"I'm the challenger? You've let surviving my weaker attack go to your head."
Doji's voice was calm, almost amused. His sharp eyes gleamed like blades.
He stepped forward.
"Fullbuster was it? You're just a fish on a cutting board. You may flop around a lot, but you're still a nameless fish."
Without another word, Doji raised his arms up with open hands and widened his stance.
"I'll first strip away your scales!"
Gray lowered his center of gravity and extended his arms, his standard Ice Make stance.
A titanic shard of ice exploded upward, ripping through the side of the tower. Shrapnel of steel and concrete rained down as the floor beneath them collapsed.
Gray and Doji jumped out the side of the building and dropped several stories, crashing onto a neighboring rooftop.
Doji didn't waste a second, his hand whipped out in a blur. Gray barely twisted aside as something he couldn't see whistled past his face, carving a deep gash into the rooftop.
Gray countered fast.
"Ice Make: Geyser!"
A massive column of ice surged upward, but it never landed.
The geyser shattered mid-rise, sliced to pieces by invisible blades, precision-cut before they ever reached Doji.
Gray narrowed his eyes. He couldn't see the slashes, but they were real.
'Slashes I cannot see. What the hell is he cutting me with?'
Another wave of attacks came. The two of them ran across the rooftop. Doji rushed at Gray with a round kick. Gray raised his elbows up. Blocked. He countered with a jab. Pushed aside by Doji's right arm. Doji's left arm went for a jab towards Gray's side. Redirected by Gray's right arm. Then it clicked in Gray's head. Doji made that same swiping motion with his hand. Gray immediately hit the floor, practically lying prone as the slash went over his head like a strong gust of wind. Gray raised his arm and made a flinging motion with his fingers.
"Ice Make: Reversal."
Doji's eyes widened as he was flung off the side of the rooftop. He felt a cold block on his back. 'When did he put that on me?!'
Gray jumped off the rooftop after him. He twisted mid-fall, ice forming beneath his feet as he landed and slid across the lower scaffold. Doji regained his composure in the air. His fast fall seemingly slowed to a subtle float towards the ground. Doji swiped his hand.
Gray shifted his body. Doji raised an eyebrow.
Instead of a deep gash like the one across his chest, only a shallow cut formed in his shoulder. He gritted his teeth, analyzing every movement as he froze his wound shut.
They're invisible… but they leave a trace. A shift in the wind. A tremor in the cold...
Then the idea struck.
Gray clenched his fist, and a shimmering frost aura flared around him. Cryokinesis manifesting as an external field. He closed his eyes for a moment.
'Anything I make… I can feel it. My ice is an extension of me.'
This concept of extending an aura of frost away from his body while maintaining it to use it as part of his senses was new to him. As a result, Gray could only sense an extra meter away from his body. Instead Gray had to rely on his intuition and react with desperate speed to dodge his enemy's "invisible" attack from a very close range.
The next volley came. Doji was not making the trajectories obvious like before. Knowing his sight was useless, Gray closed his eyes.
One slash. Two slashes. Three slashes. He weaved his body between each one with almost no room for error.
Doji's expression tightened. Just a fraction. Enough to show surprise.
"You can sense them?" he muttered, intrigued. 'And he adapted immediately? That would take m
Gray's breath steamed into the air. His eyes were locked in. No words. His concentration was at its maximum. There was something about him that changed when he awakened. He himself wasn't aware of it but the results were clear. A technique like this would take a genius to master. Someone who was a savant at combat like Natsu. That wasn't Gray's style. He was more of the creative type. But his awakening had rewired his brain entirely.
Gray hadn't simply grown smarter. His entire mind had been rewritten around the cold. Deep within him, the hypothalamus no longer chased warmth like any regular human. It embraced colder temperatures as homeostasis. In his new frozen equilibrium, his neurons behaved differently. The absence of heat stripped away the background noise that plagued ordinary minds. His body adapted in areas where the cold should have slowed him. His neural pathways refined conduction into something sharper and faster. His awakening was not just a power up, but an evolution. It was reminiscent of saltatory conduction but taken further in a way modern science wouldn't have ever fathomed possible, optimized for a world of ice. And with no energy wasted on maintaining warmth for his organs, more of his mind was free to break its own limits.
