MHA : Shoto Todoroki - Modern-day Terrorist

"Is it a wise decision ?"

Nezu smiled as he watered his plants though Katsuki couldn't see it.

Clever boy.

"Isn't he your friend ?", he quipped swiftly.

Katsuki frowned.

"He is"

"And don't you want what's best for him ?"

Katsuki thought about their last discussion, weeks ago now, how unfamiliar Shoto had looked in his room, the easiness with which he'd hit him, the knowledge that had he been anyone else, all of the bones in his torso would've been obliterated, his organs, turned liquid, would've spilled out from his orifices.

Katsuki remembered the severed head of All for One, the pools of blood, the torture instruments discarded on the dirtied ground.

Yet Katsuki also remembered the boy who'd held his hands deep in his father's chest for hours, crying over a man who'd already been dead when he arrived.

"I do"

His answer was quiet, and for once the voices weren't talking.

Despite everything, Katsuki wished from the bottom of his heart that Shoto could get better – that he could find peace.

Nezu, as if hearing his thoughts, said :

"Wouldn't the best we can do for him to welcome him in an environment where he can be at peace ?"

Katsuki looked unconvinced, and Nezu had to admit that this word - 'peace' - has a funny way of rolling from his tongue, a tiny bit more high pitched than it should be, a little bit too ironic in a sentence devoid of irony.

"He needs to see that the world is not only violence, not merely him and those that are against him"

Katsuki's lips are pursed.

If there's anybody on earth who can know how true Nezu's words are, it's him, though there's an intermittent tingling at the back of his head, a warning bell that goes on then stops abruptly and starts again.

"Wouldn't the best we can do is get him a shrink ?"

Nezu peered at his hibiscus like a proud father at his child.

He carefully cuts off a few leaves that are slightly brown on the edges.

"What would be the point ? He wouldn't talk to him"

Let alone go to the appointments, they both thought.

"I'm not sure letting him near-" anybody "- the students from 2-A is a good idea"

"Oh that would be an awful idea"

The crease between Katsuki's brows deepened.

"Then why did you invite him to Yuei ?"

Nezu stilled, his assessing gaze settling on Katsuki for a while, and he noticed how easily Katsuki got flustered though he hid it very well.

"What ?", Katsuki finally blurted, defensive

Katsuki was used to getting everything right on the first try, always two steps ahead of his peers.

Nezu makes him feel stupid, leaves him crumbs and watches as he comes again each time for more, never satisfied with what he's gotten.

He slowly got back to his work, acting like he hadn't noticed Katsuki's red ears.

"He's been absolved", Nezu explained. "And though I believe our government is wise enough to leave him to his own devices, I can't say the same for other countries. They'll do their best to recruit him and if not..."

" 'If not' ?", Katsuki repeated.

"What do you do to things you can't control ?"

"You destroy them", Katsuki said, and Nezu smiled at the sliver of self-satisfaction he heard in his voice. Pavlov had nothing on him. "But it would just be stupid. They'd sign their death arrest"

"At the end of the day, Shoto is human – and the first with multiple Quirks that have nothing to do with All for One's abilities. If they can't have him work for them, they won't want anybody else to have him. The same goes for our dear country"

Katsuki's eyes widened.

"You don't mean… ?"

"They'll either try to get him to work for them", Nezu said. "Or they'll annihilate him"

Noticing Katsuki's tensed expression, Nezu couldn't help but add wryly :

"Nothing has changed, Katsuki. It was bound to happen one day or another, Endeavor's death or not. His sudden disappearance has just accelerated what had started years ago"

Enji Todoroki had been the leash, and now they only had a rabid dog who'd killed one of the most powerful beings on earth as if he were a mere cockroach.

This was bound to make people sweat and, admittedly, Nezu hadn't expected Shoto to do it with such ease.

It was disconcerting. Terrifying, too. Useful…

"Though Shoto is far from a fool. Once he stops wallowing in self-pity, he'll quickly choose a wide. Despite what they've done, the Commission is my best bet. Special Forces wouldn't cut it as he's got a strong dislike for one of their most prominent members. The military may be viable..."

And there was also his monster of a grandmother.

Somebody as powerful and well-connected as Teka Todoroki entering Japanese grounds didn't go unnoticed.

This woman led an empire that spanned five continents and was believed to employ hundreds of thousands of people – some aware of who they worked for, most not – and had an entire country at her beck and call. Should she feel the need to, she could push Europe to start a war with them – if Italy didn't directly jump to their throat.

