“We'll take your training to new heights”

I looked up at my father, arms crossed, who was watching me critically as I finished warming up.

“Every Friday we'll have a one-hour match. The first part will be all martial arts and the second part will include the use of your Quirks”

I turned my head to the calendar on the wall.

“... and since it's Friday, you already know what we're going to do today”

Excitement made the hairs on my forearms stand up.

My father had taught me to fight, but I'd never faced him before.

“If I were you, I wouldn't get too excited”

The shadow of a smile hovered on the corner of his lips.

He placed a timer on the floor, set for three minutes.

He bent his legs and clenched his fists in a stance reminiscent of boxing. I imitated him, hand outstretched, feet apart, right knee over foot.

The timer went off and I charged him.

*

“Not too bad”

Not too bad ? Not too bad ?!

I glared at him, ice on my nose, stinking of blood.

He brushed my comment aside.

“You've been begging me for months to increase the intensity of your training. You got what you wanted"

“I said I wanted to take the training to the next level. Said nothing about you using me as your personal outlet”

He had literally and figuratively wiped the floor with me.

I shook my shirt full of crumbs and dust.

“Because your Quirks are good, you rely on them too much. But the day may come when you meet someone who has the power to render them useless, and you'll need to be prepared”

Theoretically, that couldn't happen to me.

The Wheel of the In-Between had entrusted me with the immutability of the gifts, and if we were talking about the same immutability, then no one should be able to nullify, steal, or make disappear my chakra and Quirks – ever.

But as I've learned the hard way, it's best to be prepared for every eventuality - just in case someone decides to bomb me with a nuclear warhead next time.

“How do you do it? Get so hot, I mean”

Passively, Dad heated the air around him like a comfortable radiator. On the other hand, when he used his Quirk, the temperature rose drastically to the point where my blood almost boiled.

“That's because compared to you, I only have one Quirk” He took a sip of his protein shake “Your Quirks passively regulate your temperature. Since I only have Hell Flame, I'm always heating up”

“So I could do the same? Theoretically?”

He nodded.

“Lower the temperature until the air freezes, raise it until it's unbreathable... With enough time and practice, there's nothing you can't do”

Receiving praise from my father was at least as rare as seeing him smile. I graciously accepted the compliment and moved on:

“The way you fight is different from the way a karate teacher fights. I recognize some of the boxing, but I have a hard time understanding where the rest comes from. It's just...”

“... wild ?”

I nodded.

My nose had stopped bleeding, but I continued to apply ice.

“There are some things that only the experience of confronting a variety of people with equally varied Quirks can give you. You see a move that works well, you copy it and adapt it to the occasion. And then, one day, you end up with this kind of mixed result”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“But it's different from what you do when you catch villains. Usually, you do everything neatly, but here...”

He raised an eyebrow.

“You've seen videos of me working ?”

I shrugged.

“They play clips on TV”

And I happened to watch some YouTube videos, too.

Just to get an idea of what he does all day.

“You see, there's this notion of "heroic behavior" that most heroes seem to bow to. A hero must have honor, must not use cheap tricks, must be ethically irreproachable. It's a concept I adhere to within reason. If a villain tries to gut out one of my subord-” He glanced at me “If a villain shows great violence, I have no problem retaliating to the same degree”

The pieces of the puzzle came together.

“Is that why you have a bad reputation? Because you don't hesitate to use unconventional methods ?”

“That, and because I despise incompetent 'professionals'”

I imagined him at a meeting, arms folded, looking at all the others heroes around him as if they were worth less than the dirt under his shoes.

Teka's picture, with her blazing eyes and cold face, superimposed on his in my mind.

“Remember one thing, Shoto. In a fight for your life, neither honor nor chivalry will save you. Be as vicious and savage as you have to be to get home at night. Dead don't care about honor”

I drank in his words like water, etching them into my mind.

I wonder if he's always been like this, or if it's the army that's made him this way.

He looked at his watch.

“Go and take a shower. Emiyo must have finished preparing your breakfastby now”

He stood up with an empty bottle in his hand.

