Chapter Text
Touya knew he would be a hero.
From the moment he was born, he knew. His parents had watched him closely, encouraged him, and Dad had talked about his own work enough that Touya could imagine himself there. All sorts of details, like how to best track down a bad guy and how to dodge attacks were described and even practiced, his dad egging him on every step of the way.
And when his quirk came in, bold fire just like Endeavor, it was a given: He would be a hero like his father.
So every night when Dad came home, they dove into training together. When Dad wasn’t home, Touya had to hang out with Mom and Fuyumi. Whenever he tried to teach Fuyumi the cool moves Dad showed him, Mom would come between them with chastisements against fighting. So what? It was okay for Dad to fight with Touya, but not Touya to fight with Fuyumi? Probably because she was a girl.
That was fine. Fuyumi had Mom, and Touya had Dad.
Dad’s days off were spent with him, in that training room of dreams, increasing his quirk capacity. Sometimes things got intense, but it was worth it to see the proud look on his face. And the occasional little burn was an annoyance, but it wouldn’t stop him. He was meant to be a hero, so he’d find a way to manage those limitations.
Unfortunately, Dad didn’t feel the same way. “...Touya, what was ‘ow’?”
Touya shook his arm out. “It got pretty hot.”
Gingerly, Dad lifted his arm, peering at the slightly pink spot. “A burn?”
“I dunno.” Touya smiled up at him. “What’s next?”
For some reason, Dad was frowning. “A break.”
It was frustrating, every time Touya burned even just slightly, Dad would suddenly call for a break and be all hesitant with their training for a day or two. Touya was doing something wrong, letting the pain show where a hero would fight through it.
So he steeled himself, and next time he burned he made sure not to show it. Pretended his skin didn’t sear and hurt. He found ways to mitigate, instead of a steady fire learning to create a pulse that looked almost the same but gave his sensitive skin less strain. It apparently worked, since Dad didn’t do as many breaks anymore. They could train and fight properly again, and Touya was happy in the knowledge that he was getting stronger.
Still, there were days where Dad had to work, and he was once again stuck with the girls. He disliked those days the most, feeling out-of-place with Fuyumi’s dolls and Mom’s domestic chores making her too busy to really pay attention to them.
“…so Mimi and the others go to pay respects to the fluff gods,” Fuyumi explained the premise, swinging the tiny girl dolls with dumb little fashion accessories towards the comparatively larger stuffed animals.
Touya picked up a hedgehog plushie. “And then the gods destroyed them!”
He waved it aggressively, sweeping over her neatly-arranged line of dolls until they were all knocked over, then swung it over her fists tightly gripping the last of them.
She whined, “Touya! That’s mean! They’re nice gods!”
“That’s boring,” Touya whined right back.
Fuyumi pursed her lips. “Then Mimi beats up your god!”
She whacked the hedgehog plushie with her fist, still holding a little plastic doll.
Playing was a bore, but fighting? He could get behind that. He dove for Fuyumi, just like Dad taught him to, to try to pin her down and make her surrender and admit her idea was dumb.
But she was wigglier than he expected, Dad had demonstrated and stuff, but he’d never actually tried to brawl someone his own size. So he did his best, but her alarmed, swinging arms eventually hit him hard in the upper shoulder, slapping against a burn, and he screamed out in pain.
She sat up immediately. “Touya? You okay?”
“You hit one of my burns,” he complained before he could think better of it.
Her eyes widened. “Burns?”
She got up, scurrying away. He watched her go, huffing. That didn’t mean she won, he just backed off because his body wasn’t in top condition.
When she returned with Mom behind her though, he had a bad feeling.
“Touya? Fuyumi said you were burned.”
He wasn’t sure what the right answer was. Dad always stopped training when he confessed to it, but he wasn’t training now, and this wasn’t Dad. “…I guess.”
Mom’s brows furrowed. “Let me see.”
The first one she saw, she put on some sort of special cream, and it actually felt pretty good, soft and cooling. So he showed her a second one, and a third one…
“There’s a lot,” Mom commented.
