Their Hero Academia

by Zylly

Twenty-five years after Izuki Midoriya and the rest of Class 1-A first set foot in the halls of U.A., their children begin their own hero academia. What adventures and challenges await the newest generation of future heroes? Can they possibly live up to the standard their parents set? Will they put Aizawa into an early grave? Or will this be the most Plus Ultra class of them all?

79. Chapter 71: Past Endeavors

Their Hero Academia – Chapter 71: Past Endeavors

"So this is public transportation," Izumi said. "Interesting." She had been on the U.A. buses before, but this was quite different. Certainly, there was a more interesting variety of people riding the subway, including one homeless man who seemed deep in conversation with what appeared to be thin air.

"It's just a subway train," Chihiro told her. Her Cords were retracted in the confined space of the car, but animated. She'd warned early on that a crowded car at this time of day could come with its share of "perverts."

"Not a very good one," Mineta said, pouting a bit. "No one's tried to grope me or take an upskirt photo! Aren't I good enough for these sleezebags? It's enough to give a girl a complex!"

Chihiro buried her face in her hands. "Why are you like this?"

"There's several theories."

Izumi was grateful for the company. Though she was determined to see this through, she had worried she would back out if she did it on her own. And she was well aware that she was what Chihiro called a "sheltered rich girl," making the journey more complicated. This was her first time riding the subway, after all. Chihiro had insisted on accompanying her and Mineta had insisted on coming along as well.

Perhaps she should have asked Katsumi. But her dear friend was also quite volatile. The likelihood of violence breaking out when she met her grandfather was not insignificant.

She did feel a bit guilty though. Izumi had asked their driver to take her into the city, with instructions that she would call for pick-up in a few hours, under the pretense of meeting her friends. None of which was a lie. She had met up with Chihiro and Mineta. What she had been untruthful about was that they had then taken the subway, which was not a question that had been asked, so it was not a lie. Their destination was not far, only a pair of stops past the station they had boarded at, but she desperately needed to keep her actions hidden from her parents.

She was also slightly in disguise, wearing clothes that Chihiro had brought her. They were casual things, jeans and a t-shirt with the name of some band on it. Her hair was mostly stuffed up under a lime-green hat with cat ears. As the daughter of two prominent Heroes and part of two extremely well-known families, she has spent a considerable portion of her life in the limelight, even if only at the edges of it. The story of her illness had leaked as a child and made numerous headlines as well, even if the details were sparse. To say nothing of how much of Japan had seen her during the Sports Festival. Despite coming in second, Mineta was drawing less attention, perhaps because she seemed to desperate for it; offense as a defense, as it were.

Izumi was going to see her grandfather, Enji Todoroki, also known as Endeavor, and he had been the Number One Hero once upon a time. Even as the Heroes of her parents' generation had been ascending, he had continued to hold a place in the Top Ten. But mysteriously, about eleven years ago, shortly after she had recovered from her illness, he had publicly confessed to the numerous mistakes he had made and the abusive behavior he had engaged in with his children, then retired from his Hero career and from public life. She could not remember the last time she had seen him.

But with a little bit of ethically dubious help from Mineta (She had been able to guess her father's password for Hero-Net resources, which had gotten them a location), she now knew where he was. And she had so many questions for him. Questions she could not ask her parents, for she did not believe she could trust them to be honest about this. She loved them dearly and knew that they loved her, but if what she suspected was true, then they were absolutely keeping secrets from her. It cast the specter of doubt over anything she might learn.

Because her grandfather's retirement coincided with the capture of a Villain called Plague, a Villain with the ability to unleash devastating diseases. A Villain who had escaped from custody not that long ago. Plague, who had, by all accounts, previously turned himself in voluntarily…

There were too many coincidences and things happening at the same time. She was certain she had been one of Plague's victims, though whether that had been intentional or not, she could not say. But her illness tracked to the exact time of his rampage across Japan and matched the symptoms exactly. Her grandfather was the best chance she had for getting real answers.

