A/N: What the fuck, canon. What is Horikoshi even doing now? Ruining his characters, that's what. I'm sick to death of this bs about Endeavor redemption, the man is already an obnoxious enough egomaniac, do you have to excuse a child neglector who beat his wife and verbally and mentally abused his children? I despise what they did to Touya in canon, but turning him into an ice mummy is just so fucking insulting I have no words for how bs it is. And then we're pretending Endeavor cares about his kids by having him shield them? Ugh. At least Hawks is doing what a hero is supposed to do, though I have mixed feelings on him, at least he never abused children like Endeavor did. I've just been so frustrated with the author ever since he botched his whole concept of Touya, from making him hate his siblings to giving him magic ice powers he never had before, to involving All For One for no reason, and then just basically having him burn to death, because that's not insulting to his character at all. I'm so done with that crap. I'm not particularly a villain stan, I just think it's been done better in other media, and I think the author doesn't think through how he does things with his characters. T
Sorry for the rant and sorry for taking longer than I said I would. I'm just venting a bit. I would like some reviews that aren't just insulting my story like the last reviewer did. He's an SI, of course he's different from Touya, but at the same time, much is the same. He's just more sympathetic and more human than the caricature HK wrote and thought counted as a good villain. Of course; because when you destroy all his sympathetic qualities, make him a monster and make him at his abuser's mercy, that's great writing. Not. It's just a real low blow seeing how HK isn't even trying anymore, when was the last time he remembered the side cast?
Izuku may be leaning towards vigilante or villain here, but he's a hero still, just a more cynical one.
Here's hoping Dad for One is not made canon. Given how he handled/butchered Dabi, I'm not confident in his ability to write any particular twist anymore. And besides, I think all of us fans of Dabi were done dirty. And that's not fair at all. I've seen the love he's given in fanfics, and we all got screwed over hard. But at least there's fanfiction.
Chapter 4 Conflagration
Izuku Midoriya knew many things in this world.
First, All Might was a great hero, who helped everyone who was in need of help. The young boy idolized his heroic idol.
He could just appear and smile and everything would be made all right by his radiant smile, he would punish the bad guys with a single punch, and all would be made well.
No matter who had been hurt or who was crying, they would stop crying and smile, and understand, understand that he was a good person who meant well.
Everyone looked up to and admired All Might, everyone loved him. Everyone wanted to be just like him.
Even the ones who tormented Izuku and made his life an utter hell...although he preferred not to think about them.
Thinking about them made him utterly sad, and angry at the same time.
He didn't know how to describe it accurately, but the more those bullies and the more he insulted him, the worse Izuku felt about himself.
Although it was normal for most of the populace to have quirks, for some reason, he had been unfortunate enough to be cursed to not have a quirk.
Izuku wasn't even sure why he had wanted to have a quirk so badly, after seeing how it made everyone else act toward him, they always acted like they were better than he was because they had quirks.
It wasn't his fault he didn't have a quirk! It wasn't Mom's fault! It wasn't anyone's fault!
So...why?
Why didn't mom blame him for being quirkless? Why did she still love him so much?
No matter what he said to him, no matter how much his fists hurt when they hit him, Izuku would still carry on.
He was not going to give up on a way to be like All Might, no matter what.
Yet Katsuki wouldn't leave him alone. The boy didn't know how to deal with the nature of someone who had once acted kind to him suddenly changing into a hateful maniac.
It especially sickened him seeing how he sicced his own friends onto him like it meant nothing and then would laugh.
Nothing stung worse than the feeling of having people act nice to you, only to then stab you in the back with that horrible word: quirkless freak.
It was worse how his mother seemed to think they were best friends and seemed to keep wanting him to play with him, even though she'd seen how disinterested he was in pursuing a friendship with his bully.
He hardly ever spoke to him these days, hoping he would grow bored and move on.
Sometimes, this tactic worked, although other times, it didn't work and his bullying only grew worse.
None of the kids at school talked to him, except to belittle him or add in unnecessary remarks about how awful it was that his mother continued to raise and support a being like him.
