At eight years old, Touya Todoroki started receiving texts from an unknown number. Touya had been gifted a brand-new phone after he'd thrown a temper-tantrum about the birth of his baby brother, aka the replacement. His stupid father thought a mere bribe would pacify him. Ever since his father had stopped training him, Touya felt lonely and neglected. His mother was too busy with the baby to have time for him, and his siblings had grown tired of his complaining. But the texter paid attention to him. Touya was not old enough to question how this stranger had gotten his number. The stranger told him wonderful things about how Touya had the best quirk ever and Touya deserved to be Endeavor's successor, not his stupid perpetually crying little brother.

The stranger promised that Touya could have a fire resistance quirk to make him into the strongest hero ever, even stronger than his father or All Might. In exchange, Touya had to trade baby Shouto. Touya saw no downsides to this exchange.

Rei had been crying a lot lately. The housework had gotten neglected. One night, she forgot to make dinner. After a shouting match with Enji, Rei retired to her bed. Enji stomped out. This was the moment Touya had been waiting for.

Touya crept into the nursery and picked up the sleeping baby. Shouto mumbled and stirred. "Shut up," Touya hissed. Then he froze in place, terrified that any second a piercing cry would rouse the house. But Shouto did not wake up.

The stranger had sent Touya a map in response to his text arranging the swap. Looking at his phone and holding the baby against his shoulder, Touya walked two blocks down the street.

A man wearing a fedora sat on the bench, reading a comic book. As he lowered the book, ruby red eyes fixed Touya as if pinning a butterfly to a board. "You must be the oldest Todoroki boy."

Touya held out the baby. "Take him. I don't even care if you give me a quirk. Get him out of here before he replaces me." Touya's head swirled with fear. If Shouto remained, then he would take everything: Touya's reason for existing and his father's love. Then Touya might as well be dead.

"But I made you a deal, and I always keep my bargains." The stranger placed a hand on Touya's head. A tingle made Touya's whole body go slack.

A telekinetic power caught baby Shouto as he fell. The infant drifted into the stranger's arms. Startled, Shouto began to cry. Holding the baby, the stranger stepped into a dark portal of shadows and vanished.

Touya gaped. He'd wanted his little brother gone, but he'd never seriously believed it would happen. It had been like asking for a pony from Santa Claus. But somehow, his wish had come true.

Skipping with excitement, Touya headed home.

When Rei found the empty crib and started screaming, Touya was practicing in the family dojo. He pretended to have seen nothing when the police arrived.

From whispered conversations between his parents, Touya overheard bits and pieces. Apparently a villain named All for One had a wife who wanted to leave him. Enji had been involved in collecting the wife and her child, then getting them into a witness protection program. Now Enji believed his own son had been kidnapped in retaliation. Rei blamed herself for leaving Shouto alone. Enji also blamed himself for failing to protect his family and keep his work away from home. In their grief, they grew closer. Enji took more time off work to spend with his family.

Touya loved his new life. His father became even more devoted to training him into a strong hero who would take revenge. But the new Enji was kinder and couldn't bear for Touya to get bruised or hurt during training. Touya soaked up his father's attention, now back where it belonged. He loved using his quirk even more since fire couldn't hurt his body. As he'd expected, life was much better without Shouto.

Looking back as an adult, Touya could not remember precisely when he'd realized the magnitude of the crime he'd committed. At age eight, he'd known it had to be secret but he'd felt no particular remorse. On his ninth birthday, Touya had seen a movie about a child being kidnapped, and felt a flicker of unease at everyone's disgust and revulsion toward the kidnapper. When he was eleven, Touya overheard his father discussing a child kidnapping case with a coworker. One of the kidnapped children had died. For the first time, Touya wondered what had happened to his little brother.

In middle school, Rei put all of her children into counseling because she'd found it so useful for herself. She believed they all had unresolved grief for their youngest brother. Touya told his psychiatrist about his feelings of jealousy. He learned that jealousy toward a new sibling was normal and probably would have gone away with time. As Touya processed his complicated feelings about his early childhood and his father, he became calmer and less angry. The slow realization dawned on him that an innocent had suffered and might even be dead because of him.

At some point, Touya realized that he could never, ever tell his psychiatrist what he'd done to his baby brother. Everyone would think he was a monster. His entire family would hate him. He deserved to be hated, but he lacked the courage to face up to his just punishment. Also, he knew the truth would destroy his mother's fragile mental health. Instead, he could only try to make up for his actions in other ways.

Touya had always wanted to become a hero, but now he needed to become a hero so that he could find and save Shouto. He trained even longer hours until even his father suggested he should take more breaks. Touya gave himself the hero name Guiding Light, because he wanted to become the light that would bring Shouto home.

