A/N: Hope you like this chapter and the continuation of Tatsuo's background. Please review and let me know what you think of the story so far.

Chapter 13: The Downward Spiral

Three days later Tatsuo wakes up in a hospital bed with the television broadcast informing him that his parents were among 130 other civilians that lost their lives to the collapsing building. Living on the thirteenth floor, they were undoubtedly trapped in the stairwell with other residents, trying desperately to escape the suffocating air choking them slowly.

Tatsuo heard the report from the television that a hero was responsible for the collapse, having launching a villain into the building and causing the structure to become unstable. Untold in the broadcast, Tatsuo finds on online forums that the villain in question was a petty thief with no major crimes under his belt. It did not seem the use of excessive force was necessary to apprehend him, and he too died in the explosion.

Tatsuo's heart boils in his chest when he reads the hero is on paid leave while they investigate his handling of the situation. What was there to investigate? There it was. Plain and simple. A villain who never killed a single person, and a hero who killed 130.

A knock at the door startles the boy as his eyes are transfixed on the television. He glances over when he notices Principal Nezu and his hero studies teacher enter the room. They ask him how he is doing, and he turns away from them and back at the television, unsure how they expect him to answer a stupid question like that.

They offer their condolences, and Tatsuo is unsure what to do with their condolences. That will not bring his parents back. "Did you hear?" Tatsuo rasps, speaking for the first time since he regained consciousness. "He's on paid leave while they investigate. How is he not being jailed for this?" he asks the two with gritted teeth as his purple eyes remain on the television.

"There are a lot of moving parts to the story," his teacher begins, "we only know what is reported."

"The villain was a petty criminal; he wasn't a threat. How do you go from trying to apprehend him for stealing from a drug store to launching him into a building full of people?" he asks with a rising voice.

"Satsuma," Nezu begins with his mousy voice. "The hospital staff have informed us they will be discharging you soon due to capacity constraints. Enji Todoroki has informed us that his family is happy to house you until we are to locate other options."

Tatsuo swallows hard, pulling his lavender eyes from the broadcast as they paint the hero in a favorable light. He nods once to the mousy man, "I'll be eighteen in a few months, don't think it's worth all the paperwork to put me in a home," he tells them and the two adults frown at his comment.

"Try to get some rest, we will work on the discharge paperwork," the mousy man states as he places his hand strongly on the hospital bed as a gesture of reassurance, but Tatsuo glances back at the television instead.

Tatsuo holds his backpack to his chest as Enji slides the door to their spare bedroom, desperately grasping onto his last remaining possessions. "I've provided some of my spare clothes for you in the closet," Enji begins dryly. "They may be a bit big, so when you're feeling up to it, my mother said she will take us shopping for something that fits."

He nods at his red-haired friend, unable to do anything else as he steps into the room that is not his. He clutches onto his bag, worrying that if he lets it go, it will disintegrate and he will lose every possession that he owns. Enji watches him for a moment, frozen and unsure what to say to his friend as he notices the slight widening in his eyes at the shock that he is undoubtedly experiencing. Enji sighs, turning away from his friend as he grabs the sliding door.

"Enji," Tatsuo calls out to him, turning towards his friend. "That hero," he says as the word stings his throat. "Did you hear that he has been cleared to work again? The investigation came up that he handled the situation 'to the best of his ability'."

Enji has known Tatsuo long enough to recognize that look in his eyes. Though he has never seen it before, he knows exactly what the boy his thinking, and the red-haired boy tightens his fists in confliction. "Tatsu, just leave it be," he tells him simply, unsure or unable to say anymore to the raging boy.

Tatsuo chuckles at his response, excepting more from the man hellbent on being the Number One Hero. Then again, he's not expecting much from heroes these days.