Despite being in second grade, he had already adopted an overly cynical view on life, though it was hard to blame him.
He'd been alone most of his life, and anyone he had managed to befriend was always driven away by Katsuki.
God, he wanted to stay home from school most of the time, knowing he would be there always seemed to ruin his mood.
He'd even taken to leaving his notebook with his notes on heroes at home, knowing his bully would find it and undeniably use it to ruin his life some more.
"Izuku-kun, you haven't been with your friend in a while, are things going okay?" His mother asked.
He watched her blankly as she sat down on his bed.
"I don't like him."
"Did you two get into a fight of some kind?" She asked.
She wouldn't believe the truth.
"No, I just don't like him anymore."
This turned out to be the wrong thing to say.
"But why? Hasn't he been your friend since you were small?"
"He's kept me from having friends, mom." He confessed, wondering why he was even telling her these things. She'd just go over to their house and they'd tell her their warped version of reality, about how "good" their Katsuki was. She wouldn't believe him. No way. He'd even told him as much, that no one would ever believe him if he told the truth.
"I'll talk to his mother about his behavior." She said the words he dreaded to hear.
"He's always been like that." He muttered.
"I'm sure he'll apologize or come around, someday." She said, smiling at her son.
"I know, mom, I just wish I had a quirk."
She gave him a strained smile. "Well, even if you don't have a quirk, you're still my beloved son and I'm glad you exist. I'd be a lot sadder without you."
Those words both hurt and comforted him. "It...It doesn't matter to you?"
"Not really. You're still my son, Izuku. You always will be, and anyone who makes you upset will have me to deal with."
He felt marginally more cheerful than he had before, and let himself go to sleep, falsely believing as usual that things would go back to normal, when he knew better than anyone that they always could (and would) get worse.
"At least nothing bad happened."
Little did he know, far away, something bad had happened, and in the future, their paths would cross, but that is neither here nor there. The fated hero Izuku Midoriya would cross paths with the one who called himself Dabi in the future, and they would be sworn enemies. But that again is not for this time.
These yellow fruits, the ones that were sweet and juicy-what was the name for them again-peaches? He loved them. He lived and breathed for the tasty fruit when he got the money from his job, he'd go out and buy one and spend the rest of the evening slowly eating the fruit. He considered it one of the only benefits that came from such a menial job-being able to have money and being able to afford the money needed for the hair dye, the staples and the medicines he needed when he ripped one of those stitches open was a blessing.
Although he wasn't what you would call a religious person, he thanked whatever deity was out there for that opportunity.
After all, it was like a miracle that he had escaped the chains of that hospital.
Who knew what would have happened if he had stayed there? If he had become "Touya" again, returning to the "care" of Endeavor-and again, his head hurt with an intense fury that left him reeling.
What was it about that name that made his heart race faster? It was just a name, one that he didn't remember, but somehow it had been on the paper the nurse had given him. That had to be his real name, after all. He just didn't remember it for now because he had amnesia, that's why.
Yeah, that had to be it.
He casually bit into the peach more, savoring more of its delicious texture.
It was a nice distraction from those assholes-those jerks at work, although lately they weren't being too bad and were being nice.
He assumed they would pull something sooner or later, but when was a big question.
He found himself thinking back to the dream he'd had the night before this one.
That dream, about the woman and the car.
What had that been about?
Dabi repressed a shudder at the mental images coming to mind before continuing to eat a peach.
God, if only he drank alcohol, because then he could forget all of this amnesia bullshit and he could pretend to be someone normal, someone without this memory loss business. Someone without worries or difficulties.
"Wish I knew what that was." He said, before turning his attention to the television.
There was a car wreck on the movie on tv.
He found himself glued to the scene.
His eyes couldn't unsee the scene.
It was of a man, unconscious in the rubble of a wrecked car after colliding with a big rig truck.
But for some reason, he kept seeing a different scene entirely.
He's covered in blood. So much blood. His eye wouldn't open. He's unable to sit up properly.
"Morgan-" A name escaped his lips.
He's holding onto a hand. Someone's hand.
