A/N: This chapter switches between POVs, but it shouldn't be too hard to follow... no, that's a lie, this chapter's confusing as fuck.
FOUR YEARS AGO
"Worry about yourself, Toph." He mutters, opening the fence up and sliding behind it. He melts down the door frame until it's fused together, careful to not let the heated metal touch his skin. "You already tried helping me." It's not your fault I'm like this. "If we do meet again, I won't be this nice."
"...Fine." Something in his tone seems to hit the mark, because the girl relents, taking another step back and dropping the emotion from her face. "I'm sorry, Touya," she says at last. She takes another step, and then walks away.
He waits an extra few minutes after her figure is long gone. Rage pools in his gut, dark and viscous as an oil spill. His stomach sloshes as though it's truly there, coating his insides with poison and priming him for detonation. The light dims as clouds overtake the sky, and the air cools. There were only a few people skulking around this neighborhood to begin with, but as the sun sets they scatter further. It won't be long before night sets in and the real shitbags come crawling out of their caves. He breathes in the chilled air, pleasantly cooling his lungs. Then his hand curls into a tight fist and he throws a hard, flaming punch at the brick wall. The stone crumbles and burns nicely, and his knuckles light up in pain, but it's not as satisfying as he'd hope. With a shout of rage he punches the wall again. This is all so fucked up.
What reason did that brat have for stirring up shit? Why plunge back into muck when you've just gotten yourself squeaky clean?
He stops after a third punch but there's still liquid fire, molten and furious, in his veins.
Steam escapes his lips. The blood on his knuckles congeals in dark, brittle chunks. With a quirk as explosive as his own, even the slightest hint of anger becomes a double-edged sword. He has half a mind to leave it as is, no stranger to scabs and bruised skin, but his quirk… the burns are getting worse, and he's more vulnerable to a shitty infection without a reliable medic to lean on. It's not because of the look on her face when she realized he was in pain. He ducks into a fast food joint and locks himself in the brightly-lit restroom.
The blood rinses away easily enough, trickling down the porcelain bowl of the sink in pinkish streams. He uses the crappy soap pump and scrubs at his palms, beneath his nails, over the grooves between fingers until his skin is flushed and sweet-smelling. Further up his wrists, his skin is tender, and even further, his forearms are stiff and scarred. He isn't certain, but his theory is that the farther from his fingertips, the less heat-resistant his skin is. There's still a healing blister near his elbow, haphazardly covered with gauze and antibiotic cream. His neck is permanently irritated from his more extreme uses of fire.
Thanks to the brat, he knows how to be careful with his quirk now. But sometimes he just doesn't care.
Sometimes, the way his skin twists and burns under his own will, when he's too angry for control… it's freeing. The same way his fourth at-home ear piercing stung like a bitch and got infected, but he didn't regret doing it, because he chose it. He chose it, and now it's a part of him.
Snorting to himself, he scrubs his damp hands over his face. I sound like a masochist. He runs his fingers through his hair, thick and unruly. The only thing he's really maintained is his hair, to the point where the nose-wrinkling scent of ammonia has become a comfort. It's a relief every time he meets someone new and they flinch at his looks. Either that or they don't bat an eye.
Maybe that's what bothers him so much. The brat's blind. She never knew what he looked like to begin with. She doesn't see the full picture of what he is, she doesn't know what Dabi is.
He peeks through his hands, seeking out turquoise eyes in the mirror. Jet black hair. Waxy skin. Bruises under his eyes. The skin along his neck is deep red and irritated, almost up to his jawline now. A silver nose piercing on one side, a scattering of small cartilage pieces in each ear. He's filled out his frame a bit, though his face remains angular and thin. He looks frightening, for sure, but it's better than what he used to look like.
And yet, the look in his eyes—turquoise and bright—it always gives him away. More and more people see Dabi, but he still sees Touya in his reflection.
He often wonders when, if ever, the day will come that Dabi is his true face. Right now it feels like a mask that, if one knew what to look for, could recognize Touya underneath it.
How was it that Toph recognized me? My voice? She caught him so easily, figured out how he felt so quickly—she's good at reading people, ironically, but he's also just… transparent, isn't he? It's more than his appearance he needs to change.
He dries his hands and gets on with his errands.
There's a few stops he's supposed to make today, and he follows through with the schedule more churlish than usual. He strong-arms a dealer into paying his dues; returns a flash drive of collateral to a perpetually-sweating marketing agent; collects things, distributes other things, the works. He's still angry throughout the day, but the feeling is formless and confusing. He makes no effort to grasp it fully or explore why it remains, but goes about his duties on disgruntled autopilot. No one comments on his attitude. They're already familiar with his quirk if not the hard glint of annoyance in his eye. If he talks a little less than usual, no one really notices.
