Warning: child abuse and so many names taken in vain.

"Aren't you coming, Todoroki-kun?"

It was the first day of school after the incident at USJ. Homeroom had passed (with the unexpected addition of Aizawa-sensei and a reminder of the swiftly approaching Sports Festival; deciding which was the more shocking revelation had been a struggle), the bell for the end of first period and come and gone, and Shōto was sitting where he had been since: at his desk, notebook in hand, mind an empty, dark place.

Home had never been a refuge, but after they had been dispersed the day before (early, and after they had been looked over by the school nurse, Recovery Girl, and assured that their parents would be updated on the situation), Shoto had held the vaguest hope that the vibrating tension under his skin would settle, upon seeing the familiar visage of the family estate's front gates swinging slowly open.

The tension under his skin had settled, to be fair: upon seeing Shoto in the entrance way, Father—no, Endeavor, with his hair billowing flame and eyebrows sternly pulled together in a disapproving frown—had pulled him into the dojo, and had him demonstrate the moves he had used to take down the villains. None of them had pleased him. Hours of endless drills and barked demands to move faster, do better, be better later, and Shoto had been allowed to collapse in his room without even making it to the bed, the previous tension gone in exchange for his entire right-side being a frost-bitten, throbbing ache from his overused quirk.

Sleep had been quick in coming, but didn't stay constant. In brief intervals, nightmares of hands and portals and frozen limbs snapping would have him shooting awake, only the pain in his body reminding him that it was over, it wasn't real, he needed to push the anxiety and nausea away and sleep, he needed to sleep—

Morning had come too quickly.

He looked up at the sound of his name, and immediately leaned back upon nearly coming in contact with Pinky's outstretched face.

"...going where?"

"Lunch?" she said, tilting her head quizzically like this was an obvious thing he should have realized on his own.

Shoto leaned back even further in his chair, the better to look down his nose at her and affect cold disinterest.

"Where and when I choose to eat my lunch is none of your business," he said, irritation slipping into the words. Had these children been raised by wolves? The constant hedging into his personal space was beginning to really affect his control. A familiar, creepy-crawling feeling that had stayed dormant over the brief period of normal high school lessons (English with pro-hero Present Mic, whose lack volume control made it extremely difficult to space out, followed by mathematics with pro-hero Ectoplasm, whose clones would pop up without warning to check that nobody was taking the chance for a quick nap) began to rear its ugly head.

Shoto ignored it, because it was still manageable, and because he could feel the stares of a few of his classmates on his sides and back. Scratching now would be too noticeable.

"I… guess that's true," Pinky said uncomfortably. She finally removed her hands from the desk and leaned back, bringing one hand up to run through her hair. He noticed two bone-yellow horns peeking out of the mess of her hair, something that had escaped his notice until now.

"I mean, you don't have to come with us or anything, it's not like we're gonna force you? Just, Denki totally put his foot in it the first day of school-"

"Hey!" Someone (probably Denki? Whoever that was, though it sounded a lot like Lightning boy, Kaminari) shouted from the front of the room. Pinky continued like she'd never been interrupted:

"—And we weren't able to catch you after school ended, and you just disappeared yesterday right after… well. And, you know, before the whole intruder alert fiasco, Kaminari said you went and disappeared on everyone, too, and with everything that happened at USJ… Sorry, I'm rambling, but anyway! I've kind of been thinking that me and this idiot gave you a bad first impression so, like, if you wanted to, we were gonna head to the cafeteria and maybe you could join us…?"

Shoto stared at her, for long enough that he could see her body language turning awkward, fingers beginning to fidget and torso unconsciously leaning to get away.

"I… thank you. But I… have my own lunch," he said finally—slowly, with each word tasting strange in his mouth.

Pinky twitched her shoulders, out of surprise at his response, or surprise that he had answered at all. She cast a look over her shoulder, doubtless at this 'Denki', and gave the nervous little laugh he'd heard from her before, a memory distant and just as quickly gone from his mind.

"Right, okay, had to try. Have a nice lunch, I guess, and uh… see you after?"

