Chapter Text
Touya’s quirk was almost perfect. In fact, his quirk was perfect, but his body was not. His quirk did not give his body any fire resistance. He destroyed himself with his power. He was doomed to fail.
Fuyumi, however, found herself able to withstand her brother’s flames even better than Touya himself. When she noticed her brother’s pain and her father’s irritation, she stepped up to help. Before her quirk manifested, she’d always have bandages and ice packs ready. Touya didn’t seem to like the ice packs, but they helped him cool down.
Then Fuyumi turned four and she found herself able to emit frost. It wasn’t anything dramatic and her father tried to brush her off and keep her in the background. Neither she nor Touya were putting up with it. Fuyumi stayed when Touya trained.
She remained by the door. Out of the way. But when Touya overworked himself and his skin began to smoke, she approached him with gentle hands. She would coat his limbs in frost, cooling them down without the harsh sting of the ice packs.
Of course, that didn’t solve the problem of Touya being unable to sustain himself in battle with his own quirk. Endeavor told him that if he defeated everyone fast enough, then he wouldn’t need backup. Fuyumi knew that wasn’t a sustainable strategy. To fight that hard, Touya would need to summon even hotter flames and would possibly put himself in even more danger.
The brother and sister duo would prove to be quite a strong team if their father kept training them, but he still wasn’t satisfied. They weren’t perfect. He knew between Touya’s cold body using hot fire and Fuyumi’s warm body using cold frost, there was a chance for the perfect child. A child whose body could regulate its own temperature properly and could ideally use both the hottest flames and the coldest ice.
Third time’s a charm, right?
-
Third time was, in fact, not a charm. Natsuo had a body built for the cold, but his grey eyes and white hair left Enji knowing that he was a failure. Rei was exhausted and refused to talk to Enji, so he left her to take care of their youngest child.
Touya and Fuyumi had training to complete, after all. Fuyumi especially. She refused to leave Touya’s side, yet the only thing she offered was being able to withstand her brother’s fire. Enji adjusted the training plan. While Fuyumi focused on controlling her frost and raising her endurance to heat while using her quirk, Touya would train one-on-one with Enji himself.
Keeping Fuyumi distracted helped Touya excel with complete focus. Even Touya seemed to shine when Enji only focussed on him. He knew that the two would stick together, though, so after they reached their limits using their quirks, Enji moved on to physical combat training.
Fuyumi didn’t have firepower or proper ice to rely on, so this was most important for her to learn. But even Touya should learn to fight without having to rely on his quirk.
Despite Fuyumi’s more friendly attitude, she picked up on combat incredibly quick. In only a few years, she regularly beat Touya when they sparred. Enji was hesitant to say he might have felt a bit of pride toward his daughter. Touya would notice when Enji’s eyes weren’t on him, though, and he would fight harder. Sometimes he would win and sometimes that just meant he had more bruises to take care of.
When Natsuo turned four, his quirk manifested. A near perfect copy of Rei’s quirk. Ice resilience as well as ice production. Enji did not hide his disappointment. He didn’t want the boy to distract his siblings’ training routine. If they were able to keep going like this, then they’d be able to get their licenses in their late teenage years.
Enji ignored Natsuo for as long as he could until Touya started bringing the youngest brother around to watch them train. He remained in the corner, quiet, so Enji didn’t pay him any mind. As long as he didn’t get in the way.
At the end of the day, after Touya and Fuyumi recovered from their training, Enji would occasionally find them talking to Natsuo about the techniques they had learned. On late nights, he’d even come across Natsuo mimicking his siblings’ moves while the older two gave him corrections.
Fuyumi was much better at instruction than Touya was. But where Touya lacked teaching ability he made up for in energy. Even if he could barely sit up, he’d be encouraging his younger brother to keep trying. Enji wasn’t sure if he should separate them or begin including the youngest in the training plans.
Natsuo had approached his father the next morning. He basically begged Enji to include him with Touya and Fuyumi’s training. Enji was clear that he would not go easy on the youngest. He had a lot of catching up to do.
Natsuo looked up at Enji before looking around him and then nodding. Enji glanced behind him to see Touya and Fuyumi around the corner, both giving Natsuo a thumbs up.
