I'm three days late.
Three days late from realizing that this fic… is a year old.
…Yeah, I didn't realize that either. But this may very well be the most that I've ever written in a year. My longest fic still is 140k, an embarrassing RWBY OC fic that was my 2nd fic (The less said about the first one that I posted and erased on AO3, the better. Don't worry, it wasn't smut.)
And I just want to say to all of you readers… Thank you.
I never realized that I could exactly do innovative stuff with settings until this fic. Up until now, my writing has mostly just been either memes, mindless action sequences vaguely referencing stuff that the show actually has in a comedic manner, but with this one, I decided to go off the rails.
I chose the worst match of servant to setting, aimed my pen at the least explored parts of either setting (FGO and MHA), and just started writing. It was stupid, and I did rely on rather cheap humor for the first couple chapters, I think. But hey, I invented an entirely new arc of MHA in this fic that the canon setting has probably never mentioned: the legal system :D. And things just kept snowballing from there.
Now that we're through the sports festival, where most crossover fics stop updating because the author gives up or something (I think), and into the internship arc.
None of this would be possible without your support. Every comment fuels my veins. It pumps my heart and pushes me through those hard exams just so I can get back to writing this. It's insane to think, also, that I have about a 120 word to 1 comment ratio. The amount of dopamine that I've extracted from obsessively checking the comment section after every chapter update is… well… not that significant, but still a much needed boost in these trying times.
Soo… Thank you for reading this far, I apologize for padding this author's note with so much text that most people aren't going to read, and hopefully, you enjoy an oddly introspective chapter.
Let's make this year of this fic a good one.
-SpiritOfErebus
An observation had to be made.
Hans… was really out of his depth.
Looking at the bits and pieces of mechanical jargon that he was trying to incorporate into the next chapter of his novel, he scratched his head.
It probably wouldn't work.
Nothing ever works out for him.
Looking up at his desk, he noticed an accumulation of papers. From the various English and Japanese assignments that he breezed through to the mathematics that he suffered past pointlessly, each and every returned worksheet lay on his secondhand, wooden desk.
Hans's assigned readings lay buried beneath the white mound, each and every one having been annotated once and never forgotten. Hans's math textbooks hovered near the surface of the platter of papers, its corners bent and well-thumbed. A small gathering of broken mechanical pencil lead had rolled into the nooks and crannies where the desk met the wall, a graveyard to the graphene that never made it to the battlefield.
Slowly, Hans exhaled. A deep and long, yet quiet and soft breath. Closing his eyes, he felt… something… peel away from him.
But what was it?
Was he the unchanging soul carved wholesale out of a reader's impression? Was he the child whose body got stolen by a ghost when they were four? Was he just the creation of an author's impression, or an actual conscious entity?
If he was any of those, could he change?
And on the slim chance that his existence wasn't any of those, and could experience change… Did he want to accept this unnerving uncertainty? This tense feeling of melancholy, accompanied by a state of relaxation? This feeling of satisfaction, yet the desire for more? Or was it a feeling of dissatisfaction, yet a yearning for less?
What Hans did know, however, was that he was out of his depth.
Living was never one of his strong suits. Even in life, he was extremely paranoid, frightful of losing that first, precious, and what he believed to be his only life. There were ropes packed into his bags in case of emergencies at any building. A note beside his bed at all times, saying that he only appeared to be dead in case he was deemed dead and accidentally buried alive. A fear of eating pork, of all things, because it could give him a disease.
There were many times where he himself had been the obstacle to happiness.
But now? Unburdened by the fears of yet another death? Knowing that each defeat, each deathly wound would just result in dematerialization? He should be relieved and relaxed.
Yet here he was, writing day in and day out for a light novel series he only just mildly tolerated to provide for a family that wasn't even fully his. Brainstorming future training simulations for those three idiots. Keeping his grades up to keep up a scholarship in a school he hated.
From his unshakeable spirit origin and his undeniable past, what had changed? Why was he practicing this futility? This sentimental attachment that would make the bad ending inevitably in store for a character like him even worse to bear?