When he looked over, he saw a head, a neck, and what was a t-shirt covered in blood. When he looked up further, he saw her hair was caked with blood, her ear was missing, her face was caved in. When he looked closer, he saw that she was not moving.
He reached out to touch her-and then, with a squishy sound, something fell into his lap.
When he looked at it, he screamed in terror.
It was an eyeball. Her eyeball.
It was then that he comprehended that she was mutilated below her t-shirt, her arm severed and her face smushed in.
He still held her hand regardless.
'I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die.'
"Morgan? Morgan? Morgan?" He kept calling out, but no response.
Of course not, she's dead, fucking dead dead dead.
The semi killed her. Just like it's killing me.
He thought he heard people coming and then he passed out, still shouting her name.
'Don't take her from me.'
When he came to, he found he was on the couch and he had apparently grabbed a garbage can and started puking in it. There was a lot in there.
Damned repressed memories.
He guessed he had watched some horror movie where that had happened and made up some weird fantasy in his head.
Damned heroes.
Yeah, it was the heroes' fault he'd had a bad dream. Hardly, it was whatever had happened to him to make him this way.
"I already know who to blame." He muttered, glaring at the screen where a certain hero was speaking.
Whether he knew it or not, Endeavor was a contemptible figure for him. If not for him, he would have known who he was, and would have been living a normal life with his family. Because of him, everything was ruined, everything was destroyed.
He hated him, completely and utterly.
But alas, murder was still illegal, and crazy quirk that worked on its own against him or not, he couldn't do that and expect police to not arrest him.
As annoying as his enemies were, you couldn't wish hate on those you disliked.
Mentally, perhaps, but physically was another story.
His phone buzzed.
They wanted to talk to him about something.
He'd better go and see what it was before they bitched at him about the boss firing him.
Big deal, what was the worst that could happen? Nothing serious would obviously happen.
He threw on a hoodie and sunglasses and headed out into the night, toward the business he worked at.
On second thought, staying home would have been the smarter decision. But Dabi was not exactly known for living in the moment, so to speak.
Still, that didn't make this any easier.
If anything, it made it so much worse.
"Hey, freak. We know you have a quirk." One of the typical goons said, as if Dabi remembered his name or cared enough to.
"So?" Was all he could say in response, because wow, was this original. Just for that? Just because he'd hidden his quirk?
He'd show them, that's for sure.
"You make life hell for the rest of us. We have to clean up after your mess."
"You're a freak who barely talks like the rest of us do. Why can't you be normal?"
"I-I'm sorry..."
"Aw, look at that, he thinks he can speak like a human!" They shoved him, laughing and displaying their own quirks, as they ushered him into the back room.
"Fuck you." He spat.
That earned him a kick to the face.
He could feel a staple breaking.
"Did you get these wounds from trying to kill yourself? Gotta say, I wish you had finished the job properly, you freak."
The others laughed.
"Did you actually buy us pretending to be your friends? God, for your freaky face, you sure lack intelligence, retard." They laughed and beat him.
"Stop."
"Did you hear that? He asked us to stop." Their laughing echoed in his head.
"Like hell we're gonna stop. We're gonna get rid of a mistake that shouldn't exist."
"Say, freak. Did you know I like little girls? I like doing things to them." The camera man said, his face taking on a creepy red hue, "I'm not used to dealing with people who can fight back."
"And man, is it funny when he does that! It's so funny to record things, isn't it? Then it goes up on the net, forever and ever. Just like how we're gonna film your murder."
"What?" He stammered out, coughing from the blows and because he could feel his quirk raging inside him.
"That's right. We're gonna kill you. A villain like you is no good and worthless."
His anger lit to life then.
How dare they treat him like he didn't matter.
They started to pour gasoline around him.
"Let's finish the job, sparkplug."
They couldn't harm this body-his body, they couldn't.
He reacted, instinctively, his hand lit up in a blue flame.
The other hand ignited as well, and suddenly there was a loud whoosh.
The flames exploded in size and mass in a matter of minutes, as he got up and limped away from the flames.