Of course, the real question was… answers to what? Was it enough to know whether she was a deliberate victim or simply an unfortunate bystander? Did she want to know what part her grandfather had played in it all? Did she want to know if the escaped Plague was still a threat to her and her family?

She wasn't sure. Izumi only knew that there was too much about the circumstances of her own life that she did not know. The events of her past still cast a shadow over her future. Her illness had exasperated her already somewhat frail constitution, making it the reason she still struggled with stamina and endurance. She was proud of her accomplishments and all she had overcome. But if she did not have those limitations…

Chihiro gave her a slight nudge. "Hey, we're here. It's our stop."

The house before them was a simple, small, one story affair, in a nice neighborhood. It and its lawn and garden were well kept. It was a far cry from the spacious and sprawling house her father, uncles, and aunt had grown up in. Aunt Fuyumi and Uncle Tensei lived there now, the house having been left to her when her grandfather had retired from public life and Hero work. And it was smaller by far than the estate her immediate family lived in, a truly large mansion with expansive grounds and even guest houses. When she was younger, some of her friends had joked that it must have had its own postal code. Or, as Chihiro had said, "its own phone number."

To think that her grandfather had been so close all this time and she had never known it, only a few subway stops away from U.A.

"Well," Chihiro said, "here we are."

"Right where anybody could walk up," Mika said. "Kind of expected a big fence or something, based on all the stories."

Izumi's heart thudded in her chest. "This may have been a bad idea," she said. "Perhaps I should have called first. Maybe we should come back another time. We do not even know if he is home." She took a slight step backwards.

"Hey." Chihiro put a hand on her shoulder. "Look at me." Izumi turned her head to look at her friend. "You want to go, we'll go. Strategic retreat, no shame. But you already came all this way. Might as well give it a shot."

The path to the door was made of carefully carved stones. As with everything about the house and garden, it suggested the occupant had taken great care to make everything just so. That matched with what little she knew of her grandfather, a demanding man who sought perfection in all things.

As they stood in front of the door, Izumi looked to her left and right. Both of her friends gave her a small nod. Carefully, she raised a hand and knocked on the door, once, twice, three times. It was a solid, heavy door, and the knock sounded out loud and clear.

"He must not be home," she said after a moment. "We should go."

"Hold your horses," Chihiro said.

"Hey! Buy me dinner first!"

"Not what I meant, Mika."

Suddenly, Izumi could hear the sound of heavy footsteps near the door. After a moment longer, the door opened and her grandfather stepped into view. Enji Todoroki was a large man, taller and broader than her father. His former red hair had gone grey with age. He still had a deep scar over his left eye and she could see burn scars on his face, hands, and peeking out from the collar of his shirt and going up his neck.

"What do you want?" he began, his eyes narrow and harsh. She suspected he received very few visitors.

"I," she began, then faltered. She had been so determined when she had made these plans, but now she found all her confidence failing her. Where was her determination to prove herself? Where was the strength she had found to challenge Katsumi and her classmates at the Sports Festival? Why could she not form the words?

"Out with it!" he growled, so harshly that this time, all three of them took a step back.

"Hey!" Mineta snapped. "You can't talk to us like that!"

"I'll do what I like with unwelcome and uninvited girls on my own property," her grandfather growled.

"Please," Izumi said softly. She reached up and pulled off the hat, letting her dual colored hair cascade behind her. "Grandfather. I just wish to talk. There are things I must know."

His eyes widened as recognition dawned. "Izumi…!"

It had taken considerable convincing to get Chihiro and Mineta to leave. Both girls had insisted on staying with her, but while her grandfather was willing to speak to her, he had been unwilling to entertain her friends. This was understandable. There had been a weight in her request to talk, one that betrayed the important and deeply personal nature of the conversation. But ultimately, she had convinced them to return to the small shopping district they had passed on their way to her grandfather's house. She would let them know when she was ready to rejoin them.

