"Did you perhaps see any of these individuals on the night of the attack, ma'am?"

I held up two photos- one of Tomura and the other of Kurogiri. The shots were cut from the footage of their attack on USJ. The elderly lady stuck her face an inch away from the outstuck photos, eyes squinted behind oval glasses.

"No, sonny, can't say that I have. I went to bed at seven, right after the Jon-Jon Show. Didn't even wake up with all the apparent commotion, you know. My hearing isn't as good as it used to be."

You could have lead with that when I said I had some questions about the night of Hosu attack two minutes ago, is what I wanted to say. Instead I just smiled politely and said "No problem, ma'am. we appreciate the help."

The 'we' in question was Shoto and I, though so far all he had done was stare ahead lifelessly and shuffle from door to door after me.

I knocked on the next door down, number 327.

This was part of Endeavour's apparently very important task for us. Going door to door in every apartment building within a two mile radius of the attack and asking anyone if they had seen hide or hair of the perpetrators on the night of the attack.

It was really boring work. We- I- had knocked on hundreds of doors already only to get zero real leads. The closest I had gotten was an attention-seeking retard in the second building who had claimed to spot Tomura that night. I had gotten all excited, happy to have finally found something after innumerable failures, but upon further questioning he folded and revealed that he hadn't even been in the city that night, but instead out on some bachelor party bender. He was only lying to spend more time with me, an apparently famous up and coming hero. I had been sorely tempted to sock the guy in the face after that.

It was also really, really frustrating work. Especially when I had to do practically all of it without any help. Shoto's contribution was to be the silent ghost hovering behind me and creeping people out. Also, being forced to convince people that I was actually myself, warding off others looking for autographs and photos or, in one particularly annoying case, avoiding an attempt to give a speech to lazy kids with poor grades, in all I'd been having a terrible day so far.

And it was only five hours in.

"This is a waste of time." Todoroki claimed after that apartment turned out to be yet another dead end.

The guy had some nerve, saying that after doing nothing all day. "I don't know why you're complaining. You've done nothing but follow behind me so far like some lost puppy. "

"Because I know going from door to door is pointless. Endeavour might have given that big speech back there but he really just wanted to get us out of the way. This is a wild goose chase."

I turned around to face him. "You think I don't know that? So there's a one in a million chance that we'll find anything useful, so what?"

"There's a zero percent chance."

"That's your problem." I said, jabbing a finger in his direction. "You just never give a damn."

Shoto's eyes narrowed. "What did you say?"

I stepped right up to him, looking him straight in the eye. "I said you don't give a damn. You never did."

"What are you even talking about?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. You're half-assed about everything, you never give your full effort. You just stand around with this sour look on your face, bothered about who knows what. If you'd done your best that night Tenya might still be alive."

Shouto stared at the ground and pulled his hands from his pockets. "... Take that back. "

"I won't. It's true. If you'd had the guts to use your flame side instead of cowering Tenya would have still been alive."

There it was. Even though the news had said Tenya's corpse had been found by Shouto but the truth was that Shouto had gotten to Tenya before he'd been killed. I would never even know that if the mustachioed officer hadn't let it slip, to much glaring and quiet promise of a stern talking to by Tsukauchi. My thoughts on his cowardice that night were out there. Everyone in our class knew that Todoroki never wanted to use his flames, only when absolutely forced to did he call on them. Maybe if he had they'd have been able to escape, or at least hold Stain off until a pro came along.

Shouto punched me in the face. I felt my nose crunch and blood trickle down as I went stumbling back.

My arm grew long enough to reach the floor, becoming insectoid in shape, then grabbed Shouto by the leg and pulled. Together we fell to the carpeted floor of the corridor.

I punched him in the gut, he gasped, then kneed me in the ribs. With an interlocking of legs and a twist he was on top, holding me with one hand by the throat and punching me in the head with the other.

He jumped off with a yelp, tenderly holding his right hand, the hand that had been on my neck.

My skin was covered in short, stinger-like barbs that slowly receded. An odd but useful quirk.

I kicked Shoto in the thigh as I got up, hard enough that he went careening into the cream-colored wall.

"Truth hurts, does it?" I asked him, wiping away the blood that had been seeping into my mouth.

"... It looks like it's hurt you more than it has me."

With all the quirks around I was free to pull out all my cards. I grinned at him while activating my brand new quirk, gifted by All for One.

Recovery Overclock, 220%.

I had finally managed to strengthen a quirk beyond it's supposed limits, though I'd admit that it being my own quirk and a pretty simple one at that made it easy. I felt the trickling from my nose and lip start to slow, then stop. The bruises on my face slowly started darkening, then lightened up again leaving my skin unmarked apart from a covering of blood.

