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Shouto wakes up to darkness, which is strange, considering it was just daytime a moment ago. His head aches as well, and his arms…
Numb. Pins and needles, like he’d been laying on them, but he’s sitting up. He can’t see them in front of him, or move them at all, as far as he can tell. Are they even still there?!
He leans forward and something stops him, pulling on his shoulders where the tingling sensation ends. Ah, there they are. That's a relief.
Now, about this darkness. He doesn’t feel anything over his eyes, so it’s not a blindfold, but it doesn’t seem like normal darkness either… tentatively, he lights up his left hand- nothing. The heat is there, on his back and not the hand itself, but there’s no light in the corner of his vision, no shadow cast on whatever surface is in front of him.
Huh. Fuck.
There’s a revving sound that he recognizes easily, although it seems more sputtery and broken than usual, followed by soft cursing.
“Iida? Are you there?”
The revving cuts off.
“Ah, Todoroki! I am- not glad that you are here, per say, but glad to have an ally in this predicament! I appear to be restrained in some manner, my quirk isn’t working properly, and I cannot currently see. Could you perhaps make us some light with your fire?”
“I already tried that. It didn’t help the darkness at all.”
“Really? Then I suspect that this darkness must be quirk induced.”
“Very astute,” Says a new voice, and Shouto tenses. “I see that the two of you have awoken from your little naps. Excellent!”
“Who’s there?” Shouto demands, and then feels stupid. Obviously it’s a villain.
“Justice, If you’ll restore these two’s sight. I believe it’s time for introductions.”
Shouto squints as he starts to see again, bright light coming into his eyes a bit faster than his mind can process. Eventually he adjusts, and he has the chance to take in… wherever they are. It’s a big, empty room, dim except for the bright lights targeting himself and Iida, with a large, dark glass pane and door embedded in the wall in front of them. The villain and his goons step into the light, and Shouto can see the red and white mask that each of them wears, and the one Shouto presumes to be the leader wears a tattered crimson scarf that reminds him all too much of-
No… someone please tell him that they weren’t dealing with-
“Stain fanboys?!” Iida hisses, and from the way the three stiffen, Shouto knows there’s no other explanation.
“We are not fanboys ,” the leader bites out, “I am your Reckoning, and the two with me are your Justice and your Comeuppance.”
Shouto can’t help but snort. “Comeuppance?”
The villain on the left nods. “‘Comeuppance, noun, a punishment or fate that someone deserves,’” he says proudly, probably beaming under his mask.
Ah, he didn’t realize Shouto was making fun of him. He’s about to correct the mistake when he catches Iida’s eye next to him. He shakes his head. Shouto shrugs.
The villain leader, apparently called Reckoning , continues. “The two of you are directly related to heroes that Stain deemed unworthy of the title, and are both aiming to become heroes yourselves. We’re here to make sure you’re on the proper path, and, if necessary, nip this entire thing in the butt.”
“The bud,” Iida corrects.
“What?”
“The phrase is ‘nip it in the bud,’ referring to the culling of a plant, most usually a weed, in its infancy or ‘bud’ stage, and therefore preventing it from doing any harm as it grows.”
“... Yes. That.”
The goon that wasn’t named Comeuppance takes out a clipboard and begins to write.
Shouto sighs internally. Once again, he’s been kidnapped because of something Endeavor did. Why can’t the villains ever want him for what he’s done?
“As I was saying , we’re going to nip this in the- the bud. So! In order to test you, we are going to go through several ethical dilemmas. If we find your answers to be ill-fitting of a hero, there will be… consequences.”
“And how, exactly,” Shouto says, “is kidnapping two teenagers and threatening them in any way ‘ethical?’ What exactly makes you qualified to decide what the ‘right’ answers are?”
The goon that wasn’t Comeuppance shakes his head and writes something down on his clipboard. The back is covered with what appears to be a Stain-themed sticker set, with swords, masks, and blood drops, as well as some flower stickers and smiley faces. It’s like they want to be made fun of, honestly.
“I’ll have you know that I have a philosophy degree from Endor University, and that I’m perfectly capable of judging your worthiness!”
“What level?” Iida asks.
“Bachelors.”
“No, I don’t think you’re qualified,” Shouto says. “Come back when you have a doctorate.”
Reckoning growls, and not-Comeuppance takes more notes.
“Ah, I’ve just remembered something,” Iida says. “Midoriya was with us before we were kidnapped, Todoroki. I’m sure that he has already alerted the teachers to our abduction, and they are certainly on their way right now! We will not have to endure this foolishness much longer.”
The villains laugh. “Ah yes,” Reckoning says, “your little friend. He was the one from the video, wasn’t he? The one that Stain saved?”
“Yes.”
“Well, about that. We couldn’t exactly just let him go.”
The lights beyond the dark glass pane flick on, revealing-
Shit! Midoriya!
He’s tied to a chair, the same as they are, but he’s been gagged. He’s struggling against his binds, but something about the way he’s moving is sloppy, disjointed, like he barely has control of his own limbs. He’s staring straight at them, too, but his gaze is faraway and unfocused, like he doesn’t even see them.
“What the hell did you do to him?!”
