Chapter 2: Courage
Hello, all! Hope here to bring Chapter 2 of Blood Ties! Thank you all for reading, following, favoriting, reviewing, etc. It really boosts my miniscule self-esteem, so thanks again!
BTW: Todoroki… you're so very difficult to write. Even though you're my favorite character in MHA, your reactions vary. *Sigh* No helping it, I guess.
Anon: Yes, her name is indeed Japanese. There is a reason for her not knowing much about Japanese culture, so don't worry. As for my writing style… there's not much more to say other than I'm a very straightforward person. I'm not good at beating around the bush or describing things very well, so I guess it reflects itself into my writing. I'll try my best!
Guest: Yeah, I've got plans… hehe. ^-^
For those of you who are interested:
Kaiya - Forgiving; Akira - Clear, Intelligent
Chapter 2: Courage
Courage. A feeling? Something you draw upon? Is it bravery, fearlessness? Or is it having fear, but doing something anyways? Is it foolish, a cover? Is it standing up for what you believe in, or standing against what all others believe in?
The willingness to do everything or the dedication to do nothing?
Sometimes, the one thing somebody needs is courage. While at the same time, courage could be the one thing not available to them.
This is the case for many.
"So…" Kaiya awkwardly started. A low murmur of chatter filled the bus, the only quiet seat being the one she was currently sharing with none other than Todoroki Shouto.
"I've been wondering; is it normal for people to always announce their last names before their first names in Japan?"
Todoroki turned to face her. His eyes gleamed in silent amusement.
"Is this what you regularly think about?" he teased with a straight face. Kaiya's cheeks turned a faint shade of pink.
"No! I mean, I guess I'm kinda confused about some things. Over in America, you'd always say your first name, first, and your last name, last. It's in the title. I only introduced myself like that because I was advised beforehand." Todoroki cracked a small smile.
"Is that so? Well, you could call it tradition, as that's how I've been taught," he suggested. Looking thoughtful, Kaiya ventured another question.
"So… just to be clear, your first name is Shouto, while your last is Todoroki?"
"That's correct, last I checked."
"You don't have to mock me…" she faked a pout before beaming at him. "I'm used to being called Kaiya, so it sounds weird when people call me by my last name."
"That's the reason you asked us all to call you by your first name, then," the fire and ice user clarified. Kaiya gave her confirmation, before turning to him once again.
"Would you prefer something other than Todoroki? Or is it fine the way it is?" At first, she didn't receive an answer, so she was worried that she had offended him somehow. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be too personal, or anything. I'm not very good at reading situations, so I'm sorry if I crossed a line!"
"We're here. Get out, brats," called Aizawa-sensei. He had already managed to develop a headache on the ride. It was going to be a very long day. Kaiya made to follow his order, but was stopped by a voice next to her.
"Shouto…" it began quietly, "...is fine."
The transfer smiled sincerely. "Shouto it is."
As the two made their way off the bus, Ashido, Asui, Jirou, and a floating pair of gloves, Hagakure, approached the new girl. Each of their faces reflected malicious intent, an evil smirk adorning each one of them. Yaoyorozu was standing off to the side, looking like she didn't care, but was, in fact, listening to the conversation intently.
"So, you are Todoroki, huh?" Jirou asked nosily. Kaiya was completely oblivious to what they were trying to intend, so she happily replied.
"Yeah! Shouto is really nice, he even helped me find where my number would be!" she chirped. The part of the group that wasn't completely ignorant sweatdropped at her unaware enthusiasm. Ashido's ears perked up at one part of her sentence, however.
"'Shouto? First name basis, huh," she smirked knowingly. Whatever she knew, Kaiya seemed to have missed.
"Eh? Isn't that normal among friends?" she asked innocently.
"She's right-ribbit," Asui agreed. "I prefer being called Tsuyu."
"That's not the point-" Jirou was cut off by squealing that came from the floating gloves.
"EEK! You and Todoroki would make the CUTEST COUPLE! I totally ship it!" Hagakure exclaimed loud enough for the entire class to hear. Everyone threw odd glances at where they believed the invisible girl was. Todoroki had his back turned, hiding a faint blush with a scowl.
Kaiya was seriously confused. She tilted her head to one side, resembling a puppy that had no clue what was going on. How naive, thought many at the time.
"Class, we have a reason to being here other than social investigations," Aizawa-sensei interrupted. Why did it have to be his class that was immature? Shrugging off the interrogation, Kaiya happily made her way to Shouto's side, looking at the surrounding scenery in awe.