“I’ll get better,” Touya reassured her, “so I won’t get them as often.”
He thought that was that.
But then when Dad got home, after they all are dinner, he didn’t go straight to the training room with Touya. Mom tugged him aside, dragged him to their bedroom, and Touya was left to play with Fuyumi again.
When the door to the bedroom opened, Touya jumped up, running towards Dad. “Ready?” He asked with a grin already on his face.
Dad looked down at him. “Not tonight, Touya.”
Not tonight turned into Not tomorrow and no more days after that. Touya was stuck with Mom, the one who he was certain had done something to make Dad stop training him, and Fuyumi who had told Mom about the burns.
It pissed him off.
So he kept training on his own, practicing his fire, trying to get strong enough that Dad would look at him again. But every time he reached out, Dad just turned away. He spent more time off doing hero work, so again and again Touya was stuck with Mom’s tired chores and Fuyumi’s idiotic playtimes.
Then Mom started acting weird, and there was a bump in her stomach.
Then Dad started acting weird too, fussing over Mom when he was home, ordering out meals so she didn’t have to cook, giving her foot massages, trying to make sure she was in top condition.
For a baby.
A baby who mattered more than Touya’s training, apparently. Touya dreaded each passing day that the due date got closer. His hair had started changing, turning white, and he didn’t know what that meant. All he knew was that Dad wouldn’t look at him, or at anything aside from that growing bulge in Mom’s belly.
Then his sibling was born. Dad had raced to the hospital, taken one look at the wispy white hairs coming out of the child’s head, and sighed.
Touya didn’t know what to think of how Dad threw himself back into work while Mom raised up Natsuo. Fuyumi acted all excited about a little brother, but Touya knew exactly what he was: Another failed son. It was honestly a relief, knowing that meant Dad would have to go back to Touya, right?
When a few years passed and Natsuo reached the age of quirk discovery with no fire at all, Mom got pregnant again.
This time, she seemed more tired than he remembered from Natsuo. Her eyes were sunken, and she was passing more work onto Fuyumi. Fuyumi spent a lot of time watching and looking after Natsuo, and could even fold her own laundry now. Mom tried to make Touya fold his own, but he didn’t want to. That wasn’t what Dad did, what heroes did, and Touya would become a hero, no matter what. He was still training on his own, sneaking off before and after school to build up his quirk skills. It was only a matter of time–he’d become strong enough that he could show Dad, and Dad would realize he was still worth training.
When Mom got frustrated, Fuyumi took it upon herself to fold Touya’s laundry when Mom wasn’t looking, so she believed that Touya had finally cooperated. He almost forgave her for telling Mom about those burns all those years ago.
Then Shouto was born.
Hair half-white, half-red. When Dad saw him, he smiled, the way he used to smile at Touya, and it hit him all at once.
He was replaced.
Touya raged, he insisted, he burned to try and show Dad that he couldn’t just leave him like that, couldn’t just trade him out for a literal newborn, but after he got angry enough to attack Shouto, Shouto was raised on his own, separate from him and the others.
And Dad still wouldn’t look at him. He’d come home and go straight for the side building where Shouto was being raised.
Touya knew his quirk was a mess, designed to withstand freezing temperatures and yet producing hot flames, but he had to believe there was a way to work with it. If his Dad, a top hero, would just work with him instead of ignoring him, he was certain they could figure out a way.
Until then, he would practice on his own.
Fuyumi noticed a lot.
Natsuo was growing taller quickly. She had started slipping some of Touya’s clothes into his drawers, stuff that Touya never wore, so he’d have stuff that fit properly.
Touya was as volatile as ever, on a hair trigger just like Dad. She maneuvered around his temper expertly, avoiding the topics of heroes and training and quirks and redirecting anyone who approached the subject. Whenever he tried to get Natsuo to ‘play-fight’ with him, she’d intervene to try and distract him, since Natsuo usually wasn’t a fan. The best she could get most times was suggesting soccer; it was still physical and worked out Touya’s energy, but Natsuo actually enjoyed it.