The broker, however, is another story. Giran takes a slow pull from his cigarette as he returns to the dumpster of an office building where they meet, eyes flashing with calculating interest. His hair is slicked to the side as usual, the same dull gray as the ash from his smoke, but nothing about Giran really gives away his age. All he knows is that he has ties to all the local unsavories, and enough respect that he's never seemed worried about being double-crossed.
And, apparently, he can read Dabi like a book too.
"You're quiet. What's got you so out of sorts, Dabi?" The broker flips through bills to distribute his payment.
He doesn't really think about it until he sees the bills in Giran's hands, and the anger is suddenly a crystalline idea.
He waits until the stack of bills are fully counted out, and holds up a hand before Giran can pass it to him. "Tell me about Amon's Vision," He says. "What's left of them after the Cato Raid?"
Giran flashes an unpleasant grin, his gold incisor gleaming. He plucks out a few of the bills indulgently, payment for information he holds. "That's not an easy question."
His resolve solidifies, rooting him like an ancient tree. "And that's not an answer worth that cash. I'm waiting."
PRESENT DAY
Inasa bounds into the house with his usual grace(less) exuberance, kicking off his shoes and sweeping Shouto in a bear hug. At this point, it's just better to let these things (specifically, Inasa) happen. Toph still fights tooth and nail about hugs and other overly 'mushy' affection, but Shouto doesn't know why. Inasa Yoarashi gives very good hugs, and he's a difficult guy to argue with.
"Hiya Shouto! Your house is so clean!" He comments candidly.
"Yes," Shouto agrees smoothly, straightening out his shirt after Inasa releases him. "That's because Toph and Natsuo aren't here."
It wasn't a joke, but the taller boy bellows with laughter. He trails a step behind Shouto, slapping his shoulder. "Y'got a point there! Last time I hugged Toph, I kicked up a cloud of dust!" Shouto nods, fully aware of the usual state of Toph's room and the training yard. "Toph's visiting Kouta this weekend, right? How 'bout Natsuo?"
He shrugs. "He'll be back on Sunday, same as Toph," Shouto dismisses the question, unconcerned. Natsuo doesn't really keep the rest of them informed about what he's doing, and rarely answers his phone. Mostly because it drives their father crazy, and irks Toph that he's allowed so much more free reign than her.
Inasa cocks his head to the side. "Aaaand your big sis?"
"...Work." Shouto answers distractedly.
Usually he lets others fill up their conversation with talk, but he's been meaning to bring something up with Inasa for a while now. While it's common for most of the Todorokis to be out of the house, Toph and Shouto are different, ironically, because they share the same friends, and therefore hang out together all the time. When they're not, Toph sticks around the house because she knows it'll piss everyone off if she leaves without a Responsible Adult knowing where she is. (Shouto feels no pity for her. Toph's idea of going out is far different from what any of the Todorokis deem reasonable.)
That being said, Toph is away for once, and this is a rare opportunity for the two elemental users to meet without the third member of their unofficial trio.
The airbender nods a few times, looking at Shouto evenly. He doesn't bother asking after Endeavor, because he was in the news just this morning for stopping a robbery on patrol. Inasa bites the inside of his cheek as the two of them spill out into the refurbished courtyard. It really is pristine without Toph around to tear up the ground.
"Sooo—why exactly did you need me to come over today?" Inasa asks finally, as Shouto turns to face him from the center of the yard. A slight breeze flutters Shouto's hair, blending the white and red strands over his forehead. "I mean, I kinda guessed it already but you're acting pretty dramatic for a sparring session," he adds with a snort.
Shouto's mismatched gaze lingers on Inasa for a moment, before falling to the floor. "I want to… no, I need to fight with my left side. But I keep… stopping." He can practically feel Inasa grow tense, even without looking at him.
There it is, Shouto thinks uneasily. I can't keep ignoring it…
"Why haven't you asked Toph to help?" Inasa queries him, rocking back and forth on his heels. "I know things with your dad are kinda strained, so I guess you wouldn't ask him—" Shouto lifts his head in surprise, forgetting his train of thought, and Inasa quirks an eyebrow at him. "What?"
"How… did you know," he begins slowing, feeling his eyebrows knit together in confusion. "...about—my father?"
The airbender blinks down at him, baffled. "How did I know what? That you have problems with Endeavor?" Shouto gives a jerky nod, and Inasa sags like a deflated balloon. "Shouto, we've been friends for like—ever. You don't have to say it. Endeavor's kinda a jerk to you sometimes, of course you don't want to train with him, he puts so much pressure on you." Inasa scratches his head, running a hand over his scalp like he's smoothing down the two centimeters of hair he has.
