Chapter Text
The first step to a convincing disguise, Uncle Compress says, is acting like you don’t give a damn.
That goes against everything that everyone knows about Mister (first name) Compress (last name), so Ryota didn’t believe him back then. Mister always did the most in any scenario, and narrated it out loud while he did it. But putting on a convincing background act, he explained, was very different from taking center stage.
You can’t act like you want it too badly. Play things like you don’t care either way. Blend into the crowd, an innocent member of the faceless audience. Be bored. Take a nap if you’re so inclined. Let other people shine in the spotlight while you do your work in the backstage shadows.
But being average wasn’t in Kurono Ryota’s composition. He did the best in any scenario and he knew it as he did it.
“You’re saying that you’re not going to intern with Ingenium? After he sent you a personalized recruitment letter after the UA tournament?! Why!”
Ryota sighed, leaned back in his chair, kicked his feet over the top of his desk. The other students leaning on it made room for his feet. “Ingenium is the coolest pro, of course. But he has a speed quirk, and I have a time freeze quirk that looks a lot like a speed quirk - so we’re too similar, you know? Like, I want to challenge myself. Learn something new. See new perspectives. Stay humble.”
He heard Hiro snort behind him. Miki, who was interrogating Ryota on his summer internship applications, shot him a glare. Ryota smiled. She was so protective of him! From his own brothercousin!
“You’re gonna try to get with one of the top 3, right?” Someone else asked. “Obviously.”
“Isn’t Dynamight not taking interns this year? After what happened last year?”
“So that leaves Deku and Shouto.”
“Hey, if Ryota-kun wants to learn something new he wouldn’t apply with someone that obvious…”
Ryota let his little cadre of classmates debate about his future, looking up at them with the air of someone bashfully enjoying being the center of attention. They were the most popular members of class 1A, the most charismatic and good-looking, and he enjoyed a kind of aloof power over them. While they’d been suspicious of him at first - an edgy homeschooler with a cocky grin and a crazy looking little brother - he’d won them over with charm and good looks. Now they fell over each other to get his attention.
His self-admittedly impressive showing at the UA Tournament solidified his position as the most popular guy in class. And it happened to position him well for summer internships, too - not that he had any doubt about where he wanted to go.
“What about Uravity?”
“C’mon, he’s not going to intern with a girl.”
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH GIRLS, HUH?”
Ryota laughed at Miki, now furiously brandishing her designer purse at the other student with the energy absorption quirk across from her. “No, no, I love Uravity! Who else has the guts to divorce Deku and stay in the biz afterwards? Good for her. Love her. Love what she’s doing with her life.”
“So is it gonna be Uravity?”
Act like you didn’t care, that’s the ticket. He shrugged. “Well.. nah, I don’t want to have to go all the way to Tokyo, I'm too lazy. Honesty - I dunno if he’d take me, but…”
“Who?”
“Yeah, who is it?”
“I was thinking about applying to work with Shouto.”
Dad’s little brother.
Of course the stakes would be stupid high. He should be trying to blend into the background, not making a scene. Doing so well in the tournament was too much publicity already. If Pops found out he’d be beyond pissed that Ryota was going to go for a Todoroki internship. Two weeks of working with his unknowing uncle was more than enough time to blow his and Hiro’s cover and get the whole operation, and then the whole Operation (read: world domination) taken out instantly.
But complete obedience wasn’t in Kurono Ryota’s playbook, and he was so, so, so curious.
“Oh! Of course you’re gonna get it, he’d be lucky to have you as an intern!”
“Yeah, I mean I bet he’s gonna take Tsubasa ‘cause she’s his family, but imagine -”
“What about me?”
The air around them all rustled. Ryota tipped his head back. From the very top of his field of vision he saw the tips of a pair of big red wings behind him. Speak of the devil.
“Talking about internships,” he responded. “You’re gonna go work with your brother Shouto this summer, right?”
He sat up and turned all the way around in his chair. Todoroki Tsubasa was standing behind Hiro at the desk behind him, leaning over his chair, an imposing figure already, her mane of gold and red hair just brushing his cousin’s shoulders. Ryota stifled the bile rising in his stomach. Get the hell away from him, you big fucking bird idiot freak -
“I think so, yeah. I mean… I don’t want it to come off as, uh.. What’s it called..”
“Nepotism?” Hiro suggested.
“Yeah, that’s it, nepotism. He did say that he’d approve me for an internship if I applied.” She looked back at her classmates. “Shouto has a lot on his plate right now with two sidekicks on leave and he needs some extra manpower. I’m just gonna be hired muscle. So whoever else he picks is coming in on their own merit.”
Someone poked Ryota’s back and he smiled. “Well then keep an eye on me, birdbrain, ‘cause I’m applying, too. Maybe we can be roommates!”
Tsubasa smiled back. “That’d be sweet. I can keep kicking your butt over break.”
“Aww, and I can take your place as your Brother’s Favorite!” He cupped the back of his hand under his chin and gave his best sweet sparkly smile. “Watch out, I’m too good at getting adults to love me. Noted favorite of moms.”
It was true, he was the golden boy of the PLF. Surely an aging Endeavor would be no match for him. Hawks - aw, fuck him, the little traitor. Ryota already had his precious daughter eating out of his hand, he didn’t need the other bird to like him.
“I don’t think you’ll have much trouble winning him over if he takes you. He likes chatty guys.” She shrugged. “Can’t wait to hear who you all end up with, though - shouldn’t you be, uh, working on your apps?”
“You should all be working on your worksheets! Get back to your desks!” Mr. Kirishima yelled from the front of the class. So he’d finally decided to be a disciplinarian, Ryota thought, sticking out his tongue and scrunching his face in mock distaste as his fanclub disbanded.
Tsubasa stayed behind Hiro for a moment longer, though, her red wings folding around him and shielding him from the fluorescent lights overhead. Hiro didn’t seem to mind, but then again, he always did like to be held. It didn’t mean that he liked her, Ryota told himself. Todoroki Tsubasa was dumb, unambitious, mediocre despite her pedigree and her fire-enhanced wing quirk, and no amount of jockish friendliness could change it. Hiro was tolerating her attention manfully - he must have taken Uncle Compress’s lessons to heart more than he thought he did. He played the perfect blend of scary and fragile that could yank a future hero’s heartstrings.
Nobody else in the class seemed to fall for his act, but Tsubasa did, and that was all that mattered to Ryota. He would be the charming one that won over the school, Hiro would be the loner prodigy on the battlefield with Churn. And then Tsubasa unintentionally provided the provenance, the false sheen of respectability by rite of her surname. They made a great trio. Well balanced. Deliciously ironic. Two Todorokis and a Shigaraki.
He’d already finished his two week internship application and sent it in that morning before class. Ingenium was his fallback, he had a couple other mid-top-30s heroes picked out if he didn’t get picked for Shouto, but… he had a good feeling. An inkling. Ryota always did The Best.
Tsubasa was back in her seat by the window now. Ryota turned around in his seat. Even though Hiro was wearing his usual black sanitary mask, he saw the corners of his eyes crinkle in a smile, and he smiled back.
“I’ll miss you,” he said. His voice was lower and more gravely than you’d expect from a guy Hiro’s size.
“It’s only for two weeks, you goof. And it won't be for a month.”
A long blink. Hiro read that cats do that to say I love you and he’s done it ever since. It was a good way to say it when everyone was wearing a mask and they had to be professional. Ryota long blinked back at him.
He was sure there’d been a point when he and Hiro had been separated for more than two weeks… couldn’t think of any right now, but there had to be. They’d be fine, they’d skype every night. And Hiro was probably going to stay and work with Eri, the school nurse, and flip through all her textbooks. Ryota’d feel a lot better knowing that he’d be here in an emptied UA, keeping himself safe and separate until he got back.
“Just two weeks,” he said to himself after he turned back around to his desk. It’d be fun. Little vacation. Meet the rest of the family. The ones that broke dad’s brain for a while. And his fuckwit classmate.
Fun.
“Sooo, the sandwich place here in the lobby is open 24/7 but it’s super expensive. And there’s a nice coffee machine up in the team room, so you don’t have to buy anything down here,” Tsubasa said, gesturing at the slick modern setup on one side of the first floor of the Shouto Agency. “And I don’t trust a place that can’t get a tuna sandwich right. All tuna, no mayo.”
“Busy down here, huh,” Ryota remarked, looking around as they made their way to the elevators on the other end of the vast glassy entrance.
