This isn't how she thought this situation would play out. She was nervous and uncertain. Sweat threatened to loosen her hold on her sword, causing her readjust and restrengthen her grip. There was a dangerous heat at her back that she didn't have the luxury to investigate nor enough certainty to trust in it's safety.

"You'd raise your sword to a comrade in arms?" Iida demanded, his eyes hard and judging. The glare of light reflecting off his armor was as harsh as his ideals.

Mina was exchanging worried looks with Kyoka behind him, and Aoyama was taking cover behind his shield as if he were afraid of her. She tried not to let them distract her.

"I don't want to fight you!" She said. There was desperation in her voice. She wanted to hide it, was worried that to do so would mark her as a traitor. Which, she wasn't, wouldn't be, even if it looked remarkably like it from where they were standing.

"But you will," He said flatly. It was clear that whatever doubt he was holding onto about her actions vanished in that moment. Iida would never stand for someone breaking, or even bending, the rules as she was doing. That was why he had become a knight. She'd always known that it would become a point of contention with them eventually. She became a knight to protect people and while the two ideals could meet in the middle, they were not an overlap.

"Stand down." The tension running through her doubled at the voice. She looked up as they group parted to let Prince Todoroki pass, and he rode toward her on horseback, stopping a respectful distance away. "What is the meaning of this, Yaoyorozu?"

There was a growling at her back. She chose to ignore it only because to scold him would be to unlock the thin check he held on his temper. "Your majesty," she said in a measured tone, trying to choose her words carefully, "I think we should reconsider our approach."

"She's mad, clearly," Aoyama said.

Todoroki's gaze shifted to face him, stare cold. "I wasn't asking you," he said. When his eyes returned to her, his expression was not any kinder, but he had always afforded her a fair amount of respect. She didn't take the glacial stare personally. "Explain."

"War isn't the correct pathway to peace."

He seemed to ruminate on her words and she held her breath, hoping that he would see reason. Or at least reason enough to stay his hand.

Todoroki's eyes slid past her and she stiffened with trepidation, tried not to show it. "And what does he say?"

"So it's finally my turn, is it?"

She turned around quickly with the hope of preempting whatever regrettable words might pass through his lips.

"Bakugo." She looked at the man behind her (not a man, her mind whispered), taking in the manic grin and red eyes, trying not to flinch as she saw what her friends and comrades were seeing. The anger was rolling off of him in waves, the half healed cuts and bruises on his body made him dangerous rather than sympathetic, and his hand were balled into fist.

This was the man she had been sent to slay for the promise of peace, one of the creatures that could ravage the land and destroy a village in less than a day. This was the man that had saved her life, that she had spent days trying to nurse back to some semblance of health. This was the man that she had fought with and then beside as she realized he was more of a man than the beast she had been lead to believe.

"I say that you're all dead," he growled, fire erupting in burst from his hands. "I say that you don't get to start a war and then back off when it's convenient for you!" His body began to expand, becoming larger, scalier, more frightening. Her eyes widened, her heartbeat quickened, and she was taking hasty steps back from him before she knew it. "I say that one worthwhile human isn't enough to redeem the lot of you."

"Bakugo, don't!" In a burst she found her voice, wasn't sure where she had lost it. Wasn't sure what she could do with it.

"I say you one of you gets to live and the rest of you get to live in the filthy mess you've made!" He snatched her up with one clawed hand, surprisingly careful with her, before flames were suddenly swallowing the rest of them whole.

"No!" She screamed, scrambling to see what he'd done despite him trying to shield and restrain her. Her eyes were filled with tears, but she was still able to make out the quickly melting ice that tried to fend off the flames. Prince Todoroki must have protected them.

She almost didn't feel them lifting off the ground, being thrown through the air, until she realized how far away her friends had gotten.

"How could you do that?" She demanded. "I thought we'd come to an understanding?"

"We did." His voice was too loud, too harsh, more of a growl than anything else. "I understand that you're the best this kingdom has to offer and they don't deserve you."

"I thought that you didn't want war?" She questioned. "You told me that!"

"I don't want war," he told her. "But they don't deserve peace."