I was woken up in the middle of the night by a quiet knock on my bedroom door, and I snapped awake instantly. Who's there?
"It's Shoto," my brother called from the other side of the door. He rapped the door a few more times and waited.
I swung the door open irritably. "What are you doing here?"
Shoto was standing there awkwardly, holding a bento box of rice and pork cutlets. There was a white price tag and barcode sticker still attached, and a pair of chopsticks strapped to the plastic casing.
"Um. I brought you some food?" Shoto said nervously. "I'm sorry for ignoring you. Fuyumi and Natsuo don't like you, but you haven't done anything wrong. They don't want me to talk to you. I feel bad."
He reached out, shoved the bento box into my hand and ran away, and I was left standing there dumbfounded.
Wasn't it natural for him to dislike me though? I was an illegitimate child after all, and I'd seized his position as the main heir. In a very obviously traditional family like this, the right of inheritance was a very important thing, important enough for even close siblings to squabble and feud. And Shoto felt bad? For a bastard daughter born out of wedlock?
It's too late to be thinking about anything, my mind whispered to me. Just go to bed. You won't wake up in time for morning training otherwise.
As an afterthought: you should eat the bento box.
Well, I was already out of bed, and Shoto had generously provided me with chopsticks as well. Might as well eat.
The bento box was hot to the touch, as were the pork cutlets inside, implying that Shoto had probably microwaved the entire thing. Surely he isn't trying to poison me by feeding me carcinogens? Microwaving plastic can't be good.
In the end, my stomach started rumbling, so I decided whatever potential carcinogens might have been in the bento were worth it, and I cracked open the chopsticks and dug in.
I went to bed feeling very full, and very sleepy.
Come morning, I was busy practising my flame control in the training chamber as usual.
I hadn't seen much improvement yet though.
Controlling my fire had become easier, but that feeling wasn't noticeable and manifested more as a gut feeling than anything truly observable. I supposed it would take a few more weeks of constant practice before any significant improvement became visible, so I didn't take it to heart and just kept burning the strings Enji had laid out.
Enji nodded with approval. "We're going to be adding another variation of the burning string training we've been doing today."
He tugged on the string that I was in the middle of burning, sending ripples down the line and turning what was originally a perfectly straight line into a squiggly one.
"See that?" Enji pointed. "Now, you'll have to move your fire left and right to follow the curvature of the string. It adds another dimension of difficulty to the training we've been doing. This is just a basic variation - when the time comes that you can control your flames to burn the strings without needing my help to corral them, I will introduce more complex variations."
The change to the line's curvature made it harder to follow, but the increase in difficulty wasn't that big, primarily because my fire was able to slowly consume and follow the line… like a guideline.
It was like a bomb fuse, I reasoned. Just like in the cartoons which Natsuo would watch on the TV where the characters lit a fuse and watched the fire trickle down until it got to the bomb. With a guideline like the string to reference, it was very easy for me to burn it, since my flames would naturally follow the path of least resistance anyway.
"Oh yeah," Enji mentioned offhandedly. "Shoto is going to be joining you in training starting tomorrow. His quirk is also quite good, and it would be a shame to waste his potential by leaving him untrained."
That sent alarm bells ringing through my head like no other.
I felt like I had just been slapped in the face by a cold towel. The shock cleared all the fog in my head instantly as I started running through the implications of what Enji had just said.
Is he threatening to replace me if I don't do well enough? Shoto is there to provide a benchmark… he's there as my competition!
What did Enji have to gain by doing this though? I couldn't panic yet, I'd need to think things through.
A possible benefit might be that I become more motivated in my training, and slack off less due to the threat of being replaced. Things might also just be like what Enji said - he doesn't want to waste Shoto's potential. The Todoroki name would gain another well trained Pro-Hero down the line, a net positive to society - though Enji probably cared less about the gain to society than the gain to the Todoroki family reputation, and his own name by extension.
It could also drive a wedge between me and Shoto by directly forcing us into competition, spurring us both to work harder.
Alone, I was like a monopoly, creating nothing but inefficiency due to a lack of pressure and my status as a sole supplier, becoming a literal price setter. By introducing Shoto, Enji was essentially shifting the market structure from monopoly to oligopoly, meaning that we would need to innovate and improve in order to stay ahead.
But there's also the possibility of collusion in oligopoly! Wasn't Enji afraid that I would cooperate with Shoto to slack off? If we both slacked off, then forcing us into competition wouldn't achieve the desired effect. Then again, this was assuming the worst - I naturally would not stoop to colluding with Shoto to slack off. My only enemy was myself - and I needed to defeat my weakness to stride ahead.
In the end, I was largely inconclusive about Enji's intentions. What I did know was that I now had direct competition. Pressure.
I need to work harder.
Instead of taking a break once I'd finished burning the current string, I jumped straight to the next one in a fury, concentrating with such laser focus that Enji barely needed to corral my flames from spreading outward from the string. He complimented me on my form, and I took that as encouragement to keep going.
String after string, I kept burning them and burning them and forcing my fire to move this way and that until I finished with the entire roll of string that Enji had prepared for the day.
