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Izuku was woken up by his phone's notification bell. As he had very few contacts on his personal phone, he knew that either Tomura got into a fight, Kurogiri was calling him for food or Shoto/Mina decided to send the first text. Sitting up in his bed, he checked his lockscreen, noticing it was 10:20 am and saw that it was indeed a message from Shoto.
[Cold Soba] : Hello. Apologies for asking this so soon, but would you be interested in meeting me today? I understand if you have responsibilities that must be tended to.
Izuku couldn't help but double check that the message wasn't Kurogiri due to the language used.
[Me] : Sure. Wanna join Eri and I while I teach her to control her quirk? I'm bringing along another person our age, so we should probably get to know each other.
[Cold Soba] : That's no problem. It's much more time efficient if I complete my training while spending time with you. Does this friend of yours know about me?
[Me] : Nope, I haven't brought you up. She knows about the stuff I do though, so you're welcome to use me as a conversation starter.
[Cold Soba] : Understood. When will the training begin, and where shall I meet with you all?
[Me] : 12 should be good. We'll train for an hour or so and grab a bite to eat afterwards. As for where we're meeting, I'll come by and pick you up with my quirk.
[Cold Soba] : You know my address? That is unsettling.
[Me] : I know the addresses of the top 20 pros. I gotta know which areas I should steer clear of. See you in an hour and a half.
Izuku set his phone down and hopped into the bathroom, completing his morning routine before heading downstairs, greeted by the sight of Kurogiri at the bar with Tomura and Eri eating eggs at the counter.
"You two really are inseparable." Izuku quipped.
"And I guess green really is the colour of envy." Tomura returned.
"I like you and Tomura the same, don't worry Izu!" Eri assured between bites.
"Thanks Eri." Izuku half-heartedly accepted as he patted her head. "Where are the other two? I'd rather they meet each other sooner than later."
"Having those two in the same place was the greatest mistake you've ever made." Kurogiri shuddered.
"So they've met already? Where'd they go?"
"I kicked them out and warped them to warehouse 12."
"I'm definitely gonna regret this..." Izuku muttered as he warped over to the ground, only to feel his nostrils, throat and eyes melting as he was surrounded by thick mist.
Following the split second of agonising pain, Izuku quickly fired up some pain resistance, as well as activating some durability and regeneration quirks to patch up any damage. He scanned the building and sensed two people standing in another room. Warping over, he was met with the sight of Mina throwing diluted acid in the air and Dabi shooting it with flames.
"What the fuck is wrong with both of you? I decide to check on where you ran off to, and I warp here to inhale some sort of cracked up tear gas?" He asked, doing his best to purge the memory of the trauma he just suffered.
"Izuku, this girl is fucking awesome. We learned that if she makes some potent as hell acid, I can evaporate it and we've essentially come up with a new quirk." Dabi explained, looking far too pleased for someone who created a new form of chemical warfare.
"Yeah, Dabi's quirk is the shit! His blue flames are way better than your shitty green ones - his heat is off the charts." Mina exclaimed with happiness. "Plus, we can help each other with target practice - screw your quirk training, I've got Azula helping me out."
Izuku was in disbelief. He went ages without sustaining anything close to that level of damage - and his spell of invincibility was cut short by two idiots dicking around with their quirks.
"Well it's nice to see you care about my well-being, but I'm afraid I've got to cut your little psycho meet-up short. You're both coming over to quirk training in an hour."
"The hell do I need training for? If I want to mess about with my quirk I'll just torch some abandoned buildings, or that shitty orphanage if I'm bored enough." Dabi complained.
"Shoto's gonna be there."
"Change of plans Mina, we've got quirk training to get to." Dabi quickly retracted.
"That's all it took huh? Well I've got nothing better to do since Eri's gonna be there as well, so I guess I'm stuck in it." Mina accepted.
"Izuku, mind dealing with the gas chamber out there? I like my lungs and I'd rather not screw them up." Dabi asked.
