Summary:
ice: (n.) A term used to describe water or a number of gases such as methane or ammonia when in a solid state.
The last event, and the aftermath, of the U.A. Sports Festival.
Notes:
This was originally supposed to be two separate chapters, but the emotional beat didn't flow quite right so I just mashed them together into one. Let me know what you think??
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
I'm almost late to my own match, but in the end, Midnight declares the match start without issue.
Purple immediately starts talking. He needs to engage the target in conversation, Sparky had said. He talks about heroes, and Quirks, and Endeavor and the watching crowd.
Father expects me to freeze him in place, or burn him out of bounds, or something that makes this an easy win. But Purple had been the one to approach us first, had declared so confidently that he'd move into the heroics course, and for that –
For that bone-deep drive for something I recognize –
I can help him out a little.
"What's it to you?" I reply, and the warm blanket of Purple's Quirk drops over my shoulders. Distantly, I'm aware of him smirking; the voices of the crowd are loud; Mic's commentary is shrill.
But I've had experience in feeling like my body is not my own. I've had experience in snapping myself out of it when there's nothing and no one else around to help.
There's no one to talk to inside my own skull, and Purple's voice is so saccharine, the nicest, I need to listen to it because everything he says makes sense, and what's a little walking backwards really, here goes, one step, two –
I breathe in, fill my lungs with air, take note of the way my chest expands. If I concentrate, I can still feel my ribs. They aren't twinging anymore – Father had made sure to avoid the torso last night, he'd aimed for bruises elsewhere instead – but I've been utilizing my Quirk all day and never got a chance to warm up. Pain, cold, enough physical shock and, there, yes. In a way it's just like snapping out of a dissociative episode.
"Good try," I tell Purple, and he flinches back like I'd struck him, face morphing from triumphant at my two steps back into something different. His eyes go almost comically wide. "Some kind of hypnotism, right? Not bad. If I was anyone else, you might've gotten them to walk out of bounds with just your Quirk."
The crowd murmurs. Good. They understand Purple's potential, then. They might think it villainous – Sparky certainly had – but there is a lot that Purple can do if he puts his mind to it.
"You should go into rescue, maybe," I tell him before he can start up another conversation. As long as I'm not replying to anything that he's saying – which is an interesting condition, and I wonder if it's because his Quirk relies on a null-state baseline of someone's brainwaves before it can hijack them – he can't activate it. "People freeze more than their instinct leans toward fight or flight, and when that happens you need to either get them bodily out of the way – or move them, like you might be able to.
"But, for now…" The end of the match occurs when an opponent is immobilized, knocked out, or pushed out of bounds. I don't need to get close in order to immobilize, and I've showcased my ice already. There's no need to conceal it.
I dig my heels in and, yes, intent and endothermic processes, there's a high enough humidity today that there won't be a problem.
I freeze Purple like I'd frozen students during the cavalry battle, and when after a few moments it becomes clear that there's no way my opponent can break out of it, Midnight calls the match.
Purple grinds his teeth as I walk toward him, steam rising from my every step as I send out a heatwave from the left side of my body. "How did you do that?!" he asks, low and vicious. "I felt my Quirk take – but you just – you snapped yourself out of it?"
"Usually someone needs an outside influence to dislodge you, right?" I put my hand on his shoulder and start melting off the ice. Gently, slowly; Midnight and the commentators are taking the time for a quick analysis of the match, since as U.A. instructors they're familiar with the fact that melting someone out of an ice cocoon can be harmful if done too fast.
Purple glares. "Yeah. What did you do?"
"People talk about flashy Quirks," I tell him as kindly as I can. "And yours and mine are certainly flashy. Also, I have very good bodily awareness, and I've had experience snapping myself out of something similar." That's an innocuous enough statement, I hope, considering the fact that we're still relatively strangers. If I'm being honest I don't think any of the others in the bracket could have done it. Spiky, maybe.
"And a strong will." Purple sighs as the ice sluices off, and when I take my hand off his shoulder and step back he shakes himself, tries to rub feeling back into his arms. "Damn. Damn, Todoroki. You certainly earned your place at the top of the pack, didn't you?"
But instead of sounding admiring, like Father's fans tend to do, Purple sounds… resigned. A little aggravated. Satisfied, maybe, like he's had something confirmed.
Midnight has us bow to each other, and we leave using opposite exits of the stadium. Purple gets called out before he enters the tunnel by his classmates in General Education, something about a good try and how he's represented them well.
He pauses at the exit; I don't. I need to hide, before Father comes and finds me before my next match.
In the end I go to the viewing box where 1-A is. Shouji and Invisible Girl have saved me a seat, and with Shouji's height concealing me from view I'll have enough warning before Father comes up the stairs.
Sparky has his match; it ends rather quickly. Electricity, grounding, I'm a little surprised he hadn't been careful of it going into the match considering how careful he needs to be not to shock any allies during the afternoon heroics classes, but, well. You live and you learn.
Hatsume's and Loud Guy's, on the other hand, has me paying full attention. Hatsume has such a beautiful brain. I'm itching to run some calculations, take some notes so that I can go over her designs with her after the match, but Green Hair is already writing furiously. He has that covered.