It was a cloudless blue sky that became the roof, with a vast enclosed area was laying before them. It seriously looked like a messed up amusement park, as there were many areas where rescues could be staged.
Eraserhead led the way through the training grounds until they came before a large fountain. There stood a spaceman.
A dark shadow was perched silently upon one of the arena roofs. His sharp, slitted eyes took in the image before him.
His sister… his precious little sister… was surrounded by those disgusting vigilantes that call themselves heroes. As well as a large number of their soon to be spawn.
The pests multiply like the bugs they are.
The one with two hair colors even dared to stand next to her! The figure had to restrain himself from rushing down immediately to rescue his innocent kin.
Heroes, he thought with malice. They took her away once. I won't let them do it again! Especially not let them brainwash her! A buzzing noise erected from his ear. Pressing the button on the communicator, he waited for orders to spring.
"Tatsuo, what is your status?" came the voice.
"I've located the target. She's being disgustingly smothered by the enemy. Even if she wanted to escape, there are two pros and a bunch of trainees down there," Akira Tatsuo reported.
"I see… well then, await further instructions. This is dangerous territory, we can't be unaware."
"Of course, Mother. By the way, where's Father?" the overprotective brother asked.
"Working. Anyways, keep an eye out for any suspicion. We must retrieve the target at any cost. Besides yourself, of course, dear." Tatsuo ended the call with a roll of his eyes. His mother was obsessed with him becoming a suitable heir to the family business, so she often became over-bearing.
His father was too busy to check his wife's actions, so the kids were mostly left on their own to fend off their screw-loose mother. All Tatsuo cared about right now was getting his little sister back, so he dealt with the eccentricity of his parental units.
Kaiya would be retrieved at all costs.
No. 13-sensei had just finished explaining a couple, few, some, many things. For example, the reason for one of their teacher's absence. Apparently, All Might was 'resting because he had reached his time limit already' or something.
Kaiya didn't understand many things about Japan, so she just assumed this was another. Though it was peculiar how No. 13 only wanted Aizawa-sensei to hear this piece of information. She was able to because of a part of her quirk.
Shouto was standing quietly next to her, waiting for the lesson to start. Kaiya truly didn't understand what the girls were trying to implicate, but she knew that it had something to do with her seatmate.
As Kaiya was gazing at her surroundings, absorbing everything, she continued to listen to the astronaut-looking hero. He continued to explain that their quirks were for helping others, rather than harming, or worse, killing. This was completely different from what she's been taught.
Power is everything. If you aren't the strongest, then you don't deserve to survive. The weak are merely stepping stones for those that possess true power. That is why you must always be at the top, so that no others may look down on you.
As much as she's tried, Kaiya couldn't rid herself of the echoing voice of her father's teachings. It has been drilled into her for as long as she could remember.
Her head ached painfully as she tried to push these thoughts away. She could feel her heart rate increasing, causing the machine on her wrist to begin beeping. Shouto spared her a curious glance, but Kaiya was too occupied to notice.
Her breathing deepened, chest heaving with strain, as the monitor beeped louder. Her eyes were narrowed, trying to contain this spontaneous burst of rage. She felt it administer a shot of some chemical, but she was too worked up to calm herself.
Shouto looked at her worriedly. He caught her mumbling something to herself, and could barely make out: "... no right… monster… never… trust… rather die." The last two words alarmed him, so he was about to catch Aizawa-sensei's attention. Luckily, the teacher had already noticed the beeping and was headed in their direction.
"Are you okay?" he asked carefully, placing a calming hand on her shoulder. By now, the entire class's attention was on the transfer who seemed to have only just realized the teacher's presence.
Her face instantly changed into a fake smile. She laughed it off, which only caused some of the others to worry even more.
"Oops! Hehe, I guess I got a bit worked up, huh? Oh well, the thought of rescuing people really pumps me up!" she lied. "I'm perfectly A-Okay though!" she grinned goofily.
A few bought the cover-up, some looked at her oddly before shrugging it off, while the rest continued to stare in worry at the girl. Another hand on her other shoulder caught Kaiya's attention.
It was Todoroki.
"Sensei, do you mind if I take Kaiya to the resting room? I think the stress of her first day has begun to get to her."
"Go ahead, Todoroki, but make sure to come back after she's feeling better," Eraserhead affirmed. The part-white-part-red-haired male nodded, before leading the calming girl off to somewhere they could talk.
