Chapter 2: Fire and Rain
"Everyone remember to stay in the groups that I assigned you to," Eraserhead said firmly as he and All Might led their students towards the site of the disturbance, "Although all of our intel indicates that the big players of the League of Villains are gathered in the city right now, there are still plenty of decently talented villains who could be behind this. Be on the lookout for them and take care of each other. Contact me immediately if you see anything!"
"Yes, Mr. Aizawa!" the students shouted as they broke off into their assigned routes.
"Why th'hell do you two always have to follow me everywhere?" Bakugo complained, "I can do this myself. I don't need you getting in my way!"
"Mr. Aizawa told us to stay in our groups," Midoriya shouted as he streaked along the ground beneath Bakugo's intermittent explosions and Todoroki's sheets of ice.
"Midoriya is right, so stop complaining," Shoto chided him.
"You shut your mouth, IcyHot," the explosion hero huffed, "or I'll blast you all the way to hell!"
"Sure you will," Shoto answered dryly, "Midoriya, you should go on, straight ahead."
"Right!"
"I'll bear a little to the left and Bakugo can go to the right."
"Don't tell me what to do!"
Shoto angled his ice away, ignoring their classmate's continued taunts. The trees grew thicker as the three headed out from the border of the school, scouring the area, looking for any sign of the intruders that had been sensed. Each finished his search of the assigned section, then they headed back towards each other, with Midoriya and Shoto using Bakugo's bright explosions as a guide.
"It's sure not hard to tell where he is," Midoriya sighed, rolling his eyes.
"I was thinking about that," Shoto said thoughtfully, looking out ahead of them as another rumbling blast sounded, "Do you think that this could be some of Shigaraki's thugs trying to get their hands on Bakugo again?"
"Huh?"
"Think about it. They made sure it was known…or maybe just that we believed that their strongest people would be in town. Even some of the teachers left to help with the investigation of that meeting," the two-toned hero explained, "Sure, Mr. Aizawa is still here, but it was a given that if something happened, the strongest students would be sent out to confront it."
"That does make sense," Midoriya agreed, "We'll need to warn Kacchan and make sure he stays safe!"
"I'm with you!" Shoto promised, moving alongside his classmate as they closed in on Bakugo's location.
They burst into a clearing and spotted their friend on the far side, approaching someone who waited just ahead of him.
"Is that…a teacher?" Shoto mused, squinting.
His stomach clenched as the man came into clearer focus and he noticed the patchwork stitches and odd coloring on his body.
"That's not a lowlife punk!" Shoto shouted, "That's Dabi!"
"STAY AWAY FROM OUR FRIEND!" Midoriya roared, powering up as he rocketed forward.
"Get back, Deku!" Bakugo warned him, "I owe this guy a POUNDING!"
Shoto's mismatched eyes rounded and he shot forward as a lithe, grey clad figure loomed up behind the blonde hero, reaching in his direction.
"BAKUGO!"
Fire erupted from his left hand and arm, blocking the eerie villain's path.
"GET OUTTA THE WAY, ICYHOT!" Bakugo snarled, firing at the place where the wraithlike person had been.
"I'm over here, honey," Furi giggled, sweeping in behind Bakugo and reaching for him again.
Shoto raced forward, absorbed with stopping the disaster that loomed ahead of him, while Midoriya dodged a flare of Dabi's fire and looked for an opening to strike.
"I said to get outta my way!" Bakugo scolded Todoroki as the two-toned youth angled his fire between Bakugo and Furi again, "I've got this one. Go and help the nerd before he gets himself killed over there."
He fired off a little blast that made Shoto have to alter his path. Furi's eyes narrowed and they gave an affirmative nod to someone hidden more deeply in the trees.
"Now, Dabi!" Furi cried.
Time seemed to slow for Shoto as he realized that Midoriya wasn't close enough to stop the patchwork man and that Bakugo seemed not to realize the instant danger he was in. He launched himself in between Dabi and Bakugo, raising a wall of ice. He heard Bakugo loose another heavy explosion, then a hard exclamation of dismay as Shoto's wall of ice collapsed under the force of Dabi's fire and Shoto was thrown into the path of his own classmate's attack.
"DAMN IT, NO!" howled Bakugo as the blast mixed with Dabi's fire and Shoto's slim body disappeared into the orange and blue maelstrom.
"SHOTO!" screamed Midoriya, firing himself at the place where his classmate had been as Bakugo raced forward.
The two blinked and squinted as the fire gave way to the horrific sight of a scorched body falling, crashing down into the nearby river, where it plunged beneath the surface and was instantly swept away.
Dabi watched as the two UA students raced after the decoy, then he turned to Kurogiri, who waited quietly nearby.
"Did Furi get him?" he asked.
"Yes," Kurogiri answered, "I sent them to the location you gave me. I believe that Furi was successful in hypnotizing the boy."