"That was a little mean," Invisible Girl says as Hatsume takes that last deliberate step that puts her out of bounds. "She totally played on Iida's straightforwardness."
"It's a good lesson for him." I glance down at where he'd been sitting earlier and, yes, there's his cup of orange juice, still mostly full. "She had enough equipment to make up for her lack of offensive Quirk, but if he took off the autobalancer or the leg-braces at any moment he could have taken advantage of the openings she was leaving. She's a support student, not a heroics student. She doesn't have the sparring experience."
"Why the autobalancer?" Invisible Girl asks. People are looking over now, even Green Hair, who's stopped his frantic writing. "Wouldn't Iida wanted to have kept it on, to take advantage of the equipment Hatsume-san gave him?"
I shake my head. "He's trained without them, he wouldn't have gotten used to his faster movement in the short span of that fight. The best move would have been to take them off so that his reflexes for stopping and pinpoint turning were accurate, pass by just as Hatsume's hydraulics launched her out of the way, then grab the legs and knock her down. She might have been able to recover from that; she might not."
And even if her other support equipment could have compensated for it afterwards, Loud Guy would still have created openings in which he could either knock Hatsume out or throw her out of bounds. It's likely his frustration and embarrassment had gotten the better of him.
"I've noticed this before," Invisible Girl whispers thoughtfully as the rest of the class turns back to the field in their seats, "but you're really observant, Todoroki-kun."
I don't know what she means, so I nod and pretend she makes sense. Her hands flutter like Fuyumi-nee's do when she's smiling though.
"See," she continues, "You're observant in a different way from Midoriya. He thinks about how to fight with a Quirk – you think about how to use one."
I hadn't been aware there's a difference. But Invisible Girl doesn't elaborate, just turns back to the teachers and their commentary, and there's no time for me to ask her to explain.
A conversation in the stadium hallways:
"You're the kid in Class 1-A. Your Quirk is like All Might's, isn't it?"
"…what's it to you?"
"My son will be using your spar with him as a learning experience; so make sure to give him a good one. Maybe after fighting you, he'll stop with his childish attitude."
"You know, for the record, Todoroki-kun is the most mature person I've ever met. And don't worry – he'll be sure to make you proud."
I miss Spiky's match – the last two matches of the bracket, really – so that I can go and prepare early for my next one. It's versus Green Hair, who has such a similar Quirk to All Might's, and who had been reckless enough to throw himself towards the villains who'd taken down a hero like Eraserhead without pause.
Which is more evidence to the theory that All Might and Green Hair are related, really, but there's no time to think more about it.
Green Hair keeps breaking bones. This is a fact. I kick out a spray of ice as soon as Midnight starts the match, big and wide enough to encompass the field, and he flicks a finger to block it. But the field isn't that long, and it's easy to see the discolored skin as blood vessels rupture and the way the finger hangs, limply, like he might have fractured everything in it.
I wonder if Green Hair knows how many bones there are in a finger, how many bones in a hand. They're delicate things, there are so many nerve endings, I'm wondering at the way that he doesn't cry out in pain.
Adrenalin, probably. I kick out another spray of ice and – yes, predictably, he tries to blast that one away too, too scared that I'll have made an attack he'd need to counter with everything he's got or risk being frozen in place – but unlike the first time, I don't stay still on my side of the field.
The wind is great and threatens to push me back, but it carries ice shards and mist and fog. I hide in it, loop around to Green Hair's back, coat the field on my way over.
Green Hair wheels around, looking for me – good instincts – but really, his conditioning isn't on the same level as Spiky's, let alone Shouji's. I pull up an ice wall, he tries to blast it away, but too late – I don't need it as a wall, I need it as a springboard, and when it's gone Green Hair's own shockwave of force launches me higher into the air.
He looks around, thinking I'm still low on the ground, and in that opening he unintentionally gives me I come back down with a hand on his shoulder. The weight of my body colliding with his has him stumbling. He looks over his shoulder, eyes wide –
But I've always been faster at freezing something or someone when I have direct contact with them than progressively reducing the heat in a linear, thermodynamic way like for the slanted icebergs and walls I create.
Frost webs out from his shoulder and back, Green Hair wrenches himself away, but too late. I touch down, and my feet are close enough to his that the frost creep upwards. A two-pronged approach to the usual ice slabs I immobilize people in, and one that I make the effort to take past subzero.
"Stop breaking your bones," I tell Green Hair. "Do you even realize how many bones there are in a hand? In a finger? And think of the nerve damage!"
Green Hair's eyes widen even more, but I'm too annoyed to care. "You might think that having Recovery Girl heal you up afterwards will make everything fine, but you're building up scar tissue. You're going to lose sensation in your fingers if you keep this up. Nerve damage isn't fixable, even with Quirks and modern medicine." I would know.
There's a ringing in my ears. I shake my head to try and clear it. My ribs twinge when I shift, and, oh, yeah, that's probably from the shockwave that Green Hair's made from blasting away the springboard ice wall a few moments ago.
"But I know you're going to keep going." If there's anything Green Hair has proven, it's his stubbornness. "So."
