The Tick vs... MY HERO ACADEMIA! Issue 87
These were the days that Enji Todoroki dreaded the most. Heading to the hospital that he sent his wife too after she had her mental breakdown. The... whole fiasco of what had happened. The arguments, the yelling, the screaming and finally... Rei snapped like a twig under too much pressure and attacked their son.
... he really only had himself to blame. His ambition was boundless, but he was incapable of fulfilling it. He was trying to ensure a legacy that would surpass him and all of his contemporaries. But... perhaps he did take it too far, perhaps his training was too extreme for Shoto when he was young. He ruined his relationship with his wife and his children.
It's why he came to visit Rei with a bouquet of orchids, her favorite. They needed to talk, as he waited for the nurse to see if she was awake. 10 minutes passed, then 20... then 30. And finally, he was allowed to see his wife.
She was still in bed, curled up, not looking at him.
"Enji." He could hear the contempt she had for him in her voice. Not that he didn't deserve it.
"Rei." Was Enji's single reply.
"Is it that time of the month already? Where you decide to come and see if the doctor's declared me in good health?" She still wasn't looking at him, but that was too be expected. It wasn't anything he didn't deserve. He sighed, as he took a seat in the chair.
"Do you remember on our wedding night? What we talked about?" He could hear Rei sigh as well, as she finally rolled over to look at him.
"You mean that same conversation where you told me, straight to my face, on what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, that I shouldn't come to expect you to love me?" She made it sound worse then it really was. Enji had told Rei that she shouldn't expect a passionate marriage, but perhaps they could find affection in each other, eventually.
"That's..." He thought for a moment, before sighing. "Fair. That's extremely fair of you, Rei."
"Oh? Extremely fair of me? I blame the..." She pondered for a moment. "I don't even know what they have me on. A mood stabilizer with an antidepressant/anti-psychotic cocktail."
"... that shouldn't be surprising, Rei. You had a psychotic breakdown."
"I had a psychotic breakdown because of you, Enji! Toya's fire burned too hot, Natsuo could only regulate himself thermally, Fuyumi has her snow... but Shoto was your perfect little weapon, a perfect combination of Hellfire and Hailstorm." Every sentence out of her mouth was a condemnation, but Enji had realized that he deserved such things these days.
"You told me that you wouldn't love me, Enji. And I think I accepted that, but did you ever care about any of our children?" It was a question that pierced through all of Enji's defenses, he could feel his heart skip a beat.
Did he actually care about his children? He taught Toya as best he could, but those blue flames were too hard to control and too tied to his emotions. Natsuo wanted to be a doctor and Enji was paying for his college. Fuyumi stuck around to help raise Shoto and he made sure to give her a monthly stipend.
And of course, there was Shoto, whom he trained personally... him and his sidekicks. It was intense, but he wasn't about to let Shoto's potential and his future go to waste.
But that wasn't... caring for his children. That wasn't supporting and nurturing them.
"I haven't been a very good father." Enji said quietly, but he noticed that Rei rolled her eyes.
"Of course you haven't been a very good father. That's all they talk about, sometimes. Fuyumi thinks your pushing Shoto to be something he's not. Shoto introduced me to his girlfriend. Natsuo interns as this hospital. And Toya..." She shook her head. "Did you know that he has a stalker? He kept pacing and complaining about her."
... ... ... ... ... ...!?
That was... quite possibly impossible.
"... Rei... are you telling me that Toya comes to see you?" He watched as she hugged her knees to her chest and nodded.
"Only once a month. He said he'd come more often, but he doesn't want to interrupt his siblings, or Heaven forbid, run into you."
"Rei..." Enji was quiet. Very quiet. "Toya died several years ago. In a whirlwind of blue flames when he tried to prove that he could control his flames. There was nothing left to bury. Pure incineration."
She looked at him, tilting her head.
"... but you just missed him, Enji."
Everything seemed to zoom in on Enji as Rei said those words... he practically leapt out of his chair and left the room, as Rei called out to him. He went to the Nurses station and practically demanded that he see the visitor's log. He flipped through the pages... He could see the names of his children... but every now and then... an innocuous page... staring at him black and white.
Toya Todoroki.
Of course none of his other children would have seen it, it was never clustered with them. This... someone was impersonating his son. He felt a burning sensation... he could feel his eyes water. Was this what it felt like to be a father and be... completely incensed as this absolute blasphemy against his children!?
He felt the flames consume his beard, before he heard his wife called out to him.
"Rei... I need you to tell me everything about the person that visited you today and every other time he visited you!" He needed to get to the bottom of this. With the rise of the League of Villains... and the return of the Terror... who knows who could be stalking his wife and his family!?