Shouto blinks. He's never spoken to Inasa about his difficulties training with his father, and Toph only knows as much as she does from actually living with his family… But Inasa is much sharper than he acts. He must've come to his own conclusions about Shouto after knowing him for so long…
Inasa, he thinks in a long overdue realization, is a really good friend.
"We don't have to talk about it," Inasa says patiently. "Or, I guess we can? But you said you wanted to fight, so…?" Inasa's hands flutter nervously in the air, gesturing around the yard. "I just don't know why you want me, and not Toph or, like, train at UA with your classmates—"
Oh, that's right. Shouto remembers his original reason for inviting him over. He can't put it off any longer, not when it's so clear that Inasa cares about Shouto's own feelings so much.
"Toph's been giving me a hard time about using my father's quirk, and I think you can relate," he interrupts Inasa quickly. "You've been holding back too, so we should work on it together."
"H-Holding back?" Inasa repeats faintly.
"Yes. You're only using air."
There's silence.
Inasa doesn't seem to react to Shouto, but upon closer inspection, he can see his hands balled into tight, white-knuckled fists. Shouto grows tense as well. The space between them feels charged with energy, like a bowstring pulled all the way back.
Shouto tries to meet Inasa's eyes again, but the taller boy's gaze is settled firmly elsewhere.
"Um. Is that—" Shouto sort of flubs his sentence, thrown off completely by Inasa's stiff expression. "I didn't mean it as an insult. Was that a wrong assumption?"
Inasa opens his mouth, still not looking at Shouto. His eyes glimmer. Then his jaw snaps shut and he paces away.
"Uh," Shouto stares after him, suddenly struck by anxiety. For a second it looked like Inasa was going to cry. "Are you leaving?"
Inasa walks all the way to the other side of the yard, crouches into a ball, and—disappears.
What.
Where did he go?! Shouto feels his heart rate spike as he scans the yard. Did he just run away? How could he—oh.
Inasa is laying on his roof like a starfish. A rush of relief crashes over Shouto, followed by a wave of more distress. He never answered me. Is he upset?
But I'm not wrong, Shouto muses. I'm not wrong at all, am I?
Inasa hadn't been properly training his air quirk for years, and it clearly started after he was rescued from Cato. The incident during his rescue suggested his quirk had been altered, though the quirk tests performed afterwards had produced no results. Despite being one of the most enthusiastic hero-hopeful Shouto has ever met, Inasa has become exceptionally reticent about actually showing off the full extent of his quirk. And when Inasa was put into 1-B instead of 1-A, it just solidified Shouto's suspicions that the airbender was, 1) not just an airbender anymore, and 2) resisting the reality that his quirk had changed.
But it'd be nice if Inasa actually specified why he was on the roof.
"I'm going to get us some drinks," Shouto calls out to the boy, certain that drinks can't make the situation worse. Fuyumi always offers drinks when they have guests. She makes iced tea when Natsuo's upset. "Um, do you want any tea, Inasa?"
"Sure," Inasa calls back hoarsely. "Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure…"
I broke him, Shouto ruminates, busying himself with kitchen supplies. Toph's gonna kill us both now.
He doesn't know why he asked. Morbid curiosity, perhaps. What Touya heard about Amon's Vision from the streets had been pretty innocent overall. Appealing, even. They valued purer quirks like his Cremation, but also saw the inequality of quirked society. Their ideology tied in with the theory of the quirk singularity, and trying to control the endpoint of quirk evolution. That part kind of goes over his head, into scientific vocabulary he never really had a knack for, but it explained why so much of the Cato Raid involved medical and genetics experts. As much as it claimed to be a spiritual group, AV sounded like a bunch of evil scientists, and he didn't see the point in looking any further.
Not until he realized that brat and a bunch of other kids had been in danger for so long, and no one knew about it for years. Really, hero society was going down the drain if this stuff slipped through the cracks.
So he asks about Amon's Vision. And as it turns out, the answers are complicated. The further you go, the wider the net, and the more spoiled fish you catch. Illegal gene therapy. Drug production. Human organ trade. The problem expands, twisting into other business and anchored in the foundations of too many different agendas. Militarized spiritual groups, like the Elementals. Ritual killings. Political lobbyists. A man named Tarrlok was the ostentatious spark that began it all, and yet it was the guy's father, Yakone, that broke off from Destro's cult a generation ago to revitalize the spiritual community. So there's no true beginning to it at all.
There isn't just one vision, one overarching goal of the organization. There's not just a hierarchy, there's a web, interconnecting like-minded shits in the shadows.
(Fucking annoying to sort through. He starts taking notes, and feels like a student again.)
It's too much for any one person to unravel. It's fortunate enough that Cato Hospital was raided and those experiments were stopped. The idea of the rest of the cult—the vision, the fellowship, the organization—being eradicated entirely, for them to be ripped out, root and stem, was unrealistic.