While I'd been talking I've been bringing up another ice dome, starting from behind Green Hair so he wouldn't see it coming. His eyes narrow – he bares his teeth – tries to say something, there's light shining from the vicinity of his hands in the ice slab – but too late.
I make the ice coffin as clear and as small as I can, just enough to wrap around his body, subzero temps so it'll take more energy for him to build up his strength, a meter thick – two meters – three.
I turn toward Midnight and after a few quick mental calculations I tell her, "If he can't escape, he'll run out of air within five minutes. He'll pass out in three, though."
Thus satisfied, I turn back to Green Hair. I put him in there, it's my responsibility to make sure that he doesn't come to true harm.
It's a long two minutes, I'd forgotten to account for the fact that Green Hair would be breathing faster due to the adrenalin, and the audience gets a view of Green Hair trying to hammer his way out of the slab and then the coffin, but it's that thick for a reason and every crack he makes I fill back in immediately. This is a battle of stamina, now, and –
Yes.
Green Hair makes the I-yield motion with his fingers, face doing something complicated, and I break open the coffin so he doesn't suffocate to his death.
Midnight's voice is a little shaky when she announces, "The winner is Todoroki!"
I don't go back to the 1-A stands after that. Invisible Girl and Shouji's faces are either invisible or covered, but Tail's isn't, and there's the rest of the class for whom I just trapped a classmate in an ice coffin.
Maybe it's cowardly. Maybe it's pragmatism. Either way, after my check-in with Recovery Girl, I stay haunting the halls of the waiting rooms until my next match.
No one comes down to find me, and I don't know if that's better or worse.
Loud Guy stays on his side of the field and only comes in close for hit-and-run attacks. It's a smart plan, certainly well-informed and well-strategized from what he's seen of my last two battles. I'd immobilized Purple with a close-range attack and put Green Hair in a coffin with something similar.
Except my damned Quirk lets me work in both close and long range, and in his haste Loud Guy lets himself be trapped by a slowly constricting spherical wall.
He tries to run up it, which is the correct thing to do. He – and others – forget that I have control over my ice, though, and what I can bring up I can also tear down.
It takes a little bit of timing, but once Loud Guy has hit his top speed then it takes a lot of energy – a lot of force – to turn or slow down. He's using my own ice walls to cut down on his momentum so he can make his turns properly, and throughout this Festival I've only shown how hard and impenetrable my ice is.
He smashes through the last wall, shattering along the fault lines I'd built into the ice when raising them up (I need to know how to get rid of them in order to make structures like the ice walls or domes – it's easier to introduce them instead), and skids out of bounds when he can't stop himself in time.
I'm ready to hide in the waiting room again, but Invisible Girl and Shouji and Tail and Red get to me first.
They barge in through the waiting room door without regard to whoever could have been standing just behind it. Shouji comes in with tentacle-arms full of snacks, Tail is rubbing at the back of his neck, Red just shakes his head and starts going on about – something, and Invisible Girl throws herself at me, arms outstretched.
I almost get up and trip her, fight or flight instincts rearing up, but I manage to curb it in time for Invisible Girl to collide with me. I'm not braced; we both hit the floor.
Or we would have, except Tail catches us first with his tail. "Oi, oi, oi," he says, both hands up and making a half-wave, half-downward motion. "Hagakure, you can't go around giving him more concussions!"
"Oh no I'm so sorry," Invisible gushes, "I was just so excited and – oh my god Todoroki-kun, here, let me just –"
I have to take a moment. Tail has managed to save me from the whiplash of my head cracking against the floor, but he's also managed to grab me by what feels like all the bruises. I hiss lowly before I can keep it in. Invisible Girl freezes in my arms.
"Are you alright?" she asks, but her voice is nowhere near the volume it'd been just a moment before. It could be a whisper if Tail weren't still looking over us like a particularly stern and concerned Fuyumi-nee. "I'm sorry, did I hurt you when –"
I hurry to reassure her before she blames herself. "No. This is from before."
"But you went to see Recovery Girl, didn't you?" Red scratches his head. "So why would you still have injuries –"
Tail still has his tail stuck under me and Invisible Girl, but he must swing an arm or something because Red cuts off with a low oomf. I don't look up. None of them say anything else, and the silence is –
Then Invisible Girl levers herself off without putting pressure on me anywhere else – I can't help another grunt as the pressure of her body weight disappears, ow – and Tail carefully helps me back up.
Shouji has organized the snacks on the table by the time we get ourselves off the floor. Invisible Girl is still apologizing, and she doesn't have her gloves on, it's very disconcerting to feel an invisible hand trying to pat me down and dust off my gym uniform without being firm enough to actually do, well, anything. I let her do whatever she needs to do to feel better.
"Here." Shouji passes me a bottle of barley tea, which I take with a small smile. It's one of the brands from the vending machine, the waiting room has water only. "And, ah, here –"
"You like pocky, right?" Invisible Girl asks, back to bright and beaming. Behind her back, Tail shakes his head and moves over to take a seat. "You need to get your blood sugar back on track! Recovery Girl said so!"
Sugar won't be a replacement for the rest and body energy that Recovery Girl's or almost any other medical professional's Quirk needs, but it's a solid start. I tear open the packaging and start chewing through them, quick and methodical, while the others talk.