"... I'll just have to knock you down faster than you can heal up." Shoto said as he calmly surveyed my healing.

"Keep trying." I said as my eyes turned red, features sharpening.

The retaliatory jab moved in slow motion to my new eyes and even with my poor martial arts skill it was a simple matter to block it to the side, opening him up for one of mine.

Somehow he blocked it.

Shoto was getting very frustrated, I could see it in the furrowing of his brows and the hatred in his eyes. Also, the fire bursting from his left hand. Before I could yell a reminder that we were still indoors he had raised it, a stream of fire coming for me.

Thankfully my slow-mo eyes made it so that I could, just barely, duck out of the way.

The carpet and ceiling catching alight momentarily called a stop to the fight.

"Shit!" I yelled, frantically pulling off my hoodie to bat at the budding flames without much success.

The floor, ceiling, walls and I were wrapped in an icy blanket. It put an end to the flames immediately, but it also froze me in place. "You're in the way." Shoto said.

The ice-shavings and slush around me were blown out, scattering up either end of the corridor. "You first tell someone they're in the way, then you attack!"

"Hmm." Shoto said, then smirked.

That was it. I was pulling out all the stops. I didn't need any defensive quirks now, all I needed to do was hurt that cocky, useless, bipolar-quirked asshole as much as possible before the cops finally came to break us up.

Even with the slim pickings in the apartment building I found 13 useful ones. Scythe-like insectoid arms, multiple minor strength enhancements, even a quirk that made my body rubber-like and a few more besides. It may not have been as powerful or as striking as my form in the Stain fight had been but my appearance still made Shouto step back in worry.

The sounds of multiple doors opening and heads poking out to stare at us, and the now ruined corridor, made me deflate.

"... Let's take it to the rooftop instead." I announced.

Shouto nodded. "... Let's go then."

My head was, roughly, being ground into the rooftop. The only meager comfort I took in the situation was that Shoto was receiving the same treatment.

"Just what is going on here?" Came the voice of Endeavor. "A phone call from the police station to inform me of water and fire damage to a corridor on the 17th floor... Reports of mini icebergs forming and shattering on the buildings rooftop along with fireworks and a tornado... And all within the last thirty minutes!"

"He-" I began, then my head was raised and slammed into the floor again. I think a tooth may have broken.

"You know what, I don't need to know any more than that the two of you got into some little kiddy fight and, brainless as you are, decided to duke it out not just inside the building but on the rooftop in full view of the offices across the way!"

Shoto mumbled an incoherent reply.

"Quiet Shoto! Since the two of you are so eager to fight I've taken off the rest of the afternoon to show you the ropes. I'm going to show you just how happy I am to have been interrupted in the middle of my investigations to deal with this."

The Todoroki Household was really traditional. Beautifully crafted wooden panels, windows made of a sturdy paper, an immaculate garden with a cherry tree, a koi pond and a zen garden... Those were all the things I'd spotted while being, literally, dragged through the place like a sack of potatoes. Shoto's head kept knocking mine so I shoved my elbow in his side to get him to keep away from me. He shoved me right back.

"Keep going, you two. I'm going to make our lesson all the more instructive." Endeavor threatened.

The shoving stopped and we were soon thrown onto a tatami mat.

"Welcome to the Todoroki Doujo. Shoto is pretty familiar with this place already."

I didn't stop to look around. All I knew was that Shoto looked really, really nervous.

Endeavor held up a hand to ward off any possible interruption. "Here's the deal. You two need to land a hit on me. No quirks allowed. Just pure martial arts."

I was starting to get nervous too.

"Well, what are you waiting for?! I told you what you needed to do didn't I?!"

I didn't wait any more. Leaping to my feet I ran at him, jumping to kick at his head.

"Did you really just try something that stupid?" Endeavor asked, punching me in the throat mid-flight.

I dropped immediately and he kicked me in the side. He still had on his boots, and I was made aware that they were most definitely steel-tipped. Something had been broken, that was clear by the blood I coughed up and the sharp, stabbing pain that gripped me. I was used to a lot worse though and got back to my feet immediately, moving as though I wasn't bothered.

For hours we fought Endeavor without a hint of success. We were actually getting worse the longer things went on, stumbling into one another in our fatigue and frustration. I tried to grab Endeavor by the shirt only to have Shouto accidentally kick me in the thigh.

"Watch it, idiot!"

"Maybe get out of my way next time."

Then Endeavor tripped me up and I fell right into Shoto.

"Can't you even manage to stay on your own feet?" Shoto asked.

I gestured to Endeavor. "Did you not just see that guy?"

The final straw was yet another kick to the leg by Shoto just as I was about to, finally, land a hit on Endeavor.