Yet he finds himself cornering grunts in alleyways, and behind gas stations, and anywhere else the cameras don't work, and beating them until they give him a new target. *He lets them live, if you're wondering. You just can't live the same life as before when you're missing pieces. They're lucky enough that his quirk cauterizes wounds.)
"You're a funny one, Dabi," Giran comments to him every once in a while. There's no doubt that the broker knows most of what he's up to, but he's never heard a word of protest from the man either. "I wonder what sparked that fire under you, eh? Weeks and weeks of your usual dour work, and then…" Giran makes a vague gesture with his hand.
"If you have something to say, just say it," Dabi answers flatly, eyes half-lidded.
"On the contrary," Giran shrugs, taking a pull from his cigarette, "I don't think anyone has much to say on the matter."
He does it for months. On his own. With little more than his paycheck from Giran as backup. He loses his fair share of fights, but he's nothing if not tenacious. He exhausts himself trying to put together the web, and still goes out the next week to smoke out more. He's naturally on the leaner side, but the regular physical activity makes him even thinner, nothing but wiry muscle and bone.
He wears a surgical mask while he hunts. Uses his quirk in small, sharp bursts, but mostly relies on his fists or a pocket knife. No need to get Giran in trouble, he figures.
Is it Dabi or Touya that's doing the work? He can't figure that one out.
Amon's Vision is a large conspiracy once you factor in its many branches. If he didn't have to think about his next meal, it'd be easy to completely lose himself in this fucking mental ward of a conspiracy. Instead, he treats it like a very long pet project—as if he has the luxury for such things—and dedicates a fixed amount of time and energy towards the hunt. He doubts he alone can make a real dent in something as big as this, but it feels more constructive than existing for the next gig.
... For the record, Touya was never a villain.
Not officially, anyway. Maybe that's the track he was on, the fate he was hurtling towards full-steam and eyes wide open, maybe not. The fact is, he never got around to killing anyone for Giran. He didn't burn down properties or develop some kind of M.O.
"Killing sounds awful," Toph admits softly, mud-bending a small pile in front of her while Touya lays back in the cold swamp. "Yeah, there's all the moral stuff, but it's just… one minute there's a living, breathing being, heart beating and limbs moving, and the next it's just another thing, an object. Maybe it's different for you sighted people," she shrugs. "I can't even stand it when I feel birds die," she adds, filling in a gap of knowledge he'd been worried about. She's much too young to see an actual person die.
"I wouldn't say it's much different for everyone else," Touya says, staring up at the canopy. The conversation came up in the first place because a fighter was arrested for murder recently. The Rumble itself hadn't been implicated, but it rattled them all. "But I guess we have the option of just… not looking. Not feeling it."
The girl makes a noise of dissent from the back of her throat, and when Touya looks up at her, she looks like she's bitten into a lemon. "You don't have to look at something to feel it. Wouldn't you just know?"
"Not if you don't think about it," he points out. "You can't be weighed down by something you don't know."
She plays with the mud in her palms for a few moments and Touya watches the earth shift and swirl under her power. He can do something similar with his flames, though he can't let it touch his skin for so long. "I think you can," Toph answers eventually. "I think it's a burden on your spirit, regardless of whether or not you're aware of it."
"Well that implies we have spirits in the first place that can be burdened," he turns away from her, rolling his eyes. "The only mark you leave by murdering someone is on your permanent record. And in the papers, if you're flashy about it."
She scoffs. "Don't kid yourself, Hotshot. If that were true, everyone would be a villain."
"Well, that's how villains probably think about it," Touya concedes warily. "They have different morals than average people."
"We're not average people either," Toph replies seriously. "That doesn't make us villains. That doesn't make us capable of murder. My point is, either you have to be fucked up to murder someone, or murdering someone will fuck you up."
"That's too straightforward," he denies her claim. "What if it's self-defense, or an accident? Or what about when heroes murder villains, or when they can't save everyone in danger?"
"What's your point?" Toph asks sharply. "Imagine being forced to kill someone so you don't die. Imagine trying to save someone, and just coming short. Those aren't events you can just brush off."
He does try to imagine it, and for the most part, the earthbender isn't wrong. Except for one part.
"And villains? What if you're a hero, and you kill a villain so he stops committing crimes? Someone indisputably evil, who's too far gone to be restrained or reformed." Touya wonders what she thinks of that. Personally, he thinks he'd be alright with killing someone that really deserved it. He'll understand if she doesn't have a straight answer, because she's just a kid—she probably hasn't thought this far into the idea to really understand it all.