They don't look at me twice for how fast I'm going through the food they've brought, but then again I've eaten lunch with them…
I've…
Eaten lunch with them for almost every day school has been in session, for the last few weeks. I ate lunch with them just earlier today, after the second event in the Festival.
"You're not afraid of me?"
Belatedly I realize I'd said that out loud and interrupted them. I don't flinch, I can't flinch, but I do pause and I put down the pocky and I fold my hands in my lap. I don't look anyone in the eye.
It's Shouji who says something first: "Of course we're not, Todoroki-kun. What you did was impressive, it limited physical trauma, and it was, all told, a non-lethal takedown."
Tail's expression is sad; Red's looks like he's chewed on something sour; Invisible Girl's is, of course, unreadable.
"I trapped Midoriya in an ice coffin," I point out, just in case they'd missed that part.
None of us can see Invisible Girl waving her arms, but I can feel the air she displaces easily enough. "But he wasn't hurt! He's doing just fine. He was a little concerned when you didn't show up at the spectator's box after the bout, actually – all of us were."
Tail nods. Shouji inclines his head. I blink, and breathe, and try to rationalize.
Invisible Girl – Hagakure, damn it, I can't keep depersonalizing when she's this insistent on – on –
"It's all good, Todoroki-kun!" she says, like her saying it makes it true. But Ojiro is making little agreeing noises, and Shouji is pushing another box of pocky at me, and Kirishima's hands flutter like Fuyumi-nee's does when she's uncertain, and they brought me barley tea that I've yet to finish. So maybe it does.
And then all too soon, it's time for the finals.
As soon as Midnight gives the starting signal, I run a border of ice around the field and plunge the temperature of the air within into something cold, then something freezing. Something of this effect is easier than freezing the robots and their limbs in the first event, but it's a continuous process.
Spiky comes at me in the meantime, unwilling to yield the first punch. He makes a good effort, and he's definitely cranked up his explosive output for the Festival. He's faster, more vicious. He's definitely going for the one-hit knockout and tries to take advantage of every unwitting opening I leave.
But he's not meaner, and I think that's the thing that most of the crowd are missing. I'm still dodging and they're still booing, and Spiky scowls but there's no anger in it. Spite, and determination, and that same bone-deep drive and exhilaration for the fight, yes, but no anger.
Cementoss is still sitting on the edge of his seat like this is just another spar on a typical weekday afternoon. Midnight has a hand on her hip, her fingers digging into her costume like she's ready at any moment to tear it off and gas us both.
Spiky's explosives makes ice shards and fog clouds, but it's not thick enough to cover the field. He's trying his best to bring the temperature back up, but after a certain point the body doesn't produce any sweat.
He isn't Green Hair, either. Green'd needed to be convinced to stop breaking his bones by a tactic that bypasses any chance of him fighting against something beatable, but Spiky is the opposite. Trapping and suffocating him would be like cornering a tiger: it would convince him to fight even harder, instead of shutting him down into frozen compliance.
What I need here is a clear and decisive victory. One that no one, not even Spiky himself, can blame him for.
Which leaves only one tactic, something I'm reluctant to show off to a crowd, to practically everybody, but Green had already yelled it out in the middle of a villain attack – unconfirmed still, true, and yet the idea is still out there. All I can do is try and make the most of the situation.
While we've been fighting I've been continually bringing the temperature down. It's hopeless, of course, because the field is open-ceilinged and just as air moves, heat transfers. Whatever heat I leech out from our surroundings will billow out before encountering only momentary resistance at the border.
But heat rises, and cold sinks. Most of the cold air stays trapped by the ice walls I'd put up at the border of Cementoss's field. It prevents either of us winning via pushing the other out, but I don't want to be blasted out and I'm not planning on winning by that kind of disqualification.
Spiky come in for close combat. He wants to be close enough to hit me with Explosion, but far enough that I can't touch him; but there's a moment, in which he does need to grab me, so that he can restrain or flip or toss.
I don't need to use my hands in order to freeze. It makes it easier, true, but I just need proximity.
Spiky goes for a shoulder-grab, forearm at my throat – a pinning move, that's fine, this is what I need, I breathe through the instinctual panic and fear of suffocation because Father likes to pin people down by the throat too, and I transfer all the heat that I have access to elsewhere.
Explosions like Spiky's need kinetic energy to be set off, but it's all potential energy unless they can move from ground state. And just like how I can channel my Quirk through my feet, I can channel it through every part of my body. Including the very throat Spiky had gone for.
His eyes widen, his knees freeze, and I take the opening to flip our positions.
"I'm more deadly than you," I tell Spiky, leaning in to tell him this because this is just for him. "No, listen. Not more dangerous. More deadly."
"You fucker," he manages between his chattering teeth, but it doesn't sound as hate-filled this time. Of course he doesn't protest not being as deadly. He wants to be a hero, not to kill people.
You're not a bad person, I think about telling him, because he goes all out during training but he hasn't actually injured anyone outside of it.
But what comes out of my mouth is, "Both of us have hard-to-control Quirks. This was a bad matchup."
