A wildfire surged through Mt. Sekoto, consuming trees, grass, and rock in its way.
'Goddamned fire, ruining my week off…' An hour before, La Signora and some Fatui agents saw the blue inferno from a hot spring a few miles away from the mountain. Stopping the fire was a moot point; the blaze disintegrated large swathes of the mountain peak along with the Fatui agents caught in it. The operation procedure was simple: look for juvenile survivors and induct them into Arlecchino's Hearth Home.
"Otou-san… otou-san…" Hearing whimpering sounds nearby, Signora signaled her men to look for the source. Hacking their way through what was left of bushes, they followed the noise to a lake, where a young man floated atop the lake.
The young man had red hair with noticeable white streaks. He wore next to nothing; the fire must've burned off his clothes and shoes. Third-degree- no, fourth-degree burns covered the poor thing's body, but against all odds, the boy still breathed.
"Oh God, he's still alive… Young one, are you alright? Bogdan, hose him down this instant!"
"Yes, ma'am." Recalibrating his rifle, Bogdan the Hydrogunner showered the boy with streams of water to put out the remaining spouts of fire in his body.
"Otou-san… otou-san…" The young man's cries pierced everyone's ears while Signora checked his chest and pulse. "Doko ni iru no?"
"Where's his father?! Anybody?!" While brushing the teenage boy's hair, Signora noticed the blue flame emanating from his arms that she promptly put out. Somehow, the boy's skin was cold to the touch even after it sustained multiple fires in most areas.
"We don't see anyone near the mountain," Bogdan said. "No sign of the boy's parents anywhere."
"We're taking him back to Russia."
"My Lady, don't you think the city would find out we kidnapped a Japanese citizen-"
"Rescued. " Signora fumed, cutting Bogdan off. "You talk back again, I'll cut your pay for this year!"
"Yes, yes." Bogdan shut up and lowered the boy to the ground. Ice spawned from the Fair Lady's hands and wrapped his entire body, which laid unconscious inside the ice spacious enough to house him and let him breathe.
Carrying the young man in her arms, they headed for the helicopter en route to Vladivostok.
"Calm down, kid," Signora said in near-flawless Japanese to Toya whose hands started emitting flame. "You'll turn this place into a puddle when you don't."
"Who are you, and why did you kidnap me?!" The young man glared at the tall, elegant woman in front of him. Some of her knee-length blonde hair on the back was tied into rose-shaped buns. Her moth-shaped mask covered her rigged eye, and she also wore red lipstick. The woman's costume consisted of a white sleeveless, skirtless gown with rose-shaped designs on her waist, a tall red cape that went all the way to the floor, and gloves that went all the way to her elbows. She finished her Hero costume off with a grey skirt with black diamond patterns that looked like the jewelry adorning her neck and chest.
"You've never had a TV or Internet back home, did you? I'm the Fair Lady Hero herself: La Signora." She ran her fingers through her hair, savoring the touch.
"You look like an evil queen from those movies Fuyumi and I watched! What do you want from Dad?!"
"Who's your father?" Signora smiled, taking what he said as a compliment. "Also, I did not kidnap you. Quite the opposite, to be accurate."
"You don't know who Endeavor is?!"
Endeavor, from what Signora heard from Pro Hero news, was Japan's No. 2 Hero just behind All Might. At first glance, Enji Todoroki was a Hero after her own heart; a no-nonsense crimefighter with an unbeatable track record. Although he needed work on the PR side of heroism, Endeavour still had many fans who appreciated his steely persona.
"What place is this anyway?! It's cold… but, it's also soothing."
"A place where you can hone your skills." Every Harbinger had an assigned training facility where they and their sidekicks could train and prepare themselves for battle. Il Dottore owned a research center in Sochi where his minions took experimental drugs to fight his rejects. Il Capitano had a barracks-inspired gym in Ufa where his men sparred with the renowned supersoldier to assess their combat skills.
"We will spend our next session learning to handle your Quirk effectively. For now, we'll focus on survival and agility." La Signora preferred to train in her own specialized facility in Vladivostok. Inside was a large ice rink where she developed techniques for her frost Quirk, and a fire-resistant cavern where she could let loose as the Crimson Witch, her previous moniker. On the third floor was a studio where she and her sidekicks practiced for interviews and a runway where they tested their new outfits.
"But Dad showed me awesome fire moves! I think you'll like them!" He rubbed his hands together, acting out Prominence Burn and a few other moves while Signora looked on unimpressed.
"That's a bold statement, child, for someone who won't have arms if they kept using their fire-based Quirk like that." She held Toya's arm, and true enough, sections of his skin had burned off. At this rate, Dottore would run out of skin grafts to replace his burnt skin.