She didn't wait for a response, which was good, because Shoto didn't have one. He watched her back as she skipped away, watched her meet with Kaminari and Shark Teeth, and watched until they left the room—and even then, he continued to stare.

These people were so strange. People were…so strange. And confusing.

A quick glance at the clock showed he had thirty-five minutes to eat. The classroom had mostly emptied. The only students remaining were the student who could control animals (and got so excited the one time Shoto signed in JSL to him) who was even now quietly getting up to leave the room, lunch bag in hand; and the big, multi-armed student, Tentacles (whose name he still couldn't quite recall either) and who—

—who was staring straight at Shoto.

His hands spasmed against his consent, though he managed to keep his face still. What had the other boy seen? What was he thinking?

"What do you want?" Shoto demanded. His skin crawled at the attention. He longed to duck out from under it and look away, but the boy's level stare was too disconcerting to give anything but his full attention.

"Nothing much. I'm Mezo Shoji, by the way, since we never really got around to introducing ourselves. Everyone calls me Shoji. I was just thinking about asking if you wanted to eat together. You looked like you wanted to be alone, but you and I seem to be the only ones not going to the cafeteria—other than Koda-kun, I mean."

'Koda' must be the other student. Shoto considered trying to remember the name, but just the thought of it was exhausting. Lunch with someone else, even in the quiet of the classroom? The thought brought the beginnings of nausea threatening to fill his mouth with saliva, his gag reflex gearing up for another round of Let's See How Much Stomach Acid We Can Expel.

"Hey, come on, you don't have to look like that," 'Shoji' said. Shoji hadn't gotten out of his seat, but he did turn his body fully to face Shoto. Shoto noticed what had skipped his attention before—at the end of two of his tentacles eyes had appeared. Part of Shoji's quirk appeared to be the ability to add eyes, ears and mouths to his appendages as often as he pleased, something Shoto vaguely recalled seeing during Battle Training with All Might.

Quirks came in all shapes and sizes, and Shoto had never been one to care about appearances: what bothered him now, as four eyes focused on him, was the feeling of being trapped in someone else's gaze, unrelenting and inescapable.

("Not good enough," Father snarled. Fire burst to life in his hand; around them, the glittering walls of ice steamed and melted under the heat, countless little flames reflected off their translucent surfaces like a million hovering fireflies.

"If you insist on this ridiculous belief that you can be powerful enough without utilizing your fire—the fire I gave to you, which incalculable numbers of people would kill to have even a small part of—then you have to have something good enough to back it up. And right now, boy? Right now that something is nowhere near good enough!"

An explosion of heat tunneled past the walls of ice. Shoto tried to dodge, but his leg collapsed under him, and he couldn't help the cry that left his lips as his shirt caught fire. The ice walls made pop-pop-pop noises like firecrackers as the heat created deep cracks within them.

"You. Are. Weak!"

The fire was relentless, billowing in great, blinding swathes, greedily swallowing up the oxygen in the room and attempting to devour anything it could reach. Shoto rolled and dodged, blinking back the tears of frustration and pain that tried to fall against his will, and shot back shards and pillars of ice that got smaller and smaller the longer he continued. He had fought and bled for control of his right side, and against any other hero or villain, Shoto believed he could more than hold his own. But against Endeavor? Sometimes it felt that no matter how long he trained, how hard and how much he strained to utilize his ice with more precision, strength, and quantity, he would never be strong enough to do more than try to keep from collapsing under the burning pressure of his power.

"You will never be the Number One Hero at this rate! Push past me, boy! Throw yourself at every obstacle as if you were about to die!"

A hundred icy-blue eyes reflected in the frozen walls, the condemnation in their depths as searing as the heat streaking past Shoto's face as he dodged, gasping, for the hundredth time.

"If you cannot even stand up against me, you will not survive even one second against All Might! You are a disgrace! Get rid of this ice and start again!")

Shoji's arm-eyes blinked once, twice, then closed. Shoto unconsciously leaned forward with interest as those eyes folded into the appendages, shifting to form a mouth on one, an ear on the other.

