Anthology of Anything

My Hero Academia: Demon King of Cremation (WIP)

Jaku General hospital burned away along with half of the city bearing its name. From a bird's eye view, all was calm as it had ever been. Nothing out of the ordinary. The morning started like any other; families prepared for their days, salary men rushed to work while the children were sent to school. The only thing out of the ordinary was the commotion at the hospital, where a strike team of Heroes, pros like Backdraft, Eraser Head, the Wild, Wild Pussycats, Crust, Mirko, Present Mic, and the Number 1 himself Endeavor had all shown up unexpectedly. No one could have guessed what was going on. No one could have suspected the quickly announced evacuation order in the surrounding neighborhoods. No one could have suspected underneath the hospital was a lab creating biologically engineered monsters with more than one Quirk.

Until a sea of deep blue flames erupted.

The fires swept the streets, igniting everything that it touched and burning anything in its path. They were hungry. If they didn't burn you alive in the seconds leading up to the wave you would be instantly incinerated upon contact. It was how dozens of Heroes and Nomu met their collective ends, the last thing they'd see would be a sweeping haze of burning blue so impossibly hot it left nothing but ash. Cars and buildings melted like wax dripping molten metal down. The burning debris raining down spread this wildfire, catching on anyone or anything unlucky enough to be in its path. One Pro Hero, a man in bright green spandex and goggles, had unwittingly got hit by the smallest ember of a pebble on his arm. The flames spread throughout his body, dancing, screaming as his skin turned black and ashen.

As the flames subsided, dying out from the initial ignition, there stood a figure where the remains of Jaku General. A relatively tall young man with snow-white hair and a pale complexion. He wore a black bodysuit with several mechanical enhancements still fizzling from the pipes and tubes forcibly removed during the attack on Dr. Garaki's lab. The red cape billowing in the ember-lit wind draped over his lanky build, stolen from the now-dead X-Less. The most striking features were undoubtedly the wrinkled, purple skin that covered much of his lower face and neck, all the way down his collarbone, his eyes giving him a baggy look, and on his arms, attached by multiple crude surgical staples and hoop piercings. The places where he was burned by his own Quirk. A Quirk made to surpass the man who claimed to be his "father", whose flames burned dimly compared to his failed creation.

Long ago, the son of a famous Hero was born for a single purpose, not a product of love or for hope, but to surpass All Might. A product of a Quirk Marriage. A product of eugenics: combining two powerful Quirks that counteract each other. The perfect blend. The first son had his father's flames, brighter and hot than the Pro could muster, but he also inherited his mother's resistance to ice. Every time the boy used his power he'd burn himself. So his father deemed him a failure and stopped training him like he said he would. His parents had another child, then another child. His dream child, born with a half fire half ice Quirk, took his father's attention away from the oldest son. He wanted to be like his father, the boy, a Hero who saved people from danger. But he abandoned him, abandoned his other children, all for this one golden baby. The boy said he was sorry for trying to hurt his baby brother, he said he wouldn't do it again, begging his father not to be angry, he messed up, he was at fault, don't separate the others from the youngest, and mama. Please, dad! Please!

But his father did listen. "Father" never listened. He was only obsessed with his ideal protégé. The boy would train hard in the hopes of getting his parent's attention. His flames grew hotter, turned to a different color than his father's. But at the same time, his flames burned him leaving thick patches of scares all over his body. Father Would find out and scold him for disobeying him and then hitting mama for not watching him. But mama was just as guilty as his father. She allowed him to do this to her, the money from his Pro Hero gig would make anyone want to marry his deadbeat ass. The boy slowly became fixated on perfecting his Quirk in spite of what his parents think or what the flames did to his body. Eventually, the boy did ask his father to come to the same peak he himself had trained on in his youth. To show how much he had improved his technique. He sat there, on a log, in the cold, dry season, waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting.

The bastard never showed up. He never cared.

The boy didn't know when his body started to burst into the deep blue of his flames. Over 2000 degrees ignited the moment he screamed in frustration, in anger, declaring how much he hated the man he called "father". The passion in both his heart and his flames set the peak a blaze in gorgeous blue light. It was said the boy's father was the first one on the scene, calling out to him by his dead name and only finding the charred remains of a jaw bone. But wouldn't he have been stupified if the son he mourned was still alive? Amid the inferno, the blackened, burnt body of a small thirteen-year-old boy was saved at the last moment, on the brink of death. Taken in by a man with black holes in the palms of his hands, taken to live at a facility, recovering for over three years. He met his new family who loved him and supported him, calling him "big brother" not just out of tradition or manner but out of true admiration and respect. The one who took him in raised him like a son, a real son, not as a device to surpass All Might. This man encouraged him to become stronger, to think as he did, to make mistakes, and learn from them. eventually, the man who can steal Quirks and give them to others was the boy's true father. His Papa.

The boy, Touya Todoroki, died on Sekoto Peak. And from it Dabi Shigaraki had been born.