A/N: Hope you all like the final chapter of Tatsuo's backstory. Please feel free to leave a comment on what you think about him as a character and the story so far. I've been hit with some writer's block with this story, so I'd love to hear what you all think and where you'd like to see the story go!
Thank you all for the favs, follows, and comments so far!
Chapter 14: The Upward Rise
Tatsuo sits on the bench, leaning against the backrest with his arms extended as Akari snuggles next to him reading a book. His head is shot upwards towards the sky where he watches the birds flying above him. They have been dating for two years now and after dropping out of UA only two months before his graduation, he occasionally visits her at the UA campus as she finishes up her final semester.
"Satsuma," he hears his name being called out, recognizing the voice before his eyes confirm.
"Enji Todoroki" he says slowly as he cranks his head towards his once best friend. He has not seen the man since he dropped out of school when the red-haired boy made it clear that he would not associate with such a failure. "What's the Number Two Hero doing back at UA?" he asks him in a mocking tone.
Enji tosses a bag in front of the man who continues to splay out on the bench, while Akari stiffens at the hero's intrusion. Tatsuo glances down at the bag, then back up at Enji with no change in his flat gaze. "I found that in the floorboards of our guest room," he says motioning to the boy's old school bag. "Can you guess whose signature is on the bag?"
Tatsuo smirks as his lips crawl up the right side of his face. "I have to say, Enji, it took you longer than I expected. I would have hoped an aspiring Number One Hero like yourself would have pieced it together earlier," he returns in a shivering tone.
"What's going on?" Akari asks, reading the tension between the two of them.
Tatsuo lifts himself to his feet, digging his hands into his pockets and approaching the flame hero with careful strides. "I made it so obvious back then, and yet you still couldn't figure it out. That doesn't sit well with me, coming from the Number Two Hero," he ridicules him.
"Tell me this is a misunderstanding," Enji demands. Despite their fallout, he doesn't want to believe the man to be a killer after all their history.
Tatsuo clicks his cheek condescendingly, "I can't do that Enji, because we both know it's not true," he says fully willing to admit to what he has done as he has no regrets for it. "Those vermin you called heroes were far from it," he says as he approaches the flaming hero, "So," he says pulling his hand from his pocket and placing it firmly on his friend's shoulder, "Why don't you do as the media likes to do with these heroes, and sweep this under the rug, shall we?"
Endeavor shrugs his hand off of his shoulder, building two flames at his fists. "You are a villain," he declares, "and I cannot allow you to continue."
"Tatsu?" Akari's soft voice calls out with concern, but he ignores her.
"You sure you wanna do that, Hero?" he asks him lifting his hand up as he assumes his fire.
Endeavor is quick to react, shooting a ball of fire to his once close friend, but the white-haired man expertly dodges the attack, sending a fistful of fire his own way. They begin battling, and Akari takes cover from their fiery assaults.
Tatsuo knows how Enji fights, having been on the receiving end of his attacks countless times as his equally matched punching bag. Enji knows that he lacks in close quarter combats as he worries that he will burn or overheat himself at such a close range, so assaulting him up close is Tatsuo's way to ensure he will win this battle and leave the hero with a bruised and battered ego to think upon.
Tatsuo is able to stick a hard hit on the man's chin, launching him with an explosive sounding hit as he crashes into some tables across the school's quad. The white-haired man launches himself with the hero's fire, approaching him and punching the ground at his feet, sending him flying once more against a wave of flames.
"Come on, Enji, you've fought harder than this before," he taunts the man. "Remember how it used to be? How I would be your willing punching bag, so you could elevate yourself? You always thought yourself better than me."
The villain charges with his fire, approaching the hero with unmatched speed as he punches him in the gut, and launches him in the air. He quickly shoots himself in the air, slamming into his back with his hands and sending Endeavor hurling towards the ground with an earth-shattering force.
Endeavor grunts as he shakes at the man's quick maneuvering. He quickly lifts himself from the ground, lurching towards the white-haired man with shaking breaths as he coughs up blood. He swings his arm back and sticks a strong fiery hit to his jaw, but the villain jumps back before he can perform his signature switch maneuver with the following uppercut to the gut.
Tatsuo grunts as he wipes the blood from his busted lip, "Not gonna get me with that quick switch maneuver, Enji. Not when I was the one who taught it to you!" he growls at him as he charges at him.
