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Shouto completes his thirtieth repetition before wiping his face and swallowing a mouthful of water, more from habit than thirst. Because that is what he is. He’s a machine of habits, built to run, to jump, to lift heavier and heavier weights until his limbs tremble with exhaustion.
Only once the routine is complete, when he lies flat on the floor fighting for breath, does his father enter the room.
“Don’t just stand there, Shoto.”
Every muscle protests as he straightens. He remains seated, cross-legged, while Endeavor reaches for the shinai.
Shoto hates the shinai.
“On your feet,” Endeavor says calmly.
Shoto’s mismatched pupils settle on the bamboo weapon. Reflex training. Shinai strikes hurt less than a bokken’s, but in his father’s hands, they are no less destructive. For a moment, Shoto considers provoking him by demanding an even match and asking for a weapon, but he thinks better of it. Endeavor seems in a good mood today, he hasn’t yet commented on his poor stamina. No need to make the next few hours more difficult than needed.
Endeavor’s opening strikes come with surprising restraint, powerful yet slow enough to dodge. Shoto realizes too late that this is deliberate, a way to herd him across the dojo until his back meets the wall. Then the rhythm doubles, each blow delivered with terrifying force.
“Always be aware of your surroundings. How many times do I have to tell you?”
Shoto has no choice but to block with his forearms. Endeavor raises the shinai with both hands, aiming for his neck, but at the last second, Shoto catches the tip of the weapon. The sudden move makes his elbow slams into the wall with a jolt that rattles his entire arm.
Pain sharpens his focus. With his free hand, he grabs his father’s immobilized arm and attempts an elbow lock, every muscle straining under the effort. After several long seconds, Endeavor releases the weapon, seizes Shoto by the collar, pins him to the wall and drives a brutal fist into his temple.
Shoto’s grip breaks. He twists free, slipping out of the jacket, barely avoiding a second blow before crashing into the floor in a clumsy roll. Endeavor takes his time to retrieve the shinai on the floor as Shoto probes his jaw. The blood he spits onto the tatami isn’t a good sign, but nothing feels broken.
“If that had been a real sword, you’d be missing a few fingers,” Endeavor remarks.
“If it had been a real sword, that would’ve been attempted murder,” Shoto mutters, louder than intended.
“You think villains will play fair?”
The shinai blurs into view, crashing into his side. Shoto jumps, tries to roll with it, but the wall is too close.
I’m done taking hits without giving them back, he thinks.
Ice surges beneath his feet, propelling him across the dojo, barely evading another strike.
“If you want a quirk fight, you’ll get one. But don’t complain afterward,” Endeavor growls, heat coiling into his fist before erupting into flame.
Shoto raises an ice barrier, anticipating the attack. He doesn’t anticipate his father bursting through the fire, shinai ablaze. The weapon cleaves his ice shield, and he jumps back just in time, flames licking at his face.
He prepares to counter when beams of heat pierce what remained of his defense. He dodges most, but one Hell Spider Jet hits his blind spot. There’s no time to turn, barely time to raise an arm to protect himself.
“Use your left, Shoto. You could’ve defended that.”
Oh, so it’s going to be one of those days.
Shoto raises another barrier, wipes sweat from his brow. His bangs are singed. Blisters bloom beneath swollen skin, layered atop the grotesque bruises from the shinai. It takes extreme heat to overcome his fire immunity, but his father had always been an excessive man.
“Stop running. You can’t make every fight ranged.”
“Then come at me,” Shoto provokes, panting.
Endeavor, a man of his word if nothing else, obliges.
Shoto dodges the burning shinai, twisting and turning, and Endeavor doesn’t notice the thin layer of ice he carefully laid down during his tactical retreat. He stumbles, for half a second, on the frozen patch. Half a second of inattention, just enough for Shoto to trap him inside a block of ice that slams into the dojo ceiling.
The teenager has time to admire his work for a fraction longer, a twisted grin pulling at his lips, before his father evaporates the prison. It melts like a snowflake under the sun. Steam billows upward, so thick Shoto loses sight of Endeavor’s massive silhouette. He startles when a huge hand bursts from the vapor and clamps around his injured arm.
