Vanilla Ice [Darren]

Finally, a fucking sparring class. The whole reason he came to this school for in the first place.

A happy, almost giddy Darren made his way to the training facilities, which were really glorified gym buildings. The same Darren slammed the door of the building open with a resounding “What’s up, bitches?” before the teacher told him to shut up and pair with the student whose name was written on this piece of paper. The blonde delinquent squinted at it. Another foreign name. Between Blondie and this guy, he was meeting a lot of foreigners recently.

Not that he really cared. He was here for a fight, and the fight was here for him too it seemed, for he heard his name called by a voice which only pronounced his first name right. He headed towards that voice to find a blue-haired boy about his age and size, with a clearly foreign look about him. Not that Darren had any less of a foreign look about him either -- he was a halfie after all.

He went up to the guy with a confident -- cocky, really -- look on his face and swagger in his step. He had a visible spark in his eye. “Yo, I’m Darren! Nice to meet ya,” he said, offering his hand, “and best of luck.” He grinned a cocky grin, clearly excited about what was about to happen, so much that he failed to notice the frost emanating from his sparring partner until he clasped his cold hand. He was at once reminded of his opponent’s quirk as he went to his side of the field.

With a blow of the teacher’s whistle, the match was beginning. Darren didn’t lose a second and shot himself at his opponent with a half-power activation of his quirk, his fist at the ready. As soon as he’d get in his opponent’s face, instead of the punch he was likely to expect, he’d use a thirty percent power downwards blast to crouch -- looking more like he was being pulled to the ground than properly crouching -- and disappear from his opponent’s field of vision as he attempted a sweep at his legs.

It was a flashy battle of flashy flash-freeze and flash-movement quirks, and it was going strong.

Darren’s strategy of getting in his opponent’s face and going for a spicy sweep worked perfectly, but the other boy clearly knew how to fight, as he covered his tumble with an ice attack. Rather surprised -- but still smiling a battle-crazed smile, the delinquent only had time to propel his elbow in front of his face and on the ice ball, shattering it in about ten pieces. It was only a quarter power activation, but he knew he couldn’t slam his elbow against a lot more of these ice balls.

He was up against a tricky bastard, however, and distracted by his consideration on the durability of his elbow, his instincts flared up a half-second too late. He was a cryomancer; of course he could flash-freeze the floor. He tried stepping back with another activation of his quirk, but he could feel a tug on his right leg. Half of his right foot was trapped in ice.

He could lift his heel, however, and that’s all he needed. The other boy didn’t have time to properly get away. Remembering his short-lived attendance of his middle school’s boxing club, with a blast of Kinetic Jutsu at half-power, Darren propelled his body towards the blue-haired kid. His left leg crossed over his imprisoned right foot as he pushing on his toes with all his strength. He slammed his left foot on the ice as far and as strong as he could, twisting and turning his hips and elbows in a rough motion, shifting his body weight forward and into his right fist, which flew towards Maxi’s face enhanced with another half-strength burst of his power, focused this time in his hitting appendage -- the same right fist.

The cryomancer student was right in assuming that cutting off Darren’s movement was a good idea, as it forced the blondie to go with this right straight. If his estimation of the distance separating them -- you were supposed to jab first in order to gauge it -- was right, his punch would have just enough reach to land on the blue boy’s chin, producing a snapping punch. Whether or not he tanked the hit, it would give Darren time to break his right foot free of its icy restraint, with a bit of kinetic-enhanced stomping action from his left -- or so he hoped.

The satisfying blowback in his arm and shoulder meant that his straight had hit home, sending that Maximilian guy flying. Darren’s instinct was to chase, but the tugging on his right leg reminded him of why he couldn’t. He righted his posture so he could stand on one leg, lifted his left foot and let the heel come crashing down, with a quarter power activation of Kinetic Jutsu. His toes were a little numb from the ice and shock, but he was tough.

He was tough too when he noticed that blue haired ice boy was better than he thought and he noticed three ice balls like the one from earlier were flying towards him. The delinquent teenager only had time to throw up his arms and tank the attack. It was like being hit by three boulders, but the ice was brittle enough that Darren could shrug off the attack, his crazy smile widening to show more teeth. It was almost predatory.

For all the adrenaline coursing through his veins, he knew he couldn’t shrug these off indefinitely. He was fine getting a hit in for every hit he took. That meant he owed him two more hits -- or at least that’s what made sense in Darren’s twisted mind.

He noticed the two walls of ice raising in a diagonal pattern from his opponent. He was trying to box him in. Bold move, thought Darren, let’s see how it pays off. In a series of quick fifty percent power blasts, he jumped on the right wall, then on the left one, gaining altitude, and then propelled himself above Maxi.

With one last downward activation of the same strength, he dived down on Mr. Freeze feet first, aiming to land on his chest and use his body like a surfing board like in his favorite fighting game.

Again there was the blowback, but this time his opponent expected it and put up a defense. Darren’s didn’t get to surf on ice using Maxi’s body for a board. Not only that, but he turned this defense into attack too, freezing Darren’s legs. He muttered a curse as he blew himself back, stepping on his opponents face to do so.

As he tried to land on the ground, he slip and fell majestically. Not understanding why, he looked down at his legs and saw that he had a nice pair of icy boots on, reaching up almost to his knees. He tried to stand up carefully, but then he ate an ice ball in the face and fell back down again. The smooth gymnasium floor against his iced soles slippery. 

