Heroes are covered in crimson blood ch.2
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In this sad excuse of a country, one's achievements give anxiety to others.
Everyone's dreams get shot down like birds from the trees.
Working together, to see the world burn to ashes,
we huff and we puff until the sky crashes.
That's what it feels like when Todoroki Shoto walks down the UA campus, hearing people whisper about the hero course students that got in from recommendations, and the ones that dominated the entrance exam. They don't mention the high-stakes exam that the recommended went through, because they don't have a clue about it. they just know their own challenges, and the ones that excelled at them.
He walks slowly enough to not give the appearance of rushing, and that way conveniently manages to catch the tail-ends of conversations. The headphones he has over his ears are silent. Information is most valuable when the opponent doesn't know exactly what you have found out. This he knows because his father has beat it into him, like the excess oxygen out of a cutting-edge sword.
He freezes the thought in its place, just like he freezes the floors of their family dojo, only for his father to melt them in anger the next second.
(He freezes it like how he wishes to someday freeze his warm, steadily beating heart.)
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The classroom is a little bit chilly, but Shoto doesn't mind. Chilly is familiar, chilly is good, chilly is grounding when the sunlight is reflected and he sees fires everywhere. Chilly can be easily broken by fire, like his father likes to do. Shoto can't put out his father's fires with his ice, so chilly is better than hot. Shoto nods to the people who introduce themselves to him and remembers their names, because that's what his father says makes for good connections. There is a stiff boy with glasses, Iida, he reminds himself, and a yellow-eyed girl with pink skin and hair, Ashido.
As more students filter into the room, Shoto let's himself evaluate the competition, because his father has taught him to be the winner, because losing as a Todoroki isn't an option outside. His scar itches and Shoto refuses the urge to scratch it, because then it will be even harder to see through the always irritated eye.
A commotion starts up again when a green-haired kid comes through the door, soon welcomed by a small, brown-haired girl. Because appearances are the best deception, Shoto ignores the round cheeks and flustered blush, and instead focuses on the muscle mass that shows definition even from underneath the freckled boy's uniform, and the way the round brown eyes fly over the room, almost unnoticed. Then his relative peace is further disrupted, when a blonde loudmouth, Bakugou, stands up and starts straight up yelling at the green-haired boy, Midoriya, as Shoto later learns.
Just when the blue-haired boy, Iida, tries to stop the ensuing fight, a toned arm comes and stops the smoking fist of the red-eyed hero trainee in its tracks.
Shoto allows his eyes to travel up the arm and finds a girl with long pink hair half up on space buns, who had apparently broken up the fight - however temporary it would have been since that is also when a yellow sleeping bag decided to rise from slumber.
They head to the field outside, and Shoto chills his shaking hands, because not all smoke comes from fire, and not all fires come from his father.
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Once outside, they partake in a series of physical tests. They are a bit unfamiliar to Shoto, as his father doesn't do the same kinds of tests, but he gets the hang of them quickly by watching his new classmates do them in groups.
He pays attention to the changing rankings, and takes notes how differently the students utilise their quirks, some being the best in a particular test but at the rock bottom in others. The only constants seemed to be the Space-bun girl, Haruno, and the freckled kid, Midoriya, Haruno placing at the dead center of 10tht at every test, and Midoriya in all but one of the tests at the bottom 5.
Even after the sleeping bag, Aizawa-sensei, Eraserhead, concluded the testing with revealing that everyone would be continuing in the class, Shoto was no closer to figuring out the quirk of Space-bun girl.
(He wanted to freeze the panic and the desperation that rose within him at the thought of his father finding out of his incompetence, no matter how much he wanted to deny it.)
(Instead he calmly walks to the sleek, black car waiting for him at the UA entrance. He can deal with whatever is coming.)
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Sakura is fourteen when she walks to the UA the second time, now a student. She stops at the gate, and stares at the clock from her phone, while in reality she makes mental notes about everyone struggling past the reporters. She makes a show of looking up every time she hears someone coming, to keep up appearances that she has a reason to stand there.
(She is angry that she can't hide in a tree for a good vantage point, but isn't sure why that is her first and most favored idea.)
The people who come to the campus are interesting. There are people with tails, multiple arms, head of a shark, people who seemed so ordinary that Sakura was almost ready to cry.
When the clock hits 7:55 Sakura lifts her school issued blue bag from the ground, and makes her way towards her new classroom of 1A.
(She is angry that she has to stop a fight first thing when she gets to the room, and pushes the mental image of different boys fighting from her head. She doesn't exactly remember anyone with pinwheel eyes, nor anyone with bright orange jumpsuits which clearly hadn't been in fashion since before Sakura started hoarding cheap fashion magazines. Something in her breaks with the revelation, but she keeps her face as stony as the history etched in the side of a cliff in a different home.)