Fire to disrupt his nitroglycerine sweat before he'd been able to spark it off into an explosion; ice to cool him down to the level where he doesn't sweat and can't ignite what he'd already generated. The body shivers to warm itself up, but I've brought ice and snow and subzero temperatures to the field and I've sent him from thirty-seven to thirty-five Celsius. With his muscles frozen and his joints locked in place, he won't make it in time.
"Call the match," I tell Midnight, "before the hypothermia really sets in," and to my surprise she does.
1-A congratulates me afterwards – a lot of the teachers congratulate me afterwards – and it takes the combined intervention of Shouji and Hagakure and Ojiro to send them all away and put me in a quiet room by myself.
I don't know what they'd seen on my face when I'd walked off that field, still numb – even more so than the usual dissociation – but, distantly, I see fingers finding keypads and dialing before I recognize it.
"Nee-san," I whisper when she picks up. She does so immediately, like she'd been waiting. "Nee-san. I fucked up the plan. I backed myself into a corner. Nee-san."
"Oh, Shouto," she says, and there's a pressure in my chest. I wish she were here.
"Nee-san, he came to the Festival. He told me I had to use my fire. He wanted me to win, and I did. He's – they're – never gonna let me –"
"Shouto." Fuyumi-nee sighs like it wrenches something out of her. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Do you want me to come and visit you this weekend?"
Fuyumi-nee never wants to be in the same house as Father; she's the same as Natsuo-nii that way. She shouldn't – "N-no, no," I stumble over my words a little bit but this is important. "Don't come. We'll meet as planned, yeah? I'll see you at – at the cafe?"
It's a standing appointment, we do it every month, but it still feels…
"I'll see you at the café. Just – just let me know if I need to come and pick you up beforehand, alright? Don't worry about me, or Father. I'll do it."
I can't let her do it, but I know what she wants to hear, so I tell her "Alright," and hope I'm not lying.
A conversation in a private group chat:
rockruff: is todoroki still freaking out?
tailman: I don't think this is just freaking out
tailman: But, yes
invisigirl: how much longer do i need to stall @Shouji_M
Shouji_M: I don't know. Perhaps another fifteen minutes?
Shouji_M: I will reiterate, also, that I am very uncomfortable listening to Todoroki panic like this.
invisigirl: its all for a good cause unfortunately
invisigirl: i cant do much official stoppage unless we bring the teach into this
invisigirl: im pulling all the stops i got tho
invisigirl: tsuyu is helping, bless
tailman: Did you tell her why?
invisigirl: nah but shes a gem shes just on board
invisigirl: were making fun of mineta rn
tailman: Truly tis the class pastime
rockruff: status update aizawa-sensei is in the infirmary
rockruff: midoriya just confirmed
rockruff: so no help from him right now
tailman: Do you need me to come help you @invisigirl?
invisigirl: ...actually if shouji can spare you then maybe yea
invisigirl: i might be able to get hatsume to distract em even more but
invisigirl: thats kinda a gamble
rockruff: well worst comes to worst
rockruff: i'll set bakugou-kun off again
tailman: That's the absolute worst option
rockruff: okay but it would be a valid option, hes already abouta bite somebody from 1-Bs head off
Shouji_M: Hopefully we will not need it.
Shouji_M: I believe Todoroki-kun may be finishing up his phone call soon.
Loud Guy is gone by the time awards roll around.
All Might presents the medals. Third goes to Bird Head, and I clap when the award is presented along with the crowd. He deserves it. A Quirk like his which isn't build on any modern understanding of science is hard to control – there's nobody to ask questions to, nobody who can explain if an accident happens.
Spiky takes his quietly, sullenly. All Might says something to him privately, something that I can't hear, and certainly not the crowd; the heroics teacher isn't miced. Whatever he whispers, Spiky scowls at but doesn't say a word.
But to me –
"You went a little overboard." All Might's eyes are shadowed but they gleam electric blue, like lights in the night sky. "You were smart about it – truly, your strategic mind is a wonder to behold, young man – but your opponents could have sustained serious damage."
I look All Might in the eye and say, "Compared to Midoriya breaking all his bones? Compared to Bakugou pushing himself too far and the nitroglycerin setting off the equivalent of his body weight in dynamite in a public spar? It was the safer choice."
The Number One Hero is speechless for a moment, though he regains his footing easily enough – of course he does. His public speaking skills and charisma are legendary.
But he shoots me one last look before he leaves, and that, I don't understand.
"I'm of two minds, my boy," Father says that night. "You took first place in the Festival; now, all of Japan will have their eyes on you. And yet you did so without your fire, explicitly against my instructions."
He circles, his slipper-less feet silent on the dojo mats, and I try to keep my breaths steady. In for four, hold for three, out for five. Rinse and repeat.
"I suppose you deserve some credit," he continues, like he's giving me a gift. "They'll see you now and think, ah, if he can do this with just one-half of his birthright then what can he do with both? In that, I have to applaud you."
Father finishes his pacing and comes to rest to stand in front, crosses his arms. He leans back so that he's staring down his full height at me, no matter the fact that I'm still not meeting his eyes. "But I did tell you to use the fire side you inherited from me, didn't I? Shouto, my son."