"I practiced hard a lot back home! My body can handle it!" Toya stomped his foot.
"Not from the looks of it." she crossed her arms. "You'll keep your hand intact if you use your fingertips."
"Dad could do it with his entire body just fine! Where is he?" Toya ran around the facility looking for an exit, only for Fatui soldiers to block the way.
"Three years is ample time for your family to move on," she said.
"It's been three years?" The young man looked at his body. Surprisingly, his body was still in shape even without exercise. "He's still looking for me, I know it… he's gotta be…"
"At least you'll be in better shape if he finds you. Training starts tom-"
"Only Dad can train me! No one in the world, not even All Might, can be equal to him!" Glaring at Signora, Toya's fists glowed blue only for the fire suppression system to activate. The ceiling above him drenched him with torrents of water, quenching his flames.
"Hmph, you dare squander this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?" Signora sneered. "To learn from one of the top Pro Heroes in the world right now?!"
"Did you capture Dad too? Where are you keeping him?!" Toya tried to flame on to no avail.
"Why would we do it? No good reason exists yet, as of now," Staring Toya down, she cooled her palms to stop herself from whipping him into silence. "Kid, he and your family would've found you by now. The group I'm part of has something better to offer you."
"What is it, huh? I bet it's all bullshit." The young man crossed his arms.
"A chance to be part of something greater," Signora said as her eyes burned with conviction. "Where you can drag the world kicking and screaming to a better one."
"It is bullshit!"
"Don't think of escaping," The Fair Lady argued back. "I hate to take the trouble to rescue someone, only to see them kill themselves doing something stupid. You have to earn your keep here, however."
"I pick killing myself, then, bitch!" Toya flipped the bird.
"Хороший Бог, this will take up a lot of my time…" Signora muttered to herself as she walked away from the rink, covering the unmasked part of her face with her palm.
"Pierro? Are you available right now?" La Signora knocked on the door, hoping to get an audience with the First Harbinger.
The Jester's agency was a palace in itself. His own office room contained shelves stacked with the Harbingers' documents, books relating to Quirks and history, and biographies of chess grandmasters from Kasparov to Carlsen to Dr. Checkmate.
"What for, Rosalyne?" Pierro said, putting down his papers.
"I - I thought I could stop by here and ask for a little help." Even in his old age, her superior's gravitas made her shake a bit. When she entered the First Harbinger's office, she was not the Fair Lady nor the Duchess of Ice; she was a student asking the teacher for help with her science homework.
"I have never heard those words from you since you joined the Harbingers. What is it that troubles you?" Pierro asked.
"My student doesn't want me to train him at all. He's a lost cause."
Other than her beauty and Quirk technique, Signora was proud of her cunning mind. She formulated anything she put her mind to at record time, whether it was her liquid fire serum, her artificial Ice quirk, or the best outfit for tomorrow her fans would copy.
But somehow, Arlecchino was better at wrangling children and teenagers than her. Ironic, given how when she was the Knave's wrangler when she first started out on the team!
"Ah, I see," Pierro said. "This brings me back to when you first used your ice Quirk."
"Hehehe, I was a natural prodigy." Signora smiled. "Learning how to make fancy ice spears came naturally."
"No need to puff yourself up like that." Pierro crossed his arms, looking unimpressed. "This is not Hero Vogue."
"I'm not! I'm just stating a fact, that's all," Signora replied.
"You started out tripping on floors you covered with ice a lot, Rosalyne. You approached your Quirk the same way you did with your serum-derived flame; raising icy walls and debris with reckless abandon. You couldn't hit a target from 30 meters away with your icy spears."
Per his long memory, the Jester detailed her bungled Hero operations - one where she failed to stop a hostage crisis in Kaliningrad - and all the moments where Tartaglia and Arlecchino, lower-ranked Harbingers, no less - upstaged her. As Pierro went through more mistakes Signora made back then, she started twirling her hair's ends around her finger, her smug smile hiding her crumbling pride.
"...Not to mention Columbina once beat your high score in Fatui Karaoke once." Signora ground her teeth beneath her smile. That young, angelic starlet was lucky her throat was a bit hoarse from that World Hero Association meeting; her mature, seasoned soprano voice would never lose to someone who only learned how to sing from the Fair Lady herself!
"Alright, alright. You got me." The last of her pride shattered, Signora took a deep breath to relax. She respected the Jester enough not to hit back with her words or powers. "Skip to your point."
"But when I found you in Zakopane, I took your embers and rekindled them to who you are right now. I saw this land's bitter cold soothe you and build you up to one of the Fatui's finest. Not once in your journey did I give up on you."