"It was just a thought, anyhow. I'm perfectly okay just sitting here and eating by myself. Maybe some other time."

Without waiting for a response, Shoji turned back in his seat and began looking through his bag, pulling out a wrapped parcel, a thermos and a packet of chips.

It was Shoto's turn to blink. That was it? No pressuring him to socialize, to push past the fog of tiredness, irritation, and nausea, and make an attempt at being a normal person?

Without meaning to, Shoto relaxed into his chair, a quiet breath escaping him. Feeling a bit odd but not enough to want to think it through, he pulled out his own lunch and began to unwrap it with a quiet, "Itadakimasu," echoed by his fellow lunch mate. They both looked up as they said it, surprised, but quickly turned back to their own lunches. Still, as he pulled out his chopsticks and began separating the bones from his salmon, Shoto felt his lips pull up into a quiet smile.

Lunch ended too quickly. Shoto felt he had barely closed his lunch box before his classmates were trickling back into the room, in groups of two and threes, chattering cheerfully amongst themselves. The nausea had mostly faded by the time he had forced down a few bites of his rice, and his appetite had quickly returned. It would have been nice to have a few more minutes to himself, but Shoto quietly inhaled and told himself to be thankful that he had gotten that time at all.

Shoji had been surprisingly pleasant company. There was something about eating quietly with another person—and not in a cold, awkward silence he was unfortunately very well acquainted with—had brought to mind the times when it was just him and Fuyumi home and they could take their time eating and enjoying each other's company. Without the looming presence of their father, they could enjoy the silence, the quiet companionship, the gentle gestures and body language they had grown accustomed to using to check that the other was okay.

(The rice bowl with the chipped edge and the smiling kitten placed on his tray; a chopstick holder, in the shape of a pink gecko lying on its back:

Do you need a distraction?

Ketchup on a hamburger, drawn in a smiley face; pancakes, in the shapes of bears and dogs and puppies:

Do you need cheering up?

An offer to get seconds, conveniently putting whoever was offering between Father and the other person, granting a few second's reprieve:

Do you need help?)

They had a dozen simple ways of asking after the other sibling's wellbeing without risking unwanted attention. Shoto had learned to watch Fuyumi's body: whether she was turned away from the table; where she put her hands; whether she was staring blankly forward or doing her best to disappear into her chair. Shoto imagined that his sister had learned a few tricks of her own, over the years. There had certainly been times when he'd been tempted to respond to some unbearable comment from Father, but a light touch to his leg or a deliberate clatter of tableware would have him shutting his mouth and bearing with it—because a momentary loss of temper would have considerably worse consequences for the both of them than a blow to his pride.

He was used reading Father's body: he had learned to recognize the signs of an impending explosion; of an angered rant on the unearned reputations of other pro-heroes; of the days where any wrong word could lead to a harsh session in the dojo on top of what was already on the day's agenda.

Shoto had learned to read the lines of eyes and shoulders, of purposely loosened or crossed arms, of leg muscles tensed to turn or move forward, of the subtle intricacies of hands and the tendons on them.

Faces were confusing and never told the true story.

The muscles in Endeavor's face were at their most relaxed when he was seconds away from letting his temper loose. When Father's mouth turned up at the corners, it usually preceded the cruelest of words coming out of it. Fuyumi smiled the most when her eyes were at their most scared. Shoto found that so long as he concentrated on unclenching his jaw and loosening his facial muscles, his mouth would cease to pull downwards in a frown and he could come off as calm and unaffected.

People lied with their mouths and their faces, but hardly ever with their eyes and bodies.

His classmates had mostly seated themselves; the bell for second period would be ringing soon. Shoto lightly tapped at the roughness of the skin around his left eye and let the gentle touch smooth out the wrinkles in his forehead and brow, let the muscles in his jaw unclench. His back and shoulders had grown steadily tenser as time passed and his classmates filed in, but there was nothing for that.

People saw what they wanted to see, and so long as you concentrated on lying with your face, nobody would notice what you were saying with your body.

(Mother had taught him this lesson—with a kettle of water, and unforgettable pain—and he had learned it well.)

