Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He was standing in the middle of the fog. There was no light, but he could barely see the strings of mist moving around him. He didn’t feel cold or warm. There were no scents. There was just the fog. It was calm. He was calm. Slowly, he was able to concentrate more in his surroundings. There was a whisper moving through the air, too faint to understand. Someone inside the mist. He tried to grasp at it, but his arm felt heavy and slow. His arm. Right, he has two arms…probably.

“…….”

The whisper became louder as he slowly became aware of his own body. Every twitch, every stretch, every time a new sensation reached his skin, the whisper turned louder. He felt his breath quickened. Sweat was beginning to pool above his lip. A new feeling started to overcome him. It rushed through the tips of his recently discovered toes to the top of his newly acquired head. The whisper grew louder and louder, until he could recognize there were two words. What were they? Language, right! It’s a language! What language is it?

“F……e”

This terrible feeling grew bigger and bigger. This feeling of running. This feeling of being close to dying. What was its name? He was searching through his mind, a dark void that seemed closed to him. Rows and rows of dates, names, and events that he didn’t know anything of. What is all this? I only need to know what this feeling is!

“Fi….e”

The voice was now guiding him, still not knowing what it said. It was the voice of a male, high-pitched, young. It sounded like the voice was feeling the same way as him. His heart was pounding. It felt like it was going to leap of his chest. His breathing was heavy.

Then, he saw it. A green light at the end of the fog. A sickly green both beautiful and terrible. As he reached towards it, he remembered the name of the feeling, and his heart sunk. Tears welled up in his eyes. Now, he realized his eyes have been closed this whole time. His throat was swelling, trying to scream as loud as he could. He finally understood what the voice was screaming.

“Find me!”

Fear

He screamed himself awake.

Chapter Text

Todoroki expected a howling scream to come out of him, but it sounded more like a whimper. He was drenched in sweat, and tears ran down his cheeks. He wasn’t afraid anymore. But his heart was still pounding in his chest. He was surprised of how intense that nightmare was. He hadn’t had one like it in ages. The whole experience became weirder when he realized he was standing upright, not lying in a bed. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and held it for a second. As he slowly breathed out, he opened his eyes.

He looked around and saw he was in a room that looked like a pantry. The dim bulb lighting it was barely able to show the room wasn’t too big. Maybe three people could fit shoulder to shoulder in it. There were many cans in the four long shelves to his right. At the end of it, there were four massive water containers, and there were various heating devices lying on the floor. There was an odd smell in the air, sweet and musky. It smelled like a corpse. He turned around and saw a door slightly ajar. As he slowly opened it, a much brighter light blinded him. He covered his face with his right hand.

A soft and bright chime came out of his wrist as he raised his arm. He looked at it to see what caused that sound and noticed he had three little brass bells tied with a red string to his wrist. Next to them was a white wrist band that covered a third of his forearm. There was a plastic plate on top of it with a circular grill to the right and a flat red button to the left. In between them, a little sign read “If you don’t know where you are, press the red button” with an arrow pointing at it. He looked around once again. He was in some sort of kitchen, not much bigger than the pantry itself. The stove and cupboards were tiny and old, with their tan paint chipped, and with multiple stains of various colors on them. Behind him, there was a closed door. It looked like it would open with a slight push.

However, he definitely didn’t know where he was…Upon further thinking, he didn’t know why he was there, how he even got there or how long he had been inside that pantry, staring at the wall. His feet hurt a bit, so he must’ve been there for a couple of hours.

The why was the most confusing part. Why would he be in this old kitchen? He. He? Who was he? He tried to remember his name. It felt on the tip of his tongue, but he wasn’t able to remember it. He looked at his clothes, an ensemble of blue and white, but he couldn’t figure out what was it for. There were some small tubes around his waist. The neon light illuminating the kitchen flickered, and left Todoroki in complete darkness for a fraction of a second. He heard the scream that woke him up as he started to remember the fog. That same feeling of fear creeped up his spine. The room started to bend and twist, and he felt like he was running out of air. Todoroki stumbled back and closed the pantry’s door with a loud bang. The sudden sound brought him back to the kitchen, although his were shaking.

There was an old, small table with three just as small and just as old chairs. He picked the one that seemed less prone to break apart and slowly reached for it and sat down, letting out a sigh of relief. He looked at the red button on his wrist. He was dizzy and agitated, and he needed something to keep him from going insane. He pressed the red button, and a voice came from the speaker next to it. It was his own voice. By the tone of it, it seemed like he was reading something out loud.