"Sojourn this fight, Villain," Endeavor commands him with a wavering tone, unable to call him by his name anymore.
"Why would I want to stop the fight when I'm winning?" he taunts him as he punches him with an uppercut to the chin.
Endeavor staggers back, taking in the hit, knowing that Tatsuo's power over his Quirk is waning and it will only be a matter of time until he's finished. "Come on, Enji," Tatsuo teases the man as the flaming hero lets out labored breaths. "Give it your all! Go Plus Ultra!" he cries out in a sinister tone as the flaming hero roars at him.
Tatsuo charges at Endeavor, but the flame hero catches him, smashing his arms onto the villain's back, locking him into a hold as he knees the villain in the gut. Tatsuo releases him, and backs away from him, breathing heavily as he attempts a fiery hook to the face, but the hero grabs hold of his fist pulling it back past its breaking point, before punching him straight in the face.
Tatsuo steps back as his nose begins bleeding profusely, giving him a crazed and shaking look to him that Endeavor shivers at. He looks onto the hero with burning red eyes as they pant from their fight. "It's over, villain," Endeavor announces to him. "Your ten minutes are up," he says with a triumphant smile on his face with the thought of bringing in the unnamed Hero Killer.
Tatsuo laughs, spitting blood to the ground as he straightens himself from his fighter's stance. "Being your friend was always so exhausting, Enji," the man begins with heavy breaths. "You always stood so tall, sprinting to the finish line while you left the others in the dust," Tatsuo shakes his head, reading that the Hero is not on edge since the time limit is up and he no longer sees him as a threat. "The thing is, it's not a sprint race, but a long distance one. And that's when you got sloppy," he says smiling wildly as he brings the fire to his fists. "You always pushed me to the shadows, that you never even noticed I doubled my time with my Quirk," he teases him viciously as the hero takes a fighter's stance.
Tatsuo takes his form holding his fists to his side as he puffs out his chest towards the hero as Endeavor's eyes shoot wide open. "And you never noticed that I mastered your precious Prominence Burn!" he cries out towards the man, sending a colossal wave of flames towards the hero.
Endeavor does not have time to counter the attack, and closes his eyes, embracing the flames, but when they never come to scorch him, his eyes shoot open to see what has transpired. His eyes enlarge when he sees Tatsuo trapped in a scarf, struggling against the bonds as his eyes land on Shouta Aizawa, holding the man down, with his black hair lifting above him.
"Shouta!" Akari calls out from behind the table she's barricaded herself at.
"Stay back, Akari," Shouta snaps at her as his eyes focus on the white-haired man.
"Shouta," Tatsuo begins in a low foreboding tone. "I suggest you remove yourself from this fight. You wouldn't understand. It's between old friends."
"I've heard enough of the conversation to understand, Tatsuo," he spits.
Tatsuo closes his eyes and exhales, "I've always liked you, Shouta, but you give me no choice," he says before he quickly kicks up dirt towards the hero, causing him to close his eyes and stagger back. Tatsuo quickly sends a wall of fire all around him, burning Aizawa's scarf, and launching a final attack towards Endeavor, as he uses the moment to evade the two in the panic of the surrounding flames.
Katori's eyes are wide and her mouth slightly agape as Aizawa recants the story of her father fighting Endeavor. "What happened next?" he begs for more when the black-haired man does not continue on his own.
Aizawa shrugs his shoulders, leaning back on the couch with his arms crossed over his chest. "He disappeared."
Katori blinks at him, waiting for him to say more, but he doesn't and she groans at him. "That's it? He just disappeared? What about my mother? What happened to her?"
He takes in a deep breath, "After your father disappeared, he became Japan's most wanted criminal. He was titled Hero Killer: Replicant, and he evaded the heroes and authorities. He continued to kill heroes here and there, and with a following of villains who sympathized with his cause, he condemned more heroes to their deaths without lifting a finger of his own."
"And my mother?" she presses the information from him.