Doji grinned now, eyes lighting with violent anticipation.
"This'll be a fun fight."
He slashed dozens of compressed air blades into the side of the building, carving grooves into steel as Gray flipped and slid out of reach. A final palm strike came inches from Gray's face but he dropped low, skidding into the icy floor.
Gray had closed the gap immediately and formed a gauntlet of ice in his right hand. His gauntlet slammed straight into Doji's stomach. Doji coughed up blood as he crashed through a reinforced wall in an explosion of dust and rubble.
Doji's eyes narrowed.
His breath was visible and his body was growing numb. Ice was starting to grow from the wound inflicted by gray.
'…He's freezing me. But it looks like he can't generate the ice as fast while focusing on that aura.'
He glanced down as thin layers of ice were already creeping along his body, fracturing as they spread.
Without hesitation, he slashed his arms outward. The frost shattered, and the massive ice spikes were obliterated in a cloud of white mist. But that's when he saw it.
The entire rooftop platform beneath him was frozen. The air tightened. A rumble echoed. Gray lifted his hand.
The platform of ice flipped.
Steel and ice twisted upward as all sense of gravity was gone. Doji leapt just in time, slicing through the airborne debris, cascading down through the chaos.
But Gray was already there. Floating and waiting just for him.
Their eyes met.
Then another slash.
Doji pointed directly at Gray and sent a compressed air blade screaming upward. Gray twisted in midair, narrowly dodging, but the building behind him wasn't so lucky.
The mafia high-rise was sliced in half.
It came crashing down, burying both of them in steel, glass, and concrete.
The impact thundered throughout the city. If their fight hadn't alerted any bystanders before it certainly had now.
Then silence.
From the dust, Gray emerged, gliding between the falling debris on wings of frost. He conjured a long ice blade, carving his way through the wreckage. Both men stood now wounded. Their breath steamed in the cold air.
In the distance the silence is broken; sirens.
"I'm blaming you for all the damage," Gray muttered, half-joking.
Doji smirked. He stared at Gray, looking deep into his eyes. Deep down, Gray understood the feeling. It was mutual. This was the first real time since fighting Natsu that he truly enjoyed a battle. It was almost magical. Like a battle between mages.
"Fullbuster. Let's use every last drop."
Gray smirked.
"Just this once."
They moved into position.
Gray sank into his Ice Make stance, legs spread, arms out, his aura of frost pulsing.
Doji clasped his hands together in a practiced motion, with his fingers forming a unique shape.
"Ice Make: Frozen Eternity!"
"Ultimate Technique: Silent Tempest Guillotine!"
Gray's frost rushed outward, freezing the very air around him. From Doji's side a thousand compressed slashes unleashed in a torrential storm.
Doji's slashes collided with Gray's frozen domain, each blow carving apart air that was being instantly refrozen, then sliced again as it attempted to expand.
It was an even clash. If Gray's attack were to be overwhelmed, he would be cut into pieces. While if Doji's attack were to lose, he would be frozen in an instant. But there was a clear gap in overall range. Gray's frozen zone was only about fifty meters, his current limit to how far his cryokinesis can go at maximum output. Doji's was over a hundred meters.
Within that 100-meter zone, entire buildings collapsed and shredded apart. Cars exploded. The neighborhood was eviscerated. Had the surrounding complex the Yakuza owned been inhabited, hundreds would have died.
Doji turned toward Gray with a bemused smile.
"You know... my quirk started simple. Air compression. Little pressure changes, wind bursts. Harmless stuff."
"Then something… woke it up."
He raised his hand.
"Pressure's just temperature. And heat? Heat is fuel."