I don't want to be a hero, I think of telling him. It would be so easy. Five seconds, and the secret I'd been keeping close to my chest, the one that only Fuyumi-nee and Natsuo-nii know, would be out there.
I dream about it sometimes, what I would tell him, how much I would tell him. I don't want any of this. I want to go to university. I've been interested in the stars longer than I have been Quirks. I read research papers on the internet under the blankets at night, after your training, before you leave for work in the morning, because it's the only time I have in this house that's mine.
But I never do, because to tell Father would be to see his reaction. And tonight is already going to be hard enough.
I need to take the subway to get to the café, but that's fine. Fuyumi-nee and I have been doing this for a while now, and there's a rhythm to these kinds of things.
The day after the Festival might be a day off for me, but it's not a day off for Father. He goes off to work and I stay home, or at least he thinks I do. There's no longer a rotating cast of tutors to come by during the daytime who will see to my education, which means that now I'm freer than I've ever been to just… leave.
So I leave, and I swipe the transit card Fuyumi-nee tops up remotely for me, and I put my headphones on and settle in to ignore the crowd.
If it were winter I could, maybe, get away with a hat to hide my hair. But it's not – it's May, still – so all I have is the mask that hides the lower half of my face. It does little to nothing; people still whisper on the train, sending glances in my direction.
I check Hagakure's group chat instead of worrying about it. They're talking about what they're doing over the break today, excited now that the Festival is over and they can take a rest day from their training regimes. Ojiro is talking about his younger siblings.
It distracts me all the way to the café. "Reading papers again?" Fuyumi-nee asks when she spots me, voice pitched low and fond.
But, "I'm reading a group chat," I tell her, and her eyebrows go up.
She smiles and gestures me at the other seat in this small tucked-away hole-in-the-wall who knows Fuyumi-nee by name, her order by heart, and our request for anonymity by sheer virtue of being decent people.
"Tell me about them," my sister says, and I do.
Fuyumi-nee tells me about a lot of things afterwards. About Natsuo-nii and how he's doing, about the rumors that have kicked up in her district about Class 1-A, about what I can expect from U.A. based on the time of year and the experience of previous years.
"I've heard about who you're getting internship offers from," Nee-san says, and downs her cup of tea like it's a shot. "A lot of them are smaller-name heroes with smaller agencies, who rescue cats out of trees, things like that."
Half because of Father is what she isn't saying. Half because of me and my performance in the Festival.
"Father expects me to work at his Agency, whenever those opportunities come up." I stare into my cup of tea, still softly steaming. Out of the corner of my eye I see Nee-san pour herself another cup from the teapot, frowning when she finds it cold.
Without prompting I put out a hand to warm her tea up for her, long used to this routine. Nee-san smiles reflexively back, too – habit, yes, but also the well-worn ease of unlearning associations of kettles and heat.
(Sometimes I don't need to wonder why Nee-san went and got an education degree. It requires child psychology certifications, which is to say paid learning of practical knowledge that she can practice with me before she ever needs to practice with her elementary kids.)
"Here's what I know of Aizawa-san." Fuyumi-nee passes over a handwritten note, folded neatly in two. I take it and put it away without opening it. "Shouto. What do you want to do?"
I don't know, and the fact that I don't know scares me. She must be able to read it off my face, she has to, if I have to put it into words – the idea of it shutters my throat.
I breathe in deeply, imagine my lungs pressing against the inside of my ribcage. Hold the teacup tight. Let it softly boil, then settle down like a bubbling, breathing thing.
"I can't walk away." Father would drag me back within the day, with police and search-and-rescue heroes and lawyers breathing down my neck. And after the damn Festival, everyone knows my face. "I can't expose him." Fuyumi-nee doesn't have the salary needed for the high-power lawyers, nor would they even dare take a case against the Number Two Hero.
If Natsuo-nii were here he'd be cursing out Father right now. Fuyumi-nee just frowns and taps her finger against the table, thinking.
"Slowly," she starts, and the hesitance – the sheer offer – makes words catch in my throat. "If we built a comprehensive enough case, with the power to back it – that came up in my research, too. If it's that U.A. principal, he might be able to pull it off."
There are rumors everywhere – on the internet, in person – of who exactly Nedzu is and more importantly what he can do. Fuyumi-nee wouldn't mention it if she didn't think it could work.
But that would mean – "I'd need to give them a reason to care." The only way to do that would be to be one of their students, all the way. A heroics student, becoming a hero.
Fuyumi-nee grimaces and makes to apologize, but I shake my head because, "You're right. I backed myself into this corner." I pull my hands away from my teacup to press the heels of my palms into my eyes. White stars burst across my vision. "The only way out is through."
It takes me a long time to look up. Eventually Fuyumi-nee's hand, carefully telegraphed so that I can hear her coming, comes to rest against my elbow. I press my hands into my eyes one final time and then come up to meet hers.
"Natsuo told me to tell you," she starts, and there's – there's nothing to her face, her expression is blank, what, is Natsuo-nii sick or is he hurt or – "that, quote, 'if you give into the old bastard I'll come back from college just to kick your ass.'"
