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The villain with the burned skin, the one whom the others call ‘Dabi,’ has put his face too close to Shouto’s. There’s a strange, barely restrained intensity in his eyes; he looks almost… expectant, maybe. As if he’s waiting for Shouto to say something. Or to flinch away from his gaze.
But strapped to the chair as he is, of course, Shouto has nowhere he can flinch away to. Surrounded by villains, he has nothing he wants to say. And so, for what feels like an eternity, as the villain Dabi squints and tilts his head back and forth and continues to stare at Shouto with the unsettlingly intent eyes of a madman, Shouto just stares back, his own eyes as coolly blank as he can keep them.
“Hmm,” Dabi says, finally, pulling back. His voice sounds like it’s being raked over coals. “It wasn’t supposed to be you.”
He turns to the villain with the mask, the one who calls himself Compress. “This isn’t Bakugou Katsuki,” he drawls, more loudly.
“Right in one—ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!” Compress announces, rolling one of his marbles across his knuckles with a flourish. “This is—”
Dabi’s unimpressed. “I know who he is,” he says. “Your job was to capture Bakugou Katsuki.”
He turns again, then, to face the head villain from the USJ—to face Shigaraki, sitting at the bar across the room. “Another incompetent,” he says, irritably. “Do I really have to do everything around here?”
“Oh, as if you do shit,” snaps Shigaraki back. “Get over yourself.”
The masked man—the only one present who doesn’t seem tremendously displeased about this entire situation, Shouto himself most certainly included—says, grandiosely, “Well, what can I say? It was him or no one at all. Not ideal, of course, but I thought we might be able to find some use for the Flame Hero’s kid.”
There’s a beat, and then—as if on cue—all three of the villains turn back to stare at Shouto in the chair. Shouto, again, stares back.
He doesn’t think he likes the way that Compress says “some use.”
Dabi seems to be thinking along similar lines. “No chance of turning him,” he says, flatly.
It doesn’t sound anything like a question, but Compress answers it like one anyway. “Probably not,” he agrees, cheerfully. “Give him the pitch if you’d like, but I have tried already, and he simply doesn’t seem interested. Haven’t had a single word from him since we got him out of this—” (he holds up his marble, pinched between thumb and forefinger like a coin) “—and into the chair. With no help from you, by the way. Wherever did you vanish to?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“As have we all, my competent friend. As have we all.”
Dabi chooses not to respond to that. Instead, he continues eyeing Shouto, stepping forward and leaning in close again.
“Real daddy’s boy, aren’t you?” he says.
Strapped to the chair as he is, of course, Shouto has nowhere he can flinch away to.
Dabi continues. “Little hero-in-training, thinks he’s too good for the likes of us—it wasn’t supposed to be you.” He’s practically spitting in Shouto’s face, by the last, his words dripping with a strange quiet vehemence.
It’s around then that Shigaraki loses whatever little patience he has. “If he’s really not going to turn, let’s just kill him now and get it over with,” he says. “Dump the body where the press’ll find it. See how much damage we do to Endeavor—maybe this mission won’t have been a total wash.”
Dabi glances at Shigaraki in contemplation, tapping a steady rhythm of beats against his thigh with one hand. His piercing teal eyes roam across each member of The League in the room, before settling back on Shouto, mischief twisting in their depths.
"I think you might actually have had a good idea for once, Shigaraki. Although, I have to admit," he stops, lifting a finger to Shouto's chin and forcing it up, so he could stare directly into his eyes, "death is so boring. Let's have some fun."
Shigaraki seems to think about this for a moment, the other people in the room watching the stare off with quiet curiosity. Dabi was known to love the chaos of a mission, or toying with people if necessary, but he rarely showed this level of… interest.
"Fine," Shigaraki rasps, "I guess messing with him wouldn't be the worst thing. I'm sure he doesn't have anyone who'll come looking for him, what with this attitude."
"However, we are villains. Can you blame him?" Compress raises a brow at their boss, still rolling the marble between his fingers.
"Still, villains aren't necessarily bad people. It just depends on your point of view. I'm sure daddy Todoroki taught you some manners, hmm, Shouto. And what a lovely way he always taught them. A+ parenting right there." Dabi watches intently as the blow hits just as intended. Indignation and fury rises in Shouto's eyes, flashing dangerously. Dabi laughs internally at the way he was bound up, unable to twitch even a finger. Then proceeds to chuckle lowly, right in his face.
A little intimidation never hurt anyone.
"What do you know of that?" Shouto mutters, voice scratchy from a lack of water. For these to be the first words the boy chose to speak, Dabi must have really hit a nerve. He finds that an extremely amusing thought.