"Fine, don't piss off Kuro next time." Izuku advised as he warped the two back into the bar without warning.
'Have fun with the nausea dipshits.' Izuku chuckled to himself, dealing with the gas.
Shoto got dressed in a casual blue tracksuit built to withstand his quirk, with an small smile on his face and a noticeable spring in his step. As he walked into the living room, this didn't go unnoticed by Fuyumi.
"Eh? Shoto, are you okay? You didn't catch anything do you?" She worriedly asked.
"I'm fine sis, just heading out to do some training."
"Don't you usually train in the training compound?" She asked in confusion.
"I'm meeting up with a friend, so I'd rather train at his place of choosing than bring him here."
Fuyumi's eyes widened in shock.
"You have a friend? Oh my goodness I'm so happy for you!" Fuyumi ran over to Shoto wrapped him in a hug.
"So, what's he like? Or she? Is it a girl? Is it a girlfriend? First Natsu and now you? You're all gonna forget about me soon enough!" Fuyumi began firing off questions.
"Don't worry, it's a guy and he's just a friend. He's a relatively nice person." Shoto smiled wistfully.
"Just a friend Shoto? And to think I poured my heart out to you just for friendship."
Both Shoto and Fuyumi whipped their heads around to see Izuku leaning against the wall.
"Izuku, how did you..?" Shoto trailed off in awe.
"My quirk is teleportation. I said I'd be here to pick you up, and here I am. It's 11:55." Izuku replied, strolling casually over to the siblings and stopping at Fuyumi.
"The name's Izuku, pleasure to meet you. Shoto told me all about you, but he didn't mention how cute you were." He introduced himself with a wink.
Shoto noticed a hint of pink dusting his sister's cheeks and interjected before it could go too far.
"Flirt with her and I'll freeze your genitalia." He warned.
"Got it, I'll exclusively flirt with you if you're so jealous." Izuku sighed, leaving Fuyumi even more dumbstruck.
"Don't flirt with me either."
"So you were jealous for no reason?"
"I'm not jealous you ass!" Shoto spoke up with a bit of a voice break at the end, leaving Izuku clutching his stomach in laughter.
"Hey, Izuku was it?" Fuyumi asked tentatively.
"What's the matter hot stuff?" Izuku replied as he found himself encased in ice from the neck down.
"Thanks for being Shoto's friend. He hasn't got many due to...well, you know."
"No problem, ice prince is pretty fun to be around. We're similar at our cores, and I don't have friends outside of the ones I live with." Izuku responded. "Mind breaking me out Shoto?"
"Break yourself out'."
"Wow - cold. Grab my shoulder so we can warp over for training at least. Hold your breath too - it feels a little weird."
Shoto wearily placed a hand on Izuku, nodding towards Fuyumi as a silent goodbye before he felt disoriented and slightly nauseous.
"Deep breaths and don't make drastic movements for a few minutes. It'll pass." Izuku assured, rubbing circles on his back.
Shoto, once his vision stopped swirling, looked up to see Eri, a pink girl and a guy littered with patched skin. He noted that they were in some sort of forest, though there was a ceiling above them.
"Prince Charming!" He heard Eri exclaim as she ran towards him, earning chuckles from the other people in the training area.
"Hello Eri, it's good to see you again." Shoto replied as he knelt to hug her.
"Woah you really weren't kidding. He does look like a Disney prince." He heard the girl say.
"Really Mina? Cheating on me already? Where's the faithfulness?" Izuku whined jokingly.
Shoto released his hold on Eri to stand up and take a closer look at the patchwork man, who was staring at him before the guy averted his gaze as their eyes met.
'Do I know this guy? No, I would have remembered him. He's far too recognisable.' Shoto inwardly pondered.
He saw the pink girl - Mina, he remembered from Izuku - approach him with a hand offered to him.
"The name's Mina. Nice to meet you." She greeted cheerily.