“Yeah, there’s office space from here to floor 20. Insurance companies, consulting, even HPSC. And then 20 and up is us.”
Hero work paid good dividends, Ryota thought. Everything here was exquisitely slick metal and glass and it reeked of the kind of expensive Uncle RD would enjoy. Even though he saw a few people in unconventional costumes milling around in the cafe he felt a little out of place in his work clothes.
“Anyway, I guess we can drop our stuff off in the overnight rooms and go meet Shouto and the rest of the team.” They hopped on an elevator - the back of it was tinted glass, and provided a picturesque view of Mustafu as they rose up past the building across the street and burst out over the city. Tsubasa kept talking but Ryota, annoyed, consciously stopped listening, watching the skyline as they rose, the ebullient blue sky and the gleaming glass buildings. He still felt out of place and paranoid in cities; the Villa where they were raised was in a purposefully isolated forest where his and Hiro’s rooftop hideout was the highest point for miles. Felt claustrophobic here.
The height was probably good for Tsubasa and Hawks, but why the hell was Shouto’s agency in a high rise? Fucking heroes.
“-and here we are on the main floor. The further wing is the Fire offices, and the other side by the entrance is the Ice offices,” Tsubasa said conversationally. Hadn’t even noticed him zoning out. The elevator dinged open and the two of them, dragging their suitcases behind them, passed through a stylish anteroom before being disgorged into the main comm center of Shouto Agency.
It must be two stories worth of room to get the ceilings this high, Ryota thought, looking around. The whole place was bustling with workers; some sidekicks on active duty, but mostly support personnel coordinating and filing. Everything here was slick and metal, too, and cast in brilliant bright light from floor-to-ceiling windows. Nobody even glanced in their direction.
Since Endeavor retired, geriatric for a hero in his mid-50s, his youngest had stepped in to occupy his territory and position in the city just as intended. A good little soldier for his daddy! Right into a custom-made position of power and institutional resources and an unbelievable amount of money, judging by the size of this operation. And one day Tsubasa would probably step in and take it from her older half-brother if she ever got her act together. If Heroes were still around by then. Ryota didn’t intend for them to be.
“Huh, must be something going on,” Tsubasa said. “It’s busier than usual. I thought he’d come meet us…”
“We dropping our stuff off or what?”
“Huh, yeah, let’s do that and find a sidekick to tell us what to do.”
They hiked their bags down through the Ice Offices to the overnight call rooms at the end - intended for the PM shifts to use when there was nothing going on. Just bunk beds. Tsubasa could’ve probably stayed at the Todoroki house and commuted in, but she said that that’d look bad to the boss, as if Shouto would actually care about her professionalism when they shared the same father. As long as Ryota got his own room he’d be happy.
“Tsubasa!” Someone called as they walked back out. Her wings perked up.
“Hey, unc - Shouto! Hey!”
From a little knuckle of battered sidekicks, Shouto Todoroki detached himself and strode over to the two of them. He was still steaming from his red half and looked like he’d been in a bit of a scuffle.
He was shorter than Ryota’d expected, he thought, amused. Got that prototypical Shouto seriousness, though. He’d barely changed his outfit or gear since he was Ryota’s age, still in that blue jumpsuit - not that he had any place to criticize, he himself was basically wearing a lighter-blue version of the same.
“Sorry I didn’t meet you at the door. We’re following a development downtown that might need our attention.” He turned to Ryota. “You’re Irinaka Ryota, right?”
“Yeah. Nice to meet you.” He bowed his head. That was indeed the name on his UA paperwork. “Thanks for taking me on, I can’t wait to get started.”
“We’ll do our best to give you a worthwhile and educational internship. You two will probably be working directly with me for most of it - unfortunately we’re wanting for more manpower than usual. I’m sure Tsubasa filled you in. We’ll keep you busy. And you-” he turned to Tsubasa. “Don’t think that just because we’re family I won’t be just as hard on you. This isn’t a weekend field trip, this is an acting agency job, okay? You’re a junior licensed hero for the next 14 days.”
“Got it, chief.”
“You, too, Ryota. I’m sure you’ve read the intro material, so you know what to expect.”
“I’m at your disposal, boss.”
Shouto nodded, expression solemn and intense. “No time for orientation today. We’re going to get to do some field work. There’s a villain that we’ve been tracking for the past few hours who just hit a bank uptown and we’re going to wait until he’s out to take him in while he flees. The goal here is to minimize civilian discomfort and damage. You’re going to be taking orders directly from me until I get a chance to introduce you to my sidekicks, ok?” They nodded.
He turned to Ryota. “How fast are you?”
“How… fast? Uh - well, I don’t have wings, but -” he gestured to the rollerblades hanging off one shoulder, velcroed together by their straps. “- you know my quirk makes me a lot faster than most.”
“I guess we’ll test that out. Meet me at the loading dock in five minutes - Tsubasa knows where it is. Be ready to go.”
They both nodded. He couldn’t help himself, he felt a jolt of adrenaline and excitement. His first real mission! His parents never let him go on missions with the PLF. What did he train for all these years if he never got to actually do anything with it? He wanted to fight!
“Got anything to grab in our rooms?” Tsubasa asked as Shoto turned and stalked away, giving out curt orders to his underlings. Ryota, who already had one nice leather oxford off and was toeing off the other, shook his head.
“Lemme get my blades on and we’ll get going, yeah?”
“Do you have anything you want to put away before we go on an actual mission?”
“Nope.”
“Not even your gun?”
“Gun?” Ryota ripped the velcro from his skates apart and hopped on one foot as he shoved the other in. Tsubasa bolstered him with a hand on his shoulder and a flat look. “C’mon, you know Principal Aizawa banned me from using firearms. Despite the fact that everyone else gets support items that are just as dangerous and less useful for their specific quirk. It’d be way out of line for me to bring it, especially to an internship. I know that!”
“Alright,” Tsubasa said, not sounding convinced. “Just don’t get in trouble. Or worse, get someone hurt.”
“Come on, I’m one-quarter of a professional hero, give me some credit,” Ryota said, snapping his other rollerblade on with an easy smile. He wasn’t lying, because he didn’t count lies of omission as real lies. It might be out of line for him to take his tranquilizer rifle with him - broken down into pieces and strapped against the lining underneath his leather jacket - but that wouldn’t stop him from doing it.
Tsubasa shoved her hands in her cargo pants pockets and shrugged massively, her wings moving with her shoulders. “Aight. Let’s get going, then.” She seemed to have made up her mind to perk up and she smiled. “Our first mission!”
“Alright, you lead the way, number one,” Ryota said, clicking his heels to lock his wheels until he needed them.
When they got down to the loading dock, Shouto was already directing his sidekicks out. He looked up briefly when he saw them, like he was mildly annoyed at them for interrupting his workflow. He pointed at Tsubasa without a prelude. “You follow me in the air. You-” he pointed to Ryota- “-if you can’t keep up, you can join the Flaming Sidekicks in the backup ATV.”
He nodded. No way in hell, though. “I’ll keep up.”
Shouto turned to the rest of his team, a half dozen sidekicks, backup tech, and then his interns. “Alright, team, communicators linked up?”
One of the tech people offered Ryota and Tsubasa little communicator earbuds that they popped in. The communicator crackled to life and Ryota heard the tap-tap-tap of an active line.
“Let’s move out.” The big shuttered door was already open and the open ATV next to them roared on, as did Shouto, who shot out the door on a blaze of well-controlled fire. Tsuba took a running stat and vaulted off the edge of the concrete platform that separated the loading dock from street level, wings crackling out as she sped after him and his sidekicks.
And Ryota grumbled in her wake, kicking his wheel locks off and blinking time frozen.
His quirk, as much as he played it up and worked around its limits, was still weak. And not particularly useful in a setting like this. He had some fifteen second increments, maximum, to catch up to his frozen coworkers just using his leg power to skate by.
After a few seconds he started to feel the familiar burn of exertion around his temples from quirk use, faint but getting more annoying as he kept time frozen. He passed the ATV, suspended as it sped around a corner with its inner wheels lifting off the pavement, and past Tsubasa’s shadow above him. Around them, birds were caught in mid-takeoff, people on the sidewalks were frozen halfway through their step, staring dumbly. The only sound in this frozen world was his own panting and the clack-clack of his skates.
Ten seconds, twelve, and he could feel his body vibrate with agitation.
A blink, and time unstuck with a roar of noise and wind.
He was passed, froze time and caught up with the rest of the team, over and over again.
