XII

Previous chapter edited. Clones omitted, as it was Twice's quirk, not Toya's.

Come April, Shoto was enrolled in school. It was the morning of his first day, and things weren't going too well. "I don't want to go, Auntie!" The lad proclaimed.

Natsuo tried his best to help. "You don't want to become that weird guy that goes to movies with his aunt, do you?"

Toya grinned at the remark, but didn't defend himself. "Toya's cool! He can use fire better than anyone else in the family." Shoto said firmly.

"Well, aside from you, he's the only one of us that can use fire," Fuyumi pointed out.

"Hey, what am I?" Teiko pretended to be offended.

"Adopted, apparently," Toya said with a smirk.

"Apparently," Teiko laughed. "Shoto, I'm not home schooling you full time. Go to school, make friends, and learn how to see from different perspectives. If you stick around me, I'll probably ruin you with my outrageous opinions."

"I like your opinions." Shoto couldn't see anything wrong with his newest idol.

"And that's precisely why you're going." Natsuo went to the door and lifted Shoto's backpack. "Come on, I'll walk with you."

Toya had not put his bag out, as he had no intention of attending high school. He'd put on an act for long enough and was finally going to put his foot down. If Teiko noticed, she had yet to comment.

Shoto dug in his feet and glared at Natsuo. "I'm not going!"

"If you don't go, you're going to fall behind your peers. You won't learn about math, science, history, or Japanese. You won't be able to get your license as a pro hero and all your training will amount to nothing." Teiko decided to give logic a shot.

Some part of it appealed to the boy. "Fine," the lad declared sharply. He walked with Natsuo and Fuyumi out the door, but made sure to make a fuss about it. He shoved his shoes on and stomped down the sidewalk.

Teiko listened to the stomp and was grateful for it. Toya frowned at her smile. "Why are you so happy?" He asked.

"He wanted to be at home. He finally has a place where he feels safe and secure," she explained.

Toya stood up and rinsed out his bowl. "I'm sure you know it's not the house that's changed." The grand structure was the same as always. Teiko said nothing, but Toya could practically feel her grinning behind him. "Let's go train." His family wouldn't be back for hours.

Teiko cocked her head. "I expected you to have some questions." She stood nonetheless.

"Yeah, will you help me train?" He was focused on his goal. The two of them walked to the training hall. As she'd promised, Teiko encased the door with earth so no one could open it without great difficulty.

When she was done, she turned and regarded the teen. They began to work on his fire control. "I'm probably going to bore you out of your mind, but we're going to work small, from the very basics, and change your entire habits. If we can fine tune your instincts, I'm confident you'll never hurt yourself with fire again."

For the next two weeks, they did just that. In order to check his instincts, Teiko took to randomly tossing sand at him to see how he'd react. Toya startled at first and reacted with too much power. By the fourth time, he responded with a more reasonable amount of power. By the tenth, his instincts gauged precisely the amount of force needed to counter the harmless grains. Every time before they started, she was sure to put a block over the door. Not only for Toya's secrecy, but to keep the ever snooping nanny, May, from getting a face full of fire.

Shoto put up less and less of a fuss on his attendance and went quietly enough to school. Once, Teiko looked out the door and saw the six year old call back for Natsuo and Fuyumi to hurry or else they'd be late. As for Toya, he never went to high school. He joked once that he'd enrolled in the Todoroki Dojo, which had earned a smirk from his teacher. Teiko didn't try to rush him or run Toya into a state of exhaustion. They worked at a slow, yet steady pace that was far more mentally challenging than physically. Weeks passed in the blink of an eye.

One day, the door seemed to grunt. Teiko slowed and turned. The children had been in school for two hours. Is one of them sick? A sudden explosion of fire splintered the measly barrier from existence. Enji glowered in the training hall, his face taut in a sneer. "What's this?" He glared at them both in equal measure. "Fuyumi told me you weren't going to school," his voice honed on Toya first, before they shifted to Teiko. "And you. You're supposed to be helping me, but here you are enabling him." Teiko's eyes quickly shifted to Toya's, but Enji continued. "If you think you're old enough to drop out of school, let me tell you how painfully wrong you are. You won't get anywhere in life, Toya. No agency will touch you and your dreams of becoming a hero will end. I pulled some strings, but I got a decent enough hero school lined up for you."