But she does answer, and when she does, Toph's voice is firm and steady. "What makes me special enough to decide who dies? I've met some terrible people, but never someone so hopeless that they deserve to die."
It's annoying, how often he ends up thinking about his conversations with that brat. Though it's not like there's anyone else around for him to talk to about moral ambiguity. Giran? Hell no.
Maybe there are people that shouldn't exist, but he hasn't met any of them. Touya doesn't pity the idiots that do bite the dust, but he's not… at peace with taking a life. The more he thinks about it, the more certain he is that killing a person would screw him up in one way or another. Probably tarnish his soul or something, if it didn't leave him mentally unhinged in the first place. All that talk about feeling the life leave someone—yeesh. People call him a downer, but that brat really knew how to bring down the mood. She basically suggested that all killers are haunted by the spirits of the lives they took.
Touya doesn't believe in all that spirit crap. But ever since Toph brought it up, he can't un-think it.
But the point is. He's a criminal, not a monster. However, investigating AV is becoming a little more intense than petty crime. Borderline vigilantism.
Shit, no, that's not what he wanted either. Vigilantism? That's way worse than having a hypothetically tarnished soul.
He should've realized how serious he was getting when a whole wall of his apartment ended up covered in notes, or when he starts moodily drinking away his frustration in a smoke-filled bar like he's magically becomes a hard-boiled detective at age twenty-one. Instead, he notices it when it's almost too late, and he comes close to kicking the bucket:
Someone gets smart, and his targets quit walking around unguarded. Annoying, but expected. Then, someone gets proactive—he tracks what he thinks are low-level thugs working with a trafficking ring and gets ambushed by four men lurking in the alleyway.
"So you're the bastard tailin' our guys, eh?!" one of them sneers, already sounding triumphant like this was his own bright idea. "You're not even worth the effort, but our Lord says it's better to snuff out a little kindling before someone tries fanning the flames, so—" The stranger ends his sentence with a volley of rock-like pellets that shoot from his hands, pummeling the fire user.
Overall it's eight against one, and Touya knocks out only three before he's getting the shit kicked out of him by the remaining five. He chokes up blood, trying fruitlessly to breath another gulp of air before it's knocked out of him again, when suddenly there's a screech of pain—that isn't from his own throat, nice—and a dark blur rushes in.
"What the—? This ain't your fight you—ack!" Someone's voice cuts off with a gurgle. Another man shouts in terror. Others beg for their life.
While Touya's busy wiping away drool and blood from his chin, the remaining five gang members are being thoroughly and completely outmatched by a single, ferocious entity. Touya blinks the haze away from his sight, and sees an oddly familiar man.
That's… Stendhal, isn't it?
It is.
I'm in trouble, Touya thinks to himself, but that thought's at least ten years too late.
As much as he had thought this through beforehand, Shouto can't help but feel like this is the most difficult conversation he's ever had. And they haven't even talked yet. Though Shouto and Inasa get along—and they do get along, they slot together and work like cogs in a machine—his friend has a sensitive spirit and Shouto tends to speak his mind with the subtlety of an elephant.
"...Inasa." He tries anyway, because it's the right thing to do.
"Shouto," he answers, after chugging a whole glass of lemonade. They've already finished the iced tea. Shouto thanks Kami and every spirit out there that Inasa got off the roof.
"You can bend all four elements."
Inasa's face curls up like a dead leaf in winter. "No I can't."
His denial is so paper-thin that even Shouto knows better than to take him at face value. "I'm pretty sure that you can, even if I haven't seen it."
"Shouto. I can't."
"Why not?"
"I—I just can't. It's impossible. It's—I shouldn't. It's wrong." And the look on his face is pained, afraid, but still very much a Twinkletoes face, and Shouto can kind of see that Inasa's being irrational about this. And maybe that Shouto's being irrational about his left side too.
"...No one's going to judge you. It's not your fault. But you'll regret not using your full strength," and is he even talking to Inasa at this point?
"I know that," Inasa says, and Shouto believes that he believes that, but...
"Toph's not here to judge you."
Inasa splutters. "I—I'm not worried about—"
"But you are. She judges everyone, it gets annoying."
"Don't say that about her—"
"She's my best friend too, doesn't mean she's not a hardass."
Inasa's mouth falls open in surprise. Then he snorts, and sets his head on the table and chuckles madly into the crook of his arm. He sucks in a deep breath, and releases it in a long, heartfelt, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
"... I agree," he answers after a moment, though there was no question asked. Inasa lifts his head.
There is a mask that Inasa wears. It's been there for a while, and it's finally beginning to fade away. The face beneath it is a scared one, filled with uncertainty so unlike the Inasa that Shouto has grown up alongside. For the first time, Shouto sees his friend as the bleak, confused teenager that he is, rather than the happy-go-lucky child he was for so long.
