I had the thought that Dabi would make a really scary ghost. And then I decided to write a fic in which Stain is taken out of the picture (Ingenium arresting him during the Sports Festival) and Todoroki and Iida switch places regarding their internships.
...It was supposed to be a oneshot, but I was too busy working on my other fic to finish this one. So I'll go ahead and post part of it now, and then finish it later.
The first day at school after the Sports Festival was dreary.
Though the rain had stopped after class started, the gray clouds still loomed low in the sky outside.
Most of Shouto's class lingered in the classroom during lunch break.
They only had two days to decide on their internships.
When Shouto had first glanced at the paper Mr. Aizawa had handed him, he'd noticed his father's agency among the other offers. If he were to start using his fire side, his father could teach him control. However, that would mean setting aside his past and forgetting the anger he still felt toward his father. He wasn't sure he could do that yet.
"What about you, Iida?" Uraraka asked, loud enough for Shouto to hear from across the room.
Uraraka, Iida, and a few others were gathered around Midoriya's desk talking about their choices.
"I'll intern with the Team Idaten agency," Iida announced proudly.
"Oh! That's your brother's agency," Midoriya said.
"Yes! Who better to learn from than my elder brother?"
"It's awesome you have family to learn form," Uraraka said.
As the conversation died down, Jiro stood from her desk and turned to the group. "Hey, guys," she said, smirking as she held up her phone, "Check this out."
Uraraka asked, "What is it, Jiro?"
"Someone got a video of the Apparition."
"Aspiration?" Mineta said in derision. "Why would we want to see a video of someone breathing?"
"Not 'Aspiration', 'Apparition'," Jiro said. "The killer ghost that's been haunting Mustafar since last Halloween."
Shouto was curious despite himself.
Kirishima wandered over to the group. "That's just a rumor. Besides, Halloween was almost half a year ago—isn't that story getting old?"
"It's not a story," Midoriya said quietly from his desk. Shouto could barely hear him. Midoriya almost appeared to be shivering as he spoke. "He doesn't have a high death count, but police have been investigating a few murders that correlate with Apparition sightings. It took a few months before any witnesses came forward. At first they thought they were just imagining things, since it was near Halloween. But then one night there was a body left behind, and people realized he was real."
Tokoyami joined the rest of the class around Jiro, muttering, "A disgrace to the creatures of darkness."
Since everyone else had joined the group, Shouto got up from his desk and walked over to them as well.
Jiro held her phone high so everyone could see, with the volume turned up.
The video was low quality and shaky. It had obviously been filmed from a distance, and on a phone. Most of the sound was the phone owner's heavy breathing. Ironically, Mineta's earlier comment about aspiration seemed to fit.
Almost the only thing visible was two overexposed bluish-white spots of light.
The person behind the phone cursed and said, "It's him!" Then said, "Are you seeing this?!"
The shaking became more pronounced, the two glowing lights bouncing around the screen as they grew larger.
The video's contrast adjusted enough to see a slowly approaching figure. It did, indeed, seem to be wearing a long white burial kimono and holding a blue-white flame in each hand.
As the figure came even closer, the video jerked violently, and the breathing became harsher.
The classroom lights flickered and a loud crash shook the floor. Everyone jumped, and Mineta screamed.
Shouto realized it was the storm outside. Rain started pelting the large windows just outside the classroom.
On the phone screen, there were brief close-ups of matted dark hair, purple-splotched skin, and a white kimono with pinkish stains.
The figure passed by and the video calmed down again, following the back of the figure as he turned a corner and disappeared. Then there was a faint scream in the distance.
That was the end of the video.
"Oooh, that's so spooky, Jiro!" Hagakure said, her shirt sleeves held up near her neck, as though she were trying to cover her eyes.
"Isn't it?" Jiro asked with a calm smirk and set her phone down on her desk. "They say he's a vengeful ghost who wants people to suffer like he had—by burning alive."
"He's so cool!" Ashido cheered.
"Ashido, Jiro," Uraraka gasped, jerking her head back and forth between the two, "he's a murderer!"
"Uraraka is right," Iida said, adjusting his glasses. "The misdeeds of a killer should not be viewed as entertainment."
"Burned alive? So those dark areas on his skin were burns?" Kaminari asked. "It has to be makeup, right?"
"He's not really a ghost, is he?" Ojiro asked.
Midoriya said, "It's theorized he has a ghost-type quirk, or else some kind of projection or illusion quirk. Although, I believe his quirk is actually those flames he has in his hands—a fire quirk," he said. "It would explain the burned bodies. Blue flames even hotter than Endeavor's."
"Hotter than Endeavor's? That's wickedly hot!"
The details were sounding unsettlingly familiar. Someone who had died, and had probably once lived in the Mustafar area. Who had burned, and had a fire quirk stronger than Endeavor's.
Tuning out the others as they continued to talk, Shouto frowned and leaned over Jiro's phone, trying to make out the features of the ghost-like figure in the video's preview image. It was a snapshot from near the middle of the video, when the figure was very close to the person filming. It was a slightly blurred image of the shoulders up—showing matted dark hair, purple-splotched pale skin, what resembled a much-too-wide smile, and two eyes that reflected the off-screen blue flames like a cat's.
Shouto followed Backdraft down the street, all the while fingering the weapon hidden in his pocket.
Backdraft, the rescue specialist located in Mustafar, Japan, had been his first choice on the internship form.
He wasn't listening to what Backdraft was saying, however—his mind far in the past.
His brother...
Touya.
One of the siblings Shouto had barely seen growing up, even though they had both been trained by their father. Despite how young Shouto had been, he still carried blurred memories of the sickly boy with burns and bandages, and too-tired blue eyes. The eldest son who possessed fire stronger than Endeavor's own, but without any natural safeguards to keep himself from burning to death.
Shouto's training had involved throwing up and bad bruises and dread. Touya's had been worse. His father had ruined their family, driving his wife to the point of hysteria and locking her away, separating his youngest son from the other children and training him since the age of five, neglecting and alienating his two middle children, and training his eldest son to the brink of death. All in the name of overtaking All Might as the number one hero.
That was why Shouto hated his father.
Shouto's brother Natsuo believed Touya's death had been their father's fault, and Shouto had no reason to disagree.
If anyone were to be driven by vengeance to torment and kill with fire, to punish the city that did nothing to help him, it would be Touya.
Being a member of the Todoroki family, it was Shouto's responsibility to put a stop to him. It was personal.