"Oh, come on now, that's a secret for later. But trust me, Shouto, villains know things. Things no one else has bothered to find out. Because they do not care." Dabi smiles at Shouto, a sharp, malicious grin that has dread settling in the pit of Shouto's stomach.
"Heroes care—" Shouto tries to say before being interrupted with a loud bang as Dabi slams a hand onto a metal table to his side, the deafening sound ringing through the room.
Dabi leans in, towering over him, "Heroes have never and will never care, Shouto. Why do you think we're here?" He gestured to the group surrounding them, watching the interaction play out in front of them. Dabi thinks he can see Toga in the back munching on popcorn and kicking her legs absentmindedly as she sits on a table.
"You are all villains—"
"No, no, no, no. Shouto, you're not getting it, are you? Why did we become villains?"
The silence that follows is stifling. Dabi spies Shouto's brows farrowing as he thinks about it, that blank mask of indifference stripped away with a simple question.
It's a truly beautiful sight.
"Ugh, this is taking too long. What happened to torturing him?" Shigaraki whines, scratching harshly at an already flaky part of his skin.
Dabi holds up one finger, cold eyes searching Shouto's for something. Shouto didn't know what, too busy lost in his mind looking for the right answer, an appropriate response.
He had never been taught why villains turn out the way they do, instead always believing—or being led to believe—it was inherently a part of them, that malicious streak. But that couldn't be right. Heroes had turned to villainy before.
Then what makes a villain, a villain?
Shouto presses his lips together, thinking about Shigaraki's first appearance and his insistence that heroes and villains are one in the same, Stain's dedication to culling 'unworthy' heroes, Mr. Compress's long-winded 'pitch'.
He thinks of Endeavor, and all the things he's done as the number two hero.
Shouto tries to keep the dawning understanding off his face, but he's either getting rusty or Dabi is extremely perceptive. His expression turns sadistically gleeful the second Shouto's mouth goes dry. "Now you're getting it, Shouto. Maybe you aren't a hopeless case after all."
Dabi reaches towards him, and it's only long practice that keeps Shouto from flinching before the palm makes contact and musses his hair, rough and quick. He does let himself glare at the retreating hand though, shaking his head to get hair out of his eyes.
"Make up your mind, Dabi." Shigaraki scoffs. "Are we keeping him or not?"
"We should keep him. Throw him to the dogs!" Twice chips in.
"It would be a brilliant plot-twist, turning the Number Two's son against him. Wouldn't you agree?"
Dabi tilts his head with a hum, then shrugs. "Something tells me it won't be that easy either way. Let's have our fun and see how agreeable he is at the end of it."
"I won't do it." Shouto says, even as the resignation rises to cradle his heart. "I won't join you."
Dabi sneers, "What, you think the heroes are going to come for you?"
Shouto stays silent. He's said his piece, and talking more will only waste energy better spent surviving.
With a snarl, Dabi swings into motion, his fist connecting soundly with Shouto's cheek. Iron coats his tongue, thick and hot, and the force of the blow is enough to rock the chair onto its back two legs. A hooked foot tips him the rest of the way over the edge and he gets a brief second of free fall before his head cracks harshly against pavement and wood.
Shouto sees stars, and the aches and pains from the training camp make themselves abundantly known. He pulls in a breath and blinks away the way his vision swims, and there is Dabi hovering over him.
He looks angry, hateful, murderous.
"Not gonna answer that? And here I thought we were getting somewhere." Dabi walks around the chair to crouch next to Shouto's face. "We'll just have to show you, then. The heroes don't care. Society doesn't care. The second they decide you're more trouble than you're worth, you'll be cast aside just like the rest of us."
Shouto thinks of his father, of his friends, of the twin certainties that neither of them would let him go for entirely different reasons.
"I wonder what it would take—" Dabi muses, looking over Shouto's face with consideration. "—to tip the scales for you? You've got a powerful quirk, and they love that. But it doesn't take very much to change powerful to dangerous."
Blue fire flickers to life scant feet away from Shouto's face, and he squints through the glare. As Dabi leans closer.
"You know that though, don't you? A little birdie told me you wouldn't use your fire before the Sports Festival. I wonder why that is? Did it scare you, what that bastard's fire could do?"
"It's not his."
Dabi's eyes narrow, and Shouto can hear the warning bells in the way his voice drops low and still. "...What?"
"It's not his fire." Shouto says, because despite the danger, this is a truth he's learned and one he refuses to leave unsaid. "It's mine."
There's a long stretch of silence, and then a grin creeps onto Dabi's face, as cold as his fire is hot.
"His, yours, it doesn't matter. The fire'll burn you either way." A hand full of blue fire begins to move. "Here, let me show you."
His hand drifts closer. Heat licks at Shouto’s skin.
“His, yours, mine,” Dabi repeats.