"Good. They'll know what to do with him. We should get outta here before the others catch up with these kids."
"Right."
Kurogiri opened a warp gate, then glanced at Dabi, who snickered and shook his head, then entered the gate and disappeared. With a bored sigh, the warp gate villain followed.
XXXXXXXXXX
All Might and Aizawa stiffened at the first sounds of explosions that emanated from the direction that the Erasure hero's three problem children had gone and he gritted his teeth and shook his head grimly.
"I should have known those three would find trouble," he said dryly, "Stay here and meet up with any of the others who come back. I'll go and see what they've gotten themselves into."
"Right," All Might said in a regretful tone, watching longingly as Aizawa quickly disappeared into the trees, "Be careful."
The Erasure hero hurried through the wooded area, alternating running with use of his binding cloth to vault over thicker patches of brush. Bakugo's explosions continued in the area ahead of him and he could hear the sounds of the young heroes' intermittent shouts. Blue fire lit up the sky in front of him and Aizawa felt a creeping sense of foreboding.
This doesn't seem like thugs causing trouble. I wonder. Could the League of Villains be trying to target Bakugo again? My gut tells me that after the way he so vehemently rejected them, they wouldn't bank on him defecting and joining their ranks…
His binding cloth wrapped around the limb of a tree and he launched his body high into the air to get a better read on the situation. His breath seemed to freeze in his chest and he couldn't make his voice sound for a moment as he spotted Dabi just unleashing a blistering wave of blue fire as Bakugo loosed a huge blast. The two converging waves closed in on Shoto Todoroki's reeling form as Midoriya made a desperate, but useless attempt to reach him.
No!
The young hero's face was lit for one split second with blue and orange flame and the image of his somehow still stoic and calm expression imprinted itself on Aizawa's shocked mind. Then blue and orange flames swallowed up Todoroki's falling body, leaving it scorched and motionless when it reappeared as the thick smoke around the area cleared.
He shot towards the retreating villains while Bakugo and Midoriya followed the path that Todoroki's tumbling body had taken. But well before he reached them, the ones ahead of him disappeared.
Dabi.
And in the trees, I saw Kurogiri.
The meeting in town, the information that all of the heavy hitters were going to be there was just a ruse! This was a planned attack, meant to destroy the reputation of UA and its hero course students.
How could I let this happen?
He moved at top speed, chasing after Midoriya and Bakugo as the green-haired youth screamed his classmate's name repeatedly. The desperate cries filled the Erasure hero's mind, tearing at him maddeningly.
This is my fault. I failed to consider that this could be a trap and I sent the students right into their path. At the very least, I should have considered that the villains had targeted Bakugo before and I should have kept him close to me.
Damn!
He reached the edge of a small cliff on the edge of the rushing river, where a pale-faced Midoriya stood, searching the river for any sign of his classmate.
"Midoriya!"
"Mr. Aizawa!" Midoriya exclaimed, his wild, rounded eyes fixing on Eraserhead, "T-Todoroki…!"
"I saw," Aizawa acknowledged as Bakugo touched down nearby and moved to join them.
He noticed immediately the look of mingled fury and devastation on the blonde youth's face.
"We need to act quickly if we're going to find him. We'll talk about what happened later. Midoriya, you and I will scour the banks of the river and Bakugo, I want you to search from the sky."
"Got it!" Midoriya shouted, turning to run down the shore on the near side of the river.
Bakugo wordlessly launched himself upward and Eraserhead swung across the water to the other side to begin his search. They worked together for several minutes before other classmates arrived and joined in the search. But even two hours of careful investigation failed to uncover any sign of the half cold, half hot hero course student, and after a third hour, the group was forced to face the awful truth. Principal Nezu approached the place on the edge of the river where All Might and Eraserhead stood, staring wordlessly into the water. He followed their gaze, sighing sadly.
"I'm afraid that we are going to have to call a halt to the rescue mission," he said solemnly, "I know you don't want to hear it, but I've called the authorities and we are going to turn this over to them now. Let's get the students back to the school and interview those who were involved in the actual fighting."
Aizawa glanced at Bakugo out of the corner of an eye and found the youth's expression overwritten with barely concealed agony. Midoriya stood near the blonde explosion hero, not speaking, but looking as though he ached to provide some kind of comfort to his anguished classmate. Kirishima approached Bakugo cautiously and was able to coax him slowly away from the edge of the river.
The three adults watched sadly as the deflated group of students headed back to the dorms, waiting silently as the sound of sirens rose up in the distance.
XXXXXXXXXX
Mingled sharp and dull aches and pains registered all over Shoto's body as he sucked in a deeper breath and started to emerge from a deep sleep. He longed to turn onto his side, but sensed that any movement was likely to set off even more of the jarring discomfort. He heard a soft, effeminate voice that could have been male or female instantly trying to soothe him back into sleep.