"Cold lowers pressure. Your quirk and mine? Enemies, really. But now…"
"I can ignite the air."
Flames began to flicker in his palms. Gray's eyes widened in shock.
"Did you pay attention in science class?"
At that moment, it clicked in Gray's head. A dust explosion. The rapid combustion of fine particles in the air. With the amount of particles created from the onslaught of attacks, this explosion was going to be massive.
Doji spread his arms, glowing like a demon in the storm of ash and embers.
"Ultimate Technique: Ember Burial."
The sky turned red.
This was Gray's second Frozen Eternity, fired off with a body still reeling from the first. His output was nearly cut in half. He figured if he was at full strength, he could have ended this fight before he got to this point. He was only barely keeping the slashes off his skin.
Then-
An explosion ripped through the city, a dome of fire swallowing everything.
Flames tore into the sky. Buildings collapsed. The night itself turned orange, then black. A crater remained.
A smooth, glassy pit. Gray's 50-meter barrier was gone. Doji stood alone, charred debris swirling at his feet, eyes wide with ecstasy.
He laughed-mad, joyful, unchained.
"I'll remember you, Fullbuster," he grinned.
"You're the one who made me go all out."
But then-
Doji gasped. His body went still.
He looked down. A blade of ice had impaled him through the back. His arms and legs began to freeze. He turned his head, barely.
Gray stood behind him, his body releasing that aura of frost. His body was covered in frozen cuts but none were very deep.
"Y-Y-You're not burnt?!" Doji grunted, feeling the air from his lungs freeze.
Gray stepped forward, dragging his breath.
"Those flames of yours… aren't even comparable to Endeavor's, much less "his…"
Ice crawled up Doji's neck.
He didn't answer.
He couldn't.
The frost encased his head and body, sealing him in a frozen tomb.
Gray's mask clattered to the rubble as he staggered away from the scene.
In the distance, a brighter fire approached. Gray could tell who it was. It was his father. Endeavor approached. It was his jurisdiction after all. And after an explosion like that, there's no way he wouldn't show up.
Gray didn't wait. He ran. Vanished into the night.
—
The sky was burning.
Endeavor soared through the night sky, trailing a jet stream of flame behind him. Emergency calls had piled in. An entire block of the prefecture was gone. No confirmed survivors. Explosions. Slicing winds. Temperatures rising and falling in violent spikes.
He landed in the center of the crater which was a smoldering bowl of ash and blackened steel, the remnants of what used to be an entire block.
A few charred structures remained at the fringes, flickering with weak flame. But the middle?
Glass-smooth. Frozen. Steam hissed around his boots as his flames touched the ground, then recoiled, hissed again.
Ice?
Endeavor knelt beside the largest frozen patch.
He placed his palm flat on it. His flames flared then steadied in an attempt to melt it. The ice did not melt immediately from his heat.
His expression hardened.
"That's not just any ice," he muttered. "Only an extremely powerful ice user can do this. Who has this strong of an ice quirk?
Behind him, pro heroes gathered. The villain was being thawed out by a sidekick. No sign of anyone else.
Someone approached. A face pale, injured, gasping for air.
"After interviewing that guy we found out a few things. He's from a branch of the Yakuza called the Juichi Kenryukai. "There were two people fighting here before the explosion."
"That group? They're second only to Shie Hassaikai. Who was the second person?"
"The buildings came down before we got close. But there was frost. A lot of it. Then fire. Then the explosion."
Endeavor stared into the distance. He didn't speak.
But his memory filled in the blanks.
The sheer scale of the destruction he saw as he flew over… the slashing pattern visible on ruined buildings.
"There could have been someone from Rei's side…no…it couldn't be." Endeavor said finally. He looked around for any clues, but it was clear most of it was destroyed from the fight.
The fire crackled.The wind howled.
And somewhere far away, in the shadow of the city's smoke-
Gray was running home, naked, with a big smile on his face. He hadn't had fun in a long time.