Chapter 25

Chapter Text

Izuku couldn't locate Iida.

Apparently in this timeline—if there actually were multiple timelines the way his memories suggested—he wasn't close enough to Iida Tenya to have strong enough emotions to find him. Izuku's memories were of a different boy in a different school in a different reality.

Hopefully Iida was different enough not to be the vengeful idiot he'd been in Izuku's memories.

Izuku found Todoroki easily, though the situation he was in was enough to scare the metaphorical pants off of him. He didn't even hesitate to use blackwhip to lift Todoroki into the air, grateful when the other boy just went with it, relaxing into his grip even as he continued to pour ice from his hands onto the buildings that had caught fire.

"Shoto!" Endeavour called fearfully, turning his fire toward blackwhip.

"I'm okay," Todoroki called down to his dad. "This quirk belongs to one of my classmate's."

Endeavour grunted, nodded in acknowledgement, and then turned back to the nearest nomu that was regenerating from being burned. Endeavour turned up the heat, the monster slowly dissolving into ash even as it continued to try and fight. A second nomu and then a third lumbered toward Endeavour, and this time the number two hero didn't mess around, turning extremely high heat onto both nomu immediately.

Izuku gently lowered Todoroki back to the ground when the fires were all extinguished.

"Thanks for the assist," Todoroki said, petting blackwhip like it was a cat.

Izuku was kind of glad he didn't have a body at that moment. He was sure he'd be blushing hot enough to seem like he was the one with a fire quirk.

"We need to find Iida," Todoroki said, turning away from his father to address Izuku. "I think he's after the hero killer."

"The hero killer?" Endeavour asked, sounding excited. "He's why I was in Hosu."

Of course it was. Endeavour was laser focused on hero work. Family apparently came a very distant second, even his so-called masterpiece, Shoto.

Izuku tried to react using blackwhip, but without Hitoshi to translate or a whiteboard to write on, Izuku had no clear way to communicate anything more than yes or no questions. He really needed to track down Twice and hope that he hadn't joined the League of Villains yet.

And shit, finding nomu in Hosu certainly seemed to confirm that the memories he had of another timeline were actually real.

Yeah, he'd process that later.

First he had to rescue Iida from his own idiocy.

Again.

~*~

Shoto stomped the ground, instantly building a large ice wall between Iida and the sword aimed at his heart. What the hell had Iida been thinking? The hero killer wasn't called the hero killer for nothing. He'd killed seventeen experienced professional heroes and permanently injured twenty-four more. How arrogant did Iida have to be to think he could take down someone that dangerous while he was still in his first term of high school?

"Evacuate your friend and the injured pro," Endeavour said, entering the alley a step behind Shoto. "I'll deal with Stain."

Injured pro?

Shoto almost froze at the realization that he'd been so fixated on saving Iida that he hadn't even realized there was another person in the alley. Thank fuck his ice wall had missed him.

Iida was on the ground bleeding, but the pro-hero was collapsed against a wall, seemingly dead. Shoto reinforced his ice wall to protect Iida and then frosted the source of the bleeding, hoping to at least slow it down so that he could assess the condition of the pro.

"Native?" he asked, pretty sure that was the hero's name. "Can you hear me?"

"Get out of here, kid," the pro mumbled. "Stain will kill you too."

"Endeavour is here," Shoto said, even as he assessed the pro's injuries and decided it was safer to move him than to leave him where he could end up collateral damage.

"Endeavour? Okay, yeah," the hero said, suddenly more alert. "Maybe get me out of here."

Shoto wasn't surprised that his father's reputation preceded him.

"Can you move?"

"I've lost all feeling in my limbs," Native said slowly, as if he was assessing his condition a little more closely now that he was awake. "It happened a moment after he cut me." Native made a slight gagging noise as he added, "I think he might have licked my blood off his sword too."

Shoto nodded even as he assessed the safest way to get Native out to the main street.

Creating a slide out of ice was child's play for Shoto and he was able to drag Native to Iida and then drag them both out of the alley with very little effort. The chaos from earlier was dying down now that the nomu had been defeated, so it was possible to catch the attention of passersby who were willing to help. A woman with a skin mutation that made her look a little like a blue mouse took over the first aid and another calmly reported the injuries to whoever was on the other end of his phone call—Shoto hoped it was the emergency line.