Shouto’s skin is tight as Dabi’s hand draws closer to his face. Refusing to let this just happen, he activates the right side of his quirk, a layer of frost crawling across his skin and providing a brief respite from the intensity of Dabi’s fire.
Dabi tsks. “Haven’t you ever been taught not to ice burns?”
The frost doesn’t last long, melting away in the face of Dabi’s fire. Shouto replaces it, the temperature in the room dropping as he maintains the thin barrier between himself and those blue flames.
Gritting his teeth, he shifts his foot, ice lancing forwards and climbing up Dabi’s body. While nothing compared to the glacier he trapped Sero in, it’s enough of a surprise for Dabi to release his flame, and in that breath of time, Shouto covers the entirety of Dabi’s body, with the exception of his head.
“Oh, you little shit,” Dabi growls, while, at the bar, Shigaraki throws his head back and laughs. Toga giggles, bouncing over to inspect the newly-created Dabisicle.
“Wow, you’re really in a pickle here!” she chirps.
Dabi snarls, a bright glow diffusing through the ice as he begins the process of melting it off himself.
“I think we should just … kill him now and be done with it,” Shigaraki flaps a hand (his own hand, not one of the disembodied ones) in Shouto’s direction. “Obviously he’s just going to be more trouble than he’s worth.”
“No,” Dabi snaps. Water drips down off the column of ice he’s wrapped in. “I’m not done with him.”
A scarred hand grips at Shouto’s collar, dragging him and the chair upright. Dabi releases his grip for a brief moment before relocating his hand to Shouto’s throat, fingernails digging into his skin hard enough to draw blood.
Shouto gasps, craning his neck in every direction he can manage.
“You see, Shouto, there’s one thing I can think of that would mess with the number two more than his masterpiece turning up dead in a ditch. And that’s his little prodigy fighting alongside the villains.”
Shouto strains against his bonds, flailing as much as the restraints allow and snarling out his response between choked inhales.
“I—already said I would—would never—”
“Oh, I wasn’t asking.”
Dabi tightens his hold once more before turning back to face Shigaraki.
“You have that freaky doctor’s number, right? How long does he reckon it’d take to turn Endeavour’s spawn into a Nomu?”
Shouto feels a sharp pain in his chest and thinks his heart might have stopped for a moment, the feeling tempered by the distracting burning of his lungs.
He thinks back to the USJ, to Hosu, to the creature that fought off All Might and the other that almost stole the first friend Shouto had ever made.
He thinks of their unseeing eyes and mindless maneuvers, powerless to disobey their orders.
He thinks of himself, suddenly five-years old and crying out for a mother who couldn’t save him.
Shouto knows what it is like to be helpless. He never wants to go back.
And he thought he would never have to because—
“It’s your power, Todoroki!”
Except what good is the power being his if he is not allowed to choose how he uses it?
Dabi finally lets go of his neck, instead letting his hand rest just shy of Shouto’s face, blue fire flickering in his palm and threatening to burn Shouto’s skin.
Shigaraki hums, pulling out his phone and holding it awkwardly, his index finger raised.
“I don’t know. The old man keeps most of that stuff between him and Sensei, but I’ll see what I can do,” he mutters.
Dabi scoffs at the apparent disinterest, turning his eyes back to Shouto and amping up his fire, the underside of Shouto’s jaw reddening at the heat.
He tries to move back but his chair teeters dangerously and Dabi grins, teeth bared in a manner that verges on feral.
“What’s wrong, hero? Can’t handle the heat?”
Shouto opens his mouth but snaps it shut once the full force of Dabi’s flames reach him, a barely repressed yelp leaving his throat at the sensation of fire searing into his skin. It is far too familiar for Shouto not to grimace and fall still. He tries to regulate his breathing, his head spinning fast enough for nausea to swirl in the pit of his stomach, mixing with dread and sloshing back and forth until Shouto is forced to gulp hard, swallowing the rising bile back down.
Shouto’s ears ring and the villains keep speaking but Shouto feels himself slipping in and out of consciousness, dark spots dancing around his vision. Dabi’s voice is the only one he can still distinguish; he says something, angry and vicious as he does while the other sounds mix together and pass through Shouto’s ears and rattle within his pounding skull. It starts becoming too much—it is already too much.
But Shouto has never been a quitter, so his own fire flutters just beneath the surface, pooling together and festering within his body until—
“Hello, this is Pizza-La, Kamino store.”
For a minute—as All Might comes charging through the door with his fists held high and several other pro heroes on his tail; as All Might himself makes for Shigaraki and the other heroes fan out and cut Shigaraki’s minions off from him and from each other—it looks, to Shouto, like the battle is won before it even properly begins.
The Nomus complicate things.
