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Dabi was watching the TV. The kitchen was busy, some of the kids getting ready for school, the others were preparing to go out. Dabi didn’t ask where, if they needed anything, they would tell him, or he would see it. They could tell he was distracted today though; they kept his line of sight to the TV free, ducking if they needed to get by.
This was the second time in less than a month that Dabi was watching a trial. The first was for Endeavour, he had taken pleasure in watching the man get ripped to shreds before his very eyes, to see all the people he had wronged who never got the courage to stand up to him to tell everything to the jury. As much as he wished he could have joined in, Touya Todoroki was dead, the end of that life was told by Natsuo. That moment had branded itself into his mind, Dabi doubted Natsuo could ever forget it. Forget his big brother go up in flames for protecting them. With the man who said he was there father standing over him, declaring how weak he was, how he was just a trial run for the better child.
Just watched on as skin melted and the smell of burning filled their noses. That moment probably cemented all of Natsuos hatred of there father. Dabi had hated him too, until he had found the kids, realised that some of what he was taught, he taught them. Suddenly Dabi realised that Endeavour had prepared him for life, not the life that he thought but a life on the streets. It was brutal and tough but when the cold winters came, he couldn’t help being thankful of his flames. When the thugs came, he couldn’t help being thankful for his heavy fists and the lessons of never falling down no matter how hard you were hit. When there was no food to be found he couldn’t help being thankful of the nights when he was sent away with no food. In a horribly twisted way Dabi was thankful to Endeavour, but he refused to be like him. He would never do what Endeavour did to him to the kids he took under his wing, they lived in purgatory before they came to Dabi and he refused to drag them to hell in his house.
He didn’t hate the human hero Endeavour anymore; he despised the Demon Enji Todoroki instead.
He was now watching another trial involving heroes, one that centred around the comatose man in an upstairs room. Izuku had left his chair in the corner of the room to represent him in the trial. There was too much evidence in his favour for the case to play out any other way.
The CCTV in the hero agency showed that Ari had never been allowed access to a lawyer, that he had been pressured and threatened into admmiting to crimes there was little to no evidence for, that he had been antagonised by the hero Ground Zero into fighting. That the same had happened to Izuku. The crowed on the ground testified as to who he was the only one to attempt to protect civilians, with the heroes using their powers without thought of who it might affect, who might be hurt. That the heroes had ganged up on him and not stopped when he was down, and his life blood was seeping into the ground around him. This Izuku said was why Ari was still in a coma nearly a month later, his obvious wounds may be healing but who knew what other damage they had done to him.
Dabi turned off the TV, the change that everyone was looking for would come eventually. It may be too late for some, but it would be the right time for many others. One day hero society would be fixed. He looked at the kids, one hastily pulling on a UA blazer, another spinning a ring of lock picks around his finger, looking like he was about to go to bed after a night of ‘work’ and many others milling about, arguing and laughing. He smiled with them, staples pulling at his skin, you couldn’t have heroes without the villains, and you couldn’t have villains without heroes. These kids proved that.
He would happily remember this day as the fall of the hero’s and a rise of a new generation. He remembered what Shigaraki had said when trying to recruit him
“Create a world without All Might. And cause enough destruction to show them all how fragile their justice really is.”
Dabi laughed to himself, you didn’t need a villain mastermind for that, all you need a person that people can rally around and a information dealer that really knows too much for there own good and then the people of a country can do the rest themselves.
Outside a courthouse a few miles away, the unusual event of heroes being taken way in hand cuff was occurring. Protesters cheered that justice had finally made the right choice. That the laws surround quirks should be changed, how heroes should be more transparent. In a way their fragile justice was being ripped down and rebuilt from the ground up. If it would work… who knows, but you can always try again. Keep trying until it works and then keep working until it was better than before.
For the first time in a long time Dabi had faith in the people who lived in this country. One day… one day in the future. Maybe he’ll have faith in heroes again, one day he might not go onto the streets and see a child on the side of the road crying, maybe they’ll be picked up, taken to safety. By a hero, by a civilian rather than a less than honest villain. He finally had hope, and that was half of the war won.