Shouto… she saw him sometimes. Through the windows. They weren’t supposed to get close to him after that whole fiasco with Touya, which seemed unfair. But she knew better than to disobey–last time Natsuo had tried to climb the fence to the Shouto building, Dad ended up shouting at him, but then shouting at Mom even more.
Fuyumi knew about their arguments as well.
Before Shouto was born, Fuyumi and Touya had listened together. Little arguments, but with Dad’s volume it was easy to hear. Talks about how Mom’s quirk was supposed to combine with Dad’s quirk, and sometimes cruel and confusing words about how Mom’s family had promised him better, and that they would have to keep trying and trying again until things mixed right.
Around the time Shouto was born, Touya didn’t try to listen in on those conversations anymore. He wasn’t interested, having heard enough of their disappointment. But Fuyumi still crept in the night, sneaking to the bathroom next to their parent’s bedroom, putting her ear up against the wall to know what was going on and what would happen next.
She needed to know so she could plan ahead. Decisions were made in those painful conferences, and they weren’t always passed on to the kids. When they decided to hire a nanny for the three of them, so Mom could focus on Shouto, Fuyumi had spent a week emphasizing to her brothers how tired Mom was and how it would be nice if she had help. When the news of the nanny came around to them, she hoped that her priming had made them a little less surly about the idea.
Right now, things were at an unsteady peace. Shouto’s hair suggested that he would have a half-fire, half-ice quirk, but he hadn’t actually expressed a quirk yet. Dad was still going to his building and taking him into the training room, so Fuyumi was certain he had started training him, but she had heard nothing of a quirk manifestation.
She knew Touya still had burns. Sometimes he’d come home and make Natsuo help put burn cream on his back. He had sworn Natsuo to secrecy, but Natsuo luckily still told Fuyumi about it, even if he didn’t tell their parents. She didn’t tell their parents either; she had learned her lesson considering how Touya would bring up the one time she had told Mom about his burns every time he got mad at her. It seemed pretty stupid to her. If he stopped using his quirk he’d be better. If he stopped expecting things from Dad, he’d hurt a lot less.
But today, a teacher had called Mom about Touya’s burns. Touya had complained about it on the way home, and Fuyumi’s heart was already racing knowing that something would happen tonight. Mom was terrified of Touya’s quirk, what it could do to him, and when she was brutally reminded by a teacher’s insistent concern, it put her on the edge of something. Mom didn’t usually blow up like Dad did, but a dark mood would lace her words, and as she prepared today’s dinner the chops of the knife against the block were loud, like she was slamming the blade.
Dad was out late again, so he didn’t join them for dinner. Mom served them dinner, then went to go take care of Shouto, trading places with the housekeeper.
The kids were in bed by the time Fuyumi heard the front door open. She listened intently to the familiar steps, heavy and plodding to her parents bedroom. With well-practiced stillness, she crept out of her room. She skipped each creaking floorboard and made her way to that bathroom, slotting herself carefully into it so she could curl up against the wall and hear what she would need to look out for over the next few days.
Dad’s voice. “….he’s your kid, it’s your turn to convince him.”
“Me? It’s your quirk that’s killing him, Enji, you have to do something!”
“What the hell am I supposed to do? I already made clear I won’t train him, I even had Shouto to make that clear.”
“And what if his quirk isn’t what we think?” Mom’s voice was shrill, scared, “Will I have to have another?”
“We’ll see.”
“We’ll see? We’ll see? That’s all you have to say? Our son is dying in front of our eyes, and all you want to do is make another one.”
“Rei–”
“Please,” Mom’s voice warbled in the way it did when she was crying, “Please fix him, I can’t, I don’t know how, if you can just fix him…”
Fuyumi’s fists clenched at the hopelessness in the voice. Frost prickled at her knuckles, and she absently brushed it away.
“His quirk is a failure, I can’t change that.”
“There has to be a way, please, you’re a goddamned hero Enji, you have to have access to something that could fix this.”
Strangely, Dad didn’t respond for several long moments.