The interior of Grandfather's house reminded her very much of the traditional Todoroki home, Japanese-styled with tatami mats. There was more furniture than she would have expected of a man who lived alone, but she also recalled that Aunt Fuyumi had a closer relationship with him than her own family did. It was something both she and her father made a concentrated effort not to speak of, lest their own relationship become damaged. She realized somewhat belatedly that she could have gotten her grandfather's whereabouts directly from her aunt, but that would have been uncomfortable and awkward for all involved… and might not have yielded the results she wanted. Aunt Fuyumi might well have respected her father's wishes that she not see her grandfather.

She sat on the small couch, sipping tea that Grandfather had provided. He sat opposite her with tea of his own, in an armchair. "Thank you," she began, "for visiting me in the hospital. And for the rabbit."

His eyes softened slightly as he set his teacup on a side table. "You're welcome," he said. "I knew you were out there when those Nomu attacked. I was worried that…" He trailed off, not finishing that thought.

"I pushed myself, but I endured," Izumi said, with some degree of pride. "Chargebolt and Grape Juice did the fighting. I merely acted as containment." Her thoughts raced back to that morning. She had been so certain that all she'd done was seal Uncle Denki and Mister Mineta into an icy tomb. But they had held the line until Uncle Izuku had arrived to the rescue.

"You should be proud," Grandfather said. "I watched your performance at the Sports Festival. You're stronger than I ever could have dreamed you would be. Especially after…"

He seemed to realize how his words sounded, as though he disbelieved how someone with her weaknesses could succeed. "I'm sorry," he went on. "That sounded harsher than I meant it. I'm truly, truly proud and pleased by your successes."

"Thank you," she said. "But it is the "after" and what caused it that brought me here today." Izumi sat down her teacup and folded her hands in front of her, drawing herself up to her full seated height.

"I need to know about Plague. About what he did, what he did to me. About what caused you to retire and bear your sins publicly. And why these rifts between you and Father now exist."

Grandfather frowned. "I suppose I should have expected this sooner or later." He looked down, as though deciding whether or not to tell her anything or perhaps whether or not to simply throw her out. "But you deserve the truth, to know the whole truth of yourself. It is a long tale and not a particularly pleasant one."

She simply nodded. "I'm listening."

"You've heard of the Hatamoto Program?" Grandfather asked.

"The program by which the government recruited talented and powerfully children with useful or powerful Quirks," Izumi said, "training them outside the traditional Hero Schools so that they could then exercise more direct control over them than the average Hero."

They had learned about it in their Hero History class. Hawks, now the Deputy Commissioner of the Hero Public Safety Committee, was the most well-known graduate of the program, though there were others. The majority of them were retired, with only the most recent graduates still active. The original League of Villains had leaked the details of the program to the public during her parents third year of U.A., in an attempt to discredit the country's Heroes. How much that had succeeded was a matter of debate, but it had succeeded in getting the program shut down.

Grandfather nodded. "There were other programs as well. One of these was run by an organization known as the Iga Group. They were not strictly a governmental organization, in order to provide a layer of plausible deniability should it or its agents be exposed, but for all intents and purposes, they were just another arm of enforcement. Their mission was to capture and contain anyone whose Quirk was deemed too dangerous to the general population to be allowed to remain free."

It should not have surprised Izumi as much as it did. Quirks which were dangerous to others were something society struggled with to this day. She knew there were many people who received special support equipment or other accommodations from the government because of their Quirks and the problems they created. There had been a boy in her elementary school who had to go for weekly appointments where he was able to safely discharge the radioactivity he could generate.

And the limited information she had been able to look up about Plague had included accusations of the same thing. It had never been proven one way or the other, but after Uncle Izuki had talked the man into turning himself in, a great number of people thought missing had suddenly re-entered society. It seemed there was more truth to it than she expected. It was a sobering thought. Even if it wasn't done anymore, to think that people could have been stripped of their freedoms just because of their Quirks…!

"Though they had their own agents," Grandfather continued, "they also employed some Heroes, to help with what they deemed particularly dangerous acquisitions. Myself included."

At that, she let out a soft gasp. "How?" she demanded, the forcefulness she'd been lacking before returning suddenly. "How could you?"

