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He never expected to open his eyes again, to see the polluted yet blue sky instead of resting in the Pure Lands with his clan members. Choking on his tears, he was still smiling when he left the Elemental Nations. His little brother had finally grown into the man that Itachi had paved the way for, a person their parents would be proud of. Itachi was no longer a ninja, and his heart was racing with emotions, no longer forced behind apathy and indifference. He mourned on the building's roof, mourning the life he lost and the life he could have had. He cried for his village and clan, the life he was forced into, and the lost time he could never reclaim with his girlfriend.
He mourned because he couldn't take Sasuke and run; they couldn't have a life together outside Kohana, away from death and torture. He lamented the life he was forced into, a spy for a village he adored, although they treated him as another faceless weapon, and a child forced to kill- no- slaughter for the sake of the whole.
He cried and sobbed until he couldn't. His hands pulled at his hair, and his body rocked back and forth. He shook and hiccuped while imagining his old life. He whined and denied it while surfing through the memories of his current life.
This life's version of Itachi was called Shoto Todoroki. Much like how Itachi was influenced into depression because he was shown the effects of war at the age of four, Shoto found out what cruelty was from his terrible Father and mentally ill Mother at the age of four. Both versions of him were exposed to the dark side of life before they could understand what good was.
Shoto trained. He was burned, beaten, and pressured. He was isolated, hurt, and alone. When Shoto Todoroki reached the end of his stable mentality, he climbed on his family home roof and attempted to take his life by jumping. Over the past several years, the boy tried to join the dead. Suffocation by holding his breath, slitting his wrists, and hanging himself, but nothing worked. He would always chicken out or be stopped before the light in his eyes vanished. So, Shoto was discouraged. He couldn't cope with the abuse anymore. One day, he went to the roof and decided that this was where his death would be.
Shoto planned. He took note of his Father, his sister, and his brother's schedules. He decided on the day that nobody would be home. Next, he planned the time of day. Midday, when the sun was bright and the air was warm. He would bathe in the sun's rays before he leaped. Then he chose which edge would be his last. The left side of the house overlooked the garden, where the training room was visible. Finally, he picked a failsafe, pills from when his Father had a bad injury. If he got scared, he could wait. Wait until the drugs overtook his system and sent him into shock before he finally kicked the bucket.
In the end, it was the drugs that ended Shoto's life. The lifeless body of Shoto lay against the roof's structure, his eyes silver and teal, glassy and vacant, and his clothes ruffled. Final tears fell down his cheeks, wet and soft. A smile full of relief and hope glistened on his face as the nightmare he was born into was ending, and his head lobbed to the sky with his neck slack.
Shoto's life ended at the same time Itachi's reanimation was fading. Perhaps the gods of both worlds decided two sad lives needed a chance to live again. While Itachi knew nobody would awaken in his disease-filled body, it was a nice thought that Shoto might have a second chance at life—a second chance to be happy and loved.
Itac-Shoto didn't know how long he had sat on the roof, listening to the birds' chirping and watching the distant buzzing of a bee in the garden below. He watched as the sky gained small clouds and airplanes drew a map in the sky. Shoto curled his knees to his chest and rested his too-heavy head. He watched as the sky gradually changed color, the sun began to set, and the horizon glowed in orange, red, and pink shades. Shoto knew his family would be home soon, but moving wasn't easy. While Itachi's body resisted poison, Shoto's was only a thirteen-year-old civilian child trained (abused) by the number two hero. His sister's panicked scream pulled him out of his thoughts, and he tried to focus on breathing, still physically recovering from dying and resurrecting.
"Shoto!" Fuyumi's voice sliced through the air like a knife. He could see her running; her white hair with spits of red was disheveled. Panic had taken hold of her, contorting her face in fear. Shoto's lips parted to call out to her, but he couldn't bring himself to. His mind was still grappling with the onslaught of memories that now merged from both of his lives.
"SHOTO!!" he heard her scream again, her voice cracking from the weight of her anguish. He wondered if she listened to her gut-wrenching dread permeating her entire being, so she came home racing to his aid. The panic that resided when he focused on nature returned in full force. He was no longer Itachi or Shoto, the child groomed and brainwashed. He was both old and young, a killer and an innocent. He was both, but he was also neither - a new person, yet still the same.