Hans stood up and stretched, feeling a wave of lightheadedness assault his mind as he sat up from hours of sitting down. Pins and needles sprang up along the nerves in his legs, but he sighed and walked them off. Staggering towards the solitary curtain for a window high up in the wall, he stepped on a slightly dusty stool and dramatically unveiled the light.
As dust cascaded from the normally untouched piece of fabric, beams of light slowly filtered into his room.
For the first time in a while, he took a serious look around.
His bed was unkempt, like somebody had rolled out of it, chugged one of the several cans of coffee stowed upon his bedside drawer, thrown the can haphazardly into a trash can, and then walked out into the hallways with covers still entangled with their legs.
His walls were a pale yellow, not out of neglect, but merely out of the sheer age of their construction. Some pictures were nailed to the wall, but the photographic trail documenting his growth stopped when his dead eyes replaced the vibrant ones of an innocent child.
And… that was it. There was nothing else indicative of personality in the room. Just mountains and mountains of paper.
Hans tore his gaze away, and instead, looked outwards.
The rooftops were like any other. Flat. Grey. Punctuated only by the square lumps that were the air conditioning units and the occasional brown blob of a potted plant, it was as monotonous as could be. Windows of various cleanliness lined the apartments that portrayed themselves landscape in front of his own. Some were clean, probably diligently scrubbed by washcloth every day. Some were foggy and misty. Others had strange splotches and gray patches, indicating that they hadn't been touched in years.
This world was truly disgusting.
It was like a barrel of crabs, each clambering on top of each other. The working men and the criminals. The heroic and the villainous. The naive and the jaded. Each clambering on top of each other to get out of the pit.
Once one climbs on top of the other, the one below will resist. Once one is sent to the bottom of the pile, furthest from the border of salvation, they'll make sure that no other ones get out as well.
And watching them from above?
The powerful. The rich. The ones with connections. The ones that were never in the pit in the first place. All watching them struggle with each other. And whenever they feel particularly hungry, they'll take one of them out of the barrel with a pair of steel tongs, at a distance too long for the crab's claw to reach, and place them in a paper bag to take home and steam.
As a small, insignificant, weak crab himself, with almost no meat on his bones, his own beady little eyes could observe the without having the ambition to climb himself
Everybody struggled. Some struggled more, some struggled less, but in the end? Everybody struggled.
But was this truly different from the world he had lived in before?
Minus the potential magical background that he never noticed, there were the same petty conflicts. The more fortunate struggled with the less fortunate. The landlords in eternal strife with their tenants. Even rulers of different countries weren't free, dragged along by the colliding sails of their respective countries and forced to clash on the battlefield.
Here, there were just a couple more types of crab in the barrel. Hero students competed against each other, seeking to divvy up the pie of wealth and fortune offered to their year in the pan of the camera and the flash of the lights. Villains took from society, while society desperately tried to rid itself of criminals to better itself.
And when one of the crabs got too close to the rim, those already in power, those pulling the strings through generations of gathered wealth, power, and political influence would work together to keep the population they fed from in the hole.
There was no end to this struggle. Every crab wanted out of the pit, but literally nobody else wanted them to get out. Every revolution was just replacing the person with the tongs with another person, selected from the pit of crabs to become a person that had goals aligned with the others at the top.
But as an observer, as a crab whose beady eyes had been watching for years upon years, there was a certain… irresistible quality to it as well.
Casting aside differences in position and goals, each person was indeed striving for their own way to get out of the barrel, if it was either being financially independent, being famous, being wealthy, or just being able to eat consistently every single day. Being able to continue on in the face of failure, in the face of criticism and defeat, despite their unerring morality. Hans himself was never this brave, and probably never will be this brave.
Which is why, despite their supposed ignorance about their circumstance, despite their existence as crabs, and despite their struggles sabotaging the efforts of their fellow strugglers, they were ultimately what was portrayed in his stories.
After all, the author turns to the pen when the world doesn't go their way.
But could Hans, a being devoid of their drive, their effort, and their passion, really understand them?
"Once again…" Hans sighed. "I'm out of my depth."
…
Staring at the crab legs on a table, Hans seriously regretted his choice of analogy.
"What's the occasion?" Hans said, looking at the poorly hidden plastic wrapper in the trash. He hadn't missed that price tag.