He was keeping up, he noted with pride, blinking in and out of time as soon as he had the energy. Sweat was already prickling down his back, soaking the undershirt underneath his uniform. Because of the constant freezing he was only getting half-sentences through the ear piece at a time, but from what he got, the villain they were chasing was on his way out of a major downtown bank with a pair of hostages in an armored van.
Man, you had to be a special kind of stupid to pull this kind of shit in a Todoroki’s territory. Unless it was a cover for something else, in which case Ryota had to respect the balls, but it was a pretty obvious distraction and likely not worth the risk. The kind of sophomoric villainy that Pops would love to hear about.
Maybe Shouto was thinking the same thing when he ordered his sidekicks to peel off and scout the perimeter while he went right in, his two interns hot on his cold heels.
Ryota used a street-wide slash of ice that Shouto’d laid down on his sprint to skate off of, catching a second of air to clear the top of the cars parked across the wide open square across from the bank. They were really in the middle of the city, caught between thick, almost identical glass and concrete spires. Cars swerved to the side of the narrow streets, people jumped out of the way when they saw them coming. It was so much louder than he was used to, and the idea of simultaneously trying to plan ahead for their actual mission while getting there was a lot to manage.
Alright, alright, so he had to give Pro Heroes some credit. Maybe there was some utility in sending all their little whelps to their special Hero school to run endless search and rescue drills.
Switching between using his ice side and his fire side to propel himself in front of them, Shouto gave them a hand gesture - hang left - and then he bolted to the right across the green square. Lots of civilians, a big fountain, glaringly bright and hot in the summer sun. People staring, yelling. Ryota shot past them, and Tsubasa over them.
“He’s coming out of the back alley towards 4th,” Shouto intoned over their earbuds. “I’ll box him in on 7th in front of the metro stop. Tsubasa, he’s got a projectile quirk, try to scare him into me. Ryota, clear the civilians.”
First, where the fuck was 4th street? Second - was he being serious? Clear the civilians?
Ryota looked up into the bright sky towards his boss, sweat already dripping into his eyes, blinking in affront.
There was no way in hell that he’d done all this training - since he was old enough to walk - they wouldn’t even let him have a gun here - to herd these stupid defenseless cannonfodder sheep! What the hell was he even here for if he was just going to be relegated to the stupidest tasks on the mission?
You’ll be able to come with us when you’re older, his dad always said when he left for a mission and Ryota had a tantrum about wanting to come with. So impatient to put yourself in harm’s way.
Yes, he was impatient. Because he was the best man for the job, and it made sense for him to jump into harm’s way if that’s what needed to be done. He was the best! Conceptually, he understood that every person on a team played a vital role, no matter how small and unimportant it seemed. But in his gut the acid bitterness of frustration still curdled.
Shouto was carving a wave of ice a few stories tall across one side of the square and Tsubasa looped up into the sky on the other side, and Ryota streaked down the middle, quads whining with effort, trying not to hit pigeons and kids.
“He’s peeling out - coming toward us on 3rd now, want me to get him off the road?”
“No, not safe while he still has hostages-”
Ryota heard the sirens before he saw a big black van scream into view from the side of the bank across the park. Shouto threw a swathe of ice in its path, but he was obviously hampered by his concern for the throngs of people in his way. The villain wasn’t nearly as concerned, and only a bank of ice the Pro hero threw down to extend the road kept him from plowing right into the crowd. The van skidded on the ice above them and then over-corrected to drop back down onto the street and keep going.
Jesus fuck, what ever happened to tact, he wanted to say on the comms as he sped towards them, blinking time off for long enough to cover half of the block this time.
“Shouto, let me try to get into the cab with him. I can stop the car-”
“Absolutely not! Get the civilians out of the way!"
Ryota snarled, but over the heads of the throng of people he saw that the shelf of ice that Shouto had used to drive the van harmlessly over the crowd instead of through it was starting to crack under its own weight. A dozen people, at least, were trying to get out of its way, but it was just too crowded, the day too hot.
He heard the crackling of a half ton of ice. So did the people right underneath it. It felt like time was freezing around him without him using his quirk at all. It was too loud for that; he could still hear the sirens and screaming. And then he blinked time off for real.
It was only a few dozen yards but the sidewalk was densely packed, shoulder to shoulder with stiff pedestrians, and Ryota had to slam himself through them, manhandle them, until he was finally under the blue shadow of the huge wave of ice. He wished he had time to stop and take a breath - his ribs were aching from having to gulp down air - but the rest of him ached in the way that told him that he had 3, maybe 4 more seconds of time freezing. Less and less with each use.
Blink, unfreeze, a jarring second of noise dropping around him, blink, freeze, silence.
He grabbed a woman in a sundress, caught in the middle of trying to put her phone away, caught up in getting a photo of Shouto before she realized her danger. He hauled her up by the waist like a mannequin, then, after a split second, grabbed the kid next to her.
Five seconds to get them to safety. Two to slip on a patch of ice and absolutely fucking eating it but get back up again and grabbing an old guy in one arm and a kid about his age in the other and dragging them back.
And then the tingling pressure at his temple became blinding pain that he couldn’t ignore and he felt his quirk slip out of his grasp, this time without him even meaning to. Cut to the blast of screaming.
A deep breath. Jackknife turn. In again. Grab another pair of targets. Don’t look up. Mission first.
Next time time unfroze he heard a deep plangent crack from above them. Everyone that wasn’t running away was staring up, gaping like fishes as the icy roof cracked. Where the hell was Shouto? Wasn’t saving people supposed to be the fucking point of his fucking job?
No time to panic. Keep your head in the mission.
Three more trips, more throwing people around while they were rigid as plywood and accommodating as gym weights. His time was running out, even with how fast his heart was beating he was only getting 15 or 20 heartbeat’s worth of freeze now. Soon it wouldn’t be enough. Every time he used his quirk without resting it got weaker.
He just had to get as many people as he could out from underneath the ice ledge. Maybe if he missed a few it’d be okay, he still saved some lives and that counts - no, no, you can’t settle for good enough no matter how much your body’s screaming at you to stop. You’re going to finish the mission, the entire mission, and finish it strong, he sternly told himself.
He lurched himself back into the shadow, ducking under a chunk of falling ice the size of a sidewalk slab, frozen in mid-fall, razor sharp and glinting in the sun.
And then - there was nobody else. He stood there for a moment in silence, legs shaking, heaving breaths, soaked, looking at the empty street underneath the curl of ice chunks.
People might get cut from the shrapnel, but now nobody would be crushed to death. He looked at the crowd, people that he now felt like he knew intimately.
“Fuck you,” he spat at them.
And then he unfroze time and belatedly remembered to cover his head as the glassy ice shattered, a deafening collision that threw him off his skates. Ice shrapnel flew past him, an immense second impact of cold air. He barely caught himself, plowing into the solid mass of people, saying something that was intended to be apologetic as he pushed off someone to get his footing.
He’d forgotten that his earbud was still live. He hadn’t been able to hear anything over the crowd. “Ryota, report!”
“Nobody crushed,” he wheezed. He had to get back into the action.
At least now that everyone was moving it was easier to push through them, weave and bully through them until he was back on the street and he could take off down the path that the armored van had gone down. All in all it’d only been a minute or so since it’d passed, and Ryota didn’t want to know how long he alone had been at work for. “I’m here for backup. What’d I miss!”
Ah - he followed the char marks sluiced across the glass facades on 3rd street. All the cars were stopped, honking, and he didn’t have any trouble zipping through them. From the intersection ahead he saw a bloom of fire.
“No time, he’s left the van. Save the hostages in there and keep people out of our way.”
Ryota didn’t have time to make a gesture of frustration because he was already at the overturned armored van, smoking and whining in the middle of the intersection. He heard the sound of a fight going on around him, but things were moving too fast for him to follow, and he had a new mission now. He vaulted onto the side of the van facing the bright sky and flung the door open.
“Hello?” He called down, then had to duck out and cough from the wave of acrid smoke. Burned rubber. Cyanotoxins and carcinogenic hydrocarbons, Pops’s voice in his head helpfully supplied. He could feel the heat from the van already starting to burn his knees. Maybe Shouto was trying to smoke the villain out, or maybe the vehicle and the people inside were just casualties of yet another reckless hero battle.
Fuck it. He took a deep breath and froze time.
Fire still burned him when he used his quirk, ice still felt cold. A strange aberration of physics. But he trained with his dad enough to know how to keep himself safe in a fire. He just wished he had his plague mask to filter out the dangerous smoke.