Pierro's words took Signora back to that Polish town where she burned down an entire Villain gang tormenting the locals. As a reward, the locals detained her in a specialized maximum-security cell that showered her with firefighting foam every 2 minutes. The town police did nothing to protect her from fellow inmates she incinerated when they got near. Had the First Harbinger not rescued her, she would've never seen the outside world ever again.
"Perhaps this is a lesson to extend to your student the compassion Her Majesty gave to you," The Jester said. "I believe you are more than capable of turning him into a formidable asset."
Walking out of Pierro's office, Signora thought about her teaching methods. Was she too harsh? Well, the real world was a far harsher teacher than she'll ever be, and all she did was prepare to kid for what was to come. She saw many, many Fatui agents march from Arlecchino's classrooms to their early graves, and sidekicks having their dreams cut short before they even took their Hero License exams.
But Pierro and the Tsaritsa were firm, no doubt, and fair with her when she learned how to manipulate ice. Wasn't she supposed to return the favor? Toya showed a lot of potential; that level of rage could be redirected to the Fatui's enemies instead.
To do that, though, Signora had to do the unthinkable.
"Kid… I want to say something I… I… I… I was too harsh towards you the other day." Contorting her lips to say those words hurt Signora who took a sip from her favorite red wine to soothe them. Her legs hurt from stepping down from her icy pedestal and, for once, admitting she's been mean to someone else. "Let's focus on learning new things, for now. I have something to teach you."
Toya sat down, not buying Signora's rehearsed apology completely. Looking around for vents or windows, he decided to stay a while and pass the time listening to her words.
"Fire is a beautiful beast. It's the only beast in the world whose hunger can never be satisfied. Once it touches something - wood or grass, it consumes it until not even ashes remain. And it moves to the next branch or flower and eats it until it dies for good."
Toya felt the cold on his icy chair soothe his scars and calm his flames down. His rage and bitterness faded from the moment he sat, he focused on everything she taught.
"But fire doesn't only destroy. I will teach you how it can create beautiful things." A butterfly made out of pure flame spawned from Signora's right hand.
"Signora, how do you make these?" Toya said, following the butterfly's flight path. The fiery insect flew around the hall and near the window before fading away.
"A beginner can do it." Another one emerged from Signora's left hand which flew near to Toya's head before dissipating. "All you have to do is to create a spark in your hands and imagine a beautiful butterfly resting on a flower. Keep that image in your mind as your flame changes shape."
"I'll try," Toya recalled Rei taking him, Fuyumi, and Natsuo to Tama Zoological Park. When a butterfly landed on his hand, his older sister took time to explain what they were and what they did for the environment.
A blue outline of a butterfly emerged from his fingertips. The outline slowly grew antennae and legs and its shifting wings began to flutter-
"You talked about your father a lot back then. What was he like?"
The butterfly outline atop his hand distorted before vanishing completely at the mention of Endeavor.
"Endeavor wanted me to follow in his footsteps as a Pro Hero. He even let me watch him burn the bad guys and cuff them for the cops; he was the coolest person in the world for me, of course, I'd do anything to be like him."
Toya's face slowly contorted, his eyes burning red in rage.
"...But no, to him I'm not cut out to be a Hero! After years and years of pushing me to be one!"
"Who cares what he thinks? You're agile and you learn quickly."
"Apparently, my body burns up with this Quirk, unlike Mom's Quirk or yours where it's just a cold shower. Endeavor said I can't handle the heat… but the thing is, he didn't even teach me how to! It got worse when that prick Shoto was born; now it's like he's his only child so he didn't need to look at us just because he could do both fire and ice like you do while we can't! I bet he's too busy cheering him to even think about me, if not smacking him for screwing up a little…"
"Wait, he beats his own son?"
"I remember that like it was yesterday!" Fire started to wrap Toya's wrists. "He's better than all of us combined, but not good enough for Endeavour all the time! Shoto once got his technique wrong, so Endeavour smacked him until he fell to the floor! Mom, who was shitty in her own way got smacked when she tried to protect him! I saw it all with my own two eyes!"
"What did I do wrong? Fuyumi? Natsuo? What did any of us do ?! Not even SHOTO is good enough for Endeavor, and he had EVERYTHING he wanted! Would a father fucking do that?! Huh?!"
Signora might've never met Endeavour in person, yet she couldn't help but feel like she wanted to burn him to a crisp the more Toya talked about him. Why did it have to be Rostam who left this world too early? He was a Hero in every sense of the word; gentlemanly, righteous, and even spent his day off with her Chemistry students where he got to know all of them. All he got in return was a bomb neo-Nazis placed on his apartment!