But there were no clues. All for One was dead by All Might's hands, but no one had found Shouto. Talking to other heroes, Touya learned that Shouto was presumed dead by everyone. Only Enji and Rei refused to give up hope, and this was widely regarded as a parent's foolishness.

Touya still looked. In his spare time, he traced every last rumor of All for One's presence no matter how unlikely. He searched orphanages and busted human trafficking rings. He sought out underage villains, fighting them with the gentlest touch, always looking for a way to rehabilitate them. He'd considered that All for One might have given his little brother a different quirk. But none of the teenage villains turned out to be Shouto.

The media loved Touya because he was always perfectly kind, polite, and said yes to any requests. Touya knew he had a problem when even Fuyumi said that he needed to stand up for himself more. In truth, Touya still was easy to anger, but he never, ever dared show that anger. He knew that his emotions had the power to turn him into a monster. Also, he was a bad person so if people took advantage of him then he deserved it.

Touya applied for a position as teacher's assistant at U.A. If he couldn't save his little brother, then he at least wanted to help other children. That way maybe he could feel a bit less monstrous. Touya became a teaching assistant to Shouta Aizawa, the homeroom teacher for Class 1-A.


Izuku had been floating on a cloud ever since he'd been accepted into U.A. To reward himself after his acceptance letter, he went to his favorite ice-cream stand and purchased the All Might Special Sundae: a four-scoop monstrosity with yellow taffy for hair and blueberries for eyes.

As Izuku sat on the park bench eating, a very handsome boy sat down next to him. The teenager looked about the same age as Izuku, with half-red, half-white hair. One eye was dark gray, the other turquoise. He wore jeans and a leather jacket. Gesturing at the ice cream, he asked, "Are you celebrating something?"

"Yes, actually." Izuku beamed. "I was just accepted into U.A."

So far, even total strangers had greeted Izuku's news with enthusiasm. The ice cream scooper had given him a 10 percent discount. But the boy sighed and shook his head. "Another victim for the child soldier program."

Uneasily, Izuku asked, "Why do you say that?"

"I'm sorry, I've been too forward. You're celebrating, and I've cast a pall over the mood." The boy smiled, a gentle expression. "I know you're happy about experiencing social acceptance for the first time in your life."

That…didn't sound much better. Izuku shifted, drops of ice cream falling off his spoon. True, he'd longed for heroism as a quirkless child, but the strange boy made that sound like a bad thing.

The boy said, "I know that all your life, you've been told that heroism is the only valuable profession. Every other job is seen as second-best if you fail to make it into a hero school."

There was a certain element of truth to that. Izuku remembered how every single student at Aldera Middle School had wanted to become a hero. He remembered All Might telling him that he could become a police officer as a very clear second best pick. Defensively, he pointed out, "You evidently don't want to become a hero."

"Society teaches you that everyone should want to become a hero from a young age. For people who are driven by a need to use their quirks, it's the only possible outlet. They funnel children into hero schools as early as high school. What if you change your mind later? You'll have no other profession."

"Now that isn't true," Izuku said, on more confident ground. "Many heroes have retired early and gone on to other successful careers. A lot also have second jobs, though that's more because the industry doesn't pay well except for those at the top. U.A. teaches more skills than heroics."

The boy continued as if not listening. "You're all children, but they send you to fight adult villains."

"That's definitely not true!" Izuku protested. "It would be very abnormal for a hero student to engage with a villain."

The boy locked eyes with Izuku. Blue burned in the center of one eye like the hottest part of a flame. The other eye was cold as ice. He asked, "Do you feel like you have to become a hero because your life only has value if you're helping other people? Sacrificing yourself for other people?"

Izuku suddenly felt very, very uncomfortable with this conversation. That last remark had struck close to home. He remembered being surrounded by children calling him a Useless Deku. The memory entrapped him a bit too long. Melted ice cream dripped down the bowl onto his hand. He wiped it away. With an uneasy laugh, he said, "I see you clearly have strong feelings on this topic. Shall we agree to disagree?"

The boy tilted his head, watching Izuku intensely. He said, "I see that you can't be saved by words. You chased the delusion of heroism so strongly, you accepted a quirk that destroys your body. I feel sorry for you. We'll meet again, Izuku Midoriya."

"How do you know my name?" Izuku demanded. Without answering, the boy stood up and walked away.

In addition to his general uneasiness, Izuku could not shake the feeling there had been something familiar about that boy. Had they met before? That would explain the name thing, of course. Maybe Izuku had forgotten an old classmate. But this excuse failed to erase the nagging nervousness in the back of his mind.