"Shoto, you too." He responded simply, shaking her hand.
Looking back again at the unintroduced member of the group, he saw him staring again, before he looked toward Izuku who nodded in response.
"Patchy here is probably the best guy to train with you, given your ice quirk. I'll be with Eri and Mina deeper in the forest. Give me a shout or a text if you need me." Izuku said as he grabbed the two girls and teleported away.
'Judging from the burn scars, he might have a fire quirk, which will match up well against my ice. Unless they're a mutation - in which case I'm stumped.'
The man approached him and sat cross legged in front of him.
"Take a seat, I've got some stuff to talk about."
That was a weird request. At the very least, if the guy was planning on attacking him, he wouldn't be so relaxed, so that was a positive. Forming a block of ice to sit upon, Shoto sat opposite the man.
"So, how will the training be structured?" Shoto asked.
"Yeah, about that, we're not training at the moment."
Shoto looked at him confused.
"Are you just going to talk? Judging from the burns, you're probably the guy with a grudge against Endeavour."
"Yeah, grudge is really putting it lightly."
Shoto sat up a little straighter, preparing for a fight in case the guy wished to get to the hero through his son.
"I'm going by Dabi these days, but the real name's Toya. I'm surprised my eyes didn't give it away." The man spoke.
Shoto sat stunned as he felt himself pale, looking into the man's eyes and confirming they were definitely the eyes of their father. After a minute of uncomfortable silence, he mustered the courage to speak up.
"Use your quirk." Shoto asked, ensuring that he wasn't a fraud by asking for a final piece of evidence.
In response, the man smiled and held a blue flame in his right hand.
"You're...alive. We all thought yo- all of us didn't stop crying for days." Shoto spluttered out, feeling old tears resurfacing.
"I'm sorry Shoto, but after what happened that night, I wasn't even all that sure I was alive either. That fire was a bit of a blur to be honest." Dabi reminisced. "I wanted to come back, but with that bastard at home...I was just too scared of him."
Shoto dropped off his block of ice and pulled his brother into a hug, letting the tears run freely and staying like that until his eyes ran dry. Wiping away at his cheeks, Shoto separated and sat on the floor in front of Dabi.
"Sorry, I just-"
"Don't worry kid, I get it." The elder brother assured.
After another brief silence, Shoto spoke.
"What happened to you that night?"
"I was training with Endeavour."
"Didn't he keep the rest of you out of heroics?"
"In case you didn't work out for some reason, he wanted me as the back up." He clarified. "That night, he was trying to make me turn up the heat a lot more for prominence burn. I kept going as high as my body could handle, but it wasn't enough, and the bastard kept pushing me until all the safeguards came off, causing an explosion of blue flames which sent the fucker miles away from me. He was lucky enough to have the heat resistance to get away with the a few burns that could be healed at a hospital, but as for me...a shit ton of my skin from the waist up is a mess."
"The fucker told us that you died training on your own." Shoto spat out.
"Probably wouldn't have looked good to the media if he basically killed his own son. At the time, I barely remember anything except stumbling away and enduring the burns on my body." He reminisced, tracing his hands across the burns on his neck. "From there I stole and moved from place to place, torching anyone who tried to mess with me. This shitstorm of a cycle continued until 3 years ago, where Izuku found me and made me an an offer to work with him. I accepted, and a year after that he got comfortable enough to let me move in with him."
"I see...I suppose I owe Izuku a lot more than I initially thought."
"Forget it - he doesn't care about debts like that. Now, what's this bullshit I heard about you not using your fire?"
"After what he did to us all, do you think I can give him the satisfaction of seeing his quirk flourish? Every single training session, he eggs me on, telling me to 'use his fire', and it pisses me off to no end. I'll die before I resort to it."
"Then what about me? You think I'm not reminded of that asshole every time I use my flames?" Dabi asked calmly as he continued. "Whenever I use my quirk, I imagine all the shit he put me through until I broke, and I pour the emotion into my quirk, letting it lose. Whenever I burn someone, I imagine Endeavour's smug face on theirs. My goal is to ruin him, and I use my hatred for him to fuel my ambition. Whatever your goal is, use your hatred for him to fuel it too."