Oddly enough, this feels like progress. He's not totally botching this up.
The spooky mask is a new addition. So is the bloodstained katana slicing through all his potential informants. Dread washes over Touya. Not because his self-imposed task has been interrupted by a vigilante, but because he might lose a valuable lead with one more stroke of that sword.
"S-stop!" He rasps, staggering to his feet. "Stop, no, don't kill that one!" There's a desperate edge to his voice that irks him, but on this occasion, it works in his favor. The blade hesitates over a frozen target, and the masked man cranes towards him like Koh shadowing a new identity to steal.
He abruptly remembers the story of the face-stealer, a nightmarish sort of bedtime story from his nightmare of a childhood. Don't let him see your emotions.
There are dead and bloody bodies all around him, and Toph was right: it's very hard not to think about them. He's not about to save the last thug's life by risking his own, but letting Stendhal know he doesn't want to watch people die is a no-go as well. The last man standing (actually, laying on the ground like a corpse) looks like a businessman, not a thug. It could be the bookkeeper he's been looking for.
Touya wrangles away the distraught ache in his gut, letting his face smooth out. "I need that guy to talk."
The trance breaks, and Stendhal stalks near him. The bald man, his original target, stays put on the ground. "Who are you?"
He almost blurts out Dabi, but holds back and thinks. The Rumble was over, but there had been a sense of alliance between the fighters. Even the ones who were far gone, like himself. He tugs the surgical mask away, pulling up a new mask of neutrality in its stead. "Hotshot. I was Hotshot in Loban's arena."
Stendhal straightens up, his shoulders pulled back. He's shorter than Touya, but lithe, and he moves with sharp purpose. He probably wouldn't need the weapons to overpower Touya, that's for sure. "I don't remember you."
"Well, I remember you getting your ass kicked a few times," he lobs right back, before clicking his jaw shut again. Maybe I do talk too much. He can't tell if Stendhal's offended or not with that full-face mask, though. He swallows down his apprehension—and a bit of blood in his mouth—and forges on. "I need information from that man. He's a lead."
"He's a trafficker," Stendhal rumbles, like the word itself is poisonous. "I already have all I need to rid this world of the Red Monsoon," he declares, referring to the trafficking ring moving human cargo through Tokyo and bolstering the mutant-organ trade industry. Stendhal turns back to his target.
He shakes his head, but the action only serves to make his dizzy. "Stop," he says again, almost losing his balance. "No."
"Go home before you pass out, Hotshot," Stendhal scoffs. And then lower, he adds, "You don't need to see this."
(In the back of his mind, Touya is disgruntled. This vigilante is really willing to let him go because of an old alias he's already renounced. He told that brat not to call him Hotshot, and here he is, four months later, eating his words.)
"No," Touya repeats flatly, lumbering towards the vigilante. "No, that's not all he—" The katana is raised. "I said no!" He shouts. He's long since lost his pocket knife, and he isn't close enough to physically stop the sword. So Touya reaches with his fire and flings it like a whip, slicing a thin blue hotwire through the whole alleyway.
Stendhal leaps onto the fire escape to avoid it, and the angry sound he makes is animalistic. "You don't want me for an enemy, kid."
"Shut up," Touya hurls back, because his whole body feels like a bruise and it better not be for nothing. "He's valuable. He's not just a trafficker, he's a fucking cultist," he mutters, feeling a spike of pain run through his side. He presses a hand against a deep cut on his left, knows the blood is draining from his face, but refuses to let the pain show. "A-And I mean The Cult. The only one that's worth talking about. Amon's Vision."
That gets Stendhal's attention. "The Avatar purists? They're nothing but a ghost tale these days." He cocks his head to the side, and Touya's skin crawls as if there's daggers coming from the vigilante's eyes. "Besides, you're a firebender. Sure you're not looking to join?"
"Not interested," Touya dismisses him frankly, too sore to feel offended. "And trust me, they're more real than you think."
The vigilante hops off the ladder, cocking his head to the side some more, as if he's just waiting for Touya to step out of line so he can slice off an appendage. For a long moment, he says nothing. Touya still can't see the man's face, but he feels Stendhal's eyes picking him apart and examining the pieces for flaws. He has no illusions about Stendhal's been up to since the Rumble closed down. If he didn't like what he saw in Touya, he would not hesitate to skewer him like the rest of the Red Monsoon thugs.
Fine, Touya thinks wildly, lifting his chin. He's barely standing up straight, not like he can do much if Stendhal picks a fight now. Look all you want. I bet Koh wouldn't even want this face.
At last, the vigilante speaks. "So why do you want information on them?"
"Why do you want to kill a member of Red Monsoon? Am I not being obvious enough for you?" Touya mutters.