There was a small flicker of flame across his face as her grandfather's eyes narrowed and his jaw set itself hard, his fists clenching. He took in a breath and the flames died down, the rest of his posture relaxing. "I thought it was the right thing to do," he said finally. "You must understand, this was a different time. I was barely twenty when they first asked for my help, newly minted as the Number Two Hero. Even with All Might having… made considerable in-roads in bringing justice, there was still a lot of danger and lawlessness. I thought that if someone could not control their Quirk, if it made them a danger, then they had to be stopped. As simple as that. I was good at bringing people in. They were usually committing acts of accidental Villainy anyway. It looked good on my record. It fueled both my goals and theirs."

He shook his head. "As has often been the case in my life, I let my ambitions get the better of me. I thought I was doing necessary work that All Might, with his smug, smiling face and "pure heart" wouldn't dare touch. I thought, "at least in this, I am better than he'll ever be.'"

Her grandfather's rivalry with All Might was well known. It was the very reason for the existence of her father, her Aunt Fuyumi, and Uncle Natsuo, which meant, in some way, she owed her own life to it. The two had allegedly been on better terms once, though she did not know if that persisted.

"And Plague was one of those people you captured for them?" she asked.

Her grandfather nodded. "He was. At the time, he was not yet a true Villain. He wasn't calling himself Plague yet. He was a child, about the same age as Shoto, with dreams of becoming a doctor or a scientist. His Quirk was registered as "Disease Generation." It caused him to store viruses in his body that he could release or alter. Until then, he hadn't been any trouble. But he lost control one day and unleashed something that wiped out his entire village before help could arrive. At the time, the choice to take him in seemed obvious. In hindsight… perhaps he deserved compassion. But I had been working with the Iga for a long time by then and did not question their judgement. So we captured him. In his panic, he fought back and infected several Iga agents, but my flames ultimately brought him down. And he was taken to the Iga's offshore prison."

He looked down again. "Not long after that, All Might was forced to retire after battling All for One and I became the new Number One Hero. With it came a certain degree of additional scrutiny that the program could not afford and they cut ties with me. I put them from my mind and focused instead on the challenges ahead of me."

Izumi nodded, unsure of how else to respond. How many innocents had her grandfather burned and subdued, whose only crimes were having a Quirk someone at the Iga had deemed dangerous? How could he so casually have put it behind him? Even in Plague's case, it sounded as though it had been an accident… Where did the scales of justice fall for such a thing?

"Time passed," Grandfather continued. "And I began to realize the harm I had done my family. Becoming the Number One caused me to reflect upon what I had done to them. Little by little, I did begin to reconnect with your father and Fuyumi. Natsuo never forgave me. And, of course, Toya had been hiding in plain sight the whole time, eventually turning on his League of Villain allies in order to protect his unborn child with that psychopath."

A cousin she had never met, just as she had never met her Uncle Toya. She had herd her father speak of her occasionally. All she knew was that her cousin was a criminal, the daughter of her Uncle Toya and the former League member known as Himiko Toga.

"Things were strained, I admit," Grandfather said. "But they were… slowly getting better. I was allowed to attend your father's wedding. I was even allowed to spend time with you as a child, though I am sure you were too young to remember."

She shook her head. "I don't. I'm sorry. Just flashes and fragments."

He looked defeated at that, but nodded and moved on. "To be expected. By the time you were four, I was already being surpassed in the rankings by Deku, Lemillion, Ground Zero, and even Shoto. And rather than being offended by it… I was proud. And then, Plague escaped from Iga custody, in the company of two others that had been captured, a man called Manticore whose Quirk made him into a monstrous and uncontrollable beast and another called Bloodstorm with a blood-bending Quirk called Hemokinesis. It's still never quite been determined how they did it."

He leaned forward in his chair, his tone becoming somehow even more serious. "But they held Japan in a state of terror for months. Many people were laid low and sickened by bio-terrorism, with Bloodstorm and Plague working in concert while Manticore provided the muscle. With it being well known that Shoto was my son and that he had a family, it was not hard for him to find the perfect way to strike at us, at me. He infected you."