He was still trying to decide whether to head back to see if his father needed help against Stain when his phone rang. He nearly dropped it when he saw Shinsou Hitoshi's number on the screen.

"Shinsou?"

"Midoriya said 'don't let the hero killer lick your blood.' I'm hoping that makes sense to you. He was in an awful hurry."

"I think it does," he said, his concern growing when the reflected light from Endeavour's flames stopped abruptly. "I've got to go."

"Be safe," Hitoshi ordered as Shoto disconnected the call.

Despite wanting to run headfirst into the fight, Shoto fell back on his training and quickly but quietly ran to the alley, glancing around the corner of the brick wall to assess the situation. Endeavour was down, a sword stuck deeply in his chest. Shoto swung his attention to the hero killer just in time to see blackwhip sliced in half by a stained blade.

Both ends dissolved into thin air, leaving no trace.

Anger the likes of which Shoto had never felt—not even toward his abusive father—filled every molecule of Shoto's being. He stamped his foot hard on the ground, almost laughing convulsively when a giant iceberg completely encased the hero killer and his father both.

"Holy shit," he whispered, trying to think clearly enough to remember how long the average quirked human could go without oxygen while completely frozen. Yeah, he wasn't sure he'd ever learned that, but he guessed it couldn't be more than a few minutes.

He fumbled with his phone and tried to call the emergency number. It was engaged and probably overloaded thanks to the nomu attack and ensuing chaos, so he called Shinsou.

"He came back to me," Shinsou said instead of a greeting. "He can't use blackwhip at the moment. We're not sure why, but he should already be back with you. Look for a puff of smoke."

"Okay, yeah, he's here."

Shoto had never been happier to see smoke in his life.

"But I might need help with something else. I um… I may have overreacted when I saw blackwhip get cut in half."

"Overreacted how?" Shinsou asked slowly.

"I froze the hero killer and Endeavour inside a giant ice wall. I'm not sure how long they have before brain damage or death and I can't get through on the emergency lines so no help is coming."

"Okay, I may be able to get a message directly to a hero in the area. I'll call—" Hitoshi made an inquiring noise instead of finishing the sentence. "Um…Zuku says to use your fire quirk."

"What? How does he know about that?" Shoto asked before he realized Midoriya was right. Shit. So much for his vow to be the number one hero without using his father's quirk.

He placed his hand on the ice near his father's face and concentrated on melting it without producing actual flame. Even if he did, it wouldn't burn his dad, but it was good practice for partially releasing the hero killer.

But instead of gasping in a breath the way Shoto had expected, his father remained unconscious and not breathing. A puff of smoke blew toward his father's chest where the sword was still embedded.

"Shit, yeah, can't breathe if he can't move his chest."

He worked faster, melting the ice with the hottest flame he dared to use. Warming his dad up too much would likely start the bleeding all over again. He scrunched his forehead in concentration, seriously out of practice, but he was running out of time to save both of them.

Finally, his dad gasped in a small breath and was able to take over melting the ice with his own quirk. He seemed unaware that he had a sword sticking out of his chest.

"The ice is controlling your bleeding, so don't thaw out completely." His dad nodded stiffly. "Plus the hero killer is behind you, also frozen in ice."

His dad nodded again, hopefully understanding what Shoto said. The last thing they needed was to accidentally release a man who probably still planned to kill them.

Shoto repeated his actions, using far more care to melt away the ice covering Stain's face. He was nervous as hell about loosening the ice around his chest, but he also didn't want to accidentally kill him. He'd had a front row seat to the trauma Bakugo had suffered as a result of his careless actions. Shoto did not want to repeat his classmate's mistake. Eventually he managed to melt and refreeze the ice surrounding the hero killer without restricting his chest or covering his face. His hands and swords, however, remained solidly frozen, thank fuck.

Stain was just starting to wake up when Shoto heard a voice he was infinitely grateful to hear.

"Problem children, the lot of you."