The flames crept over to the gasoline can and consumed it in a heartbeat.
By the time they could scream, the fire was now a huge azure inferno that was rapidly consuming everything in its path.
The door was close enough that he could just reach out and touch it, but by the time he got there, the others were still holding him back.
"We're gonna get you, freak!" One of them screamed out, only to be reduced to ash as the flames burned away his essence.
The instigator had run away, out of a window into the night and into the alley beside it.
Well, that wasn't gonna last for long.
"Spare me, please. I'm sorry." The loser who had tried to light him on fire begged.
Something inside him snapped.
He looked at him, and started to open the door.
The other person hurled him against the door, opening it, unfortunately earning themselves a prize of something called backdraft.
Hot flames leapt onto his back and he let out a scream of terror as he rolled on the ground.
Dabi stared for a moment.
"I don't need your sympathy...villain."
They had tried to murder him.
They would get what they deserved, then.
"It was only...him...who did that stuff. The guy who ran away..." He muttered. "I swear, I didn't do anything to children."
Dabi lifted him up, fire rising off his hands. "Spare me the garbage. Become ash already. You participated and that was bad enough."
He struggled against Dabi's grasp, but Dabi hauled him outside and left him to succumb to his injuries.
As for the main perpetrator...
"Hahahaahahaaha, I'll never have to see him again! That little freak will die! This will be the best film ever!"
He gazed at his film, which should be issuing from his fingers as he speaks. That was his quirk, the ability to make films by recording what he sees with his eyes, when he says to do so.
The film was all warped and burnt.
"What the fuck?" He called out.
Everything was burned.
"My film...my beautiful film! This was going to be even more beautiful than the film about the dead cat, the stupid neighborhood kid crying when I slapped them, or...this was going to be an artistic masterpiece!"
He sank to his knees, bemoaning the loss.
"I swear, I'll take it out on that girl when I get home. She deserves it. Doesn't matter if she's under the age..."
"Found you." A quiet voice said from behind him.
Alarmed, Yamato got up and hid his hands behind his back.
"You like making films, huh?"
He nodded enthusiastically.
"You like girls? Young girls?" He muttered, looking scarier than usual due to his face being charred by smoke and his staples bleeding.
"Yeah, the younger, the better. You know what they say." He said, smiling widely.
"...Die."
He placed his smoldering hand close to his face.
"No! I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die!"
"Filth like you should be purged. Goodbye."
With a flash of fire, the man was already melting alive from the outside in.
The scream died down within a second.
Gazing at the body, he wiped some ash off of his clothing and began to write on the ground.
This way, they would know he had done it for a good cause.
He wasn't a villain. He was just cleaning up the filth.
Burning them away, slashing and burning them away, as it were.
That's a good thing, right?
Of course it had to be the right thing to do.
As he left, he rubbed a hand through his hair, noting in annoyance that the dye had come out and it was looking purplish again. Time to get a better hair dye.
It was a dry and hot night. One of those typical nights that existed in the summer, something the residents still hadn't learned how to tame. Heat and humidity still were a constant enemy that had to be battled.
It was around this time of year where air conditioners were placed in windows and used to keep apartments cool, when it happened.
It was so dry that under the right conditions, the city could potentially see a real firestorm emerge before their very eyes. Everyone had been instructed not to burn anything, not even trash.
Fireworks had been banned and police kept going around snatching it from those who held onto it. It was not an easy job having to deal with preventing fires. But when you work for the police force, that was more or less what you got.
Maybe that was why, on nights like this, when it was in the middle of a drought, when the ground was so dry cracks were in it, the grass turned yellow from lack of rain, in all of this, he thought of Touya. He wasn't sure why, he just did.
Then again, everything these days reminded him of Touya. But especially now that there were fire warnings, a part of him had a naive hope that maybe, just maybe, he would see a familiar face because of his fire quirk. Then things would be like they were before. Maybe he would come home again.
'Touya, are you out there tonight? Where are you?' Such were the thoughts that troubled the young hero in training as he did his nightly patrols. His mind couldn't help but wonder what Touya was doing. Part of him knew he was alive, somewhere.