Years ago Nezu had thought it wise to accept Enji Todoroki's application at Yuei, hiding his lineage from the government to not raise suspicions, nurturing another of his little prodigy that would expand his influence once they were older.

Now he wondered if it hadn't been a miscalculation on his part.

Teka had moved numerous pawns here during the last thirty years…

Nezu was aware that she'd received a couple of officials and unofficial letters asking her to leave Japan or they'd consider it a war declaration. It was a bluff : Japan was too weakened to act on their threat.

The worrying thing was that Teka hadn't even bothered answering their queries and, from what Nezu had garnered, she'd even brought in more of her militia, mafia, or whatever the hell they were.

Shoto was a monster, but this woman truly was a picture-perfect one-man army.

Katsuki opened his mouth, frowned, analyzed carefully what Nezu had said, backpedaled instantly.

"What they've done ?"

Nezu stilled, closed his eyes briefly.

He puts down the watering can and faces the teen standing in full Heroic gear.

He was cleverer than All Might was at his age but not as jaded as he could've been considering everything that happened.

"You didn't get it ? I thought you of all people would've noticed..."

There, sting his pride and Katsuki will eat in your hand.

Nezu sighed dramatically, shaking his head as he did so.

"Never mind. It will do no good to talk about it"

"I can't agree if you do not tell me what you're talking about"

Nezu walked to his desk and moved a few papers around, acting busy.

"Thank you for your time, Dynamight, though I believe it is late and you have other duties you may wish to attend"

"I'm not leaving"

"It's nothing of importance"

"You don't trust me"

Nezu put down the document he was skimming over.

"It has nothing to do with trust"

"It has if you refuse to tell me what you're acting all weird 'bout"

Nezu, paws crossed, looked thoughtful as he watched Katsuki.

Trust was a weird concept : he held a near fanatic obsession with Japan only because they were the ones who'd rescued him from his lab and allowed him to be more than a failed experiment, whereas Katsuki held Shoto in such high esteem only because the boy had saved him from a certain death at the hands of All for One in the now infamous summer camp fiasco.

Duty and appreciation shaped Katsuki and Nezu, though they both acted significantly differently on it.

"Alright", Nezu conceded. "I'll tell you but I trust you not to tell a word to a soul – especially not Shoto. He may be aware of it, you are not to discuss it with him, understood ?"

Katsuki's mouth thinned briefly at the mention of his friend. He nodded sharply.

"I swear. Now what is this all about ?"

*

As soon as he passed the threshold of the room, all of the conversations died.

Everyone stood there, speechless, as Shoto went to his seat and took his school supplies out.

He didn't speak and wasn't spoken to, he doesn't look and he's not looked at.

There were fewer people than he remembered, but he didn't care enough to count who was still here and who had left.

A couple of students left the class and didn't come until the afternoon.

At lunch, Shoto doesn't go to the cafeteria but eats home-cooked bentos at his desk or perched in a tree, far from everybody else. In his pocket is the unopened letter addressed to him.

During the practical portion of training he stayed on his own a bit further away, working out with weight-enhanced seals, sweating profusely, a couple of his clones working on his fuinjutsu where everybody could see them.

He showered when everyone else was done, got to his room, and cleaned it thoroughly until late in the night. It was full of dust and cobwebs, but judging from the lack of blood on the floor, nobody poked around and got killed by his traps.

On the second day, Kirishima greeted him shyly.

Shoto was looking outside, gaze dull, hair a mess, and his eyes minutely turned to the boy.

He looked back to the training grounds covered in grass and wondered what Yuei was like for his father, if he had friends, if he was always angry and confused.

On the rooftop, as he watched the furthest thing he could see on the school grounds, he put himself in his shoes and tried to see what the world looked like for him at seventeen, full of wonder and possibilities.

He could become anything he wants.

Shoto could, too, but in some way, everything had been set in stone since the beginning.

He accepts it. That's the major difference between who he was before his father's death and who he is now.

He won't ever shy away from his true self, won't try to bury it beneath false kindness and pretended humanity.

On the third day, Katsuki was waiting for him outside of the dormitory, pacing on the fresh grass.

Shoto had felt him a while ago, waited until he landed on the grass before he got out.

His disheveled appearance makes him pause at the top of the stairs.

The students carefully avoided him, scattering like salt in the wind until there was nobody but them and the ringing school bell.

"If you want excuses", Shoto said, voice scratchy. "There's not gonna be any"

He didn't feel sorry, never really had been for anything.

"How could you ?", Katsuki spit out, revulsion dripping like venom from his voice

Shoto's eyes were dull. He blinked.