At the dinghy little dinner table rescued from somebody else's trash, his two parents sat… somewhat nervously.
"Well, isn't it obvious? Want to give our son a debriefing, darling?"
"Anne, I think that, as you are the one that made the dish, you should be the one to introduce it!"
After blinking slightly to get the obnoxious kitchen light out of her eyes, she burst into a wide, unwarranted smile.
"...Congratulations!"
Hans looked at his mother's strained expression. His parents first looked at each other, before looking back at Hans.
"For what?" Hans said, raising an eyebrow.
"You got fourth in the sports festival!" she said. "And against actual hero students!"
There was an awkward silence. The scent of steamed crab filled the kitchen, the somewhat artificial meat giving off the same feeling as a microwaved lunch. Yet, as Hans looked down, he could see the effort put into gently shaving off each and every spike on the crab's legs so that his fragile skin wouldn't be cut on it.
"I… I can't do this…" his mother muttered. "I just can't anymore…"
"I understand." Hans said, looking up and grinning slightly. "I didn't even want to do this in the first place, but now I'm fighting superpowered people with abilities beyond our comprehension, right?"
"How did things get so… so… intense? So bad? In that last match, you- you- didn't even try to-"
"I did." Hans said proudly, yet sadly. "I blocked a punch. But what I'm more impressed by was the fact that somebody finally attempted to stand up to me verbally."
"Son." his father said, putting a hand on Hans's shoulder. "If you don't want to be a hero anymore, if you ever want to leave UA, just tell us. We already have so much debt that getting some more fines from UA probably wouldn't matter."
"...And you bought these crab legs?" Hans said, looking down at the meal.
"Well, we can't exactly return them, can we?" his father said, closing his eyes and smiling. "I mean, they're already steamed."
"Yeah." Hans muttered. "We're already steamed and immobile. There's no real reason to fight it, anyways."
"What do you mean?" Anne said, "We can't fight a dead crab. It's already dead, been dismembered, and steamed."
"Just like we can't fight our fate, right?" Hans said, mirroring his father's weak smile. "Our destiny is already dead, dismembered, and steamed. We were all put in such a deep hole of debt that we… just can't climb out of, right?"
There was silence at the table, but the silence this time leaned towards sad rather than awkward.
"But it doesn't matter." Hans said, standing up. He didn't get much taller compared to his sitting self. "Because what matters… is that we've tried, right? And look at us! We're three people, suffering every single day for a goal that we didn't exactly ask for, eating something as luxurious as crab legs in celebration!"
"Heh… Hehehe… Hahaha…" his father chuckled, his voice slowly getting lower and more watery. "Yeah, I guess we are lucky, right?"
"You know what? At least we're together." Anne said, putting a hand around Hans's neck and patting her husband's back. "Our son didn't break any bones, and we're eating crab legs! What else could we possibly want?"
"I don't know… a new refrigerator?" Hans smirked.
The three turned around to see the refrigerator that UA had given Hans as "assistive equipment". The futuristic, silvery, and shiny appliance stood at odds with the scratched up oven, the yellowing paint on the cabinets, and the frayed tablecloths that lined the cooking counter.
"...You know what? Screw these crab legs." his father said. "They're probably fake anyways. We didn't even have to wash them or anything. Who's up for some classic sandwiches?"
"I mean, we don't have to completely abandon those pieces of cheap shredded fish put in an empty crab shell, right? It's still food that we spent 5000 yen on."
Later, chewing on sandwiches made from roasted sliced ham, what was probably imitation crab, and rye bread, Hans nodded.
"This… actually tastes pretty good."
…
"Wasn't there something that I was supposed to do?" Hans muttered, lying on his bed and staring up at the blank ceiling. "I updated my story, I had a celebratory dinner, I bought more coffee to sustain my unhealthy lifestyle… What else is there?"
Maybe it was further back than today. Yesterday was the last day of the sports festival, and he had gone home after he watched, from the hospital bed as Bakugo silently seethed on stage with a silver medal.
Midoriya, his fingers in a seriously dubious state, had been ushered away for more intensive care, while Todoroki had staggered out of the infirmary in order to go back to the 1-A stands and observe the frustrated face of his pro-hero parent.
Oh, right. Those two.