When Tatsuo returns to school, everyone speaks to him as though he has a bomb in his chest, and the wrong words to him will detonate the bomb. They tiptoe around him as the knowledge of his parents' death is spread throughout the school. He is given an extension on the provisional licensing exam due to his recent tragedy, but it doesn't matter, as Tatsuo is unable to focus on anything other than the shit eating grin of the hero that killed his parents. He sees the man everywhere, in all the faces of his stupid classmates that strive to be just as useless as him.

He thinks about them all and their motivations for becoming heroes, even finding his best friend Enji to be just as revolting as the rest of them. They want it for the power, the notoriety, the money, the women, the control over others as they press the weaker into submission under their dominating boot.

Tatsuo begins obsessing over the man. His hero name is Echoes, and he can control his voice into a booming register that sends people flying… into buildings. It amazes Tatsuo how easy it is to break into the public records and get the valuable private information of someone who is blindly compliant in the record keeping the government enforces on their citizens. He learns his true name, his address, the limitations of his Quirk, the statistics of his completed cases, the names of his family members. Everything he needs to know on the man is in this palm of his hand and Tatsuo can't help but use it.

He will do it today, he has decided.

Enji pulls Tatsuo out of his thoughts, asking him if he's ready to go home. "I actually have a date with Akari," he lies effortlessly to his friend who smiles wildly at him, despite the fact that he has not spoken to the sweet girl in weeks. 'Maybe after this I can get back to what we started,' he thinks to himself.

Enji wishes him good luck and Tatsuo lifts his hand up for a high-five. The red-haired boy laughs and high-fives his friend. Tatsuo smiles to himself. 'I have ten minutes.'

Once Enji enters the car to take him to his home, Tatsuo starts the timer on his phone and begins running. The hero's house is a seven minute run from UA. He will only have three minutes to do what he has to do, so he doesn't have time to mess around.

He pushes himself as fast as he can towards the wealthy district the vile man lives in, paid for by the collections of his false heroism. He wonders how much he was paid for killing his parents and the others. Tatsuo shakes his head of the thought, knowing that he needs to remain focused.

He reaches the home and looks at his phone, seeing that he has three minutes as he perfectly planned. He knocks on the door, with staggered breaths, waiting only a moment before the hero answers the door in his plain clothes.

"Can I help you?" he asks looking down at Tatsuo, appearing to be less heroic in his plain clothes with the clear bags under his eyes.

"Hello, Sir," Tatsuo bows to him, "Apologies for bothering you at your home, Sir. But I am Echoes' biggest fan, and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind signing my backpack?" he asks him, holding out the bag with a lowered head.

Any other day of the week, the man would not give the boy the time of day for appearing on his doorstep begging for his autograph, but with the recent publicity, he doesn't have many fans approaching him, so he welcomes the attention with a smile that creeps up the side of his face.

"Do you have a pen?" he asks the boy.

"Oh no, I don't," Tatsuo lies. "Do you have one?"

"Sure," he says opening the door wider, "Come in," he says and Tatsuo smiles to himself. 'Two minutes,'

"Nice place you've got here," he mentions, looking around to notice that it empty as he planned, with his wife working during this time. The man rummages around for a pen as Tatsuo feels his body heating with Enji's Quirk. "One of my favorite battles with you was when you took down that gorilla guy who was trying to take out that bridge," he says reciting some of his greatest hits and this makes the false hero smile at the recognition.

"You've done your research," he says pridefully.

'You have no idea.'

"Like I said, you're my idol," he lies with a wide smile pressing to his lips.

Echoes finds the pen and Tatsuo smiles wildly as he takes the bag from his hands and the smile crawls even wider against his lips as he watches the man scribble some generic response. 'To my biggest fan -Echoes'. He didn't even ask for the boy's name. Typical.

"I gotta say," Tatsuo begins as he finishes signing the bag and handing it to the boy. "My favorite battle was against that petty thief that you launched into that apartment building off main street," he says now with a sinister smile on his face.