The bald man gasps, beginning to twitch like he's just remembered he can move. Stendhal raises his hand beneath his mask and a moment later, the trafficker is frozen again. "No no no!" he cries, breathing unsteadily. "No, please, don't kill me!" He sobs, finally catching onto the conversation. Touya creeps closer, not bothering to pull up the mask. Stendhal doesn't stop him. "Please! Please, I'll tell you about AV, but you can't let him do this. I don't want to die!"
Touya eyes Stendhal again. He doesn't know what Stendhal's quirk is, but the man is clearly paralyzed by something more than his own fear. "You heard us talk," he reminds the bald man flatly, gazing down at him dispassionately. "You'll say anything to survive. I can't trust what you say." He lets his fingertips dance with bright flames.
"No, please! I do know! I-I worked at the prison, I was there when they got Tarrlok out—"
I'm not going to kill this guy, Touya thinks to himself idly. But Stendhal will.
"That's old news," Touya dismisses him. "I don't care how they got him out, that was years ago."
"I-I manage the paperwork i-in Saitama—"
Isn't it the same as killing him myself if I let this masked guy do the work? There's no way he can overpower Stendhal, and the guy really has it out for these traffickers.
"Saitama doesn't matter anymore, Cato's a dead end, so—"
"Not just Cato Hospital!" The man says shrilly. "I do plenty of work in Saitama police department too!"
Well. That's unique enough for Touya to pause. He 'does' work, present tense. AV was supposedly burned out of Saitama, courtesy of the Flame Hero.
"That ended with Puppetmaster's death," Stendhal butts in, curiosity finally winning out. "Without her, there was no way to control that many people."
I've been letting people live, and it's finally backfired on me. AV knew they were being targeted because I left witnesses...
The bald man's eyes widen at Stendhal, like he's forgotten he was there. "There's always another way," he hedges. "Y-you have to let me live. I'll help! I'll—"
This man is going to die tonight. The clarity of the thought startles Touya as his mind drains itself of everything else. Am I supposed to save him? He's lower than dirt. He could crawl back to AV and ruin all my work to dismantle them.
"Can he feel pain like this?" Touya interrupts the blubbering man, eyeing Stendhal.
"Yes, he can."
He turns to the vigilante steadily, face so clear of emotion it's as good as wearing a mask. Blue flames dance along his fingertips, barely kissing his skin. "Let me handle the rest."
"You can't tell anyone. Not even Toph." Inasa's hand hovers in the air, over his half-full glass of lemonade.
That seems like a terrible idea. "Okay," Shouto promises anyway, because Inasa is his best friend, and what other option does he have?
Then the glass cup rattles on the table, and a wobbly orb of watery lemonade floats over Shouto's head, dancing in the air and twisting into ribbons. He already regrets promising not to tell. Inasa's quirk is beautiful, and it's a shame no one else is allowed to witness it.
Shouto tells him so, and suddenly his head is drenched and sticky with cold juice. The air-and-lemonade bender blinks at his with wide, guilty eyes. "...Can you bend it out of my hair?"
"Uh." His hair wiggles strangely over his scalp for a moment, then stops. "...No."
He doesn't like Stendhal much. In fact, Touya would rather he fucked off and left him alone. Unfortunately, he can't tell the vigilante to fuck off because he's also delusional, and Touya has seen the sort of bloodbaths he leaves behind when people don't meet his exact standards. It's his own fault for telling the vigilante what he knew about Amon's Vision. Now that Stendhal had a whiff of what AV was capable of, he's latched onto the scent and he's out for blood.
Vigilantes were unpopular for a reason. They're often worse than the shittiest heroes. This one strutted around with a holier-than-thou attitude, and plainly took some kind of sick satisfaction in murder.
(Touya left that bookkeeper in the alley. Blubbering like a baby, but alive.)
"My work is not meant for everyone. I understand that," Stendhal says, lurking over a fresh corpse. Touya didn't retch the first time he saw it, but only because he didn't have enough to eat that day. He's seen dead people before, but what Stendhal does is much more nauseating.
It's been about a month since they came across each other hunting the same thugs from Red Monsoon. Every few days Stendhal pops up in Touya's path, either with information on AV or fishing for what clues Touya's uncovered.
And then they end up hunting together, and Stendhal leaves a mess like a fussy toddler. Touya never actually argues, but he does serve looks that speak much louder than words, spurring Stendhal into some spiel about his methods. "What I do is ugly, yes. But it is necessary force if we ever want this society to survive." The vigilante levels his gaze with Touya. "They're villains. You want them gone. This is the best way."