Mom spoke again, “...Is there something?”
“I don’t know,” Dad’s voice got quieter, and Fuyumi had to strain to hear, “there are rumors of someone who can… who can take and give quirks.”
Fuyumi held her breath. That seemed like a scary power, she’d never heard of people’s quirks being something that could be taken or given.
Her mother seemed to take some time to process, then started, “...So what then? You… you take away Touya’s quirk? And he can’t hurt himself anymore?”
Fuyumi swallowed hard. Touya would not like that, not at all.
“No,” Dad said, “what if… well, Touya got the fire, but Fuyumi got the ice. If we could take Fuyumi’s quirk…”
Now her toes froze, as if trying to lock her to the ground. Fuyumi kicked her way out of the smattering of icicles, struggling to imagine what it would be to live without her quirk. It was a part of her, but… but if it helped Touya…
“E-Enji… we can’t punish her just because of Touya…”
Would it be a punishment, though? If it would help Touya? If her parents would stop having to fight about him?
Dad sighed. “You’re right, it’s crazy. Hell, those rumors are about a villain, so it’s not like I could ask for a favor.”
Somehow, the hypothetical had driven them both to quiet, and they started preparing for bed. Fuyumi tip-toed out of the bathroom, creeping back into her room without making a sound.
The next day, while her brothers were eating breakfast and Dad was rushing out the door, she said loudly, “Touya, I wish I could give you my quirk.”
Just as planned, Dad paused in putting on his jacket. Touya, meanwhile, looked at her like she’d grown two heads. “…Huh?”
This was tricky. It was a sensitive subject for Touya, but Fuyumi was determined. She let out a sigh. “I hate seeing you get hurt. If there were a way to give you my quirk to cool you down, I’d give it. Even if that would make me quirkless, it’d be worth it.”
“Don’t talk about stupid stuff,” Touya told her, “I can still be a hero with my quirk. I don’t need you or your pity.”
He chomped on his breakfast angrily, but Dad had hovered at the door, and didn’t actually leave until the conversation seemed done.
The pieces were set. She hoped they would fall as expected.
If Dad was driving him somewhere, that had to be a good sign, right?
Touya kicked his legs in the backseat, excited to see where they were going. He wanted to believe that his dad was taking him somewhere special to announce that he had changed his mind, that he wanted to train him again, but…
Well, he wasn’t sure why Fuyumi was here in the seat next to him.
Dad hadn’t said anything more than demanding they get in the car. Touya didn’t want to ask, in case it made Dad frustrated enough to turn the car around and abort whatever they were about to do. So he leaned towards Fuyumi. “…What are you thinking?”
There was something too knowing in the smile she returned. “I think things will be okay.”
He scoffed, leaning back. So she wanted to act all mysterious, too? Whatever. Fuyumi always thought things would be okay, some way or another.
When they finally parked on some side street he’d never seen before, Touya finally worked up the courage to ask, “Where are we going?”
Dad paused. “...We’re going to see a specialist.”
Then he got out of the car, and Touya scrambled to follow. Fuyumi slipped out behind him, still not asking any questions. So he asked another, “What kind of specialist?”
“...A quirk specialist,” Dad said, then frowned a little deeper, “I guess.”
Touya hesitated at that. He wasn’t sure if a specialist was good or bad. And he could guess that the specialist would be doing something about his quirk, but he wasn’t sure what Fuyumi’s deal was. He knew she couldn’t hold her ice very long, but it’s not like she had much reason to use it, so why would Dad include her in whatever this was?
“Come on,” Dad ushered them along the street, towards a dark building.
Touya followed, something like anticipation building in his stomach. The gate they eventually entered was traditionally built, like their home, but there were men standing outside with a dangerous aura.
Was this some sort of hero mission? Had Dad decided to bring Touya along to one to show him what it was like?
But the guards parted upon seeing Dad, and they entered easily. A peaceful garden greeted them, but Dad didn’t slow down at all to take it in. He was solid but stiff in his steps, a trace of uncertainty that had Touya looking around the garden for anything amiss. Despite the mounting bad feeling, they entered a building.