As it was he could hold his breath for long enough to drop down into the body of the car and grope blindly between the front seats, half crawling into the back of the cab. Two hostages? Was he remembering that right? He couldn’t remember. But letting one of them roast back here in the blistering heat like a dumpling would look really bad on his record. At least letting a civilian get crushed by ice felt like a passive incident.
Finally his fingers brushed soft fabric instead of burning hot pleather and he groped, grabbed, and found himself holding a suited arm. It was impossible to see through the thick curtain of black smoke, so he braced himself sideways in the front seats and hauled a body out from between them.
Not only was his quirk starting to fail, but his lungs were, too - he jammed the wheels of the skates into the center console and stuck his head out of the oven, unfreezing time just to gasp a deep breath of half-smoke and half simmering hot air before refreezing and going back under. If he inhaled too much smoke, he’d pass out and suffocate.
In the second that he’d paused time, whoever he’d pulled out had dropped to the side of the cab resting against the street. But he couldn’t worry about that right now. He plunged back into the back seat, eyes burning and tearing, slipping awkwardly. Fine, he’d go all in - hauling himself all the way back instead of just reaching, he found a person-shaped lump jammed in the footwell.
He grabbed a limb, yanked, throwing his weight back to scramble the second hostage into the front of the cab. As he tried to brace his foot on the headrest, though the wheels gave way and he fell back and lost his grip. He had to bolt after the man to keep him from sliding back against the door in the unseeable darkness.
Two accounted for, now it was just time to get them out before they cooked!
As soon as he unfroze time - fuck it, he’d have to breathe a little smoke - the back of the truck’s cab went up in flames, shooting out between the front two seats where Ryota was hanging on.
“Fuck!” he yelped, wasting good air, instinctively activating his quirk. He hadn’t been able to see the inciting smolder through the smoke
One day their family would fulfill their mission to bend the world to their will. Hiro would rule the world, a new world without the need for heroes or villains, and Ryota would be his devoted lieutenant, his right hand. And surely his brothercousin would allow him certain favors, especially if they aligned with their mission. In that situation Ryota would take great pleasure in erasing Shouto’s quirk, chaining him up and letting him slowly broil to death in a metal coffin, choking on the smoke from his own burning flesh. Dad would probably love to watch, too. See if the asphyxiation or the heat got dear old Uncle Shouto first.
That was what he was thinking as he tried to smash the front window, failed, and then hauled the two hostages out of the door the way that he had come in. He had to carry them directly up and out on one paltry lungful of air with an explosion blooming behind him, and all because Shouto didn’t seem to care about collateral damage.
Once they were all out he flung them to the side of the van, but he couldn’t stop there. He could hear the sizzling of skin on hot metal, and he grabbed them again - two men in the remains of suits - and dragged them off of the van, barely able to support them down the ten-foot drop to the glass strewn street. Breaking their necks while time was frozen would still break them in real life.
He was so preoccupied he didn’t notice his time run out until it was taken from him, and the scene suddenly sprung into life.
The van shook with the massive explosion inside. The fire must have reached the carburetor, and oh, shit, they were on the underside of the van, which was also where the carburetor was; he grabbed one man by the collar and one by the leg and stumblingly dragged them away as the body of the armored van shook, the machinery on the underside cracking and spewing out fire and pieces of metal. But they were out of the way of the worst of it.
Ryota’s vision was spotting and blurring from lack of air and he took a few deep breaths, knees wobbly. Were they alive, at least? God, it’d been years since he’d last done CPR.
He knelt down. Both of the hostages were unrecognizably soot-blackened. Pressing an ear to one of their mouths he heard a faint rasp of breath. It was the internal burns that would do the most damage if they were still alive at this point, he thought, and there was nothing he could do about that now.
The other guy’s hands were tied behind his back, and Ryota fumbled for his pocketknife on his utility belt and cut them off. He groaned as Ryota rolled him back, gingerly, so as to minimize the scratches from the glass littering the street. He could see the glint from his eyes and knew they were open - so he wasn’t shuffling off the mortal coil yet. And he didn’t even have to do mouth-to-mouth!
“It’s okay,” Ryota said, looming over him, dripping sweat onto the tattered remnants of his nice shirt. “I’ve got you.”
Distantly he noticed that his hand was trembling from adrenaline as he patted the man’s sooty cheek. He stared up at Ryota, wheezing as he started to come to a little more. “Just lay right here for me while we finish things up, ‘kay? You got pretty roughed up. Take a breather.”
Maybe he tried to say something, but Ryota was already on his feet again. And fuck it if he was going to ask Shouto for directions this time. He’d already made him run enough civilian errands while Tsubasa got to go on a little aerial joyride this whole time, and he owed Ryota an actual fight.
He must have lost his earbud back in the car. He looked over his shoulder at the flaming van with dismay.
Well - he could just follow the sound of fighting.
It was a little like tracking someone in the woods around the Villa, except not at all like it. He used to spend hours out in the forest with his father practicing sniping, getting to know the noise and feel of the land. Here in the city he felt simultaneously claustrophobic and exposed, like he was splayed out on a dissection table without anywhere to hide. There was noise everywhere, sirens, yelling things falling, and it was hard to single out the sound of wingbeats.
He craned his neck, looking up. Where Tsuba was, he could probably find Shouto, and the fight.
After a few breaths of staring, looking for anything - he saw a flash of motion between the buildings ahead of him. Shouto skidding into the street on the next block in a plume of fire, then turning and going back the way he came. Ryota grinned, activated his quirk and took off after him.
As he skated, a shadow overtook him. He glanced up again, slowing down, and realized that he was underneath an aerial chase.
Some mechanical setup, a pair of metal glider wings with an engine that someone was hanging off of, was flipping through the air with dizzying spins, as Tsubasa careened after it. Ryota put his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun, and in an instant they were past him, streaking down the street before they both rose up into the air like a rollercoaster.
Well - there was no way that he could have a chance to follow them in the air, he thought, wrinkling his nose.
But the steel valley on either side of his vision caught his attention and he slowly looked up to the buildings that cradled the ruined street. Huh. He spent hours on the roof of the Villa with Hiro pretending to shoot the birds up there…
He heard the unmistakable noise of Shouto’s sidekicks arriving in the ATV behind him. He had to make a decision fast; stay here and let himself get swept up into the faceless mass of Shouto groupies, or finish his self-given mission.
Hardly a decision at all. He bolted to the long glass doors that led into the lobby of the high-rise next to him, freezing time to slide past the front desk - hah, these floors were fucking slippery! - and calmly punching the elevator button over and over again until it opened.
The cool, crisp air in here was a relief. He probably looked like absolute shit, sweating and steaming, and he punched the button for the top floor compulsively even as the elevator started to rise. There was lo-fi music gently playing. He bounced on his heels a little bit, and then reached underneath his leather jacket to where the components of his stun gun were carefully strapped.
Just two parts, the barrel and the stock. And then the leg pocket of his jumpsuit for the little plastic box with the tranquilizer darts. One day he’d earn the quirk eraser bullets, but this was good practice.
By the time the doors slid open noiselessly he already had his gun reassembled and loaded and he shot out like a bullet. The more time he wasted getting a good sightline, the less likely that there would still be anything for him to do. He estimated that he had a minute, maybe. He was definitely on a utility floor, no decoration, just bare tiles and exposed vents. After a few seconds, he found a fire escape map on the wall, and that led him to the door that led to the roof on the next hallway over.
Of course it was locked, but a long lock pin from Uncle Irinaka and a solid bump from the butt of the gun made short work of the locking mechanism, and he jogged up the stairs to the roof.
The gleaming sun made his eyes smart - would he even be able to get a good shot in these conditions?
Well, he had to find his target first.
He set up at the edge of the building overlooking the street. Oh, god, his stomach plummeted when he looked down. Just like he would if he fell off right now. He peeked over the edge again, then pulled back and got his kit set up. He was not meant for high altitudes, he decided. It made him queasy. The heat made it even worse.
Everything below him, the whole marathon obstacle course he’d just gone through, was far enough away to look like toys. Unimportant, distant. Maybe that was part of why Tsubasa was so mind-bogglingly passive. It was hard to care too much about anything from this far away.
As if on cue he heard the roar of engines and wingbeats and he crouched down behind the cement and metal banister. Perfect timing. He snapped the safety off of his gun and tried to gauge the exact point when the sound of the chase was the most deafeningly loud above him, and then he took a steadying breath and activated his quirk.