"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" Shrouding his fist in blue fire, Toya left a hole in the fireproof wall with it. The fire spread to his arms as the hole grew big from his punches' ferocity. She noticed his eyes were red with no tears while he scratched his arm scars.
"Now I'm not good enough for you too, huh, bitch?! Just because you think you're better than me?! FUCK YOU, THEN!"
For a few seconds, Signora wanted to burn off his face, from his hair to the lips. However, as she took in everything he said, Rosalyne froze up.
She saw herself escorted to the town prison as the people she saved threw trash and spat at her. The townsfolk she burned away her insides for to free them from those thugs repaid her with scorn and hatred. The insults those ingrates threw at her rang fresh in her mind: Murderer. Criminal. Vigilante.
Czarownica - witch.
As her humiliation went on, Rosalyne imagined herself burning them all alive with their own torches. Eventually, it came true - it was passed off as a terrorist attack which she took credit for arresting the suspects.
"It's not your fault, Toya, that the world threw you away," Tapping the young man's shoulder, Rosalyne looked him in the eyes and said. She took off her mask and gloves, revealing somewhat healed but prominent burn scars on her arms and right cheek. Her right eye had a different color, suggesting it was artificial. "It's no place for people like us."
"Where… did you get them?" Toya asked.
"They're reminders that not every scar will fade. That not every wound will heal," She said, silently comparing her scars with the young man's. Rosalyne had top-notch plastic surgeons work on her face, covering up most of the scars. The young man's scars, though, needed a lifetime's worth of touch-ups.
"I wanted to be a hero just like you, to bring justice to the monsters who took everything from me. The only thing I did wrong was not being their type of hero." The townsfolk's jeers and shouts rang in her mind. "Ask yourself, kid. Say, you manage to escape this facility and make your way back home. Do you really want to come back to that monster's cave? Where your dreams will only be burned to ash?"
Toya shook his head. Perfect. She had him right where she wanted him to go.
"Forget Endeavour. Forget your family. You're with us now. Everyone will abandon you, and leave you to shoulder the world's unending burdens…"
Toya's eyes began to spark with anger. Right on target; anger against closed-minded fools was always good common ground.
"But not Her Majesty, nor me. I promise you, Toya…" She held the young man's shoulders as the finishing touch. "...I will help you be the hero you were meant to be."
"Why are you doing this?" The young man asked.
"It's a favor for an old flame." Rostam and her students, to be exact. "The Tsaritsa's noble cause needs more loyal soldiers as well."
"Yeah." Toya nodded. This wasn't the first time heard these words, but this was the first time he heard someone mean those words.
"Tomorrow, we're going to formally start your training. I will assure you, you'll have way more fans than that bratty cyborg they call the Sixth Harbinger. But first, I have a fantastic moniker for you. Want to hear it?"
"Not bad… your kicks could use a little more poise, though." La Signora said, shielding herself from Toya's flurry of flame kicks.
The wily servant from Commedia dell'arte, Mezzetino was a troublemaker who resorted to violence if the situation called for it. Per his training, Toya concentrated his quirk from his five fingertips, wreathing them in blue flame as he swirled his fists trying to hit Signora from all directions.
"You've got some nerve to lay your hands on my sculptures, however." One of Toya's fists managed to break Signora's nearly-porcelain face - only for a frozen facsimile to shatter in her place. Toya tumbled behind him, barely dodging frozen mines that detonated under his feet. "Do you have any idea how long I shape these masterpieces?"
"Looks like I struck a nerve." Mezzetino smiled, cartwheeling to evade Signora's icicle strikes left and right before melting a frost spear she hurled at his abdomen.
Mezzetino was not merely a brutish servant, he was an accomplished singer and dancer as well. Toya wasn't bad at Fatui Karaoke, but he truly shined at dancing; he wove and spun his body around Signora's icicle barrage, his palms turning the airborne icicles into puddles.
To her credit, she was one of the few Pro Heroines who could run fast and kick ass in heels. Before Toya could shoot out a Jet Burn, though, the Fair Lady encased his hands in ice that shrunk his gout of flame even as he turned those blocks into puddles.
"Signora- how do you do this?!" Toya looked at his hands, unable to see Signora freezing his feet.
"The same techniques I used for those ice sculptures of me - power and elegance," The Fair Lady said while grading his performance. "Toya, you still have a lot to learn in combining the two."
Having just finished a hard day's work of practice, Toya went back to his room to chill out with some Viktor Tsoi. Never once did he think he'd be a sidekick to one of the world's top Pro Heroes, much less be an up-and-coming candidate for Russia's top Pro Hero squad: the Harbingers.
Never once did he think his journey would start in a Japanese hot spring.