MHA : Shoto Todoroki - Modern-day Terrorist

Enji Todoroki was buried on a rainy day.

There'd been a lot of people – more than he expected.

Although Katsuki hadn't been formally invited, he woke up that morning with a crisp suit at the foot of the couch he slept on, a note attached to it—9 am.

He showered then stood briefly in his boxers briefs, looking out of the window.

It was pouring. It hadn't stopped for a week.

He would've thought nothing of it before but now that he'd seen a man waking up every Japanese volcano in minutes, he knew better than not to attribute massive weather change to some god-like individual.

For a brief moment, he considered what they all were, all of them people with Quirks so powerful they could change the world. He wondered what was the point of gifting such abilities to humankind, if it wouldn't have been better if this glowing baby in China hadn't suddenly appeared centuries ago.

Now Katsuki was, too, one of these god-like individuals, just like Shoto and his father before him.

He could change the world. He wasn't sure what there was to change and where he would even start.

Something tingled at the back of his mind.

Katsuki's gaze snapped towards the door, beyond which was Shoto's bedroom turned war room.

It happened sometimes, his senses tingling suddenly when Shoto was doing nothing but breathing, before the buzzing stopped abruptly. It had happened far too often to consider it a fluke.

He didn't want to linger on the reason.

He still remembered All Might's words and the half-lit corridor where he'd killed of his own volition for the first time.

Once clothed, Katsuki went out.

He had no problem spotting the slow buzz of people dressed in black, standing at the edge of a flower field behind the house – mansion, really.

Katsuki stood at the back of the crowd.

Eyes discreetly shifted in his direction when he arrived, and he knew he'd been spotted.

There were a lot of people he recognized but could not name: important individuals who had tried to cozy up to him, lots of politicians and foreigners who screamed disgustingly wealthy and powerful.

Katsuki wondered if they'd come to pay their proper respects to Enji or if they just wanted to get on the Peace Symbol's good graces by showing up, even though it was bordering on sympathizing with criminals.

For all accounts, Shoto shouldn't have been able to get back to his house. Enji's body should've been disposed of by the military, not to receive a proper burial.

It was because Katsuki had intervened – and publicly, at that – that they'd left him alone.

After bringing Shoto home, Katsuki had found something akin to a guest room nearby his and slept on a couch – fancy, yes, but still a couch – and lived in the Todoroki estate unsolicited. He hadn't left in a week, because Shoto hadn't either.

Lots of people had pressured him to get out of the fucking house. He hadn't budged an inch.

He knew they wanted to send the military – Sung, too, who should've been back from his assignment overseas – but didn't because they feared that he and Shoto would band against them.

He found it amusing that two underage kids teaming up could intimidate the prime minister into letting them do whatever they wanted.

Katsuki's mom had called him a few days ago, and he'd nearly not answered, expecting to receive an earful.

"Listen," she'd said. "I don't care what they say about him on TV, but what I know is that a kid just lost his father and politicians have been calling for his imprisonment. I won't ask you to get your ass home, despite what some people would like" Katsuki smiled, certain she was talking to somebody next to her "Just do whatever you feel is right. I trust your judgment"

Katsuki trusted his judgment, too.

Or he did most of the time.

Only when the voices weren't whispering inside his head.

He was worried about Shoto, yes, but Shoto also worried him greatly, and he didn't know how much of it was his feelings or the voices' wariness.

Maybe the crowd was, too, and that's why they'd bothered to come.

Katsuki's eyes wandered, though he knew he wouldn't find the one he was searching for.

They were all worried about a boy cooped up in his house, too far engrossed in his grief – madness - to attend his own father's burial.

Granted, there'd been a private ceremony yesterday, only for family members and closest acquaintances of Enji, but Shoto hadn't attended that one either.

The ceremony started and things went on smoothly, albeit a bit rigidly.

The one presiding over the burial was a woman with long, burning lava hair. Her eyes were two pits of fire, glowing so brightly that her eyelashes' shadows danced on her cheeks. The black veil crowning her hair did nothing to hide the intensity of her gaze.