Quick and efficient, he pivoted and stood up, bracing his non-dominant arm on the banister. Across and a little below him, suspended like wind chimes, Tsubasa and Shouto were giving chase to the villain in a mechanical flight suit. Tsubasa was almost caught up, Shouto trailing behind on a thin bridge of ice running alongside the building. Ryota squinted. The villain had a dumb little old-fashioned aviator helmet and goggles. A sliver of skin gleamed between the nape of the helmet and his costume. He had one hand in the big bag strapped to his chest, reaching for something he’d never have a chance to grab.
Even at a distance and a bad angle, this was like shooting fish in a barrel. There was almost no sport in it. But if the game was easy, then there was no excuse for doing poorly. His father would be ashamed if he was anything except immaculate in his form and aim.
A click - standing tripod form - and then the muted thwip of the bullet leaving the barrel. Ryota squinted up, making sure that he didn’t overshoot or hit some piece of machinery instead of flesh.
It looked like he’d hit the villain in the neck, as intended. With luck the empty bullet would fall off and disappear into the general wreckage and nobody would be any wiser for it.
He turned a little, then, to Tsubasa. She’d turned the fire of her wings on, providing extra propulsion in their high-speed chase. She didn’t use her fire quirk all that often, since she had to carry those huge wings around all the time and learning to navigate around them monopolized her training. Framed as she was in furious red and gold light, arm outstretched to grab, muscles straining and glimmering with sweat, she almost looked competent.
It would be a shame if she had a little fall, he thought, rubbing his tired finger idly on the trigger. She was so used to effortlessly gliding. Might do her some good to fail.
It would be suspicious, though, he conceded. It would have to be looked into, and someone would find the tranq bullet and trace it back to him. And what kind of psychopath would shoot their friend out of the air for amusement? Not one that really wanted to be a hero. He blinked as the exhausted tingle of quirk exhaustion started dancing around his temples, and then he sat down under the banister where he couldn’t be seen and let time slip back out of his hands as he started breaking down his gun.
From the other side he heard the violent fwoom of fire and a startled yelp, and then a lot of other noises. He grinned. Got it in one. Father would’ve been proud.
As soon as he was sure that he wouldn’t be seen, he snapped the pieces back into the lining of his jacket in their special little straps and stood up. Ugh, he was sweaty. And grimy! Why Hiro would want to do this in any capacity honestly baffled him. If Ryota had his druthers, Hiro would be comfortably established as the head of the PLF making executive decisions from a safe distance while Ryota and their men did all the legwork.
On his way down he was now at liberty to enjoy the air conditioning and the nice expensive lobby. He ambled out of the building, the hair around his face whipping around with the blast of cold air from inside. Around him the city was stunned, still holding its breath, and the complaints of his body started to come back to him in increments.
He couldn’t remember ever pushing his quirk this hard before, even at UA. His head throbbed, as did his knee from where he hit it underneath the ice ledge, his throat hurt from the smoke. Some of Shouto’s other sidekicks were on the scene helping to usher civilians away, and Ryota leaned against the side of the building trying to catch his breath.
“You! You hero!”
After a second where his brain connected that epithet to himself he turned.
Down the road, past Shouto perfunctorily arresting the limp villain, some guy in a sport coat was making a bid for Ryota’s attention while the sidekicks were occupied. He watched as the man and the two camera crewmen trailing after him ran up to him, not bothering to try to meet them halfway. Behind them, Shuto didn’t seem to notice.
“What can I help you with?” He asked, trying to sap as much venom out of it as he could as it left his mouth.
“You’re the sidekick who saved the mayor from that burning van, correct?” He yelled, pointing down the street to where the armored van lay like a wounded beast. There was a big fuck-off camera aimed right at Ryota’s face and a dangling microphone just above it. Huh, the mayor? He couldn’t tell with all the smoke, even if he knew who the mayor of Mustafu was.
“Shouto’s intern,” he admitted, taking deeper breaths than he needed, running a hand through his half-undone braid. Look down, humble but mostly tired, swallow, look up through his eyelashes. “This was our first day, and I - is he okay? Was anyone else hurt?”
“You really made quite the save, young man! A few seconds later and he would have been done for!”
Yeah, absolutely crazy how Shouto almost killed the mayor of his god damned city, he thought! “So he’s alive?”
“Thanks to Shouto, and thanks to you, nobody’s been seriously injured. Even with all of the damage to the city, everyone is okay!”
“Irinaka!” He heard Shouto call.
Ryota looked over. The two blocks between them and the square in front of the bank was a disaster zone. He looked at the reporters and the camera and shot them a little self conscious shoulder-shrugging smile. Made sure to crinkle his eyes so it looked believable. “Well, that’s really all I wanna hear,” he said. “Sorry, I gotta go. Sorry if I roughed anyone up! I did my best!”
And he unlocked his skates and clacked over to Shouto, who was manhandling the half-conscious villain into police custody. He fixed his two-colored gaze on Ryota as he braked.
“Hey! Are you guys okay? That was incredible!” Ryota exclaimed. God, everything in his body was starting to hurt. But he scraped up the dregs of his energy to put on a brilliant smile. “I think I got everyone out of the way…”
Shouto wiped sodden bangs from the scarred side of his face. He was hard to read. Ryota hoped that he wasn’t laying it on too thick. Squinting, he looked up, seeing Tsubasa circling down to meet them.
“... It looks like you did. Even in less than ideal circumstances.” He gave Ryota an appraising look. “You undersold your speed.”
“It’s situational.” Less than ideal? He’d file that quip away for the Todoroki Shouto Iron Bull Torture Coffin Special.
“Then you were the right hero for the situation.” He looked over at the reporters that Ryota’d been talking to. “You’re going to have your name in tomorrow’s papers, I hope you’re prepared for the notoriety this kind of thing is going to get you into.”
You’re welcome, he sneered internally. He shrugged. “If people want to see this ugly face in the news then that’s on them. Speaking of ug - hey, Tsubasa! Hero of the moment”
A gust of hot air preceded his classmate’s landing, her wings churning around until she was going slowly enough to perch with a crunch of shattered glass. The two winced at the cloud of dust and sparks she kicked up, even though her wings were already extinguished.
“Hey, you guys okay? Irinaka?”
Ryota shot her a thumbs-up. “Hey, turn your wings off all the way!”
“They are off! They’re just smoldering!”
“Sure, sure, look at that, whaddya call that-”
“That’s smolder, you-”
“Behave, both of you!” Shouto said sternly. “There’s cleanup work to do here. And paperwork after that. Even though you both made it today, you each have a lot to improve on. No place for banter.”
“Sorry, Shouto.”
“Sorry, boss...”
“Don’t call me ‘boss.’ Shouto will suffice.”
“Sorry, Shouto…”
The hot-and-cold hero regarded the mess from the wake of their fight; multistory arcs of ice, char marks slashed across buildings all down the block, a cacophony of honks and sirens. Downed power lines and traffic jams. Police and sidekicks were ushering civilians back into their buildings or around debris in the road.
“I’ll assign you to a sidekick to help with the cleanup effort and go to the precinct to fill out the booking paperwork. I’m sure my people will put you two to good use. Remember - cleanup is 99% of a hero’s job.”
Ryota scratched his chin, looking out at the glass glinting on the street. Fine, fine, he was used to scutwork.
“And I’ll let them know to let you off before 5 so you can go home and wash up for dinner. Irinaka, you’re welcome to join us for family dinner night at my father’s home, if you want. My sister’s a good cook and the family always enjoys meeting UA students.”
“Oh! I mean…” Hah! This was too easy! “I wouldn’t want to impose, of course…”
“C’mon, you wouldn't be imposing! You can finally meet my family for the first time. Besides Uncle Shouto, of course.” Tsubasa draped an arm over his shoulders. “It’s not like you have anything else planned. You packed some nice clothes, right?”
“Yeah, come on, what kind of scrub do you take me for? You know I love a suit moment! I will literally never not have a suit!”
“I didn’t know, you packed so light, I thought you just brought underwear and a hairbrush.”
“I packed efficiently, Todoroki, ee-fish-ent-“ and Shouto had already left them to reenact their daily repartee in peace.
Several hours, a lobby cafe espresso and a vigorous shower later.
He had some scrapes from flying glass and ice, and the beginnings of some truly nasty bruises, but those were all hidden. On the outside he looked pristine, and the outside was the only thing that mattered.