When it comes to physical test that her new teacher makes them do, Sakura makes sure to score in the middle. It wouldn't do her well to draw excess attention, the kind that people give those who perform well, or those who are below average. She doesn't activate her quirk, except for a boost in ball toss.
(She is angry that she doesn't have anyone hyping her up with loud voices and 'believe it's, that she doesn't get an barely-there headpatt or small, begrudging nod. She is angry that she doesn't see sparkling seafoam eyes.)
(She is angry that her expectations are a cruel fantasy she can't quite grasp.)
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Sakura comes home, and tells her father a shortened version of the day, while her father nurses a hangover with some questionable pills from the highest cabinets in their house and a chocolate bar. Sakura puts some pasta on the stove, and makes sure to follow the instructions from the video she found to the T. She mixes some tomato sauce in, and throws ready-bought BBQ Chicken on top. She eats alone, and scoops the leftovers in a tupperware for her father to heat up later.
(Somehow the pasta is hard and tastes bland, the tomato sauce is bitter, and the chicken is stringy. She still doesn't know how to cook, even while following tutorials and using pre-made ingredients. The thought is oddly comforting.)
(Sakura buys a cookbook the next time she is in town by herself, but she can't bring herself to read it.)
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The second day of high school comes with their first class of hero training. Sakura can't bring herself to be excited about their first step to becoming real heroes and gushing over the colourful costumes of most of her classmates. Instead she spends the morning listening for the sound of bells.
(She never hears them, and she doesn't know why she wanted to.)
The class gets split into pairs, each pair then assigned either the role of heroes or villains. The objective is simple: the heroes must capture the villains or touch the papermass-missile to win, while the villains need to either capture the heroes or hold out for ten minutes.
After the explosive first match with Bakogou Katsuki and Iida Tenya as the villains and Midoriya Izuku and Ururaka Ochako as the heroes, the pace calmed down, with more decisive moves and lower-stake battles.
(Sakura can't help but flinch when the explosion starts chirping and the glowing arm is spinning a ball made of circulating air and she is on the roof of a hospital and at the Valley of the end and fightin ga far and her mind is running when her legs are frozen to the floor and her boys are dying and she is so weak and she can't stop them and where is Kakashi-sensei and theyaregonnakilleachothersenseihelp-)
When her turn to play villains with Yayarozy Momo comes, she takes a blade from her costumes hidden pockets and slices her arms.
Denki Kaminari and Kyoka Jirou are taken to recovery girl.
(The villains win in under 2 minutes. The heroes hadn't gotten to the second floor yet. When the class is over Aizawa Shouta gives Sakura a form that needs to be returned with guardians signature the next day.)
(Sakura's father signs the form as soon as Sakura comes home, while being drunk as a skunk and high as a kite on their living room couch.)
Sakura starts on the sheet they got her heroism fundamentals. The homework is easy and Sakura is done within 5 songs from Japan's top 50. She checks over her answers. She changes out of her uniform.
(The answers are easy, but what comes first are the corresponding protocol from a different code. When she is done, she proofreads the paper and erases the absentmindedly written "Those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash".)
(She is angry because she doesn't know why she feels so empty all of the sudden.)
Sakura tells herself that she feels happy when she takes her wallet and her pink cat-ear headphones and laces her boots up to her calves and leaves the house with keys on a magnet in the underside of their mailbox. She isn't sure if her father will be in any condition to let her in.
(She is angry, and so she decides to go shopping. She is angry that she doesn't have her forever-friend glad in purple making the hard decisions on what Sakura should buy from the expensive shop she has gone to.)
And so Sakura leaves the first 3 shops without buying anything and decides that she and her father need groceries. She buys instant ramen that is not a part of her meal plan, some extra tomatoes that she doesn't even like that much, and eggplant, which she has no idea how to cook with.
Her mood gets better when she is walking home in the cold under the streetlights with filled-to-the-prim paper bag clutched to her chest.
She takes the key while taking bills and subscription magazines from the mailbox, and she doesn't knock on the door. She doesn't want to be disappointed, since she for once she isn't angry.
Sakura's mood gets worse when she gets in, only to hear rattling from her fathers room and sees high heels and a purse laying on the floor next to the kitchen door. She turns the music up, prays to gods that she has no faith in that her hearing isn't doomed, and puts the groceries in the fridge and cabinets. She goes to take her schoolbag, packs her uniform, and takes a walk to her mother's house.
(She turns back around when she looks from her mother's driveway and sees four silhouettes in the kitchen window. She decides to go to the arcade.)
(She gets kicked out three hours later, and by then the house she returns to is quiet.)
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