"Please double my training intensity!" I stood before Enij proudly, having completed the string-burning exercise three times as fast as previously, and with much less help this time. "We can get more rolls of string for the next session!"
Enji looked at me approvingly. "I'm glad you understand the value of hard work. No matter how strong your quirk is, or how smart you are, without hard work, you won't get anywhere. In the end, hard work will always trump genius."
"What happens if the genius also works hard though?" I couldn't resist asking, even if I knew it might trigger Enji. My curiosity prompted me to ask even though I knew about his dislike of All Might.
Enji's eyes narrowed, a dark look settling on his face. "For a mediocre man to defeat a hard-working genius… he must become a demon. He must be ruthless to himself to the extreme, ruthless not only to his enemies but to himself, his goals, his body, his quirk, his everything, and put life and limb on the line for his goals. What he lacks for in genius he shall replace with desperation, and this desperation of a madman will take him far beyond any genius, for they were born gifted and know not of the brutal, desperate struggles of mediocrity."
"In short… work hard."
Enji left me with those words and threw me another ball of string. "You can lay that out on your own next session. I want to see you able to burn the strings without my assistance by the end of this month. I'll buy more string for you tomorrow."
He left, probably expecting me to do the same as well since the first training session of the day was over, but I hung back and started laying down the string he'd given me.
No breaks. If I wanted to stabilise my status, I would need to be overwhelmingly dominant in everything I did. To prove to Enji that I was worth investing in, I needed to demonstrate my value - potential alone was not enough. I needed to show tangible proof.
Next week. That was my target. I would burn the strings without any assistance from Enji by the end of next week at the latest.
I glared at the strings as if they were my mortal enemy, which, to a degree, it could be argued that they were.
There was a fundamental issue regarding training alone though… I needed Enji's help to stop my flames from spreading across the floor away from the string. If I wanted to practice alone, I would first need to gain control. It was a catch-22 situation.
I hesitated and looked at the string, and back at the door which Enji had left to. I thought about the words he'd said.
Ruthless not only to your enemies but also to yourself. Risk life and limb. Rely on the desperation of a madman to do the impossible. Could I really do that?I must.
Then, unbidden, almost on instinct, I conjured up my white fire - my heavenflame, and cast it down onto the string.
The end of the string erupted into flame instantly, and I felt the pressure mounting as it wrestled for control against me and tried to spread outwards.
My heavenflame already beginning to creep off the string, trying to spread onto the floor and consume all of Enji's exercise equipment, and all the things inside the room.
I fought back and forth in a vicious tug of war with my own fire, straining and straining and trying to stop it from spreading. I didn't even realize that I'd bitten down on my tongue and that blood was flowing, so concentrated was I in ensuring that I didn't incineate the entire room.
I trembled, and then screamed violently, bringing my attention to such a point mass that the flames jerked back and latched back onto the string, away from the floor, and away from certain punishment for burning down the training chamber.
Sweat flooded down my arms and my face like a stream, and I panted madly as I glared at the flames and willed them to condense, to not separate, to stay on the string.
I can't fail! I roared in my heart. I will not! I must not!
Then, almost as if a miracle occurred, the flames did not spread.
Very slowly, I gnashed my teeth and exerted, relying on the pure force of my willpower to command the flame to trickle forward slowly, and only forward.
It was like a sixth sense beyond taste, beyond smell, beyond touch or sight or hearing.
All of a sudden... I could feel my fire for the first time as an extension of my body, and not merely just as an external creation. All of a sudden… I felt connected to the flame. My will was not forcing the flame to move, because I was the flame itself.
Slowly, slowly, agonizingly slowly, the fire continued to trickle forward. The more string it devoured, the harder it became to force it forward, even if the mass of the string it was devouring was so extremely small.
My fire was in no way hot enough to melt the heatproof floor yet, but I knew that if I lost control and let my fire spread to the exercise equipment, I might ramp the temperature up enough to the point that it would consume the floor too. If that happened… I didn't dare to think about the consequences.
YOU ARE ME! MY FIRE! MY FLAME! ME! SO LISTEN!
When my flames got to the end of the string, I dispelled the fire instantly and collapsed, ironically, like a puppet with its strings cut (or was it burned?).
I lay there, feeling horrible.
My head felt like it had been hit by a sledgehammer, and I felt miserable, even as I exalted in my success.
I put a hand on my forehead to check my internal temperature. No change.
It was all mental. The feeling of strain and struggle… it was all in my head. There hadn't been a physical consequence towards my body. This is something I can train to overcome easily.
Enji had explained to me previously that his fire had been similar in the beginning, if easier to reign in than mine. Emitter quirks, especially those which involved the elements, were more distant from your body. There would always be a sense of disconnect and unbelonging, as if the quirk was external to you.
He described it as the difference between using a gun, and being the gun itself.
As I lay there tired and beaten, I knew that I had for the first time touched upon the sensation of becoming the gun in Enji's analogy. Strange as it was, I knew I had established some fundamental connection to my quirk now.
I was the fire, and the fire was me.