Inside, an old man sat at a low table. “Endeavor. Welcome, sit down.”
Dad sat down. “I’m not on hero business, so call me Todoroki.”
The old man chuckled. Touya was confused, but Fuyumi sat down beside Dad so he followed suit.
“So these are the children?” The man asked.
Dad nodded. “He has the fire quirk, she has the ice quirk.”
“I see. Are you kids ready?”
Fuyumi nodded, but Touya was still confused. “Ready for what?”
The old man eyed Dad with a raised eyebrow. “Have you…?”
“I didn’t want to explain it in the house, my wife… I think she’d be happier if it was just done, and she didn’t have to play a role in the decision.”
“Ah.” The man stood up. “I’ll be back, but you may want to explain things to them before I return.”
The man left, sliding the door shut behind himself, and Touya turned on Dad. “What does that mean?”
“Touya.” His face was stiff. “You can’t keep going with your quirk like this.”
He pursed his lips. “I can and I will. If you would just–”
“No, not like this.” Touya opened his mouth to object again, but then Dad said, “If you had Fuyumi’s quirk too, though, then…”
He stared. “...What does that mean?”
“There’s a man who might be able to take Fuyumi’s quirk and give it to you. Then you could protect yourself from your fire.”
That was absurd. Touya let out a disbelieving laugh. “Take and give quirks? No way. That’s impossible.”
“But it could be possible, it’s worth trying,” Dad insisted.
Touya looked at Fuyumi, who had been silent this entire time and had not reacted beyond her usual pleasant neutral face. “Fuyumi, did you know about this?”
“No,” she said, her smile stiffening in the way it always did when she lied, “but I want to help you Touya. I’m happy to give my quirk.”
He laughed again, what was she thinking? That was her quirk, an essential part of her just like Touya’s immolation was part of him.
“I can still train as I am,” Touya insisted to Dad, “Just give me a proper chance, you don’t need to do something weird.”
Dad put a hand on his shoulder. The weight was heavy. “I won’t train you like this.”
The reminder had his heart sinking, as it always did.
“But if you had an ice quirk to balance things out… we could start training again.”
He stopped breathing. That was his father’s eyes on him again, really looking at him, promising to go back to those good days, if he would just let whatever quirk specialist this was do their thing and give him Fuyumi’s quirk.
The door opened again, the old man stepping through. “Are you guys all set?”
Touya stood up. “Yeah!”
The man smiled. “Alright then, Kai?”
Someone entered from behind him, a boy in a school uniform and gloves. Short hair, long lower lashes, and a face mask covering the lower half of his face. He was carrying a stack of papers and a stamp pad, which he put on the table in front of Dad.
“After paperwork, we can start the operation,” the old man said.
Touya gulped. Operation? Like at a hospital? He didn’t like the sound of that, but Dad had brought out the family seal and started stamping pages, no hesitation. If Dad believed it was okay, then it had to be. A hero was brave, he would face this.
“I know we’ve discussed this, but to be clear, this is highly experimental, and we can’t guarantee the results.”
Dad was flipping through pages, still wetting his seal. “I know, but I’m willing to try anything at this point.”
The last page was stamped. “Alright, you two, come with me,” the teenager said.
They followed him into another room, leaving Dad behind. The room they ended up in was stark white, a contrast to the traditional architecture they had seen so far. This felt cold and clinical… and easy to clean.
Fuyumi beside him was quiet, but her hands were shaking. Touya grabbed one, jerking her out of whatever she was thinking about.
She turned to him. “…This will be worth it.”
He thought about the fact that Dad went out of his way to seek this out for him. It meant he still cared about him, maybe deep down still wanted to train him. “Yeah.”
The high schooler in front of them had an intent expression on his face. He peeled his gloves off. “Fair warning, this will probably hurt. A lot.”
Touya braced himself, clenching his hand around Fuyumi’s, and two hands were placed on both of their shoulders.
Pain.