She was extremely tall – as were all Todoroki – and exuded an aura of power and confidence that bordered on intimidating.

She'd arrived at the estate the evening Katsuki had, and he hadn't been surprised to learn she was Shoto's grandma. They held themselves similarly, and looked at you with the same unnerving intensity - when they bothered looking at you at all.

She'd asked him a few questions and Katsuki had nearly expected he'd need to fight to stay there and make sure Shoto wouldn't k… be disturbed.

Surprisingly, she'd merely nodded and thanked him, told him that he was free to stay as long as he could afford to.

That's when Katsuki had noticed four men in suits hidden at the corners of the room. He hadn't even heard them breathe, and it was disturbing for his senses were in a league of their own since he'd received the One for All.

Since then, there hadn't been a day when he hadn't seen one of them, though he never saw the same person twice.

He hadn't asked any questions.

Shoto's grandma seemed like a smart woman: she must've come to the same conclusions as him and decided that hiring people to protect her grandson was the best course of action.

How she'd managed to get inside the estate, though, Katsuki had no idea.

The place's perimeter had been full of soldiers since he'd gotten Shoto there.

They hadn't broken in – yet -, but Katsuki feared they would, and he'd told Shoto as much.

Shoto hadn't answered.

He wasn't… unresponsive wasn't quite the word.

He worked, day and night, painting these weird symbols and starting anew, quiet, frantic, eyes bloodshot. He just didn't bother interacting with the world outside his room.

Katsuki hadn't pushed. There were worse ways to cope than that.

He'd worried for them both, wondering what he'd do if – when? - they'd effectively break in.

Would Shoto fight? There wasn't a world where he wouldn't, yet Katsuki felt that as long as they left him working on his drawings, he wouldn't care if he were in Tartarus itself.

Would Katsuki fight? Help Shoto escape?

He could not answer.

The funeral was beautiful.

There was a violin playing in the background and people stood, head down, quiet, most with umbrellas.

Grandma Todoroki didn't need one: the very air crackled and hissed around her, drops evaporating before they even grazed her, vapor billowing around her.

The coffin had been lowered yesterday, though the pit had not yet been filled.

Despite the recent law that stipulated that all Heroes and 'qualified' individuals were to be cremated, Enji would be one of the rare few left to be buried in Japan.

He hadn't been a Hero for a while, anyway, so maybe it explained it.

Katsuki's gaze settled on the white-haired woman, a few feet from Shoto's grandma, crying quietly in a handkerchief.

A young woman was holding her quietly. A man was looking at the tombstone with an unreadable expression, his hands in his pockets. He didn't seem sad, but simply… astonished. As if, even when the coffin was still open and he could see his father, white and inert, he couldn't believe that it had truly happened.

They move on to the speeches.

People didn't hurry to talk about Enji – almost all of them barely knew him – and, in a way, it was sadder than Shoto not coming.

Shoto's grandma frowned at how obviously uncomfortable everybody was.

It was the crying woman – certainly Shoto's mom – who came to her rescue.

She squeezed the grandma's arm gently, walking past her to the lectern. The grandma looked startled.

She sniffed several times, wiped her cheeks, offering a sad smile to the crowd, not daring to lift her eyes high enough to meet anyone's gaze.

"I was married to Enji for… She shook her head. "We went through difficult times, but I will never stop thanking him for giving me four beautiful and wonderful children. Thank you"

She promptly left, her handkerchief already at the corner of her eyes.

She laid a flower on the coffin as she passed, pausing for a few seconds to contemplate the frozen face of her husband.

A very tall man – at least as tall as Endeavor was in life – stepped out from the ranks of the crowd. He had a white beard that joined his thick mustache and a face illuminated, almost as if he had forgotten he was at a funeral.

"Ah, hello everyone. I know most of you don't know who I am, so I'll introduce myself briefly : my name is Go Gunhee, and I was one of Enji's comrades in the army" He leaned over the microphone like a conspirator revealing one of his secrets. "That's a surprise, isn't it ? Little Enji served his country in the shadows without recognition. You won't read that in the two interviews of his career, will you !"