Enji heaved out a sigh before agreeing. If the youngest was going to train, then he’d have to catch up or give up. The only major adjustment that he made to the training plans was giving Natsuo pointers about the basics of physical combat. No point in training if he was going to fail before he even began, but after a month, he’d be joining in with Touya and Fuyumi. He would have to prove himself.
In the meantime, Rei was taking care of their newest child. Enji left the children to celebrate while he walked over to Rei’s room. She refused to talk to him, but he didn’t care. He observed the child’s features. Split hair and eyes. Even the resting temperature of his left and right sides seemed to be slightly different. Enji had hope. After so many years of dreams and failures, his perfect creation was born.
Still, he had to wait for the child’s quirk to manifest. He had to be sure.
He left Rei to make sure the youngest was taken care of before approaching the other three. The day had barely begun and they had work to do.
-
Similar to Natsuo, Shouto also became a familiar face in or around the training room. He had a few months before his quirk was due to manifest, so Enji hadn’t wanted to get his hopes up, but seeing the child’s interest in his siblings’ training was making it difficult to remain neutral.
Enji welcomed Shouto inside as long as he remained by the door.
“Why does he get a warm welcome,” Natsuo pouted.
“I also had to prove myself at first,” Fuyumi chuckled. “Maybe Dad has finally warmed up to everyone working together as a family.” She whispered the last line, but it didn’t go unnoticed.
Enji didn’t react to it, though. He kept his eyes on Shouto’s reactions to Touya’s training. Fire training was going to be important if his quirk was what Enji hoped it to be.
When Shouto’s quirk finally manifested, Enji was elated. Finally, his perfect masterpiece. The perfect child with the perfect quirk. He would be able to crush anyone that stood in front of him when given the right training.
Touya, however, seemed to be opposed to his brother’s perfect quirk. When Enji started paying more attention to Shouto, Touya started acting out. He’d yell and scream at first. He demanded that Enji look at him instead. His flames were somehow getting hotter and to everyone’s surprise, his hair was getting whiter.
Fuyumi tried to turn it into something positive. She and her brother would have similar hair styles. The only time Touya had reacted positively to his hair changing was when it looked very similar to Shouto’s. It was split nearly down the middle with a few bits of white in the red and vice versa.
“Look! Look! Dad, I look just like Shouto, see?! I look just like him, so you can just look at me instead!” Touya shouted.
Enji was getting to his limit. He wasn’t able to fine tune his masterpiece with all the noise around him.
“You have training to do, so train,” Enji said. His voice was stern and angry. He didn’t often take this tone outside of one-on-one training, but Touya was making himself a problem.
“Training you should be supervising! Fuyumi and Natsu fight well, but you have the experience, right? How are we going to learn what our limits are if we aren’t pushed past them?”
“Touya-nii,” Natsuo muttered. He froze when Enji’s glare landed on him. “Let’s go. We can practice my ice against your fire, okay? And Fuyumi can work on her endurance.”
Touya stood in place, staring up at Enji before huffing dramatically and spinning around. He stomped away and slammed the door as loudly as possible. Enji immediately turned his attention back to Shouto.
The boy had curled into himself watching the argument. “Stand up, Shouto. If a little bit of yelling is going to make you hesitate, you won’t last long in the real world,” Enji said. The anger hadn’t quite left his voice yet, but Shouto responded by standing up straight. “You have training to continue.”
---
Shouto didn’t know what “normal” was, but the way his mother acted made it seem that whatever the hell his father was putting him through was not normal. Even Natsu had snuck into his room a few times to help ice his wounds. Despite his direct older brother being bitter about how he was immediately accepted into their training routine, he was also the first one to approach him in the dead of night wanting to help.
Shouto had tried to connect with Touya on occasion, but his oldest brother looked at him with the same type of anger that their father looked at Touya with. It made Shouto want to hide away in his mother’s arms until it all went away.
The previous day had been particularly bad. Shouto was separated from his older siblings after Touya had tried to attack him. His father also seemed particularly upset and pushed Shouto further than ever before. Even after he’d puked his lunch up, his father kicked him over.