Touya started to scream, but suddenly there was no air, no lungs to breath out with. He heard something from Fuyumi beside him, an aborted scream, then a weird squishy sound, and then there was just a high ringing.
All his nerves screamed for what felt like a full minute, and then a terrifying numbness overtook him. He couldn’t see, touch, hear, feel, or even smell anything real. It was like he didn’t exist but he did, screaming in some sort of void where all he could feel were the phantoms of the limbs he had before.
He could imagine crying, but he couldn’t do it. There was nothing of his body, nothing to–
He came to himself abruptly, painfully, in reverse. His nerves flared back to life, pure pain filtering to his brain. His hearing returned to hear squelching and screaming, and he realized a pain in his throat was from his own screaming.
“Oh fuck,” The teenager’s words felt distant.
Then suddenly Touya was falling apart again, this time slowly peeled. Parts of him crawled and tore open, all except his eyes that he was terrified to open. Though it was a challenge to feel anything through the pain, dimly he realized there was something wet that burned out of one of his eye sockets.
“Oops.”
It felt like that eye was suddenly vacuumed out, and there was hollowness. He was distracted by that, though, from new sensations of adrenaline pumping through his veins, powerful but traveling as slow as sludge like his blood wasn’t quite pumping right.
Then something popped into that eye, filling up into something almost correct again.
And finally, finally, there was a crack of his spine, like something re-aligning itself, and everything stopped all at once. Still screaming, Touya fell to his knees and curled in on himself, terrified of getting hurt like that again.
“Well… I did the best I could,” The teen said.
What had he done? Slowly, Touya forced his eyes open. He was on the floor, looking at the shoes of the man. And blood, standing out against the white ground. Way too much blood.
Touya’s head jerked up, looking for Fuyumi.
“Where…?” Touya asked, voice high, sitting up so he could look around the whole room.
She wasn’t there. Fuyumi wasn’t there. All there was was the teenager that had put him through this terror, and the splatters of blood painting the floor and walls.
“N-no…” he said hopelessly, realization setting in.
The teenager didn’t even say anything to him. He just stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him. Touya forced himself to stand up on shaky legs. Somehow, he felt shorter than before, all his limbs feeling just slightly off-balance, jerking and twitching in ways he didn’t command. He went slowly, not wanting to slip into the liquid that he had to confront was once his sister. Tears filled his eyes.
Had he killed Fuyumi? Just because he wanted Dad to look at him again?
The door slid open, and there was Dad, mouth open, staring at him with horror.
“Fu… Touya? Fuyumi?” His eyes were darting between his features. “Which… which one of you survived?”
“It’s me, Dad!” Touya shouted, bringing his hand up to pull at his hair.
There were patches of long hair mixed in with his. What the hell had been done to him? To Fuyumi?
Anger, the only familiar thing in this whole nightmare, flared in his chest. “This… this is because of you!”
He started towards him, raising his right hand. He didn’t care that Dad was bigger. Touya’s fire was brighter, fueled by emotion, and he was feeling pure fury right now. Dad didn’t even try to run, just stared at him with some stricken look as if he cared about any of them.
Now he started to sprint, fire coming to life, ready to punch Dad and burn him as best he could in vengeance.
Abruptly, his legs locked up, and he tripped. Out of his control, his left arm darted out to grab his fiery right arm and coated it in ice.
“Touya, stop!” He was talking without thinking, “He didn’t know this would happen!”
The shock interrupted his vengeance long enough to think. Slowly, disbelieving, he asked out into the ether, “...Fuyumi?”
Fuyumi was still reeling from the pain, her whole body still shivering from the aftereffects of whatever Kai had done to them. She had been terrified, looking around for Touya and finding nothing but blood, when she found her body being moved against her will, trying to attack Dad even though Dad looked as horrified as she was.
Realization struck, and she snatched her own arm, using her ice to counter the fire that had come out of it.
“Touya, stop!” she shouted, “He didn’t know this would happen!”
Her body stopped fighting her for a moment, and her lips, her throat, her lungs shifted without her command to ask, “...Fuyumi?”