"... Shoto's on the television." She pointed to the small screen in the corner of the room and he turned in shock and surprise and there he was, his youngest child, Shoto Todoroki, who chose to take his provisional license and agreed to intern with Lunch Rush, the head of UA's cafeteria instead of himself, on the television. On, of all things, Iron Chef, facing off against a culinary supervillain with the support hero.
He felt a twitch in his eye. This was a distraction to something far more important then Shoto's dawdling!
The dorms at UA for Class 1-A was a flurry of excitement and activity. Mostly the latter, as Minoru Mineta was currently in a heated debate with Kyoka Jiro.
"You really think I'm letting you near anyone, you got another thing coming!" She looked like she was ready to whip him silly.
"... I need to take measurements! I can't make a one size fits all costume! You really want to tell me, Jiro, that any costume both you and Yaoyorozu can use will actually look good?" And to think, he actually got out all his sewing supplies for this. The crap he had to put up with, day in and day out. Do they want to win, or do they want to look like they got everything from a half off sale from a defunct Halloween store!?
Kyoka, for her part, had all the good sense to blush, being compared to Momo, but she was back on the attack.
"If it's a skirt, why do you need an inseam measurement! We can just give you our ratios, you little perv!" She didn't like the idea of Minoru knowing her sizes, but it was a lot better then having him take them personally.
"I need the inseam, Jiro, so I know where the skirt hem should fall." He needed a diagram and that was exactly what he did, sketching one out quickly.
"See, here we have you, Uraraka, and Yaoyorozu. We agreed on 4 to 6 inches above the knee, right? Miniskirt type maids just like in anime, right?" They were rough sketches, but he needed to make a point.
"Yeah..." She didn't see where he was going, as she watched Minoru place a hem line four to six inches above the Uraraka's sketch's knee.
"You see, on Uraraka... the skirt hem is perfect! But if we put it on you..." He did so, showing that the hem was well below her knee. She was the shortest girl in class, after all.
"Look! Below knee! No one is going to go to a maid's cafe where they don't show their knees! It's preposterous!" He then did the same on the sketch of Yaoyorozu... and it was incredibly scandalous.
"Look at it, Jiro! LOOK AT IT! Do you want to be responsible for Yaoyorozu feeling like a stripper!?" Not that her hero costume was any better or worse, but this was fun, not business.
"Fine, fine, fine! Ugh!" Minoru smiled. Once more... the judicious application of FACTS and LOGIC had served him well. He grabbed his cord and quick as a lick... had Kyoka's inseam measurement.
"... wait, that's it?" She was actually surprised. She was expecting...
"What? You thought I was going to ask you to strip down to your skivvies?" Yes, exactly that.
"Oh, please. I'll have you know, Jiro, that I am 100% a gentleman!" She narrowed her eyes at him, as his declaration of being chivalrous.
"Is that what they call it now? " He ignored the jab, as he started work on the skirt, the steely snip of his scissors bringing to thought good memories.
"Do you want black or white frills and lace, Jiro?" He asked, not looking up as he cut out the skirt template. She looked at him, and shrugged.
"I'm partial to purple." She said, only to immediately regret it as Minoru stopped, placed his cheek in his palm and looked up to her.
"Are you now?" A smile had split his face as he chuckled.
"Shove off, Mineta." He raised his hands defensively, and got back to his work. And in all honesty... Kyoka was impressed. "Still, that's a really straight cut."
"I used to help the girls in middle school with their cosplay costumes. It was a great way to get girls to talk with me, but..." He paused. "You know what, you don't need to hear all of that."
"Never the hot ones, right? You're so predictable!" She watched as he laughed it up, starting up the sewing machine.
"I resemble that, Jiro!" But he made quick work of the skirt. A black miniskirt with purple lace and frills. He still had the rest of the class, but he had time. The hard part was going to make the host uniform for the guys, but right now he was focusing on what he suspected would put him over the top when it came to the Cultural Festival.
"What about the rest of it?" Kyoka finally asked.
"... the skirt is the hard part! Like you said..." He was grinning. "You can just give me the relevant measurements and that would be that."
Kyoka had a lot to say to Minoru, but that was interrupted. They were just off the main room, when they heard an exclamation.
"HOLY CATS! Todoroki's on TV!" Well, when you heard that, the only thing to do was to check and low and behold, there he was. Shoto Todoroki and Lunch Rush were on Fuji TV for the big annual Iron Chef anniversary special with the Thirteenth Chairman and the absolute strangest thing about it...
Was that they were facing against the American Supervillain, the Breadmaster, who had committed several acts of baking related Terrorism in Tokyo over the last few weeks.
That just cemented it for Minoru Mineta. Shoto Todoroki was the bar all others in the Hero Class would have to set their Cool factor against! As if he didn't have any other mountains to climb during his journey to become a hero, oh well. What's one more?