“Hello, your name is Todoroki Shouto. You are a hero. You have a quirk that allows you to create and manipulate fire and ice from your left and right sides of your body, accordingly. Try activating them now. This device was made to withstand them, so feel free to use them. You can press the red button on the wristband once to pause the recording and twice to reset it.” Todoroki pressed the button once. He felt a wave of memories hitting him in the back, carrying him away to a world of images and sounds that relieved him. He felt odd how knowing his own name made calmed him down. But at the same time, that wave pushed him down a spiral of terrible events. He felt confusion, pain, fear, anger. He wanted to run away from those memories, but they just kept coming. And as quickly as they appeared, they left, leaving him winded again.

He looked at his hands. Quirk. Those are a thing. It sounded like his was quite powerful. Something in the back of his head seemed to know how to control it. He concentrated in his left hand and tried to light up his palm. Slowly, a small ember appeared in the middle of it, and it slowly grew into a bright and strong flame.

That fire.

Fire.

He noticed he was frowning at the small flame. Fear and anger were mixing inside his heart with a certain sensation of freedom. The flame grew and grew until it reached over his head. This new anger felt stronger. It didn’t just control him, he controlled it as well. So, he willed the flame away, and it vanished. He looked at his right arm now. The cold grew slowly from the tips of his fingers until water started to condense and freeze around them. It looked oddly small, though. It was almost as if he remembered being able to make a massive glacier out of thin air. The ice grew until he was able to see his own reflection on it. He saw he had a massive scar on the left side of his face.

A jolt of electricity went through his chest, and the piece of ice broke into fine snow. His scar was so painful that he thought it was melting his head off. There was a different scream, a woman’s, deafening him. He touched his left eye with the palm of his freezing left hand, trying to cool it down. It worked. The intense pain ceased, but the relief quickly turned into a sorrow. The sensation was sadly soothing, as if he wanted more of it and none at all at the same time.

The fog came back to his mind when the old chair gave way and broke, making Todoroki fall backwards and hit his head. He looked upwards to the neon light brightening the room he was in. It had a subtle flicker. He concentrated in its rhythm. Slowly, he reached towards the red button on his right wrist, both of his hands shaking. He didn’t want to know more. And he wanted to know everything as well. The recording resumed.

“I should remind you that your quirk is deeply connected with very strong memories and emotions, so brace yourself before using it fully.” He paused the recording again and thought whoever wrote that script was the dumbest person alive. He released a soft chuckle and a sigh and started the recording again. His hands were firmer now.

“You are currently on a mission that involves many heroes being coordinated. Below this recording, there’s a small notepad with further details. Try to identify your mission partners by the images and descriptions in it to avoid any incidents.” He looked at the bottom left corner of the small speaker and noticed it was slightly magnetic. With a soft pull, the speaker flipped upwards to reveal ten or so pages of information.

In the very first page, there was a photograph of a teenager. A boy. He had wild green hair, big, green eyes, freckles, and a big smile. The fear he felt before turned unexpectedly into dread. His lips started to tremble. The recording went on. Todoroki was holding his breath. "Your mission is to rescue Midoriya Izuku." Time went still. A glacial chill went down his spine. He reached towards his left cheek and realized he was crying. He asked himself "Who is Midoriya Izuku?"

“Coming next is a sample of his voice to help you further identify him.” There was a beeping noise, and then a new voice came out of the speaker. The moment the voice starts to speak, he grabbed the wrist notepad and threw it away from him. He got to his feet and walked away from the device. The voice coming out of the speaker was hesitant, nervous and seemed to move around, as if its owner couldn’t keep still in front of the microphone that recorded it. It was also the voice of a male, high-pitched, young. It was the voice of from the mist.

“M-mY Name IS MIDORIYA izukU. I’m A MAle STUDENT FroM U.A., In class 1-a. I dream to b-become the numBER ONE HERO!!!” Another beep, and then silence.

His whole chest started to tighten. He couldn’t catch a whiff of air. He couldn’t understand why, but the idea of that face and that voice being kidnapped was the worst feeling in the world. He felt to his knees, coughing as he tried to breathe again. As he felt his lungs react, he let out a loud cry. Todoroki curled up into a ball, and he began to rock himself.

It was too much. Not three minutes ago, he didn’t know his name, and now he had to rescue this voice that came from a nightmare while wielding fire and ice that came from his body and made him feel every feeling a human could possibly experience at once. He sunk his head into his legs and put his hands over his head. He had lost complete control of his breathing, and he began to quietly whimper, releasing quiet screams every now and then. Tears were running from his eyes endlessly and thinking about the fact that he didn’t know why he felt the way he did right now only made him cry more. He wanted to be swallowed whole by the floor. As the recording resumed, Todoroki raised his head lightly, and he noticed that his own voice seemed to have gone out of script. Snot and tears were covering his now puffy and reddened face.