When Shouto closed his eyes, he could still hear the man’s angry footsteps approaching him. He felt the foot pressing onto his chest until it felt like it was going to shatter. His father wasn’t going to kill him, but he’d never been so close to begging for his life before.
He wasn’t sure why, but his mother had entered the training room. His father had gotten even angrier and hit her when she tried pushing the man off Shouto.
Shouto had shouted, but he couldn’t move. His father stood over his mother and yelled until she pulled herself up and walked out of the room. His father waited for a moment and exited the room as well. From the little Shouto saw, he was relieved that his parents went in opposite directions.
He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there. Long enough for Natsu to gently shake his shoulders to wake him up. Shouto didn’t think he could say for sure he was asleep, but he definitely wasn’t aware.
“Sho, where does it hurt? Did he hit your head?” Natsu asked. He’d always been the most medically inclined of his siblings.
Shouto shook his head. He was just tired. He brought his shaking hands up to his chest and weakly grasped his shirt. Even without pressing on it, he could feel the bruise.
Nastu took the hint and lifted up Shouto’s shirt gasping when he saw whatever was underneath. “I’m going to ice it, okay? It’s going to hurt.”
Shouto nodded. He appreciated the warning. And his brother was right, the pressure of ice was incredibly painful, but the cold helped with the pain.
“Does it hurt anywhere else?”
Shouto moved his right arm until it was out beside him, letting Natsu lift up his shirt and uncover the bruise from where his father had kicked him over.
“Fuck,” Natsu said under his breath.
Another pair of soft footsteps entered the room. “I brought some bandages,” Fuyumi said quietly. “Dad went out. He got an urgent call from one of his side kicks. He’ll be out for a few days.”
Shouto let out a breath. He immediately sucked it back in when Natsu gently pulled him into a sitting position.
“I’m sorry,” Natsu hummed. “But the sooner we wrap you up, the sooner you can go lay down, okay?”
Shouto just nodded. He was getting really tired again.
Natsuo wrapped up his side and chest fairly quickly. He checked Shouto’s arms and legs, wrapping up anything that looked particularly bad before picking him up.
The movement shocked Shouto and he grasped frantically at his brother’s back for a moment before settling into the hold with a sigh.
“Sorry, sorry,” Natsu said. “It didn’t look like walking was an option. I should have warned you.”
Fuyumi followed them out of the training room and into Shouto’s room. She watched as Natsu set Shouto down on the bed and helped him get under the covers. “Dad won’t be here tomorrow, so sleep as much as you can, okay? We won’t wake you up too early.”
Natsu gave Shouto a gentle pat on the head before getting up and leaving the room with Fuyumi. They walked down the hall before stopping. Shouto let his eyes close, but he listened to their faint words.
“‘Yumi. This is too far.”
“It’s just training. Dad got carried away, but it’s not like this is going to be normal. Besides, we need to be able to work around bruises like that.”
“Shouto is five years old,” Natsu bit out. He raised his voice slightly, “No child needs to know how to fight with a bruise like that on his ribs!”
“Calm down, okay? It’s going to be fine. It won’t happen again, okay? Dad was just upset.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What if he gets upset again? What if something at work sets him off even worse? What if he doesn’t get stopped in time and actually causes irreversible damage?”
“He wouldn’t do that.” Even Fuyumi didn’t quite sound like she believed her own words.
“You said he wouldn’t hurt Shouto either. He barely looks at me, but what about you two? Does he kick Touya-nii like he kicks Shouto? Does he ever beat you until you can’t breathe?”
It took a moment before Fuyumi answered. “No.”
“This isn’t right.”
“What’s so different from what Touya-nii went through, then? He’s constantly being hurt by his own fire, yet he’s still pushed to his limit and he gets back up without a care!”
“That’s not right, either, Fuyumi!”
“It’s how we get stronger.”
Both of their voices stopped. Fuyumi’s voice had lost all confidence on her last line. Natsu seemed exhausted.
“I’m checking on Mom,” Natsu said as his footsteps approached Shouto’s door and then passed.
Fuyumi seemed to stand still for a moment before hers faded off to the distance. Without anything to distract him, Shouto fell asleep.
His brother’s words started to echo very quietly in the back of his mind.
This isn’t right.