On a whim, Izuku googled "boy with red and white hair."

A result came up on his phone very quickly: a missing person poster for the infant Shouto Todoroki. The number two hero's kidnapped son had been a famous case across Japan. Though the attention had faded over the years, for a while, the internet had been full of speculation about what might have happened to him. People had written books on the subject, both fiction and nonfiction. Shouto Todoroki was Japan's equivalent of Princess Anastasia. Even after so long, people fantasized about the lost prince returning.

There must be other people in the world with half-red, half-white hair. Well, it wasn't particularly common as a natural hair color, but people dyed their hair. Some edgelords even deliberately looked like the missing boy. But as Izuku stared at his phone and the grey and blue eyes of the baby, he failed to completely shake the prickling down his spine. He decided that it couldn't hurt to make a police report.

The policeman who took Izuku's report was very bored and skeptical. Izuku left feeling foolish that he'd bothered.


U.S.J. had gone horribly wrong horribly fast. Touya and Aizawa had been teleported away and separated from Class 1-A. The area was littered with many villains. Touya ran, desperate to find his students. They had only just started learning! They couldn't possibly face the League of Villains already!

"Hi, big brother," a soft voice said.

Touya whirled around. A short villain pushed back his hoody to reveal half-red, half-white hair. He had a gentle smile on his lips.

"You're a fake," Touya said hoarsely. This must be an illusion or a shapeshifter. Perhaps one of the villains had a quirk that tapped into his greatest fears.

The boy held out both hands, fire dancing on one and ice on the other. Touya's knees went weak. He nearly fell to the ground. Only his will to save his students kept him standing. There were still other explanations, but in his bones Touya knew his little brother's quirk. As a child, he'd been so jealous and obsessed with that power.

Shouto had come here with the villains. Touya needed to subdue his little brother with as little force as possible and take him back for rehabilitation. Desperation pounded inside his skull and made him lightheaded.

Shouto said, "I've been following your hero career, big brother. You're one of the good heroes. You always try to help people. But it makes me sad that our father forced you into becoming a hero against your will."

"No, it's not like that," Touya said hoarsely. He took a step forward. Flames built up behind his back. "I became a hero to find you and save you, Shouto."

Shouto smiled, his eyes razor-sharp. "Even though you sold me to All for One?"

Touya's flames doused. His mind and body stopped working.

In that moment, Shouto leapt forward and grabbed his older brother's forehead. Ice encased Touya's body like a coffin. As his world went dark, he heard Shouto whisper, "It's okay, big brother. I forgive you. I'm here to save you. I'm here to save everyone."


Izuku crouched behind a tree. Monsters roamed U.S.J., undead creatures with multiple quirks. However, none of them had tried to harm the students. Instead, they seemed to be herding Class 1-A into a circle in the middle of U.S.J. Izuku had no intention of being herded. Instead, he'd hidden.

A voice rang out around the dome. "Students of U.A.! All your lives, your parents and teachers have pressured you to become heroes. Have you ever once considered another path?"

Oh, great, the villain liked to monologue. Did that voice sound familiar? Izuku's head shot up. A boy with red-and-white hair stood on a raised hill. Seeing the flames and ice dancing around the villain's body, Izuku felt very vindicated and annoyed at the policeman for ignoring him. This could only be the long-lost Shouto Todoroki. The block of ice next to him had a person encased inside: Touya Todoroki.

Izuku's fists clenched. He very much liked Class 1-A's assistant teacher. Touya had no patience for Katsuki's explosive temper and always shut him down when he attacked Izuku. Also, Touya had confided in Izuku that he'd used to have trouble controlling his quirk and offered to help him with the bone-breaking.

Shouto spread his arms wide. "I have a way to save all of you! My sensei can remove your quirks. Then you'll be able to live normal lives instead of becoming child soldiers."

Izuku wanted to scream, Aren't you clearly a child soldier? An adult sent you here to fight us! Is this projection? Yet Shouto sounded like he believed every word he said.

Shouto continued, "Society defines people by their quirks. The pursuit of the perfect quirk destroyed my family. Only without your quirks will you become free."

All Might burst into the dome of U.S.J. with a "Detroit Smash!" The number one hero reached for the captured Touya Todoroki.

Leaping aside and pulling the ice block with him, Shouto growled, "All Might!" For the first time, his calm face twisted into anger. "It's not enough for you to destroy my family? You're even going to stop me from saving my big brother?"

An abnormally large Nomu leapt on All Might from behind. Shouto shot forth a blazing combination of ice and fire.

Izuku saw his opportunity. He snuck forward, grabbing the block of ice containing his assistant teacher and retreating.