The hero freezes, looking at the boy's darkening eyes. "You really showed him," Tatsuo says lifting his hand as he releases a steady flame from his palm. "He didn't stand a chance against that building."

"Woah, Kid, what are you doing?" he panics as he staggers away from the boy, but is unable to get far since Tatsuo snatches onto his collar.

"I am a student at UA, enrolled in the hero course. It's my third year, and I'm about to take my licensing exam," he says with fake niceties as the man struggles in his grip. "I never really wanted to be a hero," he shrugs, "It's never really been my thing, but my mother and father really wanted me to enroll, so I did it for them. They were so proud when I got in," he smiles sadly as their memory breaches. "I couldn't wait 'til the licensing exam so I could start my hero career and make them even prouder. But I can't do that anymore," he says as he frowns, bringing the flame to his face, having seconds left. "Because you launched a petty criminal into our apartment building and killed them, along with 128 other innocent people. That doesn't sound very heroic, don't you think?"

Terror begins to set in as Echoes begins thrashing in his grip at the realization of why Tatsuo is here. "Now I would love and stay and chat more, but I just don't have the time," he shrugs, "I should of listened to Enji and worked on prolonging my hold with these Quirks," he says as he places his hot hand on the face of the man. "Oh well," he shrugs as he releases the flames with as much force as he can muster.

He ignores the cries of pain, or the smell of his burning flesh, and revels in the beauty of the flames spilling from his hand, unable to control the wide smile on his face as he finally realizes why Enji likes this Quirk so much.

Katori stands there, frozen at Aizawa's retelling of her father's downfall from an aspiring hero at UA, to the top wanted villain in all of Japan.

"Shortly after the death of Echoes, dozens of scorched corpses of less than favorable heroes were popping up all over Japan," he continues as they sit in the lounge together. "Tatsuo was getting away with killing those he deemed unworthy of holding the title of Hero, all while living under the guise of aspiring to be one himself. He continued to train to extend his hold on Quirks in private, so he was not held back by the short timeframe, but it did not stop him from taking them on, all while Enji and the rest of us where none the wiser that he was out there using his Quirk to deliver these fatal blows."

Katori glances down at her hands, wondering if they were capable of taking a life. She thinks about losing her father, and imagining the crippling rage he must have felt when he lost his parents. She can't help but think that she would want the same justice to be served, but the idea of taking the life herself is something she can't fathom.

She knows her father has killed many people, but he has been careful in ensuring that Katori never saw him take a life. In any moment where a villain in his presence failed him in some way, and death was necessary, he always made sure that Katori was nowhere in the room when the deed was being completed, so the idea of killing someone herself seems so wrong to her.

"Looking back, it was clear something had switched in Tatsuo," Aizawa picks up. "Back then, we all shrugged it off as someone changing to the sudden death of their parents, but he was no longer the carefree clown we had all known him to be. He was calm, collected, and decisive. And thinking back on it, I imagine there was never a moment that he wasn't plotting the death of another hero," he says and the comment brings shivers down her spine.

"He began dating your mother around that time," Aizawa tenses his jaw, keeping his eyes off of her when he says, "and I'd never seen her happier than when she was with him," he says as if it pains him to admit it.

Aizawa pauses for a long time, and Katori figures that he is far too lost in the memories of her father and mother to continue speaking on their relationship, so she drives the conversation elsewhere. "So how was he caught? When did you all find out he was the one behind it all?"

He exhales deeply as he is pulled from the memories of his sister and back to the topic at hand. "Endeavor was starting to piece it together. He noticed Tatsuo giving him high-fives or other physical touches before quickly running off on his own. He noticed that all the bodies died in the same way, and he couldn't shake the idea that it was not someone with a fire Quirk. But it all came to a head when he noticed the signature on his bag from Echoes."

Katori holds herself tightly as chills cover her body. "What happened?" she asks him, eager to hear how it all came to a head and what led to her father becoming the Number One Villain she knows him now.