They appear from nowhere, melting through portals in the air and attacking with a vengeance. Their presence is enough to throw the heroes off, allowing the villains to slip free and regroup, and then it’s a proper fight: the heroes suddenly outnumbered as more and more of the inhuman creatures flood into the area.
In the center of the chaos, nearest to the chair Shouto is still pinned to, Dabi burns a bright, scorching blue: hot enough that the floor under his feet is melting, hot enough that it radiates through the entire room. No one can get close to him. Best Jeanist is reduced to launching fibers from a distance, probably trying to snare him, but everything practically evaporates before even making contact. The heat is just too much. Someone needs to cool things down.
Shouto’s right hand flexes in its cuff.
“Jeanist,” he says, loudly enough to be heard over the crash of battle from all around the room. “Get me out. I can take him.”
It’s the obvious solution. Shouto’s not a professional yet, but he can still be of use here. His quirk is perfect for this job, far more so than Jeanist’s; he and Dabi may as well have been designed to clash with each other. Jeanist appears to recognize it, too, as his eyes flick to Shouto—there’s just a brief moment of hesitation before he’s launching himself across the distance between them and smashing open the cuffs on Shouto’s limbs before pivoting away to intercept an attack from another League member, leaving Dabi to Shouto.
Shouto, who is launching ice before he’s even standing all the way. He’s unsteady on his feet from having been restrained for so long, but it’s a fair fight: Dabi’s unsteady, too, and getting more so the brighter his flames burn, like they’re taking more from him than he can give. Like his own fire is hurting him, somehow. Still, he grins broadly as he lashes out at Shouto, maniacal laughter bubbling from him as he weaves drunkenly back and forth.
He looks unstable. In more ways than one.
Even fighting two people at once isn’t enough to stop him from monologuing, it seems. “Number one, number three, half the rest of the top charts,” he scoffs, sounding half out of breath as he dodges around Shuoto’s attacks and returns fire. “Where’s number two, then? Slacking off? You’d think he’d care enough about you, about his successor, to put in the effort—”
It’s the middle of a battle. Shouto has an unlimited number of better things to be thinking about right now than whatever the most unhinged member of an unhinged group of villains is talking about. Nothing Dabi says, especially nothing he says right now, should bother him.
Still, for some reason, he finds himself replying, through gritted teeth, “Why do you keep bringing up my father. Why are you so obsessed with him.”
Dabi’s blazing eyes go cold, empty. His hands—for just a moment, almost imperceptibly—falter.
“Because I hate him,” he spits. “Why else?”
There’s a moment, then, when Shouto finds himself faltering too, as he stares at those eyes, cold and blue and
“Dabi!” comes a shout from Shigaraki across the room. “For fucking once can you do what I say, we’re retreating—leave him for later—”
Startled, Shouto—he can’t help it—glances across the room toward Shigaraki’s voice, and is surprised to find it emptying out, half of the villains gone already and the rest actively wrestling free from the still-standing heroes to throw themselves backwards through the Nomu portals.
Dabi’s expression sours. “Shigaraki,” he spits, as if to himself, as if it’s a curse, and then, pointedly to Shouto: “Give my regards to daddy dearest,” he says. “Or don’t. I’ll see him myself soon enough.” He turns. Over his shoulder, he adds, “Have fun rubbing shoulders with heroes. Enjoy it while it lasts. While they still have some use for you.”
Too late, whatever spell had frozen Shouto in place breaks. He lashes out one last time, trying to freeze Dabi before he manages to slip through the portal behind him, but he’s gone before the ice even makes it all the way there.
All Might’s hand is on Shouto’s shoulder. He’s saying something to Shouto, but Shouto hasn’t been listening. His mind won’t stop playing Dabi on loop: the bitterness in his voice, the way he’d fixated on the thought of being cast aside by heroes. The way he’d acted, when talking about Shouto’s father in particular. The things he’d said. The way he’d said them.
(Daddy dearest.)
(His, yours, mine.)
(That’s a secret for later.)
It doesn’t mean anything. There are any number of reasons a villain might have a personal vendetta against a top ten hero.
Shouto finds himself asking All Might, cutting him off midsentence, “The villain called Dabi. Do we know his real name?”
All Might’s brow wrinkles, and for a moment he looks like he’s about to protest Shouto’s interruption, but instead he answers the question.
“In fact, we don’t, my boy. We’ve managed to identify everyone else from the Forest Camp attack, but not him yet. We’re still investigating. Searching for more evidence, anyone who knows anything.”
“I see,” Shouto says, dazed.
He almost leaves it at that. It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t mean anything. It’s not possible.
But those eyes. Cold and blue and strangely familiar in their fury as he cursed Shouto’s father’s name. As familiar to Shouto, really, as his own reflection from the days before U.A.
Shouto says, “I think I might need to talk to the police.”