Katsuki was red in the face.

"Fucking dogs !", he half-screamed as if it explained everything, and it did

"He got what he deserved"

"How could you do that to another human being ? How could you- how can you even look yourself in the mirror ?"

"He touched what wasn't his to touch", Shoto bluntly answered. "He shouldn't have crossed me"

Katsuki shut up and, for the first time, when he looked at Shoto there wasn't compassion or warmth, only confusion and a bottomless well of incomprehension.

For the first time, Katsuki realized he didn't know who was standing before him.

"I thought we were friends" His voice cracked on the last words. He steeled himself. "I always thought you were a bit weird but you always were there for me, so I thought I had to be there for you too. Only now am I realizing that it was not friendship. You don't have friends, only people you can use"

There was a sharp burst in Shoto's chest but it was instantly drowned by the overwhelming pain that had been accompanying him for weeks now.

"Once I was done", Shoto said slowly, numbly. "I pissed on his corpse"

Katsuki turned red and suddenly he was in centimeters from Shoto and they were head to head, one set of eyes blazing the other barely aware of its surroundings.

He grabbed Shoto by the collar of his shirt and screamed angrily in his face :

"Dumb ass, wake the fuck up ! All for One didn't kill your father : the Commission purposefully let him die !"

There was a blink. Another.

A flurry of emotions flashed through Shoto's eyes, too quick for Katsuki to pinpoint them.

He wanted to bite his tongue but couldn't stop now that he'd started.

"He was alive when All for One left", Katsuki said. "They could've saved him but they didn't because they knew you'd hunt All for One to the end of the universe if you had to. They wanted you to do what All Might couldn't do. They used you"

Shoto's eyes were slightly wider, his gaze a tad more alert, and Katsuki wouldn't stop.

"You tortured a man for two weeks straight in the most inhuman ways possible. You're a fucking monster, do you know that ?" Spit flew out of his mouth as he screamed. "I regret every second I spent defending you. I should've stepped aside when they told me they wanted to kill you"

He let him go and left without another look back.

Shoto stared into space.

He stayed at the top of the stairs until the end of the first period.

When the bell rang, he automatically started walking to where he knew the next class would be held.

It was a fight practice. They were an even number, thus somebody had to pair with him.

They were nervous. He barely noticed a slightly nervous Kirishima jogging toward him, sending reassuring looks to his friends, looks that said 'don't worry about him, he's just like us'-

He was alive when All for One left.

-and suddenly Kirishima is on the ground, eyes wide, forearms protecting his face.

Shoto's eyes are glazed as he hits him, the fog surrounding his mind clearing until he's all sharp edges once more.

[Bargaining] Anger

"Hey", Kirishima said under the flurry of hits, voice wobbly, and there was fear there. "You won, just let me-"

Shoto's fist split his head in two like a hammer pummeling a watermelon.

There were screams.

Something thicker than blood trickled between Kirishima's eyebrows and down his nose.

Shoto hit again because when you get the enemy down you need to make sure they're dead.

Kirishima's nose broke first before his cheekbones exploded, his face losing structure, his lips split open like earth when a volcano sprouts from the ground.

Shoto was an animal in the body of a man, a monster whose cracking skin was barely holding him together.

The sound of his fists hitting and breaking flesh echoed endlessly in his mind and out of it, mixing until the only sound he heard was that of his heavy breathing.

Everyone had fled.

One of them was crawling, her legs having given up on her. Someone else threw up. People are crying.

"It's messy, Shoto"

The familiar voice chilled him to the bone.

He rose like a possessed man, fists raw and bloody, panting, slowly turning around, freezing as his eyes settled on the man standing among the teenagers.

"Oh my god", somebody muttered. "Oh my god"

Shoto took a step towards his father, shaky hand raised, and the students dispersed from his vicinity as quickly as they were his father's.

Hysteria swept over them.

They were all screaming or curling up on the ground, head between their locked knees, frantically rocking back and forth, wild eyes going from a dead boy and a man who should be dead, madness teetering at the edge.

"Leave", Dad said "You can't stay here. Leave"

"Is it true ?", Shoto wondered out loud, eyes wet, and the double meaning wasn't lost on Enji.

"Leave before they imprison you again"

Shoto looked around, uncertain and dry-mouthed, unable to notice the dead boy or the delirious teenagers.

"Come with me"

He grabbed his father's extended hand and although his smell wasn't quite right and he didn't feel like the sun, Shoto knew it was the best he'll ever manage.

Enji squeezed his hand and they both disappeared.