“Aren't you going to eat with me?”

“I have an early meeting. I'll probably be home later than usual, so don't expect me for dinner”

He left, slamming the door behind him.

I heard his footsteps receding down the hallway until he spun around and came back.

He half opened the door and met my eyes.

“Good luck on your first day of school”

“Luck doesn't exist”

“You better pray it does if you don't want to be expelled from this seventh school”

He slammed the door behind him before I could say anything.

*

“Shoto?”

My smile faded as soon as I recognized the voice. I turned around slowly.

Rei was standing at the kitchen counter, fidgeting nervously with her fingers.

She was studying me with that disgusting motherly look, probably trying to see if my father was taking good care of me.

“Oh, Rei”

I knew it would hurt her and that's why I said it.

“How are you?”

“Fine”

A silence passed.

Behind her, sitting on stools around the kitchen island, were the two idiots I shared my blood with.

The girl looked at me with surprise and interest. The boy, on the other hand, barely looked up from his plate.

“I, uh... I heard you went to the Heroes Awards. How was that? Did you meet any cool heroes?”

“No”

“Oh... I see. I see”

She tried to laugh, but her nervousness made her choke on her own saliva.

“And... um... My sister tells me that you've met her?”

I pretended to be surprised.

“Your sister... ? You mean that screaming woman? She's kind of... scary”

“Oh. Really ? Haha”

Her eyes fell on my lunch tray, which I wanted to finish in my room so I could continue working on the fourth level of Fuin.

Her face lit up.

“Do you want to eat with us ? We haven't started yet...”

This was not the image conjured up by the empty plate full of sauce that the teenager was wiping with a piece of bread.

“I have things to do”

“Oh, um, okay... So maybe another time ?”

I shrugged and walked away, ignoring the disappointed look she gave me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the girl cast a dejected glance at her brother, who didn't seem to care.

Learn from him. You and I haven't been part of the same family for a long time.

*

I noticed something interesting the other day.

Cold soba - the Canon Shoto's favorite food - was also my favorite food (if we forget chocolate cake).

Even if I weren't the Shoto of the Canon, it seems that certain things in this story are unalterable.

Like the fact that my face had to be scarred. Or the fact that Touya managed to escape when he was nothing more than a burnt piece of flesh, barely standing on his own two legs.

Did that mean that certain things in the story were unchangeable ? Like the fact that Deku, the original protagonist, was destined to get the One for All, even without the incident with the mud villain ?

Maybe not.

Maybe my face and Touya's dissapearance were just coincidences.

Maybe if there was no Mud Villain, there would be no Deku protagonist.

And in that case, wouldn't this world be a blank page for me to do whatever I wanted ?

The idea fascinated me.

My Hero Academia without a hero…

“We have arrived”

Emiyo smiled softly at me through the rearview mirror. My eyes fell on the school in the center of the city.

It was located in a chic, almost posh neighborhood, where women in cashmere sweaters and perfectly manicured nails chatted about their hard lives while their nannies looked after the children.

Chanel-clad little girls chatted with each other. Boys in berets mimed what looked like a baseball game.

No armed men securing the perimeter, no teachers looking like jailbirds on the run…

An average school in a town more than an hour's drive away.

After the last attack, no one would have guessed Endeavor would hide his son in a public school.

“I'll pick you up at 5”

I swung my satchel on my back and nodded to the housekeeper before stepping out.

The group of women looked at me curiously, no doubt wondering why a ten-year-old was wearing a mask, but they soon returned to their conversation.

No one paid any further attention to me, which wasn't a bad thing.

I went to meet the teacher who was in charge of greeting the students at the fence.

She smiled at me and leaned forward before speaking to me in the same voice you would use to speak to a dog.

“Hello there. I haven't seen you around here before”

“I'm new. Shoto Todoroki”

“I thought so. See that building over there ? The manager's office is on the third floor, behind the secretary's office. Do you think you can get there by yourself?”

I nodded and left.

My eyes swept over the swings, the slide and the playground.

Starting from tomorrow, shadow clones will be the only part of me that stand on this ground.