Ryota looked more like a Kurono than a Todoroki by far. He got Chrono’s sharp minnow-shaped eyes, his high cheekbones and delicate chin. In his economy of movement and his sniper skills, and his single minded love and dedication for his brother-leader, he was indubitably of yakuza extraction. In everything else, though - that was all Dabi. The white hair and electric blue eyes, the theatrical flair and the wide, deep malicious streak.
He tried to play it up to visit the other side of his family. Bright blue shirt and braid tastefully messy. Black leather shoes with silver clips. He was giddy with excitement, but he couldn't show it.
“Aw, you clean up nice.” Tsubasa said when he slipped into the back seat of Shouto’s car next to her.
“It’s literally just a black version of our school uniform.”
“Fine, I was trying to be nice. You look terrible, I can’t be seen with you. My parents are gonna think I’m a loser bringing you home from UA.”
“Oh, they already know,” Ryota said, saccharine, buckling in. “Thanks for driving us, Shouto!”
“Please don’t argue. I get enough of that with Fuyumi’s kids.”
“It’s loving banter, I promise. It’s how kids talk to each other these days, right, Todoroki?”
“90% of it is a joke. The rest of it is tough love.”
“Aww, Tsuba-chan, how rude.”
“Someone has to keep you from getting too big-headed, everyone else in 1A is part of the Irinaka Ryota fan club except me and your brother. And he doesn’t count.”
Ryota snorted, but he didn’t care enough to respond to that except to acknowledge that he was absolutely winning at infiltration, something that was reasonable to desire and possible to achieve.
They skirted around downtown Mustafu and made their way into the suburbs, the quiet, geometric streets with sleepy trees hanging over them like storm clouds. It was getting a little dark and people were starting their commute home around them. Shouto put on some inoffensive music. It would probably be weird to be taken to his boss’s family’s place for dinner if he weren’t part of the yakuza, but he understood what it meant when all your business was family business.
The Todoroki house emerged at the end of one of the residential streets. He knew that that was what it was because it was the biggest, and the most centrally located, and of course that would be Endeavor’s house. He could just see the sweeping gables above the traditional wall surrounding the property.
“Nice,” Ryota whistled appreciatively as they got out. “You grew up here?”
“Yeah,” Tsubasa said, a little sheepish. “The ol’..... house.”
Shouto keyed in the door code and they wandered onto the grounds, beautifully and traditionally manicured with bijou little round stones and fountains and some big old trees. Ryota stared at it all. He wanted to etch this into his memory, every second. This was the home of his father and his father’s father, the primordial ooze that Dabi had emerged from, dyed black and laughing mad. It felt like a horror movie set even in its secluded peace.
Shouto knocked on the front door.
“It looks like Fuyumi’s here, I saw her car.” Tsubasa offered. “I hope that means dinner’s ready soon.”
Shouto nodded. “Mhm. I hope Hawks didn’t try to help with the cooking this time.”
The doorknob clicked as it unlocked and the door opened, and they all looked down at the little black haired kid staring up at them.
“Uncle Shouto! Tsuba!” the kid threw the door.
“Hello, Kido, thank you for letting us in.”
“Come on, we’re in the kitchen.” And he ran back into the house, into the warm glow.
“My sister Fuyumi’s kid,” Tsubasa explained as she ushered Ryota in before her, after Shouto. “She’s married to Ingenium’s older brother.”
Oh, the erstwhile Ingenium, he almost said. The artist formerly known as Ingenium. He’d heard all about Stain’s exploits from Aunt Toga, and the now cruelly de-legged speed hero had a notable walk-on role. “Cute,” he said instead. “The eyebrows give it away.”
There were voices and the sound of chopping and things sizzling inside and he followed Shouto, but his eyes darted all over the place. The broad plain entryway with its excruciatingly traditional setup and decoration. The mix of antique minimalist furniture and chintzy little souvenirs and pictures. The lack of scorch marks but the preponderance of scuffs and scratches between ankle and shoulder height.
“Hey everyone, sorry we’re late,” Shouto announced. “Work.”
“You’re just in time!” Someone called out. “You beat Natsuo, and he didn’t even send us a courtesy text.”
“Boo, hiss, all the kids out saving lives instead of making it to family dinner on time.” That was Hawks. Ryota recognized fake charisma when he heard it.
Shouto ushered Ryota to stand next to him, facing the kitchen full of Todorokis. “This is Irinaka Ryota, my other intern this break.”
Standing in the back, leaning against one of the counters, Endeavor. Sitting at the kitchen counter with a double-old-fashioned, Hawks. The axes of evil. Ex-Ingenium, in his wheelchair, and the Todoroki daughter at the stove, turning to look at him. He raised a hand and put on his most winning smile.
“Thank you all for inviting me,” Ryota said in his best sheepish voice. “I wish I wasn’t empty-handed.”
“Hey dads!” Tsubasa popped her head over his shoulder. “I told you all about Ryota, right? The one with the brother.”
“Hey,” Hawks drawled. “Nice to finally meetcha.”
“Hello, Ryota!” Fuyumi said, putting down her spoon and giving him an angelic smile. “It’s so nice to meet you! We were all a little worried that Tsuba would be the odd one out at UA, so it was so nice to find out that she has friends.”
“Fu yumi …”
“The food smells really good!” Ryota grinned. “What can I help out with?”
“Oh, nothing right now, I’ll put everything on to steam once we decide if we’re waiting for Natsuo and his wife to show up. My older brother, he’s an ER physician with his wife, they do a lot of overtime.”
“Everyone’s in public service in this family, huh?” Ryota asked. He knew that already. He practically knew these peoples’ social security numbers and blood types. “Can I grab a water, then?”
“The cups are right behind dad.” She pointed.
Endeavor was fixing an intense flashfire stare on him from the other side of the kitchen.
Even rounding the curve of 60 years old he was still one hell of a presence. Tall enough that Ryota’s eyes were about nipple height, and he was pretty tall for his age. His trademark red hair was graying tastefully at the temples. Gravity was starting to take a toll on his face, cleaving it with wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and between his brows. He’d look kind of haggard if it weren’t for the muscle and the designer sweater and slacks.
He was just some guy.
Ryota was… disappointed, somehow.
He was still staring at Ryota like he was trying to unleash hitherto unexpressed telekenetic fire powers. Ryota smiled again, cocking his head a little. Oh, god, he hoped that he wasn't preparing to give him the shovel talk regarding his youngest daughter. “And you’re… Endeavor. Thank you for having me over to your home.”
“Please. Call me Enji.” He leaned forward a bit, then took a glass out of the cabinet behind him and handed it to Ryota. “Where are you from, Irinaka Ryota?”
“Shiga Prefecture,” he lied casually. “Mountain town. I don’t know how well I’m gonna be able to adapt to city work, but if we ever do an away mission in a forest somewhere I’ll turn back into a backwoods hick.”
“Hm.”
“Yeah, I’m glad I get a chance to try working downtown. I want to learn how to work wherever I’m needed, y’know?” He shrugged, flipping the tap on and pouring himself some lukewarm water. Tsubasa was talking to her sister and brother-in-law behind him, but he couldn’t care less about that. “But god, it’s busy. And it’s so loud! I don’t know how you all hear each other talk. And I dropped my little ear thingy on the job today like a trainee. You worked here your whole life, right?”
“Mm. The house has been in the family for generations.”
Ryota hm -ed politely, looking around. “Your ancestors got top of the line kitchen electronics, huh. Very prescient.” He took a sip of water.
“Mm.” Unamused.
A moment passed. Then several. Oh, no. This was starting to get awkward. Endeavor, the giant shadow cast over his history, the cancer that had spread through every member of their family, was not only just some guy, he was just some guy who was really, really bad at holding a conversation. Ryota could kick himself with joy.
“Soooo, one son in medicine, one in heroism…”
“Fuyumi’s a teacher.”
“Aw, cute! She only got that one kid or are there others hiding around?
“The baby’s upstairs asleep.”
“Hah, how do you remember all these kids… it’s funny, me and Hiro, it was the opposite with us. We’ve got twenty uncles and aunts and then it was just us two for the longest time.” He looked off thoughtfully. “I’m trying to remember what Tsubasa said. It’s just the three original Todoroki kids, right?”
Maybe it was heavy handed, but it was worth it to see the brief flash of emotion pass through Endeavor’s face, tugging at the scar that covered one half. He gathered himself almost instantly.