“Excuse me, I want to add something else.” It was so odd to listen to his own voice being so strong-willed. “Thank you.” He waited for any sound to come out. He prepared for another wave of emotions, but his own voice carried on. “They didn’t add anything about your suit…or my suit…well, the suit that we’re both wearing? Anyway, if you’re still wearing a white and blue suit, it will help you use my quirk. If you’re not…I guess just roll back the sleeves to keep them from harm…I don’t know if you’re using sleeves, though.” It was so odd to listen to his own voice being so aloof. “Well, I also wanted to add one more thing.” There was a long pause. This time it seemed that he took his time to give a proper speech.

“We owe Midoriya a lot. He has helped us countless times in countless ways, putting himself in harm’s way or simply by voicing his own opinion. He’s very brave.” Todoroki rose to his feet. “You might be scared right now, but you have to push away from that. He needs us. And we can’t let him down…that’s it.” The recording abruptly ended itself.

“He needs us.”

Silence lingered for a couple minutes. Todoroki took a deep breath, held it for a couple seconds, and let it out. He cleaned his tears and snot away. He’s a hero. He said so himself. He remembered those. Heroes save people, and right now there was someone who needed saving. Then he walked towards the notepad. It was time to work.

He looked back at the table with now two standing chairs and one pile of splintered wood. “Might as well get the hang of these quirks quickly.” He aimed for the chair and made a thick ice cover around it. The memories were less striking the second time and felt better because of it. He did the same for the table, just in case, and sat down, confident that it won’t break again. The feeling of control over his quirk brought out a few scattered words from the deepest part of his mind. Words of encouragement and calmness. He was okay again.

He was holding that odd notepad with a speaker in front between his hands. He braced himself for what was in it. It was safe enough to assume that more memories would come up. As he opened the notepad, he saw Midoriya’s face once more. “I will find you.”
 

Chapter Text

Todoroki began to study his wristpad. Next to Midoriya’s picture, there was a brief physical description:

AGE: 16

HEIGHT: 166cm

WEIGHT: 62kg

DEFINING FEATURES: SCARS IN HIS RIGHT HAND AND A LARGE SCAR IN HIS RIGHT ARM

MISSING SINCE: 21 MAY

PRESSUMED: ALIVE

MISSION START: 26 MAY 10:05

It had been five days. Five whole days since Midoriya’s disappearance and already nine hours since Todoroki began searching for Midoriya. There was a small note, probably made by Todoroki himself, next to the mission start time:

Entered building: 10:06

Ground level searched: 10:53

First floor searched: 12:26

Second floor searched: 15:11 (probably checked twice)

A small pencil in the lower edge of the pad was neatly tucked inside a plastic tube. Todoroki got it out and saw it had been used. There was a thin, rectangular hole in the bottom of the tube. He got the pencil in it and turned it around. A thin piece of pencil bark came out of the hole, supporting Todoroki’s assumption that it was also a sharpener.

He flipped to the second page of the pad. It was the floor plan of the building’s lobby, and the first floor. There were small dots in every room. He flipped the pages again and saw the second and third floors. The second floor had every room as well with small dots in them, but it also had two dots in the right half of it. To the right edge of the page, another note:

Never leave a room without checking it as searched.

The third-floor plans were partially marked. Only the upper left rooms had been searched. He flipped back and forth the whole building’s plan to get a better notion of where he was. He didn’t know he could read floor plans, but apparently he was able to understand he was in a six story apartment complex with two small stores on the ground floor, 8 apartments on each floor, from the first to the fourth one; there was a gym and a recreation room on the fifth one, and two penthouse apartments on the upper level.

After these pages, there were multiple pictures of four people in bright hero suits, each of them with their name and quick description: Eraserhead, Uravity, Ingenium, and Midnight.

He knew all of them. The two in the middle were his classmates, and the other two were his teachers. However, each one of them had the word “EVACUATED” next to their names.

Finally, the last two pages showed the villain in question.

