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Midnight raises her eyebrows when her gaze meets the small sign depicting Todoroki’s chosen hero name. “Care to... explain that?” she asks.
The boy stares at her in his usual slightly apathetic way but he nods nonetheless, explaining: “Well, at first I wanted to just call myself Shouto but I then thought that taking my first name as my hero name would be kind of confusing. So I decided to... pep it up a bit.”
“Alright...” the R-rated hero says slowly and carefully continues: “That still doesn’t truly, you know, explain that.”
Shouto blinks, looks down at his sign, frowns a second and finally gives the teacher a disbelieving gaze. “Why isn’t it understandable? I think this name perfectly reflects my true self.”
“Shouto, no...” Midoriya buts in after having been too shook to make a sound for a while. The whole class is kind of squinting at their dual-coloured classmate in disbelief. Not even Bakugou could utter anything other than a noise that sounded strangely like choking.
“What’s wrong with Fuck Endeavour?” Todoroki honestly seems like he doesn’t know the answer to that... or he would have emitted innocence if it weren’t for the tiny twitch of his mouth corner.
“The better question is: What’s not wrong with Fuck Endeavour?” Midnight asks bemused, “Isn’t he your father? If you want to make homage to him you should do it without actually mentioning his hero name. Try it again, squirt.”
Shouto nods and for a few precious moments, while he wipes away the previous “suggestion” and writes down a new one, class 1-A actually thinks the next one will be better.
Before presenting what he has written down, Todoroki points at Aoyama. “I thought about going with Can’t Stop Hating My Sperm Donor but that’s a little too spicy and too inspired by Aoyama. That’s why I went with this.” He turns the sign around and –
“Shoooutoo, nooo...!” Izuku murmurs in horror.
“Dead Enji-Lada is a perfectly good name and you can fight me on this.” Shouto says, trying to keep his lips from wobbling suspiciously. Nobody actually wants to fight him on that. Some are laughing quite hard even, which makes suppressing his own manic cackle a bit more difficult.
He thinks he even hears a reluctantly respectful “Damn, Half’n’Half” from Bakugou.
Midnight’s mouth opens. It closes. It opens again when she can finally think of a reason to not just agree to that meme-y cheeky brat’s absolutely disastrous hero name... if it can be called that.
“As much as I would like to say yes, it includes your father’s first name. It can be counted as slander that way, so nope. Think a little more subtle.”
Ashido, Kaminari, Bakugou and Sero let out disappointed sighs.
Shouto frowns but it isn’t as if he hasn’t got an ace up his sleeve. He’s always loved very old TV shows from before quirks developed and there’s one he especially adores because of a character that resembles him greatly.
His fingers automatically jot down his third and final suggestion.
Midnight lets out a huff. “You’re into classics, huh? Well, yeah, sure, why not.”
°°°
“He’s called what?!” A fiery fist slams down onto the poor mahogany table and the woman’s pale face blanches to an unnatural shade when she sees how enraged her boss is.
“Y-Your son’s hero name i-is Fire Nation Rebel: Icy Prince Zuko, E-E-Endeavour Sir!”
That day, Todoroki Enji’s whole hero agency building explodes.
Shouto will count that as one of his greatest victories for years to come.