“Use it, Shoto,” Endeavor orders. “How else are you going to get out of this?”
He struggles against the iron grip, tries to freeze the hand with his right side, but Endeavor raises the temperature preemptively, denying the ice its form. Hundreds of crystals are born and die where Shoto claws at his father’s hand, trying, uselessly, to force him to release.
“Use. It.”
Shoto knows this is just meant to test his endurance. Somewhere, in the rational corner of his mind, he knows his father would never inflict permanent damage. What is the point of ruining a perfectly functional weapon? He knows it intimately, in the way each breath scalds his throat, turning every inhale into an effort. He knows how the burning spreads along his skin, like thousands of needles piercing his flesh, and yet, in that moment, with his body temperature swinging violently, cold dissolving into fire, he thinks he hears the late whistle of a kettle screaming in the night.
Smoke gnaws at the steam, blurring his vision further. His ears ring. A distance voice reach him through the fog, murmuring words he can’t quite grasp. Unsightly, they say.
Then frozen fingers thread through his hair. The sensation is too sharp, too real. He whimpers. Calls for his mother. His father. Somewhere far away, a voice apologizes again and again.
I’m so sorry, Shoto. What have I done? I’m so sorry .
“Don’t pretend to be so weak,” Endeavor says above him. “You can end this.”
I won’t. I won’t. I won’t . The thought beats uselessly against his skull but his mouth produces only broken pleas.
“Stop. Don’t do it. Please.”
The smell of burned flesh fills his nose. Panic grips him with a near-physical force. Every muscle in his body shakes, the pain so sharp it borders on delirium.
“Stop. Don’t. Stop it! Fuck… please!”
This time, he’s going to die. This time, he won’t get away with a smple scar. No, he’ll end like his mother. Like Touya.
You can end it. You can end the pain. Just give in.
“Shoto!”
It’s only at his father’s triumphant shout that Shoto realizes his left arm is alight. A flare of flame, brief and violent. Powerful, but nothing compared to Endeavor’s earlier display.
It’s the first time he has used his left side in years.
Endeavor releases him, feral satisfaction etched across his face.
“See what happens when you stop holding back? It doesn’t have to be hard. This is your full potential. This is who you were born to be,” he repeats, almost proud.
He lifts a hand as if to rest it on his son’s shoulder, but Shoto recoils like a wounded animal, clutching his arm to his chest, teeth bared.
The rage surging through him is so intense he nearly unleashes another burst of flame. He forces it down, digs freezing nails into burned flesh, and drags in a painful breath.
When he exhales, the temperature in the room plummets. Ice locks half his body in place. He trembles under the sudden, brutal shift.
Endeavor watches in silence, his expression darkening.
“How long will you deny your own nature? You are my son, Shoto. My creation.”
He throws the remains of the shinai at Shoto’s feet. A blackened, smoking length of bamboo. Shoto flinches, struggling to remain upright.
“Whether you like it or not, your flames are part of you. They are meant to be used. And they will be.”
Endeavor turns on his heel and leaves. That he stops there for today is proof of his good mood, but Shoto knows better than to trust it.
Slowly, he melts his armor of ice.
Pain pulses through his wrist and up his forearm, bruises from the shinai mingling with the burn. The wound is grotesque, blood and pus seeping together, but he knows the routine. Disinfect, bandage it, and endure until tomorrow, until Doctor Kazue erases the worst of it. The burn won’t scar, at least.
Still, for a moment, Shoto had nearly broken his promise. For a moment, he had almost fought back with his flames. After years of repressing them, of endless sermons and nightmarish training as punishments. His only act of rebellion against his father, against the very reason he exists.
Never again, he thought. Next time, he won’t even allow them to surface.
The next time he has to fight, he will seal his left side, encase it beneath ice so thick and so strong, not a single spark will ever escape.
____
The countdown ends. The gates open.
Bakugou Kastuki explodes forward. The force kicks back through his arms, familiar, as he spots a robot, fires, and keeps moving as it collapses behind him. Another follows, torn apart under his blasts, the violent satisfaction of metal shattering.