I whipped around, completely disregarding Endeavor in favor of dealing with Shoto. The asshole had just cost us both the chance of ending this charade of a lesson.

"Get the hell out of my way, you useless bastard!"

"If you had any sort of intelligence you'd let me deal with this alone - you're just a liability!"

I was punched in the head. So was Shoto.

"You- two- just- don't- learn!" Endeavor roared, punctuating each word with a headshot or punch to the gut.

I was laid flat. Shoto collapsed on top of me.

We didn't even have time to breathe before he was on us again. I was pulled to my feet only to be knocked straight back down again. It was like being hit by a train. My legs didn't even fold as I fell, it was like they had frozen in shock.

I so badly wanted bring out Recovery, just to end the pain, but this wasn't an apartment with hundreds of people in it where I could play that off. Doing that now would give away my secret quirk. As experienced as he was Endeavor would know right away, there were no other people within distance of his compound for me to have copied it and any attempt at playing it off would not end well. It would bring questions my way that I couldn't answer.

"Fuck this. I don't give a damn about the rules anymore." I said. My right hand turned blue when I shot what could only be described as an oversized snowball at Endeavor, one that melted to a puddle before making contact.

Shoto shook his head. "You can't even do it right. This is how you use my right side."

A flick of the wrist from Shoto and a jagged wave of ice spread across the dojo floor, too fast for Endeavor to dodge. He was wrapped in ice up to the thigh. I didn't know how long it would last on a man whose quirk was named Hellflame, but it gave me an opening to swing at him with all my might. I took great pleasure in the feel of my fist clocking him right in the face.

Endeavor stumbled but recovered fast enough to almost effortlessly parry my follow-up kick that, while probably unnecessary since we had managed to get a hit in even if only by breaking the rules, would have made me feel a lot better.

"So, you two can work together if you really need to. Let me give you a reward." Endeavor said.

Then, with a final blow to the head, I was sent into blissful unconsciousness.

The light streaming into the door was dim with the last hour of daylight when I came to. Shoto was already up, sitting forlornly with two black eyes. With that, his fair skin and striking red and white hair he brought to my twisted mind the image of a cosplaying panda. Damn, Endeavor must have given me one heck of a concussion if my mind was coming up with such messed up images. Even so, I wondered how long he'd been up already?

I yawned, sitting upright. No one spoke for a while, I was just trying to get my thoughts together after a humiliating beatdown.

"I'm sorry..." I said, breaking the silence. He looked up.

"About what I said this morning, that Tenya would have still been alive if you had done your best... It was wrong of me to say, I don't know what came over me."

"... You were right though."

"I wasn't. There was nothing you could do." I said, parroting Inasa's response to me two days back.

"You don't know that for sure. And maybe I couldn't have saved Tenya, but I could have at least stopped Stain. Instead I just let him get away." Shoto said, holding his fists to his sides.

"Stain isn't a problem anymore. He'll be going to prison for the rest of his life."

"That's better than he deserves." Todoroki said, echoing my regrets.

"It is. But it's the best we could do."

He looked away. "... I know."

"I wanted to do more, you know. I wanted to kill him. I wanted him to suffer."

"... Why didn't you?"

"Because then I'd be no better than him. He was a vigilante before, you know. Stain was. He probably still thinks he is, in a way. He wants to clean the world of fake heroes."

"Are you defending him?" Shoto asked, standing up.

"Of course not!" I said, crossing my arms. "He is a piece of shit. If the world was fair he'd be executed and we'd get a safer Japan out of the deal."

"Then what is the point of saying that?"

"Because, what I'm trying to say is Stain thought he was one of the good guys. He thought that he had it right, that he was doing the world a favor. If I killed him I'd go around thinking that I had the right to decide who lived or died, just like he did."

"But he'd be gone, never have a chance at killing anyone else ever again."

"And I'd have to suffer the consequences. I would become a vigilante right then, or if not I'd have to go to prison. In the best possible outcome any shot I had at becoming a hero would be gone if it came out, and it would have. And all the people I could have saved, I'd be sacrificing them too."

"That's wrong." Shoto said. "Why should you have to be punished for doing what's right?"

"Because what's right and what's wrong is subjective. Your right may be different from mine. The best consensus we have is the law."

Shoto sighed. "Sometimes the law seems so far off."

"Hey, I never said I liked it either. " I said, annoyed. I would break the law in a heartbeat if I felt like it was necessary, to be honest. But not for something like that, when the consequences were so severe.

He laughed, but quickly became quiet again.

"... I'm not letting something like this happen again, at least not without knowing I gave it everything I had." Shoto vowed, opening his left hand. A bright red and orange flame flared into existence by his command and hovered almost hypnotically over his palm.

