Late? Don't know her. Did I rewrite this chapter three times? Perhaps.
We'll be reaching U.A. in a couple chapters though, so. yay!
Having a Quirk was.
Weird.
Weird, because she could still remember not having one - and, briefly, she wondered if Midoriya experienced something similar after receiving One for All - but it's strange in a way she could never explain. A gift, yes, but a condemning one. While Midoriya had been Quirkless, she had been - something else.
The rage of Cremation settles in her bones, beneath her veins, and steers her forward because she cannot remember dying, but she is dead. And alive, living for nothing but pages of a story that are far gone - lost, because she exists, but she was never known for missing opportunities.
Touya refocused on the book in her lap.
Eighteen years - should've been twenty - before All for One makes his move.
The world will twist and turn, but it will not wait.
Father wanted a child to surpass All-Might, so -
Why not give him what he wants?
"Otou-san," she thought aloud, more curious than questioning. They sat in the waiting room because neither of them were allowed in the patient rooms with soundproof walls; The Hero Hospital was strictly business, unlike Musutafu General, where she was born. Her father had learned from the media debacle and thoroughly chewed out his sidekicks, but she doubted that the news of her little siblings would be silent. No matter the cover, paternity leave was difficult to hide.
"Yes?" he replied, a bit too quickly. Nervous, then - justified, since Rei was in with Fuyumi and Natsuo, and he wasn't.
Touya draws a winter cloud and the summer sun, just beneath the snowflake and the flame and the only remaining space on the sheet. It seemed that her habit of doodling and cramming notes in the gaps of textbooks had carried across the multiverse. Her lips twitched up.
(The pair of red sneakers with the tiny tally marks for shoelaces went unnoticed in the corner of the page.)
"Do you think I'll be a good sister?"
Enji shifted in his seat, and the hospital chair squeaked in a way that made her neck itch. A nurse (muscled, calloused hands, neck scar, former hero) wheeled a cart down the hallway and nodded.
"...Why do you ask?"
Touya folded her fingers together and looked to the ceiling. She says nothing.
"Todoroki-san?" Their nurse peered out from the corner. "Your wife, Fuyumi-chan, and Natsuo-chan are ready to go home!"
꧁꧂
Insanity was subjective, but stability wouldn't stop her from seeing a stapled face in the reflection.
(The past never dies, one-half of her screams, and the other cackles at the irony.)
"I'm not him," she tried to tell it; because she isn't, but life and reality were fickle things.
The void in her chest burned.
꧁꧂
Her hand rested on the rim of the cup, focus clear on the passive movement of the air.
The absence of heat stung her senses more than when the air buzzed full of it. In the same way that she could taste the burn (heat energy is molecular excitement and energy is everything) of Enji's flames in the back of her throat, she could pick up the cold scent of her mother's Quirk from a room away.
(What is a Quirk?)
Children draw inspiration for their techniques from their heroes; they look at All Might's power-packed punches, Endeavor's flames that burn towards the heavens. They forget about the little things while staring down their dreams; they look to the stars and forget that their feet remain on the ground.
Dabi had only channeled the heat and rage of Cremation into his uncontrolled destruction. Blinded by his admiration and jealousy, he never realized that fire was only a product of heat, and there was so much you could do with heat - or a lack of it - before you reached combustion.
And, on the politics side, if her techniques resembled her father's too much -
Well.
There were lifetimes of stories lining her skull and abilities born from the musings of the universe. All for One and the holders One for All weren't gods. Influential and powerful, but like everyone else, they were only human in the end.
(Tomura is Tenko, much like I am -
much like I am -
...)
Mother was the delicate balance of a blade on ice, unmoving under the wind.
Father was the sharp curl of a campfire, ready to rage at a moment's notice.
Touya's fingers curled around the edge of the glass.
Everybody had a presence, whether they knew it or not, and she could only wonder what the energy in her chest felt like to the outside. What did her parents sense in her Quirk - in her - if anything at all?
Lowering her body temperature to match the surrounding air was calibrating herself to the frequency of the universe - because, unlike Shouto, her endothermic and exothermic abilities weren't exclusive to a single side of her body. Cremation was the furthest from reality; while she couldn't gather the moisture necessary to form her own ice, she could still use her surroundings.
(Failure is not -)
And, sure enough, when she closed her eyes and (carefully) pushed the heat out and away - when the chill whirred in her ears and crawled up her arm and crept down her spine - ice crystals bloomed to life.
"What was it like?" Rei would ask while Enji was away working a serial robbery case. She'd seen the files on his home desk.
Touya couldn't respond. How could you describe the deepest part of yourself?
"It felt wrong," her mother surmised. "Against instinct?"
"Something like that," Touya mumbled, wondering if she had finally gone mad.
(The best people are.)
꧁꧂
Time is time, and it will not wait.
The Billboard Rankings take place on the first Saturday of January. It's a busy month for business, and her fifth birthday passes in a whirl of promise and praise. The Endeavor Agency becomes a second home where eager sidekicks coo and crowd around.
It was good PR practice, she supposed, before anything she said would be taken too seriously.
Yet -
It always seemed to come back to his office and the balcony and the stars, where Touya will pretend not to feel the future twist behind her eye.
"The world is waiting for you," Enji said, gesturing out to Musutafu and its horizons beyond. The tone of voice made her mind whirl with questions; she managed to keep her shoulders some stiffening, but the pressure of his hand had never been heavier.
(Our goals align, but when will he realize that -
"One day, you will stand beside us," Endeavor tells her, with a certainty of a man who had spent his life as the only rival to the Symbol of Peace.
I'm no hero.)
Ages:
Enji: 28
Rei: 25
Touya: 5
Fuyumi & Natsuo: 1 Month
Infinite love!