The urge to escape from the world of abuse and manipulation overwhelmed him. He had to create a new identity, one that he could shape and control—a new name for a new life, with a unique background and a fresh start.
With his brain rebooting, he noticed something different - his quirk, the half-ice, half-fire quirk that he had possessed since he was four years old, had Awakened, most likely a result of the death the body experience. Both halves of his quirk strengthened, and he felt them swirling within him, like yin and yang, yet able to merge and combine.
Shoto focused on this feeling, pushing aside Fuyumi's cries, and summoned a white flame cold enough to freeze and ice hot enough to burn in both hands. It was a perfect quirk, an ability with infinite potential. His Father would have been proud.
With a smile, he decided it was time to leave. He shot a bomb of ice into the air, which ignited a fire combustion, sending a sparkling snowfall raining down on his sister, who had collapsed in grief, thinking she had lost yet another brother to the abuse they had all suffered. She looked up at the sky, speechless, as he silently conveyed his message.
He wasn't dead, but he wouldn't be returning.
Haruki Izanagi meaning "Cloudless Sky" and "God of Life," is what he chose in the end. Obtaining records was challenging, but he had enough money to transfer into an untraceable account. He could change his appearance and background to his new identity with the finances available. His spy abilities as Itachi helped Haruki mold himself into the person he wanted to be in both worlds.
He turned to the underground villain, whose quirk could change a person's hair color. The man bleached Shoto's red and white hair before giving him a permanent new color. Now he had black hair with strips of white and red, which he felt were a nod to his past in both worlds. He smirked as he thought of his elder siblings, both from this world and his past life, who had inspired his new look. His eye color and the scar were too recognizable, so with the help of another kind person, he changed his eyes to blood-red in honor of his Sharingan. Though he couldn't change the scar, he could conceal the top half of his face with a well-placed mask.
Haruki Izanagi spent several hours sifting through his memories, piecing together the commonalities between his two lives. Crafting a background that wouldn't leave his self-identity in tatters was crucial because he couldn't connect to another person if he were unsure.
Haruki was born into a privileged family, one of six siblings. Their lives were shattered when a villain killed his parents and kidnapped the family, hoping for a ransom. In a desperate bid to save themselves, Haruki as the middle child killed the villain, and the siblings managed to escape. But not unscathed. One of them died in the ordeal, the youngest, leaving only five.
The surviving siblings had to resort to trickery to make ends meet, with Haruki playing the role of a robber and one of his siblings playing the hero to earn food, clothing, and shelter. They were a family lost to the world, struggling to survive. In order to provide for them, the eldest found a job, but they were still forced to use devious means. Soon the eldest couldn't handle the stress and committed suicide because of the hardship leaving only four siblings.
Haruki became the protector of his siblings as the only one with a good quirk, and he honed skills in combat and strategy to fight random criminals. He trained and learned alongside his siblings, determined to ensure their survival. But tragedy struck again, and the youngest sibling died of frostbite during a brutal winter. With only having one younger and one older sibling now, Hauki closed himself off emotionally.
For several months, the siblings did whatever they could to survive. However, they were not able to continue like they were. The youngest once again died because of starvation. The two siblings remaining cried and mourned for their fallen family member. That day, he made a pact with his sister to survive, no matter what, as they only had each other. However, his sister eventually succumbed to the hate in her heart and turned to villainy. She was betrayed and killed, leaving Haruki alone and adrift. In a moment of despair, Haruki cried out for help and decided to seek the aid of the adults.
It wasn't an airtight background, but the tragic backstory would explain his skills and abilities, giving reason to his Awakened power, which he now called Magnesium Regulating. This name described his unique ability to control hot ice and cold fire.
With scars visible on his grey, worn-down shirt and torn pants, Haruki Izanagi stumbled into the police station, hoping for a new beginning, a fresh start.