Toya glared at his father. "I'm not going. I don't want to be a hero."

"Don't be an idiot." He glared at his son, then at Teiko. "Let me guess, you've ruined him with your idiotic speeches about how a true hero wouldn't be paid. Let me enlighten you as to how you live. If you don't like a hero's wages, then why are you under my roof?"

"Because you're not a hero. You're an overpaid psychopath." Toya was surprised to find the words had stemmed from his lips.

Enji expected as much from his sister, but not his son. A vein bulged at his temple and he thundered down on his eldest child. "If you think you're old enough to talk to me that way, then you're old enough for me to fight you with no restraint." He drew his arm back and prepared to beat the resilience right out of Toya.

They were too close together. Any blow Teiko made would have hit them both. Toya acted in his own self-defense. He spurted fire from every pore. Years of rage and self-confidence in his abilities collided with his newfound indifference for his blood ties. Like a spark on gasoline, he exploded physically at the same moment he mentally snapped. Blue flames shrouded both figures and Teiko lost sight of her nephew and brother. The heat was enough that the roof of the house collapsed overhead. There was no smoke, but the flames billowed upwards to treat the hole as a chimney. Teiko set about encasing the walls with stone, as to limit the structural damage.

Enji stepped back from the inferno and waited for his child to burn out, but Toya wouldn't allow him the chance. The teen threw ball after ball of fire at his old man. Each one boasted enough strength that it created divots and singe marks in the walls of solid rock. If not for the impromptu-skylight, the heat would have been unbearable. "Get out!" Teiko shouted at Enji. She erected a cover of earth as a screen to keep her safe. Her brother looked as if he wanted to yell in return. "Your son's going to flame out!" She had to scream over the roar and constant whoosh of air. "Get out, now!"

He didn't listen. Teiko had hoped he would, but wasn't surprised when he didn't. Enji looked away and began to charge towards Toya. His stubbornness is going to kill us all. She created a rock the size of a softball and projected it with just enough force to hit Enji on the head and knock him unconscious. The burly fellow dropped with a satisfying thud.

Toya seemed to see that the end had arrived. He slowed his attack, until the blue flames gradually receded. The boy stood in the center of the training hall. His chest heaved with each breath. For a moment, Teiko marveled that his clothes had survived. It was with a sickening, sinking feeling that she recognized that no…they hadn't.

At first glance, it appeared as if over half of Toya's skin had been stripped from the muscle. Cauterized cells collected in patches along his form to create a horrifying patchwork over his slender figure. Teiko prided herself on being unshakable, but seeing her nephew in such a state was utterly terrifying. His turquoise eyes stared down at his unconscious father. His breaths came in long, audible pants. "Auntie," he whispered, his tongue seemingly unaffected by the heat. She didn't know how he could utter a word with his face split horizontally. For just a moment, he looked unburdened in spite of the disaster. Somehow his body failed to recognize the pain. "Let's kill him. That's one false hero down." When she didn't immediately respond, he beamed at her. Blood oozed from the aggravated tissue. "Come on, Auntie. Just use another rock. This time down his throat to choke him… We could end it!" Did his tears seep from joy, pain, or fear? "If you kill him, you don't have to stick around anymore. Fuyumi could take care of everyone. Shoto loves school, he won't miss you." Crimson leeched across his broken form. He lifted his foot to take a step forward. Brown and red smeared on the floor behind him. "Shoto doesn't need you, but the world does. Let's get rid of the false heroes like him." He pointed at Enji sharply, but kept his face on Teiko.

She felt color drain from her face. The gore was well beyond anything she could handle. She knew that all she'd have to do was wait for him to pause. Soon enough, he'd pass out.

"Auntie?" He became panicked at her lack of reply. "Why won't you answer? Just kill him!" Toya's vision blurred. He tried to move, but felt his balance abandon him. He swayed and fell to the ground.