He let out a small laugh, glancing at the open coffin conspiratorially. Then, as if the weight of the situation dawned on him again, his face darkened, and his lips tightened.

"Enji and I had a fallout sometime before his death… We didn't—There's a lot of things we didn't agree about. I regret trying to stop him. If I'd helped…"

A shadow flashed across his face.

"We grew apart over the years. I didn't want to believe that he'd changed, that he could've been a different man from the one I knew. I regret his death."

Then suddenly, his gaze grew ominous, and a chill went down Katsuki's spine.

"And I know everybody will regret it, too."

A lot of people came, most talking about Endeavor's career, few about Enji.

Colleagues, subordinates, and even a few Heroes spoke.

It was brave of them, especially because they'd certainly be publicly shamed if it was known they'd attended a criminal's funeral.

Public opinion had turned to neutral after Shoto…

The Todoroki had won a lot of supporters, and there was an online war between them and their detractors, splitting the country into nearly two exact parts. Not as if Shoto would give two shits about it, anyway.

The most touching was the young heroine who talked about how Enji had saved her when she was just a child.

"… without him, I don't know where I would be. Certainly not here"

Her voice was filled with tremors: she took a deep breath, trying not to let emotion overcome her.

"He gave me the desire to be a hero, but not the kind who struts on TV: no, I wanted to be like him, someone whose actions speak louder than words"

She smiled sadly, tears threatening to overflow onto her cheeks: not wanting to make a scene, she hurried to lay her small bouquet of daffodils in the coffin.

Right after she was Aizawa, and Katsuki's brows shot up.

He had thought he was the only one from U.A. to be invited.

Aizawa scratched his neck, glanced at the coffin.

He was subdued, a lot more different from the man who'd threatened to fire 1-A's students if they weren't competent enough.

"I knew Enji at U.A. He was very different from the man he became: he tormented other students and fought whenever he had the chance..."

Aizawa scoffed as though remembering fond memories.

"Fortunately, it didn't last. He told me once that this change was due to the army and fatherhood. If someone had told me thirty years ago that Enji would end up a father…"

He left his sentence hanging, his smile turning bitter.

"I can't say how hard it must be for all of you, his family, to have to bury him this year. He wasn't even fifty: he could have lived so many things… And Shoto…"

Aizawa coughed to hide the swell of emotions in his voice.

Katsuki waited until the very end, until there was no one but the Todorokis and him.

Shoto hadn't come.

He didn't know why he'd hoped otherwise.

Katsuki knocked on the door. No answer.

He knocked once more and peered inside.

The door creaked.

Footsteps – dozens and dozens of footsteps – overlapped with voices – voices of different people, but unique to one.

Katsuki lingered on the threshold of the room.

Shoto was painting to the left, Shoto was wiping an ink stain near a window, Shoto was distributing pens to a dozen other Shotos gathered in a circle around an immense diagram laid out on a table. Shoto who was giving orders to other Shotos moving back and forth between the three large, adjacent rooms that made up the war room.

Nezu had warned him that Shoto could be… more than what they'd believed.

He'd told him he'd need to be calm and, above all, not rush him.

Katsuki knew which Shoto was the true one because he was the only one who hadn't reacted when he opened the door.

He walked to him and stood there, watching him half bent over a table, pondering over a drawing that made no sense and never would.

"The funeral just ended."

Shoto added a curve, didn't look up.

"A lot of people came."

Again, no answer, not even a hum.

Katsuki grabbed the drawing as Shoto was going to add another insignificant detail, checking it with false interest.

"What are you trying to do, anyway?"

It was too ugly to be contemporary art, and Shoto had never been an artsy guy anyway.

Shoto snapped the paper back.

"Trying to recreate the Edo Tensei."

Right. Edo Tensei.

Katsuki nodded as if it made sense.

He glanced around. The place was in full swing. At a glance, there must have been about thirty other Shoto.

He tried to ignore the voices that whispered that one of him was enough, and that thirty was akin to an apocalyptic threat.

"The Edo Tensei, okay. What's that ?"