“It’s just them. And then Tsubasa was born later.”
“Wow, I feel like I need a chart.”
Endeavor grunted, but he didn’t seem offended. A fuss from the other side of the room announced that the final Todoroki had arrived, drawing all the attention. Ryota excused himself and slipped away from Endeavor, not wanting to look like he was monopolizing all his time with the Todoroki patriarch. Besides, now that all the players were here, he could start observing.
As the family greeted Natsuo and his wife, the ripples of the family dynamics started to build. They were all friendly, of course, but they moved around each other the way skin would pull at an old scar. Fuyumi was full of hypercompensatory joy and light, but her eyes still darted around nervously, like a rabbit on the lookout for the fox, making sure everything was in order. Natsuo was affectionate towards his sister, but even a passing glance showed how he held his father at arm’s length; his step-father doubly so.
Shouto ran just below the radar, clearly adept at keeping out of things. Still, his eyes would linger too long after interactions, calculating, waiting for the shoe to drop. And Tsubasa, for all that Ryota had thought her oblivious in general, also had a crease of worry in her eyes as her family began to talk about the trivialities of their days.
It was perfect.
“Well - since we’re all here, why don’t we start eating?” Fuyumi announced, clapping her hands together. Finally, Ryota was getting hungry. He’d probably burned off half of his body weight that afternoon.
He let the family shuffle around the big table in the dining room, grabbing two serving platters with Fuyumi and making noises about how he wanted to help out before taking the last unoccupied seat between his classmate and Iida’s wheelchair at the end of the table. It was a tight fit, just like back at home with all his uncles, but a lot less convivial.
As soon as they all got to the table the dibsing began from the sons.
“Hey, Iida, can you pass the unadon? I’ve been smelling it since we got here, and-”
“Unadon? Wow, is it a special occasion?”
“Please make sure to leave some for the interns…”
“It’s family dinner, it’s always a special occasion! And - careful with the soup, Hawks, it’s still hot -”
“Ah, shit, haha, this isn’t really a potholder household, is it-”
Ryota looked around, seeing that he wasn’t being watched, and then activated his quirk again. With a soft crackle of energy the scene around him froze, chopsticks in the air, mouths open. He peered around Tsubasa’s wings to see Endeavor at the head of the table, arms crossed, Hawks next to him with a big dumb grin and a ladle spilling suspended broth.
He stood up, reached delicately over Natsuo’s wife’s arm, and served himself a few pieces of whatever he could reach. Some dumplings, extra rice… Wasn’t this more civilized!
He felt his grasp on his quirk slipping, and he sat back down with his plate harder than necessary so that he could snap time back again. As expected, nobody had been watching him to note that he’d shifted pose and position minutely, or had a nice plate of food without having to undergo the indignant obstacle course that the dinner spread presented. Huh, not a bad display from his suck-up peacekeeper aunt, he thought, the food looked good.
“You want some - oh, you got it already.”
“Lemme pass it to Iida, here - ah, sorry,” Ryota said, faux-accidentally bumping Tsubasa as he passed a plate on to Iida sitting next to him at the end of the table.
“No problem,” Tsuba said, her strong grip never wavering. “It’s what happens at a packed table.”
“Yeah, for real,” Ryota said, ducking under her arm to grab a bun that he hadn’t been able to reach before. “Not even sure how we’re fitting this many people here.”
“This isn’t even the whole family,” Tsubasa said, finally having delivered the serving plate without incident. “You should see this place at Christmas.”
“What? More in-laws and babies hiding in the woodwork?”
Across from them, Natsuo huffed. “No more in-laws. Unless Shouto finally has something to announce.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Fuyumi said, leaning in towards their conversation with a tone of lighthearted ribbing, sharing a look with Iida next to her. “Haven’t I seen on the tabloids covers at the supermarket that you have a special someone? When are you going to bring her around?
Shouto scoffed and looked away, but just a hint of pink dusted his face on his ice side. “Please don’t bring up tabloids.”
“Ooh, juicy gossip?” Ryota asked, leaning conspiratorially towards Fuyumi. “Who do they say is the lucky lady?”
“Depends which one you believe,” Fuyumi said with a wink.
“Don’t pay any attention to those,” Natsuo said. “Shouto should know better than to get our family involved in something so high visibility.”
Something twitched in Shouto’s expression; the most subtle tick, a bit of hurt, a bit of guilt. He didn’t react though, emanating an air of indifference. The youngest brother, the one used to laying low.
“Come on, 'high visibility is part of the job when you're a top Pro, right?” Ryota asked, dragging the topic back to center stage before it could fade. “Who is it in the rumors? Another hero?” It was a calculated shot. If it was wrong, it was just playing into the playful banter. If it wasn’t…
Shouto still didn’t meet his siblings’ eyes. “Don’t encourage them,” he sighed, no heat in his voice, but with just enough ice that it seemed as if there was something deeper to his request to let it lie.
“You don’t need to make it sound so dire, Natsuo,” Fuyumi chided. “We’re just poking fun.”
“I’m just saying, it’s bad enough hearing the rumors from other heroes, but now everyone at my work is talking about it, too. I had a patient ask about my brother’s sordid love life last week. It’s not like we need that kind of publicity all over again…”
The conversation at the other end of the table hushed a bit, as others seemed to catch on to what was being discussed.
“All over again?” Ryota stage whispered, directing his question to Tsubasa but knowing the others would hear.
“Shouto’s right,” Endeavor spoke up from the head of the table. “We shouldn’t put such stock in such puerile rumors.”
Natsuo snorted bitterly. “Yeah, because the tabloids have been so wrong in the past about a newly divorced hero hooking up with a coworker…”
Hawks side-eyed Natsuo, admirably keeping his tongue in check, but Shouto’s head snapped up at that.
Uravity, Ryota mouthed, testing a hunch. It wasn’t a leap. The Uravity/Deku divorce scandal had been the biggest drama of the past year. Decade, even.
Shouto pulled the napkin from his lap, leaning forward to Natsuo. “I’m going to say this once. I saw the tabloid covers too, but I thought at least my family wouldn’t fall for this nonsense. I am not dating Uraraka,” he said, each word seeming deliberately picked, the subtle blush not abating in the slightest. “We’re friends from back at UA, and that’s all.”
Ryota pressed his lips together to keep from smiling; it seemed that favoring lies of omission was a family trait after all. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that it took two people to get a divorce, and that meant two opportunities for an unfortunate third party to get roped in.
“I don’t care,” Natsuo said, despite his wife placing a placating hand on his shoulder. “But I just thought that after everything we went through when the media found out about Endeavor, you wouldn’t get anywhere near that situation!”
“So I’m not supposed to talk to my friends anymore? To protect my family’s honor?”
“Well, it would be a nice change of pace if someone in this family cared about our reputation.”
“I’m sorry it’s inconveniencing you and your lack of a reputation, Natsuo, but I have just as much of a right as you to conduct my personal life how I want. You and Endeavor are alread-”
“Enough!” Endeavor boomed, slamming a fist on the table. Everyone around it flinched.
Ryota made eye contact with Natsuo’s mousey wife, raising his eyebrows a little and then looking down to his plate.
“Enough,” the former Number One Hero said again, quieter and gruff. “Let’s just have dinner.” And then, like getting each word extracted from his mouth like teeth, “The food is delicious, Fuyumi. Thank you.”
Oh my god, he hoped that it was like this every dinner. It was even better than he could have hoped.
Fuyumi took a deep breath, microexpressions flitting across her face before she settled on a desperately banal smile. “So, Tsuba-chan, Ryota, you went to that big public break-in with Shouto today?”
Tsubasa blinked and then settled on taking a bite before answering. “Yeah. It was, uh, a lot more intense than at school. We got the bad guy in the end but he had us flying after him for, like, ten minutes.”
“He could fly?”
“That was the part that took us by surprise. We knew he could levitate and shoot random little objects, but he built this mechanical setup to levitate himself. It was pretty smart. Shouto wasn’t prepared.”
“But he was, wasn’t he, he had you!”
Ryota politely ate. One always admired people that overcame the burden of their quirks to actually do something novel, through their own ingenuity and hard work. God forbid Hero society let that stand, though; no, they had to crush down those tender shoots of human advancement before the world realized that superpowers were only as superior as the people using them.
“Yeah, and Ryota to help clean up after us. He saved the mayor from the getaway van right before it blew up.”
“Really!”