The last of his classmates, Freckles, Iida and Gravity, came in just before the bell rang, and Aizawa-sensei ambled into the classroom on their heels with all the eagerness of a hungover salaryman.

It was time for second period to begin.

Shoto placed his last notebook inside his bag and zipped it closed. School had ended for the day, leaving him and his tired classmates to grouch (his classmates, that is) about aching muscles and slowly make their way out of the doors and into the relative freedom of their after school lives.

The sports festival and all he would need to do to prepare for it were occupying his thoughts (he had to re-write his training schedule, which would, unfortunately, necessitate having to actually speak to Endeavor about it-), when Shoto realized that today, unlike the previous weeks, was not going to be a day of him and his zombie-classmates shuffling out of the doors—on account of the massive crowds of people in front of it, as they all discovered once Explosions had slammed the doors open... and was nearly trampled.

"What the ever-loving fuck?" Shoto heard him mumble. He then tilted his chin upwards and sneered down at them. You had to give Explosions credit: where he fell short in basic human decency, he more than made up for in his creative use of facial expressions and bad, awful, no-good language.

"Get the fuck out of my way, Extras. If you've got the time to waste circle-jerking each other, be my Endeavor-damned guest—"

Quietly choking on thin-air, Shoto tucked his face into his elbow and coughed, incredulous amusement leaving his shoulders shaking. He barely heard Iida launch into a lecture about appropriate word-usage in a public setting.

He'd heard All Might's name used in vain plenty of times in his life (in his household in particular, in increasingly vulgar and creative ways as he grew older), as well as the names of a number of other heroes. All Might, Best Jeanist, Gang Orca, Hawks and Edgeshot ranked among the most popular names to misuse (i.e., 'I'd Gang his Orca', 'I don't give two-Hawks', 'All Fucking Might', 'Sweet Jeanist' and 'Holy Edgeshot'), at least among the students he had encountered during his short private-education experience, but not once had he ever…

'Endeavor-damned'.

Shoto dropped his arm as soon as he had composed himself, hoping his face wasn't as red as it felt. That was possibly the most wonderful thing he had heard in a very long time. If he thought he could get away with using it without landing himself in a world of trouble, he would unquestioningly use it at the next opportunity. He allowed himself one minute to imagine what Father's face would look like if he said it in his presence, reveled in the resulting image for a glorious five seconds, before reluctantly shooing the image away. Sadly, the cons did not outweigh the pros, and it was best to put the thought entirely out of his head to avoid any accidental insulting of the wrong person.

"I came here to declare war," someone said from the door. Shoto hefted his bag over his shoulder and tucked his chair in, determinedly not looking at the door. If he made eye contact, there was a chance someone would engage him, and then he would be forced to speak or potentially make even more eye contact, and that was the last thing he needed right now. Not looking at the door also helped to keep the thought of, How am I going to get out without touching someone? from turning into skin-crawling anxiety. The crowd had yet to disperse, something Shoto thought could be blamed entirely on Explosions, who had basically thrown a still-warm cow into the middle of a pride of salivating lions—well, no, actually; perhaps it was more like throwing a bag of feed into a chicken coop? A salad into a cage of docile rabbits? In any case, if Explosions didn't stop blocking the door with his terrible attitude and even worse mouth very soon, he was going to have to do something drastic.

A sheet of ice across the floor should do the trick. Shoto gauged the distance between his desk and the door, calculated in the number of 1-A students still in the room, recalculated to fit Explosions's ego, and nodded to himself. That would work.

Still, he would rather not get on Aizawa-sensei's bad side by using his quirk if he didn't have to, particularly not when Sensei was still injured, and his temper so much shorter than it already naturally was.

They had all had an unfortunate encounter with Sensei's shortened capacity for bullshit, just after lunch:

"You having problems concentrating, Mineta?" Sensei asked the boy during History, the bandages covering most of his face doing nothing to detract from the incredibly weighted nature of the question.

