Enji Todoroki stared at the brilliant cerulean flames as they danced, turning the building specifically built to withstand his flames to ash. His eyes glazed unseeing even as his wife desperately tried to use her ice to put it out, only for it to evaporate before it reached from the heat. Touya…his son was in there, there’s no way he could be little more than ash, not with his condition.
A grunt was forced out of him as a cold mass slammed into him, bouncing him across the training yard like a stone skipped across a pond. The man groggily looked up at his wife, still too numb inside for his flames to rise to his defense.
Rei was glaring at him, silver eyes overflowing with tears but holding a heat that should have melted the man on the spot. “I TOLD YOU! I-I told you, you bastard…” Her voice trembled and cracked from the force of her grief.
Enji felt a stir in his heart, yes…of course this was his fault, wasn’t it…All of that, pushing his son past his limit, all the training, all that effort and his caring son was gone, sacrificed for…for nothing?!
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
Gazing about the training ground, the blue glow from his dead son’s flames bathing the area, Enji’s eyes fell on Shoto. The child gripping onto his sibling’s hands like a vice and that stirring in the man’s heart churned like a storm.
"S-shoto. Shoto!" The man began to raise to his feet as Rei looked incredulously on.
"Enji no!" Rei's hoarse voice yelled out as he lumbered over to Shoto "Not him too! "
Enji knelt in front of the trio of children, his face a smiling mask of manic energy and guilt,"S-shoto. You need to train. Y-you need to do it or...gnk or your brother will have died for nothing."
The youngest child stared up at his father uncomprehendingly as his mother’s body covered with frost, a thick wall of ice slamming into the man to separate them. He continued to watch as his father’s flames finally ignited after the third strike. The dead eyed stare stayed on his face as his siblings, the ones he had left, nervously drew him into the house. The sounds of their parent’s fighting dimmed, eventually becoming completely silent before his father entered the house without a word.
This wouldn’t happen again, Enji would not allow his Shoto, the one who had the perfect Quirk to make up for what he lacked in, to go down the same path as Touya. Shoto would succeed for his fallen son, what Enji had started, this would not be in vain.