Fuyumi-nee keeps a straight face until the end. I stare at her for one moment, then two, and then my brain finishes parsing the words and then I'm laughing for what feels like the first time in three days. Fuyumi-nee breaks character not long after.
"He's gonna piss somebody off on campus," I wheeze, "and then he's gonna, gonna try an' throw a punch and, and, break his knuckles."
"Oh, gods, you're right," Fuyumi-nee manages between gasps. "Who let him become an adult?"
"You did!"
"Well, past me was obviously high on something then!"
Fuyumi-nee's information on Aizawa Shouta, also known as the underground hero Eraserhead, is comprehensive. There are a few years missing here and there, no doubt dates when closed-file cases must have been ongoing, but she's managed to find his teaching certification program and the letters of recommendation for his tenure as a U.A. teacher.
The certification isn't recent, but it's not old either. His letters of recommendation come from an eclectic spread of Pro Heroes, but all of them, down to the last of them, make note of his dedication to the profession.
This is the man who's expelled almost every U.A. class he'd ever been put in charge of. But he hasn't expelled anyone in 1-A yet, and he had put himself into the frontlines when he had to have known it'd spell his death as an underground hero after this job as a high school teacher.
Fuyumi-nee's neat handwriting is scrawled on the very bottom. I think if you told him why you'd prefer not to intern with Endeavor, he would understand.
And, well. Fuyumi-nee's character judgement hasn't led us astray yet.
On the first day back, Homeroom Teacher asks us to pick hero names.
I need to convince him that I'm trying. I need him to get on my side. I don't want to be called anything that could be even remotely linked back to Father; I want to be able to retire the name when I'm done with high school and I resign from heroics to go to university.
I think about hot teacups, cold ice flowers, Fuyumi-nee's own fine control and incredibly detailed ice sculptures that I have no hope to match. Compared to her, compared to even Natsuo-nii's incredible snowflakes, I'm a hacksaw doing the job of a scalpel.
"Call me Entropy," I tell the class, and Hagakure shoots me a double thumbs-up and Shouji politely claps his hands and Kirishima cheers hard enough that Ojiro elbows him hard in the ribs.
Spiky never does figure out his hero name.
I prop my chin on my hand and stare at the back of his head, but no dice. He stays hunched over his whiteboard, furiously scribbling, fingers clenched around the pen like it's a lifeline.
I go to the teacher's lounge after class is over. One sharp rap on the door – two – and then the door is sliding open. Snipe looks down at me from behind his mask.
"I need to talk to Aizawa-sensei," I tell that emotionless face, and Snipe shrugs a shoulder and steps aside to let me in.
Homeroom Teacher is at his desk grading papers. If there are any personal items on it then I don't get to see them; he'd looked up already, no doubt at sound of the door opening, and his dead-eye stare is challenging.
But I remember when he'd first walked into the room three weeks ago, covered in bandages and still limping.
"Will this be a short talk?" he asks, and in response all I can do is shrug.
Homeroom Teacher heaves a sigh that seems to shake his whole wiry frame, and reluctantly stands up. He does it a little slowly, a little haltingly, like things haven't healed quite right even though in his own words Recovery Girl went overboard with her Quirk. "Come on. Let's go find an empty classroom."
He sits me down at a cramped student desk, pulls over a chair so that he's not standing like he's lecturing or lying down in his rumpled yellow sleeping bag. "Talk to me, kid," he sighs, like he's already regretting listening to me.
I pull out the list of agencies he'd given me – obviously pre-filtered, it's nowhere as big of a stack as I would have expected from 3000+ agencies – and point at a name.
I need to be careful. More than that, I need to be truthful.
"I would very much rather not intern under Endeavor."
Homeroom Teacher – doesn't blink, that makes sense, with his Quirk that had to have been one of the first instincts he'd trained himself out of. He stares me down. I straighten under that gaze because this is serious, this is something that's making my hand shake, and I hurriedly pull them back from above the desk to put them on my knees and squeeze.
It doesn't help, but it makes me feel better.
After what seems like an hour, a minute, Homeroom Teacher asks, "Why not?"
Fuyumi-nee had helped me come up with an entire list and I recite it dutifully. "Endeavor has been teaching me since I was seven. At this point there's not a lot that I can learn from him. Furthermore, I want to take this opportunity to learn from a hero who operates differently from me. My Quirk has the potential to be very dangerous, but all Quirks can be like that. I want to learn from someone who's been able to –"
Homeroom Teacher puts up a hand. I shut up, brace the neck and loosen the shoulders, it hurts more when you tense up but you need to protect the spine –
Nothing comes. I can't hear anything over the blood rushing in my ears, but there is no fire, there is no heat.
"In, one, two, three," Homeroom Teacher's calm voice is saying when my hearing filters back in. "Hold for three. Come on, Todoroki. Out, one, two, three. Hold for one, two, three. In, one, two, three."
Oh. He's doing regulated breaths. He's exaggerating, shoulders rising and falling on the breaths, and I do my best to follow him.
He stops the count after a few more moments. I blink, resist the urge to scrub at my eyes. I'm awake, and things don't feel exactly real, but I press fingertips together under the desk and reduce the heat. The cold prickles, pins and needles, and, yes, there.