Ryota made a self-effacing noise through a strategic mouthful of food. “Didn’t know it was him.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Iida said from next to him. Oh, shit, was it rude to talk about heroics in front of the former ingenium? Well. Too late. He had a wistful smile, like he was living vicariously through them. “You would’ve saved him either way. There’s videos of it online already. You’re bouncing around out there, zapping people out of harm’s way… you’ve got a special quirk.”
“It’s not super speed, but it does the job.” A smile, and then a falter, pretending just now to realize who he was talking to. Just as he intended, a shadow flicked over Iida’s face before settling into a mild, wistful smile. “I mean - it’s just that that’s what everyone thinks that my quirk is. When they see it. I think your brother mixed them up and tried to recruit me.”
“Tenya would’ve been lucky to have you.”
“Aw, stop it, you’re gonna spoil me! But if you want to remind Shouto of that, I'm not gonna stop you, haha..”
As he glanced over the table, he found himself meeting Hawks’s gaze. With Endeavor talking to Shouto now in low, terse tones, the old Winged Hero was regarding Ryota with a sort of off-putting clinicality, head perched on the palm of his hand. Unlike the rest of the Todorokis, as shallow and dull as an ice cube, Hawks had a spark of sense left. Had Ryota started off too strong, causing all that trouble? Ruffled some feathers?
Ryota held his gaze, letting his words trail off for just a second. He let his face go blank, turning off his facade for just a microsecond. An expression that professional assassin Hawks could understand. And then he instantly popped on his usual 10,000 kilowatt grin. Hawks didn’t return it.
He turned back to Iida and plunged back into the conversation at full, blinding enthusiasm. If anyone noticed the half-second standoff, they didn’t comment on it, and he handily steered the conversation back to family business to get a little more gossip.
“I’m gonna run to the bathroom,” Ryota whispered to Tsubasa after a few more minutes. He’d gotten some nice information to chew on for one night, he felt like he could slip away and let Tsubasa continue to recount her own perspective on her glorious field trip. He had a little side quest of his own.
He had maybe five minutes, he calculated. He didn’t have a real mission or a game plan or anything, this was purely for his own curiosity and edification. He padded back towards the front door to give himself the plausible deniability of having gotten lost in the maze of rooms, but then lingered in one of the side rooms adjoining what looked like the living room.
Here it was quiet, the sounds of voices muffled by rows and rows of traditional paper screens and painted walls. This little room, night-dark, lightly peopled. No clothes thrown over the low couch or books or papers spread out on the table. No scuff marks from feathers on the wall. It even smelled stale and still, like incense. Ah - a butsudan, that would explain it. Ryota smiled, gently running his hands over the lacquer before sliding them down to undo the clasp and open the shrine up.
It was hard to see what was inside, it was so dark. Just a yawning black hole cut into the fabric of the room. He reached his fingers in, tentatively, groping. He didn’t know what he expected to find.
In this house so heavy with Touya Todoroki’s memories, it felt like he was reaching his hand into an animal trap. It springs shut and he’s trapped here, and has to start chewing pieces off like dear old dad in order to escape the stifling stale air, the universally known and unacknowledged family secrets, the parlor-game charade of family life -
The light came on. Ryota winced.
“What are you doing here?” Endeavor’s voice boomed. Ryota turned, heart catching.
“Oh! Uh-” Well, hm, this was actually a bit of an incriminating situation, wasn’t it. He pitched his voice quiet, looking down, embarrassed. “Sorry, sorry! I was just looking for the bathroom, and then I saw… Your butsudan was open. I thought it should be closed if you weren’t… sorry.”
Endeavor closed the distance between them in a few big strides and Ryota felt all the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He moved like a predator despite his size. Big hands settled above Ryota’s on the open doors of the butsudan. It wasn’t his best excuse, Ryota thought hastily, but it was hard to come up with a good lie when you were caught red-handed.
Instead of slamming the doors closed, though, Endeavor hesitated. They both looked into the butsudan.
There was the usual collection of incense and mementos, and… a picture that looked like all of Ryota’s baby photos merged into one. A boy with dandelion-fluff white hair, trying his best to look proper for a photo. He looked so smooth, so very young and soft, just a baby. Not at all like his father, the professional killer. Sweet. Sad.
He looked to Endeavor, opened his mouth to ask about it, then closed it, making sure his grandfather could see that he had questions but was too polite to ask them. The former hero’s eyes were fixed on the photo, though. Ryota followed his gaze.
“Our oldest. He’s not with us anymore.”
His voice was low and ragged. Ryota was elated. Yes! Tell him more about his oldest son. Where did he go? How did he die, grandpa? How did you kill him, and in what ways? Tell me everything. I deserve to know.
“I’m sorry.” Ryota wouldn’t exist if Endeavor hadn’t murdered his son. He couldn’t be too sorry. He was giddy, high on getting him to admit his one great failure. Heroes, those festering abscesses of society, needed to be lanced and drained and Ryota was the terrible sterile needle plunging in to let the pus and blood run out. “He looks… young.”
“He was.” Endeavor exhaled. “He was.”
Endeavor slowly closed the doors, and Ryota let his hands fall to his sides. In the brilliant lacquer of the little doors he saw himself and Endeavor, standing side-to-side, their images warped and distorted by the wood grain. In the low light, with his hair up, Ryota could be a dead ringer for the late Touya Todoroki.
“I’m sorry.” Ryota murmured. Then, after a pregnant pause, “-but for real, which way is the bathroom?”
Endeavor punched out a surprise chuckle. “It’s the other way. Through here, down the main hallway and to your left.”
“Thanks, Endeavor.”
“Please, call me Mr. Todoroki. Or Enji.”
“With the greatest respect, sir, absolutely not.” He heard him snort again. Ryota moved towards the door with the bounding energy of a young dumb go-getter, but when Endeavor didn’t follow him he took the opportunity to pause, and give a calculated look back. Endeavor was still in front of the butsudan, eyes a little glazed.
“For what it’s worth,” Ryota said, his voice lowered, the best waiver he could fake thrown in for good measure. “I’m sure you did everything you could.” He let the lie rest for a beat before continuing. “When I was a little kid, I heard about you all the time. Trying to save everyone. And I’m sure… I’m sure if you could have saved him… you would’ve.”
Something flashed in Endeavor’s eyes, the smallest pinch of his features as the words impaled him. Ryota, the picture of innocence, slunk away. Not something he'd ever try with Hawks, but it was clear that the old man was as credulous as they came, and he could target his weak spots instantly and lethally. He almost regretted it, not getting to see the full effect of the dagger he’d slipped into his grandfather’s chest, but still. A win was a win.
Ryota, 1. Hero world, -100. At least.
“I’m so sorry about the family infighting,” Shouto sighed as they pulled off the freeway back into the Shouto Agency’s neighborhood. “It’s how things have always been, and it’s hard to beat against tradition.”
“I have like twenty uncles, I’m used to it.”
“Still, it’s hardly appropriate to argue in front of guests.”
“Maybe you already see me as family,” Ryota teased, shouldering up next to Tsubasa. “Watch out, I’m gonna be the next Todoroki. Somehow!”
“Don’t look at me like that, Irinaka, you’re barely even the species of person I’d be interested in.” She said with a luxurious sigh. “Not even for a convenience marriage.”
Shouto dropped them off at his HQ with a spare keycard and the promise that he’d get them their own the next day. Tsubasa had started falling asleep in the car, so she barely registered her half-brother’s instructions as she got out. Ryota moved to follow her.
“Oh, Irinaka.”
“Yeah?”
Shouto turned around in the front seat. Illuminated by the headlights of cars speeding by, and the colorful glow of the city, the white side of his hair glowed. He held out a fist. Was he going in for a fist bump…?
Ryota leaned over and reached out a hand, unsure.
Shouto opened his fingers. Into Ryota’s palm dropped a little tranq bullet, empty and scuffed up.
“You dropped this earlier today,” Shouto said conversationally. “After the mission. Despite firearms of any kind being banned for heroes without a shooting quirk. You should be more careful from here on out, Irinaka. The glory of winning a fight isn’t worth your career.”
He stared down at the capsule, rolling it between his fingers and palm, and then decided to smile. Huh. Uncle Shouto was a little more conniving than he thought. Ryota had to have gotten it from one side of the family.
“Right. Thanks, Shouto.” He tucked it in his shirtfront pocket, gingerly, to avoid getting pricked by the needle, and scooted his way out the back door. “Have a nice night.”
Bastard, he thought with a smile as he pulled back into the street and drove off into the night.