Todoroki looked at the pages perplexed. He reread and reread the two pages, but he still couldn’t understand it. There was no picture of the villain. Their physical description was full of “sometimes” and “maybe” and “allegedly”. He was looking for anyone from the range of a short, thin, very pale teenage girl to a tall, heavily muscular, dark skinned elderly man. Their quirk was already obvious though, although reading it in detail made Todoroki understand the power he was dealing with:

RETROGRADE AMNESIA: THE QUIRK ALLOWS THE SUSPECT TO CREATE AN AREA OF EFFECT WITH A 15 METER RADIUS AT WILL, IN WHICH ANYONE WITHIN IT WILL SUFFER FROM RETROGRADE AMNESIA (ALTER THEIR OLD MEMORIES, BUT NOT ANY MEMORIES AFTER THE EFFECT). BEFORE SUFFERING AMNESIA, THE VICTIMS GO THROUGH A PERIOD OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS WHICH BECOMES LARGER AND MORE FREQUENT AS THEY GET CLOSER TO THE USER. NO INFORMATION IS KNOWN ABOUT THE TIME THIS AREA OF EFFECT LASTS. NO INFORMATION IS KNOWN ABOUT THE LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF THIS QUIRK. NO INFORMATION IS KNOWN ABOUT THE EFFECT OF BEING LESS THATN 1 METER AWAY FROM THE USER.

Behind these pages, there were another 4 other sheets of blank paper, with the word “ANNOTATIONS” on the top. He was already suspecting it, but the first note he had made confirmed that this was not the first time he had lost consciousness.

THAT RECORDING IS STUPID IIII I

Those lines probably meant this was his seventh awakening. He went back to the search notes. 47 minutes to search the ground floor, 93 minutes to search the first floor, 165 minutes for the second, and he was beginning the fifth hour of searching the third floor, and barely a fourth of it had been scanned. He must’ve passed out once on the first floor, twice on the second, and three times already on this one. Todoroki was growing more and more frustrated. He wasn’t even halfway into the top floor, and nine hours of mission had passed. The last note he had made gave him a little bit of hope:

YOU HAVE TWO COMMUNICATION DEVICES: ONE IN YOUR EAR AND ONE IN THE FRONT RIGHT POCKET OF YOUR PANTS.

But as he stood up and reached towards his ears, he found nothing. Todoroki looked around the kitchen, and then entered the pantry. There it was, a small black device that looked like a hearing aid in the entrance. The only problem was that it was on the floor in 8 separate pieces, with a big shoeprint surrounding it. He even raised his left boot and saw a small, black, plastic splinter in between the grooves of the sole.

“Dammit” he searched in his pockets and found the extra earbud. He put it on and walked towards the frozen table and chair, with not a bit of water pooling under them, and grabbed his notepad. “Hello? Can anyone copy?” He took the pencil out once again and scratched that last note:

YOU HAVE TWO COMMUNICATION DEVICES: ONE IN YOUR EAR AND ONE IN THE FRONT RIGHT POCKET OF YOUR PANTS.  BE CAREFUL

“Hello, can anyone copy? This is Hero Shouto, reporting.” He waited a few seconds, and from the other side of the line came out a rasp and angry voice.

“Ah, fuck, I lost 50 bucks. Copy, Hero Dumbass. Get the fuck out before I have to drag your now stupider ass out.”

“H-hello? Wait…Who am I talking to?”

The other speaker gave a long sigh. “This is Your Royal Highness the King of Heroes WHAT!?...FUCK, WHATEVER…dumbass…This is Bakugou…Bakugou Katsuki.”

A wave of memories ran into Todoroki’s head. He was starting to get used to it. “Katsuki…”

“HOW THE FUCK DID YOU JUST CALL ME, HALF-DUMB HALF-DUMBER!?”

“Listen, I’m starting to remember enough. I need to find Midoriya, but I don’t think I can.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Yeah, we KNOW. So, get your ass out so we can have a better strategy than rescuing two idiots instead of one.”

“No, hold on, I don’t think ANYONE can rescue him.”

Another moment of silence. As Bakugou came back, he sounded quieter.

“What do you mean?”

“When was the last time I contacted you?”

There was a rustling of papers on the other side.

“48 minutes. That’s double the previous time. You’re getting really dumb.”

Todoroki looked at his notepad’s watch. It was now 19:52.

“It took me 18 minutes to debrief myself again. That means that I’m at 30 minutes of unconsciousness. That’s over twice of before.”

Bakugou’s voice changed to a much more alert one.

“Yes…yes it is…”

A long pause, then he talked again.

“WELL!??? KEEP GOING”

Todoroki was staring at his notes.

“I’ve said this before, haven’t I?”

Bakugou was getting (more) frustrated.

“HA! You might not be too dumb yet! To a T. Everything except your quick math…It’s the funniest thing, but these people in here have their black suit pants so up their asses they don’t let me have fun with this shitty script…WHAT, I CAN SEE YOUR BELT IN YOUR FUCKING THROAT MISTER HANNIBAL LECTER!”