Right, that ice prick was still there and he didn’t have an ice pick to dig out his legs. He was gonna have to improvise. First, he rolled to the right to dodge other potential ice balls, and forced himself upright with his quirk, and then forward. He could only slide, then he was gonna fucking slide, and he was gonna do a great job at it too.

Using his iced-over feet like ice skates, and compensating for his utter lack of ice-skating abilities by using his quirk to essentially keep himself from falling, he blasted himself towards Maxi. He almost fell backward, but with an activation in the torso, he managed to right himself. He aimed to pass him on the left and Lariat his ass with his right arm. Blinded by the potential coolness of his move, he was completely forgetting that he was getting inside the ice boy’s freezing range again. With his bumbling moves -- again, we shall remind readers that Darren has absolutely no experience in something as twinkish as ice-skating, as a former delinquent with a somewhat outdated sense of manliness -- he would be an easy target to freeze over, especially since half the work was already done.

'Seriously, who got that dumb idea to skate on the ice our opponent controls in the first place?!'

It was a tense meeting in Darren’s internal war room. The committee of his mind -- composed of his organs, a few abstracts concepts like his subconscious, and a smaller version of himself -- had called for an emergency meeting. The CSTU (Circulatory System Trade Union) slammed a report on the table that they couldn’t provide enough blood to the feet to keep them warm any longer, and the feet agreed. There were murmurs at the table. Everyone agreed it was a dire situation. The motion was carefully considered, but inevitable.

A high priority message was immediately dispatched by the Peripheral Nervous System Worker’s Confederation. All muscle pilots were to brace for impact and get ready for a 100% activation of his quirk. The plan was to brace for the attack and counter as best as they could.

Back in the war room, Kinetic Jutsu, the personification of Darren’s quirk, was ready, and every literal or figurative pair of eyes was on it. But then, a message came from the ocular nerves.

Apparently, the freezer box boy’s attack was coming for Darren’s head. It was this ice-spear-looking thing. The tympans reported, snickering, that it had a dumb name.

Darren’s muscle pilots were experimented, and they knew what to do. They didn't need orders; they knew that if it was a blow to the head, they could dodge it. The blonde delinquent immediately ducked under the attack with a fifty percent activation in his torso. A right upper flew at the spear, aiming to break it with a seventy-five percent power activation concentrated in the fist, which would be sure to smart a lot, and an opposite activation stopped the hit before he dislocated his own shoulder.

At the same time, a hundred percent power blast in his left foot violently broke it free from the ice. Another full power blast in his whole body freed his right foot as well and shot him up above Maxi once again. Darren pulled both his ankles in the process and only realized it when he landed behind Maxi with a fifty percent power shot, felt the ground falling under his feet and most importantly, saw it getting closer. Luckily, it wasn’t the first time it happened to him, and he had just the right tool for the job.

Pulling himself up in a Mickael Jackson looking-ass move with his quirk, he shot one last desperate elbow. He had no ankles to show for, and pulling himself up and down so much got him dizzy from the G’s he pulled on himself. This elbow, shot at full power towards the back of Maxi’s head, was his last shot, and he put everything he had into it. If it hit, Darren was likely to hurt his own joint in the process. It was the cost that came with using his powerful quirk to the full extent of its capabilities.

Right now, he cared little. The kid made him go 100%. Win or lose, it was the kind of intense match that Darren lived for.

Darren felt his elbow slice the air, but not much else. With the momentum and his sprained ankles, there was little he could do to keep himself from falling on top of the other boy. The delinquent was sweating copiously, proof of their match’s intensity, and the human freezer bag felt rather nice on his back, along with the iced ground, even if it was rapidly receding. “Aaaah… Great fight, Mister Freeze, great fight.”

“... Mister Freeze?”

---

Ten minutes later, the both of them were dropped at the infirmary by a pair of helpful classmates who took carrying their injured asses as a great rescue work exercise. It was one of the aspects of the school that Darren liked most. Not everyone was a pure-blooded brawler like he was, but everyone was constantly doing their best to improve themselves. He couldn’t help being excited about seeing what they would all be like come graduation time.

They were dropped on side-by-side beds as the pair went back to exercising. Darren’s ankles were hurting a little less now, but he still couldn’t really walk properly. Mister Freeze, for his part, had regained a bit of color in his face and a bit of consciousness as well, so Darren decided to shoot the shit while waiting for the nurse to show up.

“So yeah, I don’t think you heard me last time man, but great fucking fight! That shit you got up to was cold, shitty joke intended.” He had his big dumb smile on. It was his most genuine. He never heard about Maxi before, and by now couldn’t give less of a fuck. He was a cool guy in his book. Granted, it wasn’t a very intelligent book, but still.

He was a little winded as well for using his quirk for so long, and even had his vision grey-out for half a second. It was a side effect of Darren's quirk; the more he moved around, especially horizontally, the more blood was chased out of his brain by physics. The human body wasn't made the handle the sudden accelerations of his quirk. Now that he thought of it, Maxi essentially had the same problem with cold.

"I guess it's your quirk that makes it that you're so fucking cold all the time? The dude who was carrying you complained about it. Your body can't handle too much of your quirk as well, right? Same shit with me." He glanced at his ankles. "Look, I even fuck up myself. Though I guess you get credit for that," he added with a competitive sideways smile.