And he would find him.
No matter what state he was in, he would find Touya and bring him home if it was the last thing he did. This much he swore to himself and to himself only. It wouldn't do for people like Endeavor or anyone else to learn of his plans, after all. He had had to set aside his machinations for the most part aside, and focus on his hero work. They had told him to essentially forget about his best friend and never think about him again, but he wouldn't do that.
If it had been Keigo who had gone missing, he knew Touya would have looked for him.
He knew Touya wouldn't have given up hope, wouldn't have shrugged his shoulders and said, oh yeah, he's done for, forget about him. H
He would have kept going until he had searched every inch of this country. Loath though Touya was to admit it, he was much more heroic than he thought he was, and brave and determined to protect his family and friends. Why else would he have joined UA, then? If he hadn't been so determined to be different from his father, he wouldn't have taken the hero course at all, would he?
Maybe he hadn't known much about Touya at all.
But what he did know about Touya was: he never gave up. He was in that coma, after all. And then the hospital experienced a mysterious fire that somehow, he magically died in. It made no sense to Keigo.
All he could think was that Touya had faked his own death and run away somewhere, because why would he go running back into the arms of Endeavor? He already knew how strained their relationship was, he had seen it himself.
Touya had never greeted his father with enthusiasm, he had hunched his shoulders and turned away from him every time. Touya always seemed happy to be at school, away from whatever hell was at home. If that alone didn't shatter his initial hero worship of the man, what else would? He'd have to be a fool to not notice how afraid Touya was of his father.
And no child should be afraid of their father. He would know, his own father wasn't a good person by any stretch of the word. And he, too, had abandoned him and his mother, so he empathized with Touya on that part. How was he faring out there?
Being all alone couldn't be easy. Touya must be on the streets, he had to be. With those injuries he had sustained, no child, let alone teen could survive out there for long, or hope to without problems arising.
Hence why he'd been making all of these routine visits or searches to different areas.
So far, he'd had no major breakthroughs on Touya, but he had gotten some evidence of the existence of someone with a fire quirk. It was nothing but mere rumors, though, so the veracity of them was unlikely.
After all, Touya had had a unique type of fire quirk, one very hot and capable of producing powerful flames, flames so powerful they even hurt him.
So, it wasn't just a quirk any idiot off the street could claim to have.
Naturally, if there was a fire around because of these conditions, heroes would be sent to deal with it.
He'd spotted some small embers burning on the outside of town, but of course heroes had dealt with those brushfires before they could endanger the city or the citizens. There had been more reports of house fires, though, mostly caused by electrical fires or malfunctions with air conditioning or gas stoves. Those were always a real doozy.
The firefighters usually dealt with that stuff, though, so usually he was mostly left to patrol and wonder about what went on there.
"You look really down in the dumps again." A female voice interrupted his musings.
He turned to see a figure on the rooftop of the building he was perched on.
"Usagiyama." He said, tersely.
"Awww, come on now! Aren't we friends? Call me Rumi!" She whined, pouting slightly.
"Is that so?" Hawks said, chuckling slightly, feeling some of the tension from earlier melting away.
"You're thinking about him again, aren't you?" She said tentatively.
"Hard not to." He replied back in annoyance.
He couldn't help but think about him, wonder if he was behind all of these fires, there had been small fires lately but nothing too intense.
What would Touya do if he was here? His quirk was far more suited to fire, after all, he would have been perfectly suited for managing these fires. He could at least have assisted in rescuing those innocent civilians who'd been involved in the fires, if nothing else. Even with his vulnerabilities, at least he would be doing far more than Hawks could ever do in these situations.
He was far too invested in these thoughts, before Miruko stopped him, grimacing.
"That smell is nasty. What the fuck is that?" She said, her nose crinkling.
"That smell?" He stopped as he smelled the same odor, and resisted the urge to puke.
It was the smell of a dead person.
Not an entirely uncommon occurrence, but usually the police dealt with this shit. On top of that, it was an especially putrid smell, the smell of rotting and charred flesh.