She responded, “Yes, you’re inside me, aren’t you?”
Her face frowned. “N-no, you’re inside me, right?”
She looked down at herself. With a start, she realized she was wearing Touya’s shirt. Still, below that was her shorts. She stared at her hands, somehow warped just enough to feel unfamiliar. She patted at her head, her face, her hair, one again noticing that parts of her hair had been cut short, creating a patchwork.
For some reason her hand closed over some of the hair and tugged at it again. Just like Touya would do when he was frustrated.
She forced the palm to open up, releasing it. “M-mirror?” she asked, still not sure of the truth.
The old man came up behind Dad. “You should leave.”
Dad turned on him. “My children! What did you do to them?”
“You signed the papers, you knew the risks,” he said darkly, “that they could die. At least one survived.”
“Which one?” Dad’s voice was desperate.
“You can find out on your ride home.”
Everything felt like a blur after that. More arguments, legal threats, talk about what it meant for a hero to work with the Yakuza, and Dad with his fire on like he was going to blow up the place, but after Fuyumi started sobbing he eventually scooped her up and went away, rushing to the car.
He buckled her in roughly, like he was running from something. She kept crying, terrified, jerking on occasion in ways she wasn’t controlling.
“You did this!” Her mouth shouted with no input from her, “It’s your fault!”
“I know,” Dad muttered as he drove, “I know.”
Fuyumi sobbed. She didn’t know how to handle this, her familiar and yet alien body, knowing Touya was there and yet wasn’t. “I want Mom,” she whined.
Dad didn’t respond, just kept driving.
Her right hand kept flaring up into flames, grabbing at their seatbelt as if trying to melt it away, and Fuyumi had to keep grabbing at it with her left hand, patting it down with a flurry of ice. She fought herself the whole car trip, gaining and losing control of different parts of her in waves, constantly trying to stop herself from clawing out or burning up the whole car.
Finally, Dad stopped the car. Fuyumi looked outside, hoping to see home, but they were outside a hospital of some sort. “…Dad?”
His face was grimacing. “This hospital works closely with heroes like me on sensitive cases. They can be discreet and… and have specialists who can figure out what’s going on with you.”
Specialists. Just like Kai had been a ‘quirk specialist’. “N-no,” she burbled, “no more specialists, please, Dad, can’t we just go home?”
Dad had gotten out and opened the passenger door. “I can’t let your mother see you like this.”
“I want Natsuo,” her mouth claimed.
Dad frowned. “You can see them if you cooperate, okay? We just need to figure out what’s going on. These are real doctors, they’ll figure things out, and then we can go home.”
Fuyumi’s body started reaching for the other door of the car, but she forced her hand into a fist and pushed away from it to get closer to Dad, let him grab her arm. “O-okay,” she started.
She convulsed. “No!”
With great effort, she forced every limb to still, clenched her mouth so it would stop objecting. She just had to cooperate, let Dad and the doctors do their thing, and then she could go home and be safe and figure out what the hell was going on with her and Touya.
She wasn’t perfectly successful, sometimes losing concentration and trying to punch Dad or wriggle out of his arms, but it was enough that he was able to get inside and get the attention of the staff, who went into a flurry to figure out what was going on.
It was hard to hear the conversations, Dad’s truncated explanations of a “quirk accident” and a runaway villain, when she was focusing so hard on not running away and biting every nurse and doctor who got close.
Finally, she was strapped to some sort of gurney, all her limbs restrained, and she could finally loosen herself for a minute. As soon as she did, she started thrashing and screaming bloody murder. “Let me out! Let me out! He did this! I don’t want any more specialists, he just wants to throw us away again, I don’t want to be anywhere near him, let me out! Let me out!”
Fuyumi forced herself to take deep breaths between the shouts.
“You can’t keep me forever! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all for this! Fuyumi I hate you, you should have let me run! We can’t trust him!”
There was a pinch in her neck. A needle? And suddenly all her limbs felt heavy. Her eyes fluttered closed, and those shouts coming from her faded to nothing.