar shook the entire fifth floor. A massive, raging torrent of jagged, razor-sharp ice spears erupted through the breach, carrying the kinetic force of a detonated bomb.
The sheer concussive shockwave of the expanding glacier caught Shoji completely off guard. The heavy, muscular teenager was lifted entirely off his feet. He was thrown violently across the width of the room, crashing heavily into the far corner with a sickening thud. The ice rapidly crawled over his legs and torso, pinning him to the floor in a web of freezing frost. Shoji groaned, his eyes rolling back slightly, completely unable to stand.
In the dark observation room on the other side of the campus, the entire student body jolted in shock.
"He blew through the wall!" Kirishima yelled, his hands gripping the back of the chair in front of him.
"Shoji is down in one hit!" Ashido gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as she watched the multi-armed boy slump against the corner of the screen.
Back in the ruined payload room, a thick cloud of pulverized concrete dust mixed with the freezing mist of the ice.
Sakazuki did not flinch from the explosion. His heavy cloak fluttered wildly from the blast radius, but his boots remained firmly planted on the floor. He slowly turned his head, his dark eyes locking onto the massive, jagged hole in the wall.
Stepping through the ruined concrete, surrounded by a halo of freezing mist, was Shoto Todoroki. Hanta Sero followed closely behind him, stepping carefully over the rubble and looking incredibly nervous.
Todoroki brushed a dusting of crushed concrete from the shoulder of his costume. His mismatched eyes met Sakazuki's dark, unreadable gaze.
"I hate being herded toward a specific door like cattle," Todoroki stated, his voice completely level, echoing coldly in the destroyed room. "So, I decided to make my own path."
Sero peeked out from behind Todoroki's shoulder. He looked across the room and saw Shoji buried under a layer of frost, completely immobilized and groaning in pain. Sero winced, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Hey, Todoroki," Sero whispered loudly, guilt flashing across his face. "Didn't you overdo it a little bit? He hit that wall really hard."
Todoroki did not even glance at the fallen student. He kept his eyes locked entirely on Sakazuki. "Recovery Girl will check on him later. There is no need to worry. The objective is to secure the weapon."
Silence descended on the room. It was not a peaceful silence; it was the suffocating, heavy quiet that precedes a catastrophic natural disaster.
Sakazuki stood in the center of the room. He looked at the shattered wall. He looked at Shoji, incapacitated in the corner. Then, he looked at Todoroki.
Slowly, Sakazuki raised his right hand. He grasped the brim of his pristine white military cap. With a smooth, deliberate motion, he pulled the cap off his head and casually tossed it aside. It landed softly on the concrete floor, entirely forgotten.
The ambient temperature in the room, which had dropped significantly due to the ice breach, suddenly spiked violently upward. The air began to warp and shimmer around Sakazuki's broad shoulders.
On his forehead, small droplets began to form. But it was not normal sweat. Thick, glowing, viscous beads of liquid magma oozed slowly from his pores, illuminating the sharp, severe angles of his face with a terrifying, demonic orange glow. The heat radiating from his body was becoming absolute.
From the seams of his black leather gloves, thick plumes of dark, acrid smoke began to curl upward into the air. The leather creaked in protest against the overwhelming, building pressure beneath it.
"In that case," Sakazuki rumbled. His voice was no longer a calm, commanding bark. It was a low, vibrating growl that seemed to emanate from the tectonic plates beneath the earth. "I will send you to check on Recovery Girl as well."
Todoroki's eyes narrowed into sharp, dangerous slits, his entire right side bracing for impact. Sero took an involuntary step backward, genuine, paralyzing fear washing over his face as the oppressive heat threatened to suffocate him.
In the observation room, the atmosphere was thick enough to cut with a knife.
Momo Yaoyorozu took a step toward the massive monitors, her dark eyes wide with mounting dread. "Wait... This does not look good. The sheer thermal output is scaling too fast."
Minoru Mineta grabbed the sides of his head, trembling violently. "Are you kidding me?! Look at his face! That isn't a training exercise anymore, that is a declaration of war!"
Katsuki Bakugo stood entirely still, his crimson eyes glued to the screen. He wasn't yelling. He wasn't making explosive threats. He was watching the boy in the white suit with a terrifying, absolute seriousness, recognizing the posture of someone preparing to execute a target.
Izuku Midoriya gripped his notebook so tightly his knuckles turned white. He swallowed the dry lump in his throat, his mind racing through the sheer magnitude of the impending collision.
"The absolute first place in the entrance exam," Midoriya whispered, his voice trembling slightly in the quiet observation room. "Against the son of the Number Two Hero, the absolute best of the recommended students... This building might not survive."
On the screens, All Might did not smile. The Symbol of Peace leaned closer to the console, his shadowed, sunken eyes locked onto the monitors, his hand hovering dangerously close to the emergency abort button.