Fuyumi sat silently, her heart heavy with the weight of her brother's absence. Her tears flowed freely, but she knew better than to vocalize her pain. Shoto had made a difficult decision, and she couldn't blame him. As she stared at the open pages of her book, her mind drifted back to a time when her younger brother was just a child. She remembered how his knees still wobbled, and he had clung to her and their other siblings with innocent desperation.
Once he heard that Shoto's quirk emerged, Father demanded that the boy come to the training room. When Shoto didn't come, Father dragged the child by the arm and ignored the cries of his youngest. She was young, too, at the time, but she could feel the responsibility given to her because their ill Mother was unavailable. As the eldest and only female in the house, it was her job to care for her family. She cooked, cleaned, and nursed the wounds of everyone in the house, including sweet little Shoto.
She closed her book and headed to the kitchen, her feet making soft paters on the hardwood floors. Father wasn't home yet, and Natsuo was still in the College dorms at his school. She was the closest to Natsuo, but he loved Shoto the best after Touya, the eldest, died. Natsuo would be devastated when he hears about Shoto's death since he deeply loved him. It was better for everyone to believe that Shoto was dead, even if he wasn't. Their Father, the Number 2 hero, would do everything in his power to locate and bring Shoto home if he knew he was a runaway. As much as she wanted to, Fuyumi couldn't force her youngest brother to return, not when she had never experienced the physical abuse that her siblings had.
The boiling water bubbles on the stove caused Fuyumi to jerk her hand toward the wooden spoon on the counter. She would have to tell his school. She nodded and grabbed her cell phone, and dialed.
Shoto Todoroki's supposed suicide spread like wildfire throughout the school. The school announced the speakers that morning, informing every student of the boy's unexpected death. Every teacher was solemn because of the news and offered their living students a shoulder to cry on and an ear to rant to. Shoto's homeroom teacher was particularly emotionally distraught. He had noticed the child was suffering from some home tragedy and tried to give Shoto the help he needed, but the boy looked at him with vacant, empty eyes.
"He said 'nobody can stop him'," the teacher remembered, his heart breaking all over again. At the time, he was baffled but later understood when the Number 2 hero came to get rid of the rumors about his family situation. While the homeroom teacher didn't believe the man, the rest of the faculty did. It saddened him that the world lost such a sweet, intelligent boy. He had never been a fan of the Number 2 hero, but now he despised the man. No Father should be unaffected when two of his children die. The homeroom teacher picked up his files and slowly walked through the school's halls in the direction of his classroom with one student less than the previous day. He desperately wished for an investigation into Shoto's Father, hoping justice would be served.
Enji Todoroki's eyes widened, and his mouth gaped when his manager delivered the news of Shoto's death. His beard ignited with flames, growing three times its original size, as he tried to process the information. It couldn't be true; his masterpiece was dead? Enji rose from his seat and bolted toward the training room, bulldozing past his sidekicks and swatting away the obnoxious reporters like bothersome flies.
As he burst into the training room, he slammed the doors shut and punched the air, unleashing a torrent of hot flames that followed his actions. His rage and anger boiled inside him as he fought an invisible enemy. Enji's eyebrows scrunched deeply on his face as he struggled to comprehend why he wasn't informed of Shoto's death until a day later. His daughter, Fuyumi, was in a tizzy yesterday, but he had assumed it was due to a minor issue with one of her students.
Enji had no heir, and none of his living children could overtake All Might! His wife, the unstable wench, would never be fit mentally or physically to have another child. His investment years ago has been washed away in an invisible river.
His flames engulfed and destroyed every piece of training equipment in the room. It was impossible now to chase his dream through his children, and it was unachievable to surpass All Might himself. The furious and overwhelming anger made the flames of his quirk, Hellflame, spread outside the training room. Humiliatingly, the sprinklers in place activated, and he was drenched in disgusting water. His anger was not quelled, but he had no choice; he needed to move on.
He couldn't let this tragedy derail him from his goal. He marched out of the agency and began stopping villains, his mind racing with a new plan to surpass All Might. Perhaps, he could train a U.A. student to become his heir, his legacy. It was a risky move, but Enji had no other choice.
Haruki looked out the window of the car, smiling faintly as the buildings flashed past him. A new name, a new home, a new life; all thanks to his memories of the past.