Chapter Text
With the development of quirks, there was an immediate question of what it would mean for humanities progress. Some thought that such a huge change to life as we know it would only bring strife, problems that would only serve to stall progress, but in reality the outcome was quite different.
Progress soared, as understanding of physics and molecular structure was bolstered to an incredible degree, leading to the ability to take to space and terraform planets for human occupation. Forces like elemental control, abilities to force plant growth, and clean sources of energy from electric and wind types allowed for humanity to flourish in many corners of the galaxy, and settlements of all sizes were formed on as many habitable planets and moons as people who would come and live there.
The Hero Association developed in response, keeping peace across the many sectors and planets. The strongest Pro Hero on any planet was the Overseer, but how exactly they functioned varied quite a lot planet to planet.
And on the blisteringly hot duo-sunned planet of Musutafu, the pro hero Endeavor was the Overseer and self-styled King. Shouto Todoroki was his youngest son, his prodigy, his little prince. One who was fated to become a Pro as well, when the time came. And all the best Pros across the galaxy came from the most prestigious private academy on the planet of Yuuei, where a young thirteen year old Shouto was visiting for the first time with his mother and father.
They had already seen the school in the morning, having stayed overnight after arriving late the day before after what felt like an impossibly long journey. Shouto was suitably impressed, and was tentatively excited to be able to go to such a awe inspiring school. The same one his father had been to when he was training to be a Pro. Once he had admitted to his parents that this was where he wanted to go to school when he was older, they indulged him and promised him a trip to the far off planet so Shouto could get a feeling for if that was where his dream lay. He was certain now, this was where he would end up when he was old enough.
His father left for the remainder of the afternoon on what he cited as “important Pro business” leaving Shouto and his mother to their own devices. They decided to tour the little town surrounding the academy, indulging in a few shops before lunch. Shouto had never been offplanet before, and was busy eagerly drinking in all the sights and sounds. Even the air felt different here, colder and windy, the sky surprisingly less bright than he was used to, being on a planet with one sun.
It must be springtime on this planet, Shouto surmised, for the cool wind that rustled through pink trees the boy had never seen before, but was thoroughly entranced by. He was so focused on his observations of this new place that he did not notice the other boy in front of him until he crashed into him bodily, both stumbling from the impact. Shaken from the jolt, Shouto realized he had wandered much farther off from his mother than he had meant to. But while she was deep in conversation with a shopkeep, he couldn’t help but want to follow the beautiful pink trees and the sweet smelling flowers that drifted from them in the wind.
All at once Shouto remembered his manners. “Ah, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going,”
“Oh, it’s okay! I really wasn’t either.” the other boy said, smile clear on his sunny freckled face. He looked to be about the same age as Shouto, with dark curly green hair, and equally as green eyes. He brushed his hands down his sturdy but still kind of dirty looking clothes, resettling the pages of the small notebook and pen he was carrying, before regarding Shouto again.
“I haven’t seen you around here before. Do you go to school nearby? What’s your name?” he started, enthusiasm sparkling in his eyes.
“No,” Shouto returned, “at least not yet. I’m Shouto Todoroki, and I want to go to Yuuei Academy when I’m older, so my parents brought me from Musutafu to visit.”
“I’m Izuku Midoriya! Wow, so you want to train to be a hero, huh? That’s the coolest! You must have a really cool quirk to be able to train at the best hero school around,”
Shouto could nearly feel the excitement coming off the other kid, and while normally he wouldn’t volunteer this information, he felt like there was a question hiding under his last statement, and decided to indulge him.
“Um, yeah. I can make ice with my right hand, and fire with my left,” Shouto offered, not used to having to explain his quirk. Everybody back home took one look at him and immediately knew who he was, quirk and all. But this new boy looked so interested in this knowledge, practically vibrating with questions.
“That’s an amazing quirk! Can you do both at the same time? Can you control fire and ice that you didn’t make yourself?” an entire litany of questions spilled from the boy, speech degenerating into rapid-paced mumbling, too fast for Shouto to follow. He simply watched him go for a minute, not knowing if he was going to stop and give Shouto a chance to answer any of his questions. It became apparent after another moment that he was not, the moment enough for Shouto to remember his manners again. Of course, it was okay when someone inquired about your quirk to do the same in return, right?
“What about you? What’s your quirk?” And what should have been such an easy question made the other boy’s whole expression crash. Shouto instantly felt guilty, what had he done wrong?
“Well, uh... I don’t really have one yet...” Midoriya looked away, breaking eye contact to thumb nervously at the strap of his satchel. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t get one ever! I’m still hopeful.” determination bloomed back into those green eyes. “I really want to go to Yuuei Academy, and be a hero too! That’s where All Might went to school, and he’s the best pro in the ‘verse!”