That was it then. No more questions about it. She had been a target, not merely an unfortunate victim. And only then, a target to cause her grandfather pain and distract the Heroes like her father. The weakness that she still carried with her, all the times her body had failed her, it was all his fault. She could already feel her cheeks flushing with anger.

"It was your fault," she said flatly. The words simply spat out of her, a powerful accusation.

Her grandfather's eyes widened and he looked down, shame written all over his face. She could no more have hurt him than if she'd struck him with her Quirk. "It is," he said. "I've carried that with me every day since then."

She should have left then and there. But there was regret in her grandfather's voice. How dare he treat it as something he could simply feel sorry for? He carried it with him? What about what she carried with her? Izumi was angry. Angrier than she could ever recall being in her entire life. She stood.

"Do you know," Izumi demanded, "how I have suffered because of you?" She could feel the room growing colder around her and the heat inside her own body starting to rise. "How often I am left with barely the strength to even stand? How difficult it is to regulate the two aspects of my Quirk? How hard I have to fight for my place among my friends? How my parents treat me as some fragile China doll, confident in me one moment, afraid I might break upon the slightest breeze the next? Do you know?!"

Frost had collected around her feet, spreading out across the tatami mats, stopping less than a centimeter from her grandfather's chair, traveling around it and completely encircling him. She could feel the heat inside her, a glowing red center. She could hold it for now, but her anger seemed to stoke it, demanding its release. She had such a perfect target right in front of her.

He looked smaller now, so very defeated, his arms hanging limply at his sides. He did not look her in the eye. "You have every right to hate me," he said. "It was my fault. He targeted you because of me."

She was breathing hard now, her muscles clenched tightly. She wanted to scream, to lash out, to draw every last iota of heat from his body, to do something. If only he would yell back, show some anger of his own, react as anything other than a punching bag. She wanted Katsumi here. Her friend was so such less inhibited than she. Katsumi would have already torn the old man apart.

But Izumi… Izumi was not that person. She would fight with all her might, for her friends, for justice, for what was right. But she would not strike a man who would not fight back, no matter the wrong he had caused her.

All the same, she should have left. She had confirmed her suspicions. But there was so much more she needed to know. "I am not certain I hate you," she said after a long moment, sitting back down. A little bit of vapor came with her words and she had to focus a moment to cease leeching heat from the environment. "But I do not particularly like you in this moment. But I need to know the whole story. What happened next? How was I cured? Why did this cause you to retire?"

Her grandfather nodded. "You deserve all the answers," he said. "I'll do my best to tell you them.

"After you became ill, it already began to strain things between Shoto and myself. I had told him what I knew about Plague and the others and the part I had played with the Iga. He assumed, correctly, that you had been targeted because of me. Shoto and his friends doubled-down on their investigations, even as the cases grew and you grew sicker and sicker. Plague grew bolder, breaking into television broadcasts. His virus had not killed anyone yet, but he claimed he would escalate it if those responsible for stealing his life did not confess their crimes. Eventually, Lemillion was able to put together enough clues to find where the three of them were hiding out." He closed his eyes for a moment, at those reliving those memories. How much guilt did he feel? It couldn't possibly have been enough.

"Plague was ahead of us. He sent Bloodstorm and Manticore into the heart of Tokoyo. Shoto, Ground Zero, Lemillion, and Ingenium took them on. It left Deku and myself to battle Plague. Just as well. I suspect Shoto would not have trusted himself to fight alongside me. I suspect more of their friends would have joined in, but they feared what might happen elsewhere with that many Heroes mobilizing. The second League of Villains was already beginning to make noise, splitting their attention.

"Plague was hiding in his old village. It had been abandoned since then… but he had remade it, built himself a lab where he could unleash his virus on the winds of a coming storm. When Deku and I arrived, threw everything he had at us. A viral load that dropped me to my knees in a moment, puking my guts out. But Deku… that boy just put everything he had into resisting, sparking like a damn emerald firecracker. I tried to burn it out of my body, raising my temperature, but it was all I could do to keep conscious. He hit Deku with so much they say the soil where he stood is still loaded with viruses.