He doesn’t think about anything but the propulsion detonating from his palms, carrying him across the entrance exam field. Katsuki does not look back, because there is nothing behind him worth acknowledging. No familiar muttering at his shoulder, no one reaching out when he never asked for help.
After all, Deku had no place here. He never did.
Not when they were five and he fell in that stupid river, not in the suffocating grip of the sludge villain, his body locked up, useless.
Katsuki has never needed saving. Especially not from Deku, running in,quirkless and shaking, acting like courage was enough, like Katsuki was weak.
He’ll show them. He’ll show Deku, All Might, everyone. The anger that’s been sitting in his chest ever since that incident finally has somewhere to go.
And nothing stands in his way now.
____
“Find someone cheerful, strong, and approachable. Someone like you. And entrust it to them.”
Nighteye’s words come back to him as he lingers in the teachers’ lounge, a cup of tea cooling between his hands, and a thirty-page folder of future students’ profiles resting on his knees. Almost six years have passed, and while Yagi is still sleep-deprived as he was then, he’s also missing half his stomach, along with much of his digestive system. He knows his death is close. This year, or the next, according to the projections of his former sidekick.
Distracted, he stares at the American sandwich growing cold on the table, hemmed in by colorful binders and school manuals. Since his gastrectomy, Yagi can no longer swallow solid food. Sometimes he manages half a sandwich, chewing with painstaking care to reduce the risk, but most days he survives on liquids. Now that he has started his tea, he won’t be able to take another bite anyway. How ironic. Japan’s Number One hero, the Great All Might, defeated by an American sandwich.
“But… see? You can’t smile at all, can you?”
It seems Nighteye was right, once again. All Might is a hero who smiles. All Might is a hero who laughs with his whole chest. All Might meets adversity with thunderous laughter and reassuring winks. Yagi, however, doesn’t smile much, not anymore. The muscles of his face resist the effort. He is little more than skin drawn tight over a withered body, and his time is running out. How many smiles does he have left? How many laughs?
A successor. He needs a successor.
He reaches for the file labeled Mirio Togata, the third-year student Principal Nezu has strongly recommended. Nighteye supports the choice as well. Yagi has only met Mirio briefly while shadowing Aizawa during practice with the second-year class, but he immediately understood what the others saw in him. Beyond a quirk perfectly suited for close combat, Mirio’s fighting style and charisma echo All Might’s. A smile anchored in certainty, absolute confidence in victory. A brilliant young man who climbed this far through sheer effort. A worthy Symbol of Peace.
Someone cheerful, strong, and approachable. Someone like him.
“Can I ever hope to become someone like you?”
Not with the alarming rise in quirk-related crimes, not with the looming reality of quirk singularity.
Not when, according to Tsukauchi, rumors of All For One’s return are spreading.
And even if they are only rumors, the next generations of both villains and heroes will rise on an entirely different level. One For All is already squandered on his quirkless self. Generations of users died to preserve and strengthen it, just to defeat All For One. Even his master, who entrusted everything to him… What would she say if she could see him now, pathetic and exhausted, only able to maintain his form a few hours a day at best?
No, he thinks bitterly. Fine sentiments are no longer enough. The future number one cannot be only a symbol. The future number one will have to be a machine. Someone who inspires admiration and fear alike.
Someone, perhaps, like Endeavor. After all, the Number Two surpasses him in cases resolved. He's ruthless, and unsmiling, but terrifyingly efficient. With polished manners and a touch of charisma, he could be a hero even All Might could envy.
And his son, Todoroki Shouto, is entering U.A. this year. According to his file, he possesses an extraordinary combination of quirks. The kind of power that would be monstrous in villainous hands. The whims of the genetic lottery are fascinating, just like that other boy from the entrance exam, Bakugou Katsuki, seemingly born to dominate the rankings… Both boast excellent academic results, physical abilities far beyond their peers, and, as the entrance exam footage shows, a ferocious drive to win. An indispensable trait for anyone aiming for the summit.
Should he gamble on these untouched talents, whose flashy quirks will inspire fear? Or follow Nezu and Nighteye’s recommendation and choose a successor who inspires hope, who mirrors him in every way?
Yagi separates three files from the stack, a sigh brushing his lips.
It’s time to look toward the future.