Shouto had heard of All Might, but had never heard anyone speak so favorably of him. His father said he was full of himself, and a bad pro for never adopting his own planet to Oversee. He just went around challenging deserving pros for their position on many different planets, before leaving his mark on them and moving on to the next. Shouto said nothing of this, and nothing for the fact that he was pretty sure that Midoriya couldn’t make the Academy’s hero course without a good enough quirk to back him up.
He didn’t need to say anything of course, because Midoriya was still barreling ahead at full steam without any input from the other party, having gotten so far ahead of himself he was on a different subject entirely.
“So I’ve been working on inventions instead! To hopefully help with my quirk if I get one. Lots of hero’s have support gear, and I think it’s cool how it’s usually really well suited to their quirk! Oh!” His green eyes grew wide, and the boy suddenly started rooting through his satchel.
“You said you were from offplanet right? Could you help me test something?”
“I guess? As long as it doesn’t take long, I have to go back and find my mother soon,” Shouto returned, admittedly curious to see one of the boy's inventions.
“It won’t take long at all! I just want you to take this with you,” Midoriya handed him a small device. It had a rectangular face with a small gray screen. Upon flipping over it’s slightly wedge shaped body, the other side held a tiny keyboard. It had a few arrow keys and a enter and menu button. Shouto experimentally pressed the spacebar, and found the little button to be satisfyingly clicky.
“They’re short ranged communicators!” The tinkerer enthused. “See, I’ve got the other one. But I’ve modified them, I think they should be able to send messages really far away now! So, all I want you to do is take that back home with you and see if I can still send and receive messages,” Midoriya held an identical device, small enough to hold in one hand. “And if you never get anything, well... guess I’ll have to try again with a new set. But now's my chance to see if I can get them to cross to another planet! You’re going to be helping me so much!”
“Okay. No problem. I’ll do it.” Shouto pocketed the little device, feeling strangely compelled to help the other boy with his experiment. He had never been allowed to spend time with other kids his age, having been schooled by private tutors his whole life, so he didn’t want to miss his chance to help his new maybe-friend. Midoriya went on about how to use the communicator and other things he was tinkering with, entertaining Shouto for much longer than he had meant to be out for.
Remembering his mother was probably looking for him, he asked Midoriya to help him find the cafe he was supposed to eat at.
The two made sure before they parted ways to make a fervent promise that they would see each other again one day at Yuuei Academy.
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Midoriya’s little communicator worked perfectly even though it took quite a while for the messages to make the distance, and the boys proceeded to strike up a friendship that Shouto held dear to his heart. It was something his father didn’t know about, and couldn’t take away from him (so long as he never found the little communicator Midoriya had given him), and was one of the only bright spots in his increasingly dull and painful life as he got older. He told Midoriya everything, even as it became harder to find time in his grueling schedule.
His time was strictly regimented, every meal delivered with punctuality and incredible lack of variety, and his training with his father was taxing to the extreme. On days when he would return, freshly showered and thoroughly exhausted from the day’s activities, he would sometimes find a message on the little communicator, and would crack maybe the first smile in days as he read over whatever Midoriya had sent. There were often long stretches in between messages, both for their busy schedules and just the inherent nature of the communicator (which Midoriya swore he’d make Todoroki a better one when he saw him again), but Shouto liked hearing about his life.
Midoriya told him all about his inventions, and the fact that he would never go on to develop a quirk. He still wanted to attend Yuuei Academy, but had decided if he can’t make the hero course he would try out for the support course as well. Told Todoroki about his friends (some of them sounded more like bullies to Shouto), and the general news of life on Yuuei. Shouto wanted to give him back stories of Musutafu, something fun or entertaining to tell Midoriya about his life, but increasingly it was coming up empty. And he began to tell just about the only person he could about just how truly unhappy he was with his life here.
His father was cruel. To all the people he was supposed to protect and support. His son, his wife (much to Shouto’s constant outrage), even to his Kingsguard, the minor pros who worked under his father to uphold Musutafu’s settlements. “Justice” was doled out unrelentingly to even the regular people of Musutafu, punishments far too harsh to fit the crimes committed. The Endeavor King ruled with an iron will, and was constantly trying to impress these behaviors onto Shouto, who found it abhorrent. He could do nothing to stop his father from mistreating the citizens of their planet. Hell, he couldn’t stop his father from mistreating even his own family. Shouto knew he had siblings, but had never met them. They did not live in the compound with Shouto and his parents. He didn’t even know if his mother knew where they were, every time Shouto asked after them his mother’s eyes grew unspeakably sad, and she would always give some non-answer, becoming increasingly agitated the longer the conversation went on.