Shouto whirled around, a cry of rage on his lips. But as soon as he saw Izuku, his gaze softened. He said, "I'll be back later to save you, Izuku."

Then Shouto vanished into a portal of shadows.


OMAKE TIME!

Omake: Izuku's Line in the Sand

Izuku: I'm going to save you and redeem you, Shouto!

Shouto: All Might is trash who destroyed my family. Also, I'm going to steal the quirk that you obtained from him because it breaks your bones. You'll thank me later.

Izuku: Get your hands off my favorite piece of All Might merch before I destroy you.

#

Omake: Why Touya Takes Zero Crap from Katsuki

Katsuki: I have anger issues and an inferiority complex!

Touya: Ah, you remind me so much of my younger self.

Katsuki: Is that a good thing?

Touya: Nope! Either you can get therapy or I will beat your issues out of you before you cause irreparable harm to an innocent person like I did.

#

Omake: Like Big Brother, Like Little Brother

All for One: Shouto, let's dye your hair before U.S.J. so we can surprise Enji with your true identity at a critical moment.

Shouto: We could even get washable hair dye so that I can dump a bottle over my head while giving my big speech.

All for One: I like how you think, very dramatic.

Later:

All for One: I saw you on the news, what happened to your hair dye?

Shouto: Uh, so you know how ice sparks form in the air around me when I use my quirk? The ice then melts when I use fire. I should have gone with the water-resistant hair dye.

#Just kidding #All for One didn't brother to disguise Shouto because his quirk was too obvious #Shouto would have made a great brunette though

#

Omake: The Dabi Curse Spans Universes

Dabi: I'm going to kill my little brother.

Touya: I'm going to save my little brother.

Dabi: Didn't you fail in the first thirty seconds and get turned into an ice pop?

Touya: Didn't you fail to kill a baby Shouto? Remember the time you stepped on Hawks for five minutes while flooding him with blue fire and he only got a tiny scar?

Dabi: My god…we're both cursed…hey, do you think if we swapped lives for a day we could fulfil each other's goals?

#Dabi just wants to go live in the AU where he's Endeavor's favorite son #He'd never, ever come back

#

Omake: The Tale of Shouto's Leather Jacket

All for One: Why does every Todoroki on my side always end up dressing like a goth? At least Shouto doesn't rip up his clothing as badly as Dabi in canon. But I offered young Shouto many fine suits, yet he turned them all down.

Shouto: (Applying black eyeliner) It's the instinct inside all Todoroki children to rebel against our father figure. FYI, I'm getting my nose pierced before my big villain debut.

All for One: Young man, I have a vault and I'm not afraid to use it!


Author's Note: I firmly believe that Shouto would be a much better villain than Dabi. Let's face it, he could hardly be more incompetent…

All for One treated Shouto differently from Tomura. With Tomura, All for One wanted to turn him into an attack dog and trick All Might into hurting him without knowing his real identity. But All for One wanted to steal Enji's role as father since Enji took Izuku from him, so he treated Shouto more like a son.

Tomura/Tenko is a hero in this AU. He's good friends with Touya and very jealous that Touya got to be Eraserhead's teaching assistant. There may be some other role swaps among Class 1-A and the League of Villains as well. Hawks is definitely a villain. Ochaco would be the obvious pick to swap with Toga. Tensei might also be trying to save his little brother who got kidnapped by villains at a young age. I haven't decided about everyone else.

It is difficult to say how much Touya should be blamed for what he did at such a young age. At age eight Touya probably should have known better than to sell his little brother, but he was also not old enough to be left alone with the baby or have unsupervised phone use, so what happened was partly on his parents. Honestly, I can't judge little Touya. I too tried to trade away my little sister as a child.

Obtaining a new younger sibling is a huge adjustment. Before my sister was born, my parents hyped her up a lot, promising me that she would become my best friend. Then when the baby arrived, she was a red-faced ham that did nothing except cry and hog my parents' attention. I thought I had gotten a defective one. I felt cheated. My parents said it would take her a few years to play with me. That was double my lifespan!

By kindergarten, I had gotten tired of waiting. I asked my best friend if I could swap my little sister for her older brother. My friend tried to warn me that a bigger, stronger bully of an older sibling had serious downsides. But I would not be told what was good for me! I wanted one I could play with! I bribed my friend's older brother with a zebra cake to become my new sibling. But when we attempted to explain the swap to our parents, they laughed at us. I never did get my zebra cake back.

Now of course I wouldn't trade the little gremlin for anything. Later my sister grew old enough to play with me. In fact, she wanted to play too frequently so I was forced to vault her, but that's a story people who have read Custody Battle already know.