"I don't even have a goal anymore...the only reason I wanted to become a hero was to show that smug asshole I would reach the top without a single flame, and after learning about the shit with All Might and that corrupt hero commission, I know I'd be signing away my humanity if I reach the rank." Shoto poured out, letting his thoughts run wild.
"Then find something else. You don't need to be a shitty hero to achieve something in life. Me and Izuku spend our time mopping up the underworld, and I learned that Mina doesn't plan on becoming a hero either. Run a damn bakery, marry a cute girl, or just do anything else as long as you're happy."
"I can't be happy while people are praising him as a hero. And besides, do you think he'll just let his greatest invention go? He'll stop at nothing to force me on the hero track. He's got mum locked up for fucks sake!"
"You don't have to worry about people praising Endeavour for long - leave it all to me." Dabi assured, placing a hand on his brother's shoulder. "I'll shatter that bastard's image and tear him down so our family's finally free of him. It's my job as the oldest to look out for us all. If you want my advice, make a deal with him for a little more freedom."
Shoto looked at him in shock.
"You think I can reason with him? What do I have that he doesn't already have?"
"Simple - tell him that in exchange for training by yourself, you'll use your fire."
"And then what? I'm still stuck on the hero track whether he's putting me through that torture or not. I can't let him win."
"He's not winning at all. Once you're out, Fuyumi can leave the house if she wants to, and you just need to keep up appearances in the hero course until I deal with him. If you've got the deal in place, he can't do shit to you, and if he pulls anything you can just go back to locking away your left side. As the number 2 hero, he's only home for a couple of hours a week at best."
"That's still just delaying the inevitable. Even if Fuyumi's out, being stuck in a house with him as I'm training to be a hero is hell."
"Just endure it for a while and leave the rest to me." Dabi assured. "I can deal with him."
"You can't expect me to believe you'll fight him yourself-"
"I've got Izuku - no matter what happens he won't let me die. But this is something I need to settle with Endeavour as family. I need to cut him down to his knees and show the world their precious hero."
"Then let me help!" Shoto burst out.
Dabi smiled assuringly. "Shoto, you're my little brother. When the time comes, I want you to kick back and enjoy the show."
Shoto sat in thought for a while, before speaking up.
"I'll go along with the plan, but I want to meet up with you more."
Dabi offered a grin in response. "You're not getting rid of me that easily - I'm here to stay."
Dabi stood up, hauling his brother up with him by the arm. "Alright kid, shoot some fire at me. Even if you don't become a hero, getting a handle on your quirk is good in case of an emergency."
Shoto faltered, looking his brother in the eye.
"Come on Shoto." He sighed. "Just don't think of it as his quirk - the fire is all yours. A quirk is just a tool. I've been using my fire for years - it doesn't magically turn you into Endeavour."
"I understand, but it's not just that. You said you got those scars because you couldn't handle fire, so-"
Dabi cut him off. "Your flames are nowhere near mine in terms of heat, don't worry. Besides, let's just say I've increased my fire resistance over the years."
Shoto stared contemplatively with his left arm held out, trembling.
"Forget about the old man - it's not his quirk. Focus on me. Compare it to my quirk if you really want someone to think about, but it's yours." His brother assured.
Swallowing his doubt, Shoto ignited his left side.
"Pretty uncontrolled, but it makes sense given your past. Direct your fire to me in a short burst."
He complied, shooting some flames at his brother who simply tanked the blast. Once the flames dissipated, Dabi stepped forward unharmed.
"The heat is nothing special, considering you only shot raw fire at me. The secret to changing the temperature isn't sending out more or less flames. You should condense it as much as you require before firing it out. Since you're just getting started, we'll work on control in only your left arm, before we start working on fine tuning so you can shoot condensed flames from other parts of your left."