"You can count me in." I said. "I'm never going to let anyone down ever again. I should have done more by Tenya. He deserved more from me, I should have given him more. From now on I'm going to give in my all- I'll never let another person close to me suffer because I wasn't good enough."

Shoto moved over, holding out a hand. I took it and he helped pull me to my feet.

"Then it's a promise." He said.

It was once again late when I finally got back home. I felt even more run down than I'd been after the Hosu fiasco, at least physically, thanks to a hands on demonstration of domestic violence courtesy of Endeavor. I really didn't know how Shoto had survived in that place if this afternoon was a tell of how the second rank hero disciplined bad behavior.

"Hey mom." I called.

"Izuku! I'm in the kitchen. Get over here and give me a hug."

Mom had become really clingy these past few days. Watching the Stain video hadn't helped ease her worrying over me. "Sure thing." I said.

I didn't begrudge her clingyness, not when it was largely my fault she was acting like this. My gallivanting with All for One and self-imposed training camp, even cut short as it had been, was hard on her. I was under no delusions that my mother was completely healthy of mind. The portraits of me that still lined the walls wouldn't have been out of place in a horror movie, in the home of an obsessed murderer. She was still my mom though. And if she was a lunatic, and I didn't think she was, at least she was a functioning one.

"You look really worn out. I made sure to make an extra big helping of curry and rice for you."

The smell wafting from the pot on the stove was mouth watering.

"I'll have dinner later. Right now I just really need a nap."

"Was your internship with Endeavor really that tiring today?" She asked.

Oh, she didn't know the half of it. If I hadn't healed up my many bruises before getting here, looking like one gigantic sore, she would have been up in arms. "Really. I'll just eat later."

Mom looked skeptical. "But the food is going to be cold..."

"That's what microwaves are for." I said. "Don't worry about it mom. You look tired too, maybe you should relax and watch a show or two. I'll probably just be in my room for most of the night anyway."

"Hmm... That does sound good..." Mom agreed.

I locked my bedroom door behind me then, quiet as I could, started rummaging through my cupboard. I pulled out a red backpack, the high-density weights Mei had expected me to use and grabbed a few protein bars out of my backpack and scarfed them down hungrily.

Waiting until I heard the door to my mom's bedroom shut and the sounds of her television playing I opened my window and, praying she wouldn't come knocking while I was out, hopped out of the third floor.

Landing gently, courtesy of a faceless neighbor two doors down, I checked my watch.

7:45pm.

Good. That gave me nearly ten hours before mom would get up. It was time to head back to the Warehouse.

I, surprise, surprise, found out that I was making another error even if it is somewhat minor. Up to this chapter I've been spelling the name of the red and white haired guy in class 1A as 'Shouto' when it seems like it should have been Shoto all along. I went back through this chapter after my initial round of edits to change every instance of the name I could find. Hopefully none made it through the cracks but if it did at least I wont be doing that in the chapters to come.

What makes this worse is that I just know that I'm doing little mistakes like this all over the place and I just haven't caught them yet.

Anyway, to comment on the events in this chapter. Like it was said above, Shoto didn't actually come across Tenya's dead body, but actually got to the scene mid-fight if just barely. Not using his flame side in the fight wasn't a conscious thing, but rather in the heat of the moment and since he never really uses it the thought never occured.

It wouldn't have changed the outcome either. Shoto watching Tenya killed before his eyes and letting Stain run off in shock. As you can imagine that left a pretty pronounced mark on Shoto, hence his reticence and depression this chapter and the last. And here we have a completely different inciting incident for Shoto's future use of his flame half, and as a consequence completely different ramifications for how this will shape him.

Endeavor's reaction to their fight may seem pretty intense, but I've always felt that the man was pretty intense anyway. He made sure not to do any damage to them that he felt would be debilitating or impossible to fix. He is also bothered by their interruption into his affairs and the fact that since he wasn't getting anywhere with his investigations it wasn't that terrible an interruption anyway.

For anyone wanting Golden Week to just end already you'll be happy to know that it will do so next chapter. Chapter 23 will see school start again and for the exams to be mentioned. You may have forgotten already but Aizawa still has an ultimatum up for Izuku- either meet his personal standards for physical fitness by the end of the first term (the standards which will be far above class baseline) or be kicked from the school.

The love you show this story, whether it be review, favorite or follow, is collected and stored inside silos. That accumulated warmth is distributed to the Egyptians in my brain who plow the lands of creative fertility whenever an intellectual famine hits. Without that life-sustaining sustenance they would crumble and wither away in the sweltering desert sun, as would this project. As always, I am forever appreciative of your support. Please keep those rations coming!