"Oh, no, no, no little one."
"Ugh…"
"Yes, yes, I know it hurts. Here, a sip of water."
He hadn't realized his throat was so dry and a little relieved sob escaped him as he found his voice again.
"Wh-where…?"
"Don't you worry about that now," Furi chided him gently, caressing his face and running slender fingers lightly through his hair, "You're going to be fine. You're safe now and I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."
"S-someone tried to…hurt me?" Shoto inquired, blinking and squinting up at the person who was leaning over him.
He could just make out an oddly eerie silvery eyes and hair, and a beautiful face that was as androgynous as the person's voice.
"Who are you?"
The stranger smirked down at him affectionately.
"Are you seriously asking me that, Sho-chan?"
"Um…"
"Well," Furi chuckled, "I guess it has been a long time, but you can just think of me as a relative on your mother's side. I go by they/them, dear."
"Oh," Shoto managed, sitting up slowly, "Okay."
"Didn't I tell you to rest?" Furi scolded him, pushing him back down gently, "You were beat up pretty badly. If I hadn't had a friend with a cell restoration quirk, I don't know if you'd still be with us."
Shoto frowned and looked down at his yukata clad body.
"Someone beat me up?"
"You don't remember?" Furi asked, narrowing their eyes curiously.
Shoto shook his head and winced, immediately regretting it.
"Ow!"
"That's why I told you to rest, honey. You should hold still, drink tea and soup and get better. Furi's here to watch over you now. There's no way that anyone, especially not that flaming bastard is ever going to hurt our sweet boy again!"
"F-furi? And did you call me…Sho?" Shoto mumbled, trying to make sense of the rush of new information.
Furi gave him a sorrowful look.
"Oh, he beat the living shit out of you this time, didn't he, Sho-chan? Well, don't you worry at all, kitten. He's not going to find you here. You can rest assured that…"
"Who?" Shoto demanded, "Who beat me up? Who almost just killed me?"
"Don't get so riled," Furi warned him, laying a firm hand on his forearm, "It's not good so soon after being healed."
"Please," Shoto said desperately, his chest heaving and his mismatched eyes rounding, "I'm not…I'm not remembering anything! I don't know who beat me up, or who you are, where we are or who I am! I can't remember!"
He stiffened for a moment as Furi's arms curled around him, pulling him in close.
"Poor thing. I'm so sorry!" Furi purred in his ear, narrowing their eyes into slits to activate their quirk, "I know this is hard for you. It's hard for me too. I'm not surprised that you don't remember anything. After all, he beat you to within an inch of your life this time."
Shoto's breath caught and his body became rigid as a flash of what seemed like memory ripped through his stunned mind.
"You may have convinced everyone else to believe your lies, you bastard," he yelled at a huge, hulking fire enshrouded monster, "but I was there! I saw what you did to Mom. You murdered her in cold blood, then you poured hot water on my face and told everyone that she did it, so that you wouldn't have to take the blame. You covered up her death and said you'd put her in a hospital, but I went there! I know that the woman in the hospital isn't my mother! It's all a bunch of lies you made up to hide the truth!"
"Sho…"
"No! You're not lying to me anymore. I know what a damned villain you are! I know and I'm going to make sure everyone else knows too! You aren't getting away with this!"
"Sho-chan!" Furi snapped, halting the use of their quirk and watching the youth reel in sheer terror at the vision they'd provided.
"I…I saw it," Shoto managed weakly, his eyes filling with tears, "I saw him kill her."
"Yes, yes honey. I know. Furi knows what you saw. Trust me, I won't let that animal near you again. I promised your mom I would watch over you if she ever couldn't, and that's just what I'm going to do. You just put your faith in me, little Sho-chan. I'll help you, I promise…and the day will come that you will be strong enough to finally face him."
Furi turned their head to hide the predatory look of deep approval at the heavy shudder that traveled through the young hero's body.
"He was covered in fire."
"Yes, he has a fire quirk and your mom had an ice quirk. He forced the poor girl into marriage and terrorized her into providing him children until he got you. Then, he pushed you and pushed you, beating you to get control of you and hurting Rei when she would try to protect you. When he overdid things and killed her in front of you, he hired a villain to steal the memory of it and then hired the woman to take your mother's place in the hospital. He has built everything around him on a foundation of lies, Sho-chan, but…soon his tower of lies is going to come tumbling down. Soon, we will be strong enough to stop him for good."
Furi watched closely as the words took root and Shoto's eyes darkened with emotion.
"Who is he? Who is the bastard who messed up my family, killed my mother and hurt me?" Shoto asked in a low, enraged voice.
Furi's face erupted into a wicked, demonic smile unseen by the young hero who was clinging tightly to their shoulder, fire and ice leaking from his gripping fingers.
"The flame hero…Endeavor."