Shoto gave him a sidelong glance – it was the first time he'd looked at him since his arrival.

His eyes were cold, almost cruel.

"Who sent you ?"

Katsuki looked him straight in the eyes:

"I came of my own will"

And it was true: he had refused the microphone that Nezu had suggested he take, as well as all the other crap tools with it.

Shoto studied him for a few seconds before returning to his… drawings, his shoulders slightly more relaxed than before.

Katsuki took that as an encouragement to continue.

"Listen, I'm not saying that I know what you're going through, but-"

"Was there a buffet?"

"Pardon?"

"The funeral. Was there a buffet?"

The question caught Katsuki off guard.

"There wasn't."

Which he'd found a bit unusual, but whatever.

Shoto nodded, as though satisfied, and went back to his work.

In the background, the clones seemed to be arguing.

"I thought you would…" Katsuki cast another paranoid glance around "… I thought you were plotting a plan to go kill the guy who killed your father.

Le pinceau de Shoto s'immobilisa un centimètre au-dessus du parchemin.

"If you do, I'll help you."

And Katsuki meant it.

Shoto stiffened.

It was the most he'd managed to get out of his friend in days, thus Katsuki emboldened.

"I'm just wondering why you haven't…" It was difficult to properly explain what he meant without sounding rude. "Well, you're rather intense. I'm just surprised you haven't dealt with him yet."

He'd expected to see All for One hanging by his skin in Tokyo the same day.

"… Dad's more important."

Is.

Shoto kept drawing. His movements were psychotic.

He added two curves and four new esoteric symbols.

"I know," said Katsuki.

"No you don't."

He didn't. He'd said it only because that's what he felt he should say, not because he meant it.

"I'd like… I think maybe you should speak. Not to me, not if you don't feel like it, but to somebody, like your grandma."

Shoto didn't answer.

Frowning, he was pushing things around, seeing something that Katsuki wasn't able to.

"It can't be," Shoto muttered, and Katsuki leaned forward, ignoring the building tension in his shoulders.

"I could help you. We could—maybe you need to see somebody, alright? Your father—"

Katsuki didn't say 'wouldn't have wanted you to act like that' because it was shitty and he didn't know what Enji Todoroki would've wanted.

Did he feel bad, seeing how frantic Shoto had become? Did he feel proud that somebody cared enough about him they'd move the heavens for him? Was he even watching over his son?

"- his death has taken its toll on you. You need to let go, for a while at least, and grieve properly."

Refusing to admit that his father was dead and wouldn't come back wasn't the proper way to grieve.

Shoto, as if he couldn't hear him, kept on pushing papers around, searching for something that eluded him.

Shoto ignored him – or didn't hear him – continuing to sow chaos in his workspace.

"They've got the pure lands so I thought…"

Shoto grabbed a book and, for a brief moment, it looked as if it glowed blue.

Katsuki blinked, and the glow disappeared.

"What is it?"

Shoto was ash white.

"… their reincarnation cycle is completely different than ours."

Katsuki frowned, peered over his shoulder.

It was a physics book, diagrams, and circles with evasive numbers.

Katsuki's eyes roamed over the page, trying to understand what had annoyed Shoto so much.

The book was shaking. Katsuki looked up.

Shoto was red in the face, veins bulging on his forehead.

The hardcover snapped, chunks flying around, and Katsuki jumped, startled.

"What's the problem?"

Shoto's eyes snapped to his, smoke rising from the corner of his pursed lips as though he were boiling inside.

It tingled at the back of Katsuki's mind.

"Get the fuck out of here."

Katsuki frowned.

"Wh-"

Shoto hit him square in the stomach.

All the air was expelled from Katsuki. He spit saliva as he shot across the office like a rocket at full speed, embedding himself in the hallway wall.

A lightning-like pain shot from his spine to his chest.

The last thing he saw was one of the Shotos approaching the door, looking down at him: Katsuki's eyes lowered and he saw Shoto—the original—at the back, throwing tables against the walls and breaking ink pots amid a rain of paper, as light as feathers.

They closed the door on him.