Shoto absorbed the advice, listening to each word as if it were gospel, before letting the flames on his side snuff out with the exception of his arm.
"I understand, let's continue."
Izuku teleported back to the area to find an exhausted shirtless Shoto, with Dabi as fresh as when he first got here.
"I'm guessing training went well?" He asked with a smirk.
"Dabi...he's a...slave driver." Shoto panted out.
"You think I'm bad? Izuku's a demon." Dabi scoffed. "Eri's lucky she's only a child, or she'd be passed out."
Izuku laughed. "Yeah, I didn't exactly spare Mina."
"She better be alive. We've barely scratched the surface with our experiments."
"Don't worry, she's fine. I sent her back to the bar to clean up with Eri a few minutes ago. I'm guessing Shoto wants to shower too? I'll give him some clothes since his seem a little...burnt." Izuku gestured to the pile of ash that was once his shirt and top half of a tracksuit.
Shoto reached out tiredly. "Don't...if you warp me now I'll die."
Izuku waved his complaint off and pulled out his phone to text. "Quit exaggerating, you'll only puke. But I don't exactly want your vomit in the bar, so I'll ask Kuro to warp us over."
Just as Izuku finished on the phone and placed it in his pocket, a warp gate appeared in front of them, much to the amazement of Shoto.
Izuku patted his back to encourage him to move."Don't worry, unlike my warp, Kuro's is a lot smoother, and he can do it without being present. Let's step through."
Shoto walked in cautiously and found himself in a dimly lit bar, with Eri sitting on the sofa with a man with similar red eyes and white hair, as well as a man made of the same mist as the gate at the counter. The two seemed to be speaking, with Eri excitedly retelling her training experience as the man listened in with a smile.
"Tomura, this is Shoto. Shoto, Tomura." Izuku introduced.
The white haired duo looked up from their conversation.
"So you're Dabi's brother huh? Nice to meet you kid."
Eri sat up and looked at the siblings with wide eyes.
"Woahhhh you're brothers? That's so cool!"
Dabi's palm smacked his face.
"Good job Tomura - I wasn't planning on advertising it."
"Oh, my bad." He replied without much regret in his voice. "It's just the bar anyway, we're all sharing each other's secrets."
"Fair enough." Dabi replied, turning to his brother. "Shoto, wanna grab some soba after you shower? It's on me."
Shoto caught Eri perk up at the mention of soba and smiled. "Sure, mind if Eri comes too? She seemed to like it yesterday."
"Fine by me. Tomura, you down?"
"I'm fine indoors." He dismissed.
"I don't think so, Tomura. You haven't left in three days, and you need fresh air." The mist man spoke up, before walking to Shoto with a hand outstretched. "My name is Kurogiri. Pleasure to meet you."
"Likewise. Thank you for the warp." Shoto responded shaking his hand.
"Fine, Kuro's gonna warp me out anyway if I refuse, so I may as well come with you willingly." Tomura grumbled.
"Dabi, Tomura, wear something normal. No masks or coats." Izuku reminded them. "Shoto, feel free to use my shower. We're the same height, so you're welcome to grab a shirt and trousers from my room. Kuro can warp you, I'm checking what Mina's up to."
"Thanks." Shoto responded gratefully as Izuku left.
"I'm heading up too. Gotta change into 'something normal'." Tomura grumbled. "Come on Eri, I'll get you one of my old jumpers."
With that, the two entered a warp gate on the side.
"Guess that leaves us. I'm going to my room. I'll be down in like 30 minutes so we can leave. Kuro, mind warping Shoto to Izuku's room?"
"Not at all." The mist responded, as a gate formed in front of each brother.
Shoto stepped through the gate, appearing in a bedroom and searching through the wardrobe for a change of clothes.
'Please God tell me these aren't the only clothes he has.' Shoto thought as he held a shirt with 'T-Shirt' inscribed on it.