The situation came to a head when in a fit of panic and paranoia, his mother threw boiling water in his face, scalding his left eye. It was on his fire side, which was generally heat proof, so even though it hurt quite a bit and caused a little bit of damage to the eyeball itself, Shouto probably would have been fine. Probably. If his mother hadn’t immediately panicked and in her effort to fix the situation froze over her hands and pressed them into the burn, trying to cool it down but in the process caused irreparable tissue damage, leaving him with a terribly large scar.
Shouto’s recovery was bitter, and his mother became withdrawn. She was moved into a hospital shortly thereafter, his father saying she had fallen ill. He was barely allowed by his father to see her, anger over the incident thinly veiled. She passed away soon after in the hospital, and Shouto’s world crumbled apart. He now lived in a palace that felt empty except for his detested father, and he had a poor time coping with it. His training intensified five fold. Todoroki was becoming numb to his own feelings, time passing him by at a pace that at once felt exceedingly fast but simultaneously every day seemed to drag on. But at least he still had Midoriya. He thought every day about how he was nearly eighteen, nearly old enough to leave this wretched planet for Yuuei Academy. He would find Midoriya again after these many years. And once he was out, they could figure out exactly how he could never return to Musutafu, preferably for the rest of his life.
The only problem was, apparently his parents’ acceptance of his wish to attend Yuuei Academy died along with his mother. Endeavor made this known suddenly one day as he approached the end of his secondary schooling. Mentioning casually that he would no longer be permitted to go, and would instead do his Pro training under his father as an apprenticeship instead, as being Overseer allowed him to grant Pro licences on Musutafu when enough years of training were completed. His father would hear no arguments. Shouto had no way of changing his mind, no matter how much he tried to get his father to listen to him.
Shouto mourned. Of course, he missed his mother but he somehow thought he would make her proud by going to the Academy to do his Pro schooling. He would never get the chance to be with Midoriya again. The future was bleak, without even his tutoring for secondary school to distract him with learning of interesting subjects. He had nothing to look forward to but spending more time with the flaming monstrosity that was unfortunately his father, to undoubtedly be trained to the bone only to fail to live up to the high expectations placed upon him. And for the first time since the death of his mother, Shouto wept, as the future he had been building his life around was ripped from him.
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Time passed. Todoroki still occasionally made time to talk to Midoriya, despite feeling like he had failed him by not being able to attend the Academy with him. Midoriya insists that this isn’t the case, as he entered into the support course as opposed to the hero course, so they wouldn’t have been classmates anyway. He knows that Midoriya was just trying to make him feel better, as he always did. And talking to him did usually lift his spirits a little, that facet of his personality unchanged from when they met as children.
Today he collapsed onto his thin futon, skin hot but body shivering, and dug out his most prized possession, the communicator, from under his futon to check for a message from Midoriya. Their conversations were always long-form, as the messages took many days to go from Musutafu to Yuuei. Midoriya had been regaling him with tales of the beginning of his second year and new support classes, having just met a new student in the course named Mei Hatsume, whom he was getting along swell with. The girl could be overbearing, but she tolerated Izuku’s equally dogged enthusiasm and never-ending muttering with great aplomb. Shouto was happy for him, and his heart yearned for what his friend had. Meeting new people and making new friends. Shouto wished to be there with him, as he always did. He had mentioned it again in his last outbound message, saying how he was even willing to abandon his Pro Hero dreams and join the support course if it meant leaving Musutafu and his father behind.
As he powered the device on, he mentally planned out the message he would send today. He had some mishaps in training, as his father was testing his ability to use both sides of his quirk simultaneously for as long as possible, without use of his thermoregulator pack or insulating gauntlets. Sure, they were very useful for keeping the extreme nature of his quirk in balance, but his father insisted he couldn’t be too dependent on them. Keeping them level with each other required intense focus, and several minutes in he had lost concentration for just a moment and the fire won, spiraling much farther out than he had meant it to, setting the yellow brush that covered much of the desert landscape outside his home on fire. The housekeeping staff rushed to put the flames out, covering the still burning Todoroki in extinguishing gel as well. Once the fire was taken care of, they realized that the bright teal gel had frozen solid on Shouto’s right side, from shoulder to fingertip. And, being slick with the cool gel made him slippery and unable to light any fire at all for a time, leaving him unable to thaw the ice covering his other arm. His father had laughed and refused to help him, cutting training short for the day. He insisted that Shouto was wasting his time, and stomped off, shedding a bit of ash that always seemed to accompany his perpetually burning body. The ice had to be manually chipped away, painfully occupying the rest of his afternoon. He had just finished his shower, washing out the remains of the now-dry gel on his person, and was planning on telling Midoriya how grateful he was to be done earlier than usual, even if how he got here was laughable.