Aizawa looks down, shameful that he ever believed her, so willing to trust her back then. "She told everyone that she never had any contact with him since that fight with Endeavor, but it was clear that she was lying, and she never stopped seeing him," he says with a prominent frown on his face. "I am not sure how long she was willing to continue the ruse, but it came crashing when she could no longer hide the pregnancy." Katori's face drops as Aizawa continues, "She panicked and left to join him," he says sadly, having that day that she cried to him, begging him with wet eyes to not tell anyone as the last memory of his sweet little sister. "She was apprehended a few months later," he finishes, unable to tell her how the rest of the story, but already Katori knows.
Since then, her father supported the Yakusa with various missions until he left due to disagreements with the way they were operating, since they were unwilling to adapt and use their Quirks more openly. From there, he developed his own group of villains faithful to his cause, all while raising Katori on her own to hate All Might and other heroes like him for what they represent in society.
She can see that Aizawa is drained, his eyes lidded beyond their signature indifference. She understands that he is exhausted thinking about her father and their past, and she knows that he will not continue with any further information for her, but she is grateful for the information he has provided.
Her father does not speak much about his past, and she would love to hear his side of the story, but she knows that he will not divulge this amount of information like what was just given to her. She thinks about the reasoning her father became a villain, and why he would not tell her that side of the story. Is there a reason that he kept this side of him a secret from her? Why would he withhold his past from her? He has always been her hero, even though society never saw him that way. So maybe that he wanted to keep that personification that she had of him.
Katori looks down at the picture in her lap at her smiling father, unable to understand how the happy man could have turned into the stoic and calculative man that she knows now. When this picture was taken, he's already killed countless heroes, yet he was able to effortlessly smile and live a double life in front of all his friends. She cannot help but wonder if her mother knew about all those deaths.
"He may be a villain, and I will never be able to forgive him for all that he has done," Aizawa begins, noticing her eyes lingering on the photo as her fingertips graze the image of her father. "But he is still your father," he tells her, "So I dug up that photo for you to have, and to understand." She smiles down at the photo and he continues, "I understand his frustration with the lack of justice, but he took matters into his own hands, and that is not how a hero should operate," he tells her sternly. "The words of those pros during the sports festival are from those who hold no value on your life or actions. Do not give them the power to prove themselves right. In the end, your choices are your own, and their actions or your father's actions mean nothing to your own."
She looks up at him, noticing his strong lingering gaze at her and she feels a wave of panic flow through her, wondering if he has any idea why she is here and her true intentions with joining UA. She knows that her choice in hero name may have raised some brows with him, but the chilling gaze that he gives his is a knowing one, and she cannot help but look away.
"That being said," he continues with the strong gaze, "Your fight at the sports festival was televised, and it is without a doubt that your father was watching," she swallows hard at his words and he notices. "You father will contact you now that he knows you have a Quirk, I know him well enough to say that. And when he does, you need to make a decision." Katori watches him carefully, waiting for him to tell her that he knows everything and that she's under arrest, but he does not. "You are here to become a hero, and you must do as a hero does, and trust that justice will prevail."
She thinks about his words and their meaning. Her father did not trust in the justice system, and took it upon himself to regain justice, and it was because of his actions, that he became a villain in the eyes of the public. When All Might was announced to become a teacher at UA, her father made the decision to have her enroll to survey then lure the teacher to meet his justice for killing their mother.
Katori finds herself getting lost in her emotions and the direction of her decisions. She knows she needs to gain justice for what happened to her mother, and do as her father asks. With every moment that a hero questions her motives or assumes her villainy based on her parentage, she wants to enact her plan. But when she is in class with her friends, and they cheer her on, and make her laugh, she can't help but long for this life as well.
She puts her head down, shielding her expressions from Aizawa. She's already hesitated long enough to be suspicious, but she cannot help but be overwhelmed with everything around her. She can't tell him that she will report her father to him if he contacts her, because she knows that man will read through her lie in an instant.
"Are you ready for your training?" he pulls her from her thoughts, knowing that he will not get an answer from her, and she nods at him.
They make their way to the courtyard where he instructs her to stretch and prepare to use her Quirk. "Who am I going to use my Quirk on?" she asks him, "I don't think I can do much damage with yours," she says stretching her arms over her chest.
"Your Quirk is separated into two components; your father's copy Quirk, and your mother's draining Quirk," he begins, "When you're using your mother's side of the Quirk, you steal what you need, and no longer think about it from there as you focus on copying and using your opponent's Quirk?"