Something had to be said to those two, after all.
Maybe Hans's nature was an immotile boulder, but those two were still young and impressionable. Having something that was as confusing and one sided disguised as logic said to them would… probably cause some mental turmoil.
But which one was easier to talk to? That was the question.
Hans considered phoning Midoriya, but given the fact that internships were coming up and something dramatic and life-changing was going to happen to the shounen protagonist then, he'd rather not set any more flags. His life was troublesome enough without them.
Then… Todoroki?
With a shaky hand, he opened an app that was only used a couple of times. Way too little for the teenager that he supposedly was.
The telephone app. With Iida forcing the numbers of everybody in the class onto his phone as a means of "improving his communication skills and to foster a polite way of speaking", Hans… did indeed have everybody's number.
Scrolling down to Todoroki's number and thinking about how to rationalize the words he had said, he paused. His blue eyes, illuminated by the bright white of the phone screen, shone in the dark room like off-brand sapphires.
"Well, better late than never."
He clicked the button.
…
Lying flat on his futon, with aches and pains all over his body, Todoroki looked up at his pale, white ceiling.
His performance had been… less than satisfactory… to Endeavor. Washing out in the third round wasn't even remotely close to what Endeavor had wanted.
Making it merely to the top eight? It wasn't befitting of somebody with his potential.
"If only you had used your fire…" Endeavor growled "That buffoon would have melted before you. He was using your ice to his advantage, and yet you just let him take victory right from your grasp! When will you cease your meaningless rebellion, Shoto? You… have truly disappointed me this time."
Todoroki sighed, his face still as impassive as ever. The moon shined in from the open window as a cloud slowly passed over it, leaving a patch of moonlight that illuminated nothing but his disfiguring scar. It had faded now, into a patch of wrinkles and slightly darker skin.
But every time it blinked, he would feel the whole mass shift.
Then, his phone rang. Grabbing it reflexively, he looked at the name to see if it was Fuyumi or Natsuo. But, instead, it showed a chain of Hiragana that his sleep deprived eyes couldn't identify.
"Hans… Christian… Andersen?" he muttered. "Why is he calling?"
Thinking back to the entire holographic lecture that shouldn't have convinced him, Todoroki looked contemplatively at the green button on the screen.
Why… did he listen to the rambling words of that incredibly cynical child?
For the life of him, Todoroki couldn't figure it out. He couldn't figure out why he wanted to be a hero, why he kept at being a hero, why his brother had disappeared, why he was at UA, why his father obsessively pursued his goals, and why…
He paused.
There were a lot of whys he didn't care to ask. He just… kept doing. He kept using his fire when his father told him to. To use his ice when he needed to cool down.
And for the first time in his life, when he entered UA, he figured something out all on his own.
In combat… he would never use his left.
It didn't answer any of his whys, but it did stop his questioning somewhat
But why did he figure that out in the first place? Was it to spite his father? Was it to bring personal satisfaction? Was it just simple teenage rebellion?
He didn't know.
Here's another question. Why did he let Hans win, then? Why did he go along with the final plan that inevitably ended in him losing? Was it a spur of the moment decision? Was the vision of a future where he completely avoided his problems by dropping out of the hero career when he was free just so tempting to him?
Was he heroic, like everybody else said he was? Or was he just… a coward? Somebody easily influenced by the quitting words of another?
He supposed that doing one more thing when he was told was okay, then. If only to figure this out.
He pressed the green button.
For a moment, the other end of the line was silent. Todoroki almost thought that Hans had left the call hanging because of his… not-so timely response.
"Hey." Hans's deep voice said through the speakers. Normally, as Hans spoke, this tone wouldn't exactly be at odds with his cynical expression, but now? Remembering Hans's rather… short and slim body?
There was a certain element of absurdism as he tried to reconcile the voice of what sounded like a vampire villain to a very short hero student that looked like a twelve year old.
Shaking those conspiratorial thoughts away, like theories about how Hans was secretly a reincarnated vampire, Todoroki refocused on his solemn mood.
"What did you call for."
"I called… to apologize." Hans said. "I feel like I should at least explain the words that I slung at you during the match."
"...That would be much appreciated. It's why I pressed the button."