“What we did to him? How about what he did to us! We had to use up much of our nerve blockers to subdue him, and even that was barely enough!” Reckoning gestures to Comeuppance, whose hand is heavily bandaged, blood leaking through in a semicircular pattern.
Shouto looks back at Midoriya and sees blood on his t-shirt, dripping from his collar, despite him not appearing at all to be injured.
“Justice has to keep him under full sensory deprivation just so that he doesn’t keep trying to kill us. I don’t know what Stain saw in that little monster, but he saved him, so we’re keeping him safe. Unless, of course, you refuse to cooperate.”
Reckoning flicks his hand, and a blade rises from who knows where and comes to a rest at Midoriya’s throat.
Midoriya stills. Shouto stills. He’s not even sure he can breathe.
“N-now, there’s no need for that kind of behavior,” Iida says, voice shaking. The time for bantering is gone.
“Oh, but it just might be. I already saw that the two of you weren’t planning on being helpful. Perhaps we all need a little extra… motivation. As long as you’re true heroes, you’ll want to keep the hostage safe, won’t you?”
Shouto swallows the rock in his throat. “Look. I don’t care what you do to me– whatever you do, leave them out of it .”
The knife lowers. “Good,” Reckoning says. “Good answer.” Justice nods and makes a note on his clipboard, scratching pen deafening in the silence of the room.
“Let’s begin, shall we?”
- - -
- Imagine that villains have taken a children’s hospital hostage and are demanding a ransom. If they don’t get the money, people will die. But if you pay the villains, there’s no guarantee that people will survive anyway, and it emboldens them to do similar stunts in the future. What do you do?
- You unmask a villain and it turns out to be a close friend of yours. You are the only person around. Do you let them go?
- Your heroic family member is on life support, and if they die by midnight, you inherit their agency. Do you hasten their death?
- You accidentally injure a civilian with your quirk. You are the only one around, and they will die without immediate intervention. It is obvious that you are the culprit. Do you bring them to get help?
This is stupid. So stupid. But he has to play along so that Midoriya doesn’t get murdered. That wasn’t even the only “consequence.”
Good old Comeuppance has a quirk that lets him shoot nails out of his fingertips. Not fingernails, the kind that you use in building. Every time one of them gives an answer that Reckoning doesn’t like, Justice writes a stupid little note on his stupid clipboard and Comeuppance shoots him in the leg and Iida in the arm. Luckily there haven’t been too many “wrong” answers, but Shouto is glad to have his tetanus shot.
And that’s not even talking about the questions themselves. They’re never-ending. They had to have been doing this for what, an hour? Two hours? Did Reckoning just zoogle “Moral dilemmas” and copy and paste the stupidest ones he could find?
“Uh oh,” Justice says, “I just realized something.”
Ugh, what now?
“The heroes are saying pretty good stuff, but how do we know they’d actually do any of it in real life?”
Reckoning stopped, stunned. “Why, Justice, you’re absolutely right! Just because they know the correct thing to do does not mean that they are true heroes. Hm.” He dropped his stack of questions unceremoniously to the floor. “We’ll have to come up with a new way to test them.”
What?! Everything they’d just been through- it was for nothing?!
“Or,” Comeuppance says, “we could just kill them.”
Reckoning nods. “We could just kill them.”
Okay, what the fuck. Shouto tries to free his arms, and forming ice around his wrist breaks one of the cuff things. He’s able to pull his arms in front of him, but they’re still too numb to move properly, and without that precision, he could seriously hurt Iida. Iida who has no way to escape his own cuffs because all of his power was in his legs. Fuck!
Comeuppance levels his nail-gun fingers at Shouto’s chest. Iida yells. Reckoning’s knife goes back to Midoriya’s throat.
The wall crashes in.
The teachers are here.
They’re safe.
- - -
In the end, they’re put in a triple hospital room much like the one in Hosu. It’s a fitting conclusion to what is, hopefully, Stain’s final involvement in their lives. They’re all gathered onto Shouto’s bed, nerve blockers finally worn off. The nails, while painful, would do no lasting damage, and would leave minimal scarring. Midoriya is completely fine besides a couple of bruises and a small knife scratch on his neck.
“You’re kidding me,” he says. “After all of that , they were just going to kill us anyway?!”
“Yeah,” Shouto says, “I didn’t get that either. For all they spouted about ethics and morality, they were really quick to give up.”
Midoriya sighs. “I can’t believe I was so useless for all of it. I hated not knowing what was going on. And they gagged me too. Aizawa-sensei saw me like that. He had to carry me out . How embarrassing…”
“Do not worry, Midoriya!” Iida says. “It was your ability to fight back initially that got our abduction noticed, and your phone that they tracked to find us! You were instrumental in our rescue!”
“Yeah, but I still wish I could’ve done something instead of just being the leverage for you guys.”
“If it helps,” Shouto says, “you probably would have answered all the questions right.”
Midoriya makes a face. “They’re Stain stans, Todoroki. I don’t really want them to approve of me.”
“Midoriya, please pardon the interruption, but what is a ‘stan’?”
Midoriya yawns. “Y’know what, I’m too tired to get into that tonight. Ask me again in the morning, okay?”
And then the three of them go to bed exhausted but, in the end, alright.