"I guess," she presses as she moves her arms into various stretches.
"Your mother's Quirk is far more complicated than draining from your opponent. As you saw in the sport's festival, you can drain someone until there are Quirkless," he says and she lowers her head at the memory of Yaoyorozu's cries. "But your fight with Bakugo was evenly matched. Which means you only drained what you needed to copy, and fought him on the same level."
"Draining him any further could have over exerted myself, while also putting him at risk of becoming Quirkless," she tells him.
"So, you hold back because you're worried of how much you will take?" he asks her with a cock of his head.
"Doesn't seem like a fair fight if I take almost everything," she says looking at him and no longer stretching.
"No, but it's a piece of her Quirk that you need to understand, especially when you take more than one Quirk at a time," he tells her with a darker tone and she doesn't understand his meaning, "Katori," he reads her confusion. "You've seen Midoriya destroy his body hundreds of times because his body is not built to withstand the power of his Quirk. The same applies with you. Only you've maintained a stronger body than Midoriya over the years, so you may be able to handle more than him. The fact remains that if you take too much of someone's Quirk, or too many at once, you can cause irreparable damage to your body, or worse," she gasps looking up at his lidded and indifferent eyes.
"You've managed to handle tiny pieces of three Quirks at once," he continues, "but if you were to drain say Todoroki, Bakugo, and Midoriya of more than ten percent of their power and used it all at once, you could easily get yourself killed," she frowns at him as he presses the importance of what he is saying to her. "You need to be careful with how much you take. Your body was not built to withstand the Quirk types that you have drained, let alone that many Quirks all at once."
"Yes, Sir," she responds to him with a stern nod.
"So, for your training, we are going to focus on building your body up," he concludes. "You're right in the fact that we cannot do much with your father's copy piece of your Quirk, but we can still prepare you to be strong, evasive, and prepared for any situation. That includes working on prolonging keeping your eyes open."
"I'm ready!" she tells him with a smile on her face and a determined fist clenching before her.
Training with Aizawa is the worst thing Katori has ever experienced in her life.
She expected the man to go rough on her, but this is a whole other level of torture, and she wonders if he is getting some sick enjoyment out of it with who her father is. Maybe he thinks he's getting revenge on him? Either way, she has never thrown up so much in her life, while ever muscle in her body cries to stop moving.
Aizawa starts off their day with running around the UA campus one hundred times. If she throws up, she adds ten laps. From there, she lifts the common area furniture—on her own—up the thirty-plus stories of UA to the roof. She then needs to return the furniture in the exact area she found it, and repeat ten times. A few more endurance tests are sprinkled throughout the day, until she ends on a stare down with Aizawa. If she blinks before him—which she always does—her hands are whipped with a ruler and she is continues her training with her eyes on the field, where Aizawa hits her with a wind machine and kicks up debris in her eyes.
'I'd rather be fighting Bakugo right now,' she groans to herself as another wave of dirt hits her in the eyes.
They have been training for three of the five days, and Katori is already willing to die before continuing another day of this torture. He finally tells her to break for some water and her shaky legs manage to run towards her water bottle. She gulps down its contents as he approaches her with his hands in his pockets.
"You're still struggling to keep your eyes open," he evaluates with a flat tone.
"Kinda hard to do that when you're kicking dirt in my eyes," Katori returns under her breath.
"Are you talking back to me?" Aizawa questions, and Katori's heart races; talking back adds ten more sprints around the campus.
"No, Sir," she says firmly and a small smile leaves Aizawa's lips, clearly showing her that he is teasing her, and getting some enjoyment out of this.
"I spoke with the costume designers, and had them add this to your suit," he says pulling out goggles from his pocket.
She looks down with wide eyes, taking the white goggles in her hands and moving them around to inspect them. They are slitted like Aizawa's, but he explains that there is a glass barrier to avoid foreign debris from entering, and strategically places slits so her opponents can't see if she has her eyes open or not, as well as giving her enough vision to see her surrounds.
Her eyes begin watering, and she is not sure if it's from her training or the sentiment, but either way, she launches herself into his arms and gives him a tight hug, thanking him for his kindness. Aizawa stiffens at her motion, never once having a student like him enough to hug him, but after a moment's hesitation, he wraps his arms around her shoulders and returns the gesture.