"...What button?" Hans said. "Is there a metaphor or analogy that I missed within our brief conversation?"
"No. The green button. On the telephone app." Todoroki said helpfully. "You know, when you pick up a call?"
"Oh. That." Hans said. "Anyways, about what I said… do you remember, by the way? I do, but I'll be surprised if you really remembered a lecture mid battle. It was basically-"
"You telling me to give up heroism when I feasibly can if it's causing me more pain than good, along with another note about how I could use my powers better in other fields, such as creating water for the various drought infested areas of the Earth?"
"Well, that saves me a lot of trouble. And I'll save some words so I can explain this quickly. Basically, don't be too one sided on being a hero. It's a totally valid career, and if you think that it can give you self worth and fulfillment, then disregard my advice and continue with that. Honestly, it's silly to just give up your aspirations to be a hero just because of my speech, but once again, if it really does cost too much personally to keep being a hero, it's perfectly fine to quit and find some other way to both contribute to society and achieve self actualization."
"...My father thinks that being a hero is more about the status position than the actual helping, probably." Todoroki said sourly. "I was born… just to surpass All Might?"
"What do you mean?"
"...Eugenics, basically." Todoroki muttered.
"Oh." Hans said. The naming puns suddenly weren't as humorous. The last name that correlated with fire… and a first name that was literally the kanji for freeze.
Endeavor came from a family of fire quirks. Todoroki's mother? Presumably a family of ice quirks.
What kind of backdoor deal was made just for the pursuit of power?
"...Yeah, that's pretty fucked up. But, well, if you still want to fulfill your hero dream, don't let that stop you. We shouldn't be trapped because we were born with natural advantages that people use to pressure us into being a hero, but we also shouldn't be limited by our self doubt."
"To be perfectly honest… I don't know." Todoroki said. "I don't know what I want to do now. Being a hero with Endeavor constantly monitoring me just seems like hell, but if I quit now, I just feel like a coward. Like I'm turning my back on something that I've persisted on for years."
"...What you're feeling is either a genuine desire for being a hero, or just a sunk cost fallacy." Hans said. "But, that's what high school is for, right? Just exploring?"
"Yeah… I guess." Todoroki muttered.
For a moment, the phone call continued in perfect silence. Outside of Todoroki's window, a gentle wind tousled the shrubbery outside, making a gentle shhh.
"Well, I'll leave you with this quote." Hans said. "Back when I was, well, younger… I saw a girl that had been abandoned by her family. Society despised her. Her body was covered in scars. But every single day, she would wake up and try to bring joy to others. Despite not knowing what joy herself was, with her life thoroughly drenched in tragedy."
"And?"
"When I asked her about why she was still trying so hard… She smiled, and said: Life isn't painful. Life isn't hateful, either. And that's because…"
"Because what?" Todoroki said.
"... Because happiness will arrive someday."
Todoroki got up from his futon, and slowly trudged to the sliding door that separated his sanctuary from the large, traditional house that Endeavor roamed. The moonlight illuminated a central courtyard, where distant memories of his siblings, so much younger back then, playing soccer cheerfully, slowly echoed across the empty house.
"So, even if hope seems almost ephemeral, like an illusion, or a distant, passing warmth… Just remember that somewhere in your life, there is bound to be happiness. You probably just haven't gotten to it yet."
Leaning against the wall, Todoroki shut his eyes. A single drop of rain fell from the sky, and he prayed that one day, the rains could put out the fires burning away his home.
Slowly but surely, the rain began to pour.
…
EDIT: About the quote that Hans says to Todoroki: This comes from him talking in Fate/Extra, where he references the exact same quote in his fate backstory. It's not something that I made up.
I'll be brief here because my first authors note on top was so long.
Hopefully, Todoroki was shown pretty well. I got an impression that he honestly… didn't have much of a direction in canon, typical of people that have overly controlling parents. In canon, he got Midoriya as a role model (I think?) and proceeded to follow heroism and leave most of his character complexity behind, except for moments within the Endeavor redemption arc.
Here, he got no such clear direction, and Hans's advice only adds to his indecision about literally everything.
But that's what High School is for, right? To be indecisive.
(UA is a glorified vocational school lol)
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-SpiritOfErebus