The device finished booting up, emitting the tiniest ‘ping!’ That was Todoroki’s favorite sound in the world. The sound of a new message from his friend. He was expecting an update on the gauntlets he was working on to direct wind pressure, but instead the opening line was completely different.
I have a new idea for how to get you out, and I really think this one could work.
Not what he was expecting. But it wasn’t totally out of left field, for years the two had been coming up with ideas on how to get Todoroki out of his home. Usually the ideas were quite fantastical, spun from Midoriya’s boundlessly creative mind to try and cheer up Todoroki when his training was wearing him down more than usual. Like hatching a dragon that would come and devour his father and fly him away, or having a huge cannon shoot him clear through space to Yuuei. Sometimes on particularly bad days the ideas were more serious. And it seems today Midoriya had a serious idea.
What if we hire a bounty hunter to come and essentially kidnap you? And bring you here to Yuuei.
This was new. Usually when they were developing plans it was just the two of them against the world. Never before had they discussed bringing in some outside party before. Shouto’s mind began racing.
We would have to offer quite a lot of money to lure someone into breaking in and stealing from one of the ‘verse’s more powerful Pros but I’m sure there’s someone out there for the job. I’m sure we could pony up the money, or we could both save up for a while. I could probably start mass producing and selling smaller inventions if I need too, until we had enough.
That was sweet of Midoriya, but Shouto didn’t think that part would be so hard. His father didn’t trust so much in banks and personal credit chips, and almost never used them, instead keeping money stored on clean blank chips with no names attached to them, which he insisted was safer. Shouto thumbed at his own personal chip, subdermally implanted under his right wrist. He had no doubts he could steal enough in an emergency situation to pay for his own bounty and for whatever else he might need.
This plan allows for you to have plausible deniability if something goes wrong too. If you and your “kidnapper” are caught, you would be returned home safely and your father would never know it was your idea, so you would be safe from him.
And this surprised Shouto. His fear of his father was always one his biggest deterrents in running away from his home, as his father had connections all over the planet, being its Overseer, and he had no doubts there wasn’t a single place on this planet where he could be safe from him if he found out Shouto had willingly run. He had no doubts that if his father knew of his willful disobedience he would do something unspeakable to him. But with this plan...
Shouto didn’t realize how fast his heart had started beating. His head snapped around his room, fearful he would suddenly hear his father approaching from the corridor.
If this escape plan was framed as it being against Shouto’s will his father would never have to know. If something went wrong, he would be returned home by the Pros and he and Midoriya could work on coming up with another plan without being in fear for his life. Maybe this really could work.
To be honest with you I’ve been looking into this plan for a while. I really wanted to make sure it was solid before telling you, because I really think this one could work. I can do almost everything from here, you would just need to wait for the bounty hunter to come pick you up, maybe put up a little fight with him before ultimately letting him take you. He would bring you here to Yuuei, where we’re going to make sure your father can never force you to do anything ever again.
I know it’s dangerous to involve other people in this. A bounty hunter would be an unknown, and the journey might end up being dangerous for you. I’m sure the hunter would act “professionally” in order to get paid, but how that actually plays out could be anything. But I know you’re so strong Todoroki. I’m sure with your quirk and all the training you have, you could hold your own against anybody. That’s a big part of the reason I can even propose this plan. You’re strong enough to get through anything.
He fell back flat against his futon, staring up at the ceiling. The last words Midoriya wrote swimming in front of his eyes.
Please think it over. We can get you out.
Shouto wanted to believe it. More than anything else in the world. He could feel Midoriya’s conviction in his message, and if Midoriya believed this would work then so would he. He thought over the plan, smoothing it out in his mind and working out details he would need on his end. He spent so long thinking about it he eventually fell asleep, forgetting even at that moment to start on his reply to Midoriya, too bent on absorbing the idea.
But the next day he sent a reply. And slowly, over the course of several weeks, their plan was worked out together.
Months after this initial message, a listing appeared on some slightly less than legal sites. A bounty. A quite considerable sum of money for the acquisition and delivery of Shouto Todoroki, the prince of the planet Musutafu, to the planet of Yuuei to an anonymous party. He was to arrive unharmed. No strict time frame for the delivery. The money was to be paid in clean, preloaded chips.
A month after this listing appears, Inasa Yoarashi picks it up.