(Mineta, Shoto mouthed to himself, confused, but then Sensei's incredible killing intent hit him, and the thought was forgotten)

A white-faced Purple Balls slowly shook his head, but Sensei was already grinning darkly, his eyes glittering sinisterly between the slits of his bandages. Without anyone having actually moved, Purple Balls's desk suddenly seemed to be the only one in the room, as if all the tables around it had given into the terrible gravity of their oncoming doom and had shifted away from it, and him, in response.

Shoto himself wasn't immune to the sudden invisible exodus, and found himself slowly holding up his textbook and hunching his shoulders to hide behind it. From the corner of his eye, Shoto saw Big Lips doing the same, only he was going so far as to actually slide down his chair, as if he intended to disappear under his table.

"Not to worry, Sensei has the perfect cure for you," Aizawa-sensei told Purple Balls, smiling malevolently down at his flinching student. "Take this—" he scribbled something down on a piece of paper, "—and give it to Recovery Girl. It explains how you've just been so tired lately, from all those all-nighters you've been pulling—" (there was a collective gasp, as everyone knew what Recovery Girl thought about All Nighters ) "—and how you just keep forgetting to eat, so your stamina is also suffering. It also has a note from me—your thoughtful, kind-hearted teacher—that encourages her to give you the full work-up, in the off chance something else is wrong that your dear Sensei has failed to notice."

Sensei reached out his arm, paper fitted neatly between his index finger and middle finger, and smiled beatifically with all his teeth. Looking as if his soul had escaped his body, Purple Balls slowly got to his feet and wobbled over to Sensei, taking the note with trembling fingers and a woe-begotten expression.

"Sensei," he whimpered, "if I tell her that she'll…. She won't use her quirk if she thinks you haven't been taking care of yourself! I don't wanna shot! Or… or… probes, or whatever!"

"Then you should have thought of that before falling asleep in my class," came Sensei's heartless reply. "Remember that for next time. The rest of you as well! I won't tolerate any bullshit from you!"

"Yes, sir!" Came the immediate response out of 19 terrified mouths.

As Purple Balls dragged his feet out the door, Sensei's parting orders to 'not change the note, or he would know' ringing in their ears, Shoto resolved to step extra carefully around Sensei for the foreseeable future.

They had all been… extra quiet, after that. Suffice it to say, Sensei's already small threshold for misbehavior from his students had fallen to nonexistent levels, and Shoto had no interest in aiming that level of temper at himself.

So only his quirk as a last resort—ah, Explosions was walking away. He'd made some statement beforehand, Shoto vaguely recalled hearing. Something about aiming for the top? Oddly, this statement was being treated by a few of his male classmates like it was a prophecy handed down by a renowned religious leader, and Shoto couldn't help looking at them askance for overreacting to such obvious knowledge. They were training to be pro-heroes, the absolute best of the best; if they weren't aiming for the top, then what in the world were they doing here in the first place?

In any case, Explosions was opening a path for him. Relieved, Shoto tracked the stomping boy with his eyes and in the process accidentally met the eyes of a tall, violet-haired boy. Looking away would be cowardly, now that they had made eye contact, but he had this particular game down pat:

He blinked once, as if surprised; flicked his eyes down, then slowly up; blinked again, slower, as if disappointed; then away, with a dull, disinterested look for emphasis. In his peripheral vision, he could see the boy bristling in irritation or anger, and grimly counted it as a success.

Now hopefully he would be able to get out without the boy confronting him (there was always a downside to these, what had Natsuo called them, 'dick-measuring contests'?) and Shoto could finally get home and start on planning his Sports Festival Win.

"ALL RIGHT, NOW THAT IS ENOUGH!" 1-A's reliable Class President shouted. Shoto immediately began weaving his way through the desks, positive he knew where this was going, and thankful for it. Iida was really quite a helpful individual when he was aiming his self-righteous shouting in someone else's ear.

"1-A students are now going home, I demand you all disperse before I call a member of the faculty!"

And so another day ended, and Shoto was able to duck his way out of the crowd with minimal contact and from there, to home. He had a win to plan... and a massive Fuck You to somebody he hated to fit into it.