As he thought before, he wasn't here to make friends with idiots, but this might be an exception. He didn't mind her company on the bus, whereas others he'd be extremely annoyed. He ended up leading her just outside the Landslide Zone.
After taking a few deep breaths, she began to speak.
"Thanks, Shouto. I really lost control for a sec back there, so thanks. For pulling me away."
"I'm not usually one for prying, but I wouldn't mind if you'd want to share whatever's on your mind," he offered. Kaiya remained silent, looking like she had no idea where to start. She sighed decidedly.
"Would you like to know what my quirk is?" she finally asked. Todoroki looked at her questioningly, pondering the sudden question. Kaiya took this silence as a confirmation.
"I'm the middle child of three. In some strange turn of events, each of us happened to inherit a different quirk from our parents. My older brother inherited my mother's, my younger sister my father's, and I was given a combination of the two. Separately, my skills are weaker compared to my siblings', but when I use both I'm the strongest.
"But that quirk isn't the problem. The main problem for me is the quirk that was neither my father's nor mother's," she explained. This greatly confused the boy, as he'd only heard of children inheriting one of or both of their parent's quirks. He himself was born with these ideas in mind.
"My parents had access to very smart and successful scientists, who finished a certain product a bit after the time my brother's quirk manifested. They called it Manufactured Quirks. It allowed them to… forcibly inject an artificial quirk, and allow the subject to use it.
"My own brother, Tatsuo, was given the MQ Dragon as a test run. It succeeded, and he is now able to transform into a dragon at will, or even against his will," Kaiya admitted sadly. "But even though he was given immense power, he still isn't able to use it to its fullest because it was given after his real quirk manifested.
"He's still able to use the real quirk, however, and it gets him along fine. In fact, he's the next heir to the family business," she explained before taking a moment to collect her thoughts. Todoroki believed that he would hear about her next, however that wasn't the case.
"My younger sister, as I said before, inherited my father's quirk. She was considered the 'dollface' of the family, and wasn't given an MQ. She's expected to be married off to expand my father's empire, so she's spoiled all the time. Never knowing freedom, I almost have sympathy for her…" she trailed off. Shouto took this moment to prod the explanation forward.
"But, I'm assuming compared to you, her life was much better." he guessed.
"Yep. She had a paradise compared to me," Kaiya agreed. She seemed extremely hesitant to talk about herself, as shown when she changed the direction of the conversation.
"I guess I haven't told you about my parents yet, have." Playing along, the heterochromatic boy shook his head no.
"My father is able to manipulate all of the sun's qualities, such as light, heat, and fire. My mother controls electricity. Back when they were younger, they lived in Japan as moderately known heroes. After my brother was born, they decided to move to the US, where later I was born followed by my younger sister."
"So that's the reason your name is Japanese instead of American," he realised. Things were beginning to come together.
"That's correct!" she answered cheerfully. It looked strange for her to be so carefree, though it was probably a facade. "At a young age, even living in the US, I had always found the Japanese way of life to be very interesting. But my parents forbade me to further learn about the country, other than what I had already learned, which was very little. They seemed to have developed a hatred towards Japan, for reasons unknown to even me.
"And sometime after that, they made a decision that changed the entire family."
A loud crash interrupted the two, causing them to be alarmed by the sudden change in atmosphere. Something sinister had come. And it had just interrupted a very important conversation.
To Be Continued…
Hello again! Thank you for reading! Feel free to follow, favorite, review, or even PM me if you have questions/concerns. You don't know how motivating feedback can be, even if it's criticism! I'm only an amateur writer, so I need all the help I can get!
My Musings: This chapter surprisingly has more words in it than the previous one! I'm so proud of myself! I've noticed that of the animes I watch, after seeing most of the characters I'm able to determine who my favorite will be even before I actually watch the show. Call me one to judge a book by its cover, but I'm usually correct in my assumptions. Many of the characters I like, in fact, have different personalities, so it isn't just the handsome ones… ^-^. Anyways, this isn't important, but I just felt like writing it down anyways.
I'm also looking for some good animes to watch or manga to read, so if you have suggestions, please let me know!
I think I'm going to put up a popularity poll for all of my current stories sometime soon. It'll help me to decide which ones to give the most priority to.
That's it, so please continue to read! My next update… I've got no clue, sorry!~
~Hope ^o^