"All the while, Plague was screaming accusations. About how he'd been kidnapped by the Iga and myself, when he'd just been a kid. About how the Iga Group had experimented on him and tortured not just him, but everyone that had captured. I didn't want to believe it. Didn't want to believe I'd been a party to such horrors. Any illusions I'd had that I was doing the right thing… shattered."

There was sadness in his voice, even some measure of sympathy. Perhaps he really had thought he was doing the right thing. Her grandfather had once tried to undo the harm he'd done to his family. He was capable of guilt and remorse. Izumi was not always the best judge of people's emotions and behaviors, but she believed him here. For now, at least.

He shook his head. "And Deku… Deku told Plague he believed him. He even promised that he would look into it, that if it was true, he would smash the place open with his own hands. But only if Plague offered a cure for his virus that was ravaging the country. His sincerity must have reached him, because Plague agreed… on the condition that I confessed to my complicity as well. In that moment, I would have agreed to anything. Deku countered that by that point, it might be too late. But he promised again to investigate Plague's claims and personally assured his safety."

Grandfather sighed. "Plague was reluctant, untrusting even still. At that point, broken, the fragile relationship I'd built with Shoto shattered, I had nothing to lose, not even my pride. I begged him to at least save you, even offered up my own life. Deku talked him down to putting a stop to it all. Plague agreed and administered an antidote to me and gave Deku a formula."

Izumi had a faint memory of what had happened after that: Uncle Izuku rushing into her hospital room, giving her mother a formula of some kind. Her mother must have manufactured it, personally. After that, she'd begun to recover. But she had already been somewhat fragile, something she had inherited from her grandmother, Rei. Others who had been cured, she had discovered, had recovered fully, with few lasting effects. But she still walked in the shadow of that illness.

Her grandfather continued. "In the aftermath, we turned Manticore and Bloodstorm over to the authorities. As best as I recall, they got Anima in to talk to Manticore, to see if there was anything human left under that Quirk. Bloodstorm though, was nothing but a psychopath who went straight to Tartarus. Deku claimed custody over Plague, said he was needed to save lives. He was the Number One Hero by that point; they trusted him."

It must have been serious then, for Uncle Izuku to have believed him. But it was also no surprise that Uncle Izuku had been able to talk Plague down either. As the Symbol of Hope, he'd made it a point to do things different, to fight when he had to, but to use other methods whenever he could. It was one of many things that made him incredibly popular and incredibly valuable.

"We regrouped to take the fight to them. Lemillion and Ingenium had been injured, leaving only four of us. Iga's prison was located on an island off the east coast of Japan. And its head was a powerful man named Jinpachi Kitagawa, who had a geokinetic Quirk that let him control magma. He was a military man, who fit in well with the early days of Quirk laws. But the times were already starting to change, and his obsession with protection was turning more to madness in the face of it. When Deku, Shoto, Ground Zero, Plague, and I arrived… he must have known his time was over. He set his forces on us immediately and even joined in the battle himself."

Her grandfather touched the scars on his hands. "His lava was hotter and more powerful than my flames. I could not stand against him. But Shoto could. His ice, his mother's Quirk… It proved to be exactly what was needed that day. He saved my life, though I could tell he was tempted to simply let me die. Maybe he should have. But we won."

He shook his head again. "The inside of the prison was more horrible than I could have possibly imagined. People half-starved, attached to more wires and machines than I could have believed. This was nothing else than outright torture and experimentation. Kitagawa was… a very sick man, with some very horrifying ideas about how society should function and who should be at the top, making the decisions. But he had whispered enough in the ears of the right people and operated for long enough that I doubt the government was fully aware of the extent of what he was doing. They didn't want to know. They only wanted the problem Quirk users removed. Plausible deniability."

"That does not explain your retirement," Izumi reminded him. She was horrified by what she was hearing, but was failing to see the connections.