 “Why are you on the line, though, Bakugou?”

Bakugou gave yet another sigh.

“Scratch that, you’re brain dead. It’s this whole psychology shit. If we can start up most of your memories quicker or whatever, you can keep searching quicker. I don’t know why the fuck you picked me, but I charge on the hour, so you owe me two mansions now.”

Todoroki smiled softly.

“Well, I don’t remember everything, but I feel like we’re good friends.”

There was a brief moment of silence before the communication was ended with a quick chime…then it came back up.

“Yeah, yeah, shut up. Listen, numbskull, it doesn’t matter. The mission is FUBAR. Everyone has been brought back in stretchers. Round face might be blank face for some days, already, and she was with you three hours ago. So, get your ass out of there before you can’t even read…that’s literally before you can’t read.”

Todoroki raised his voice, alarmed.

“No, wait! No mission will work. If I am the most aware, it’s because my memory of Midoriya is the quickest. I have to be the one to get there, but it’s taking me too long to remember. Ask those psychologists how I can reboot quicker.”

Bakugou gave a quick chuckle.

“Don’t need to. They already spilled the beans while they thought I was snoozingYOU GET ONE INCH CLOSER AND YOUR FACE WILL LOOK LIKE THE MILKY WAY, FREUDIAN FUCK.”

“I’m listening.”

Bakugou’s voice sounded serious.

“Go back to where you last woke up, there must be a particular smell that you can identify. Smell is like this super memory reloader.”

Todoroki rushed back into the pantry. There were dozens of different cans and containers, but he could barely see what they were of. He closed his eyes and started to smell each of the shelves. There were soy sauce bottles, sake, tomatoes, spices of various types that Todoroki had never smelled before. But then…there it was. That scent of rotten bread. And suddenly his stomach felt like it had turned upside down. He got out of the pantry coughing and trying his best not to throw up. He was able to hear Bakugou making a roaring laugh through his earpiece.

“There are bags of Kudzu powder in the pantry. My father has tons of it in the house. I hate that stuff.” Todoroki said as he cleaned the spit on his lips.

“Well, take a bit of it in one of your first aid penises.”

Todoroki emptied one of his canisters, one that had pieces of gauze, and pinched his nose to do as he was told. Bakugou looked at the clock in front of him. He was in a stark tent with half a dozen people monitoring cameras, transcribing everything they were saying, and checking on the other four heroes lying down on gurneys in the entrance. Bakugou had in front of him a massive manual full of every bit of information about this mission, and it was also just as full of doodles of explosions and multiple inappropriate additions to almost every paragraph. He also had a screen with a camera looking at the main entrance of the building where Todoroki and Midoriya were and another screen with Todoroki’s vitals. The clock in between these two displays showed the time, 19:58. He had done Todoroki’s math while he was asleep, so he knew that Todoroki had less than 4 minutes before falling asleep again.

“Your time’s running out, half-n-half. Forget about rereading your whole bullshit, every time. You need to know everything at once, but the most important thing you have to know is that you have to smell you bath salts of whatever. Open your notepad on the shitty ner… on Midorya’s picture.”

Todoroki opened it. The first time he saw that smile, he felt such fear and confusion that he cried. But after just under half an hour, seeing it again felt so familiar. Very familiar actually. His chest felt lighter and his sight got sharper. He didn’t know why, but his resolve to find Midoriya became the most important thing in his mind.

“Done.”

“Now you have to use every one of your senses to remember as much as you can. Freeze and burn something, while starting the recording, while looking at that picture and smelling your father’s shitty taste. Fuck, you could make some noodles and eat them, but we’re out of time.”

Todoroki looked back at the frozen chair and table. His fire…his fire wasn’t that bad. He didn’t remember yet, but somehow his fire quirk was related to Midoriya as well. Just how close were they?

He set his right hand ablaze and scorched the remaining chair. He sat in between the chairs, feeling the heat and cold at the same time. He grabbed his canister on his left hand and the notepad open on Midoriya’s picture on his right hand. The smell was making him nauseous. He pressed the red button and the recording began from the beginning.

“I’m set. What else-“

Todoroki could feel it happening, now. He could feel how everything he had learned was getting erased. As much as he wanted to fight it, he felt how he became smaller and smaller with each passing second. He could see the flames next to him go from a wild whirlwind to a lazy dance. He directed his sight towards the picture. The picture. The picture of…

He was standing in the middle of the fog.