In that moment, he thought only of one person who could be responsible, and swallowed the vomit ready to come out, because he couldn't-he wouldn't-he just couldn't do something so inhuman.
"Heroes, we have a body here!"
Those words made his blood turn cold.
The smell of smoke and charred flesh hung in the air for a few blocks before he made it to the scene of the crime.
"You okay?" Miruko asked, noting how pale and ashen he'd been for the trip.
"I'm fine." He said, forcing those feelings down.
There was a giant black trail of ash and soot leading from the front of the alley all the way to the charred, burning building before their eyes that sent a giant plume of smoke up in the air. The smell of fire still hung in the area, indicating that a relatively recent fire had happened, recent enough for the air to take on a haze.
The sight before him was enough to turn his stomach one hundred degrees, because there was nothing quite like it he'd seen before.
The body of a man in his twenties lay before him, his limbs curled up in the fetal position, indicating that he'd been in extreme fear before he died. His flesh was black and charred, his clothing singed off him. His face was a charred disfigured mess, the flesh having melted right off it where he'd been burned directly, and the sight was not something pleasant to take in, but a nightmarish, grotesque scene befitting something out of a nightmare.
His hands were outstretched still, as if he'd been trying to get to safety before being slaughtered.
The man before him was pretty much skeletal due to the extent of the burns.
Hawks threw up on the spot and covered his mouth to stop any more vomit from coming out, because what kind of human would do this? It was inhuman, cruel, wicked.
"There's something written here in the ash." Another officer said, showing the two of them the smoke.
Indeed, there were what appeared to be letters drawn out in the charcoal.
'Do not weep for him, he was a child abuser. Judgment was inflicted and he went to hell.'
"That's sick. He's passing judgment on others?" Miruko said, though her expression seemed torn.
"It's still a murder." Hawks muttered, "But I can't entirely not understand why he did it. But at the same time..."
It had to be him. It had to be him.
Who else would do something like that to an abuser of children?
No, this had to be Touya.
"Keigo, he's a monster. Don't go feeling bad for the man who did this." Rumi said reassuringly. "I can't approve of murder, even if it's understandable. He should have been arrested."
He nodded mutely, watching as they covered the body with a cloth and prepared to wrap it up.
"That's the worst thing I've ever seen." He muttered.
The building was entirely beyond saving, too.
'Touya, why would you do this? That's monstrous, even for you.'
"What could have happened here to drive someone to this extreme?" A police officer asked the two.
They had no answers for him.
'Touya...'
The answers lay with one person and one person only, and said person was currently preparing to flee his old apartment to go to another.
He needed to run, had to run, had to hide.
Now he'd done it.
They'd seen his quirk.
They knew what he could do.
He had to leave and go somewhere safe, but where was safe?
It had been a simple plan-scare the hell out of them and make them leave him alone, why had it gone this way?
Oh-because he'd learned the man abused children.
That was probably why.
He choked, coughing on the smell of ash in his throat and wiping away the blood from the torn staples that ripped as soon as the flesh was burned yet again.
"...He got what he deserved."
But at the same time, a small voice whispered in his head, 'I don't want to kill.'
"You have potential." A new voice said as he was in the alley. "Master would be very interested."
He turned in time to see a figure covered in shadow from the top of his head, dressed in formal clothing. "Who the hell are you?"
The being spoke again, "My name is Kurogiri. I was wondering if you would like a place to stay, after the murder you just committed."
"I'm good, thanks. I appreciate the concern, but I work alone." He muttered, sticking his hands in his pockets.
"You did a public service back there. Those men were scum. What you did was fitting." Kurogiri, apparently, said in approval.
"Thanks. I only did what had to be done, but I'm not a people person."
"That may be so, but I am deeply interested in you, Dabi. Here's my business card."
Kurogiri gave him something and left in a flurry of shadows that reminded him vaguely of the woman he saw sometimes.
As he gazed around his new apartment, he realized one thing was wrong.
He had violated his quirk use vow, and now he would pay the prices.
Gone was that sense of freedom.
He was now a villain.
And there was no turning back.