"You back with me?" Homeroom Teacher asks, and I duck my head.
"You shouldn't have had to see that. I apologize."
"Why are you asking me?" he continues, ignoring the apology. I don't know what to do about it, but if he's happy to move on, then, okay, I guess we're moving on. "You could have just chosen another agency and that would have been fine; you don't need permission. There's a reason we asked you to choose."
"Because." I curl fingers into a fist. "I need you to help me convince Endeavor to let me choose another agency."
Homeroom Teacher stares some more, then reaches out to flip through the list of agencies.
At last, he hums and asks, "What were you thinking as an alternative?"
"If I'm not doing an internship with Endeavor," I tell him carefully, "then it has to be another top ten hero. Or one that he respects, but those are few and far between." All Might for one, but Father would rather kill me than have me learn from his rival unless I spun it right. But with Green Hair's Quirk being so close to All Might's, that point is already moot.
"He hates Best Jeanist." Father doesn't approve of the non-violent capture method, even if he had approved of the man's interests outside of heroism. If Fuyumi-nee were here, she would say You should ask whoever has an internship with him for a meeting because Best Jeanist is, to date, the only one with a flourishing career even outside of Heroics. And then there's the implications of his Quirk, which, gods, no wonder he's the Number Four Hero. "He thinks Edgeshot is ridiculous." Not in so many words, but the sentiment is the same as when I'd last asked him if we could skip training for the day.
I flinch back from the memories of that day and press on, feeling Homeroom Teacher's heavy gaze on me like I'd feel Father's. "Mirko might work, but Father is... Father."
Homeroom Teacher grunts. "Sexism is ridiculous in this industry, but there you go."
I snort involuntarily because Fuyumi-nee had said something like that, too. "Mirko could bury us all under a ton of rubble and people think she's soft. I don't get it."
Homeroom Teacher levels a look at me. "You skipped Hawks."
I blink and realize he's right. "Hawks might work." Number Three Hero, youngest ever, known for ranged combat. Also support, but the ranged combat part would be what interested Father.
But, "Wouldn't Tokoyami be better with Hawks?" They're both birds. They are both capable of flight. On paper, they would be a better matchup; unlike me, who's only looking for a way out from beneath Father, Tokoyami would actually be able to learn from Hawks.
"Yes," Homeroom Teacher says, and he's - approving? For what? "But heroes can take more than one intern, you know."
"It splits up their attention," I argue, even though a part of me yells to not, to let him talk himself out.
"Well, they'll have to deal with multiple students sooner or later."
And, like that, it seems like the decision is made. Homeroom Teacher passes the preference form back at me and I pen in Hawks's title and agency with a careful hand. I don't think I've ever heard him being called by a name that isn't Hawks, which is interesting, but the internet has known him as Hawks since his debut four years ago. If he has another name, he's kept it with his private life.
"Todoroki."
I look up. Homeroom Teacher is – not frowning, not exactly, but his jaw is offset like he's biting on something. After a moment he continues, "All you've said to me today, I will keep confidential. I'll tell Endeavor that I handpicked the internship agency for you based on your training plan."
I hadn't remembered that – I hadn't expected that – but when Homeroom Teacher says it, it's like – like –
My shoulders slump without me meaning to, but the chair is comfortable and here is a hero who lives up to his name. Fuyumi-nee had been right again.
"Aizawa-sensei," I say in lieu of anything else, and the man hums before he gathers the papers and waits for me to stand.
It's all over the news the next day: Ingenium in Critical Condition. Hero Killer Stain Strikes Again. Hosu City In Uproar.
Loud Guy – Iida – comes to school the next day, even though his last name and that of Ingenium's is famous. He smiles, but it looks like something Natsuo-nii would wear. Tense and smiling because the only other option is hitting something.
Nobody talks about Ingenium to him. When people in the cafeteria throw Iida side-eyes and pitying stares, Gravity Girl puffs up like she's about to deck them in the face, too.
"Can you distract them?" Shouji asks Hagakure, and I don't understand why he's asking her of all people but she pumps her hand, her uniform sleeve bobbing with the motion, and by the end of the day the school is alight with rumors about some second year's embarrassing weekend instead of Hosu City.
Notes:
Izuku: You know, maybe Todoroki-kun does have a point about the nerve damage part.
Izuku: Will that stop me from using One For All? Doubtful. But at least I'm making an informed bad decision now!
So, when I said earlier, that I had an outline: I... miscalculated just how much more stuff I've got to stuff into it. I thought I was done with it, and then November 6th rolled around, and I had a couple of ideas that I could either write as a separate fic or that I could put into Parallax - and then I chose the latter. So buckle up everybody, I don't know how long this'll be but I know that I'm gonna live up to that Angst with a Happy Ending tag I added before we're through, as well as all those relationship tags. <3
The next chapter will be what I've tentatively been calling an "interlude," where it will be from multiple third person Points of Views that's not Shouto's. For this one, I'll be covering Shinsou, Aizawa, Izuku, Bakugou, and Fuyumi's perspectives, along with two shorter bonus ones.
And if you missed it: my writing playlist for Parallax is now up on Spotify.