This is called disproportionate force in heroics lingo, actually, Touya thinks. One of the most common criticisms in modern heroics. There's plenty of registered heroes that go too hard on villains. At some point, it just becomes senseless. Grotesque. Touya's quirk gets ugly so easily, he knows what it looks like when he goes all out. He knows what it does to a victim, and to himself. And he knows the exhilaration that accompanies that power, too.
"It's excessive," Toph snaps, chin lifted high and her feet sturdily cemented into the swampy earth. Touya is bowed over, panting from exertion as the forest sizzles around them. This is the first time he's seen her so scornful. "Are you a peacock? A gorilla, banging your chest? All those fancy flames thrown in one go—it doesn't make you more powerful. It's wasteful. Have some fucking class."
Stendhal has a point about decaying society—a point Touya could actually get behind, if he's being honest—but the vigilante's definitely missing the mark on what's necessary to make those changes. Leaving a bloody message to scare other villains is messed up. Maybe it's effective, but in Touya's experience… it's just a hop and a skip away from total megalomania.
And as Toph would put it, "Have some fucking class, Stendhal. You look like a nutjob."
The older man bristles, but when he turns to Touya, the firebender only offers a neutral face. He's only stating the facts, after all. "I'm doing what's necessary," he sneers. "I take no pleasure in my role."
"I think you do," Touya admits, crouching by the remains of an older man to check his ID. Might be useful to keep any official licenses or documents he has on him, if it's not bloodstained. Oh, yeah, he's going to barf when he gets home. "Not many people live to see you after you complete a 'mission', but I'm here, and I'm telling you—you look like you enjoy it."
"You can't even seen my face," Stendhal points out lowly, and Touya would be more cautious if he weren't sliding his katana away.
Touya shrugs. "Just seems like you're misinterpreting Plus Ultra, y'know," he dares to mention that school motto, knowing it'll rattle Stendhal.
"What would you know of dedicating yourself to a cause?" Stendhal hisses. "You're no hero yourself."
"I never said I was," he replies, only barely restraining himself from sounding utterly offended at the thought. "I'm not trying to be a hero."
At this, Stendhal is silent. He can tell he's being stared at, but the vigilante doesn't move a muscle, letting the firebender stew in his last words for a horrible long moment. Then, out of the blue, he lifts his hand and unties his mask solely to give Touya the most unimpressed look he has ever been served.
"Really," the older man drops the word like a bear trap on his foot, and the implication of his tone bites into Touya's very soul.
I'm the idiot now, Touya thinks mournfully. The fact that he and Stendhal were going after the same target, working in tandem, meant he had become some sort of dumbass vigilante.
And yet…
And yet, the next time he goes out with Stendhal, stalwartly denying what he's doing is vigilantism, Touya feels some level of satisfaction. Not because of his own actions, not because he's hopped up onto a soap box now. Not even because he finds a new lead on Amon's Vision that crops up a new location to investigate.
He eyes the bodies crumpled in the street that Stendhal has left behind, and sees that they're all breathing. Wounded and battered, but alive and whole.
Maybe he's not the only one changing.
"Shouto… can we do this again?" Inasa's voice is quiet and shy and Shouto dislikes the notion that it might stay that way. "We. We didn't even practice with your fire, so…"
"We need a different location," Shouto points out, eyeing the courtyard. The water could be explained away by Shouto's ice quirk, but anything more would be pretty obvious.
"...There's this clearing in Ueno," Inasa's voice is still hesitant and low, but he's not laying on the roof so Shouto tries not to be bothered by it. "Well. It's more like a marshland. I've only been there once, back when I still… It's a good spot. No one goes out there."
Toph isn't allowed to go out without telling a Responsible Adult, but Shouto technically has no restriction. It certainly feels like he's sneaking around behind everyone's back, but he was going to do that anyway to figure out how to use his left side, so.
"That sounds good," Shouto agrees, though it also sounds like he's being a hypocrite. "Just tell me when."
It's okay, because this is important, he reasons. Inasa departs from the house looking sunnier than when he arrived, and it reaffirms Shouto's choices. Toph can't know about this, but she would understand. Everyone would.
...Right?
A/N: If you're wondering why I put such different storylines into the same chapter, it's because they're centered around the same theme: idiot boys making idiot life choices. Also, y'know, different facets of one's identity. Touya, who is Dabi, who is Hot Shot, who is also some kind of vigilante. Inasa, who is Twinkletoes, who is the Avatar. Shouto, who is Confused, whose conspiracy theories are actually pretty accurate in this story.
I'm not too crazy about how this chapter came together, I hope it's not too confusing? Touya's plot line hasn't reach present day, because I wrote too much and couldn't get to that part, my b.
Also, oh my god, what the fuck is the tone of this chapter? Grimdark? Ironic? Light-hearted and awkward? Uhh let's just say it's because of the whole Changing Identities Trope I'm trampling all over.