"I'm getting to that," he said. If her interruption bothered him, he didn't show it. "Things after were… not good. The government was able to keep the affair on the island hidden. Kitagawa was going to be thrown in the darkest depths of Tartarus. But Deku wanted everyone they had released, as quickly as possible. The government tried to argue, but he threatened to go public. They threatened to ruin him. He didn't care."

Her grandfather gave a small laugh. "Too much of All Might in that boy, related by blood or not. They caved. The government, including the HPSC, got everyone involved to keep it under wraps in exchange for acting expeditiously, while they quietly set about cataloging and releasing the people who had been kept there, along with disbanding the Iga and evaluating what to do with its employees. Some of them were loyal to Kitagawa personally, and would be imprisoned. Others… thought they were just doing a necessary job. And many of the most fanatical and loyal scattered before they could be caught, including several of their science staff. Deku wanted to go public, of course, but was ultimately convinced that such a revelation would shatter the fragile peace of society."

He let out a low growl. "But Kitagawa did not plan on going quietly. He would break whatever he could, tear down those who had stopped him. The only thing that could head it off was another scandal. I was injured, feeling my age. If anything had taught me that this was now a young man's game, it was this. And so I manufactured the scandal that would occupy the public and the media's attention. Confessed publically to the wrongs I had done my family and declared my retirement from Heroics and public life. Perhaps not quite what Plague wanted from me… but I suffered the scorn and fall from grace all the same. Plague surrendered himself to custody voluntarily, recognizing that he had crossed the same lines that had been crossed in his original capture. I understand that these days, universities and labs occasionally contacted him for his expertise."

Grandfather let out a long sigh. "It was just as well. After finding out exactly what I had been a part of and how it had nearly led to your death, your father wanted nothing more to do with me and wanted me to have nothing more to do with you. The least I could do was make sure you grew up in a world that did not give itself over the chaos of the bad old days. Like a good compromise, it left no one truly happy. It was one of the last times your father and I spoke."

He certainly made it sound like an act of self-sacrifice… but Izumi was not so sure she could forgive so easily. Not with everything it had cost her. Not with everything he had done, all the people he had hurt, by his actions and by his ignorance.

"He has escaped," she told him flatly. "I overheard it while doing my Internship."

That got a reaction out of him, his eyes going wide and his flames flaring for the briefest second again. They were weak and flickering. "Impossible," he said. "He would not…"

"I only know what I have heard," she said. "It seems only fair that you know. Information for information."

That was probably harsher than she should have been. But the emotions roiling inside her demanded an outlet. The blame for so much could be laid at his feet. She needed time to process it all. She needed to decide if she would confront her parents about this and the fact that they had kept it all a secret. She needed… she needed, very much not to be here.

Izumi stood again. "Thank you for your honesty, Grandfather." She turned towards the door.

"Wait…" he began, rising slowly out of his chair. "Izumi…"

"Yes?"

"Could I… would you… ever consider… visiting again?" Despite being a big man, he looked small, pitiful, and broken. He was reaching out to her, desperate for some kind of connection.

"I shall consider it," she said, truly not knowing the answer. She opened the door in time to see Mineta, head down, horns pointed, about to charge it.

"Mika!" Chihiro called out. "Stop!"

Mineta skidded to a stop, hooves clattering on the stones. "What? Aw, I wanted to break down the door!"

Izumi stepped outside, pointedly closing the door behind her. "Why were you going to break it down?"

"We've been texting for the last half hour!" Chihiro said. "You didn't answer!"

Izumi shook her head. "I turned my phone off. I wished to be uninterrupted."

Chihiro's Cords pointed accusingly. "Don't do that, okay?! We were worried!"

She nodded. "I shall try not to worry you in the future, thank you."

"Did you get any answers?" Mineta asked. "Do we need to administer an ass-kicking to a senior citizen?"

"I do not think that will be necessary, but thank you," Izumi told her. "But to answer your question… yes. And also no. But I know now what made me. I just have to figure out if it changes who I will become."

"Can we figure it out on the way back?" Mineta asked. "Because there was a really nice ice cream shop on the way with a couple really cute guys behind the counter…"