Gods Amongst Men || BNHA - MHA

Paradigm

Chapter Three/Roaring Muscles

"With family by your side and vigor in your eyes forever, live forever." - Avenged Sevenfold

Slight spoilers for episode 105 of the anime or chapter 249 of the manga.

*
It wasn't hard to guess which child was Endeavor's, the boy had his father's eyes. Not entirely identical in color, only one of his irises the same vibrant turquoise as the Flame Hero's, the other a muddied grey, but they were the spitting image of the way the Enji Todoroki viewed the world and everyone in it, like mere hurdles to overcome. With a face full of nothing but loathing and determination, the boy was nearly a mirror of his father.

Physically, the differences between the pair were there. Endeavor's boy was slight compared to him, though that really wasn't saying much because the Hero was a behemoth and his son was still solid even if he wasn't overly large, standing shoulder to shoulder with most of the other teens. His hair split right down the middle, flaming red on one side and snow white on the other, laying straight and just skimming his eyes. But more glaring than anything was the scar Enji's son sported on his otherwise unblemished skin, a brutal, garish thing that wrapped entirely around his left eye and stretched down his cheek, smoothed with time but intense nonetheless.

Accidental, supposedly.

That was all Drakon had been able to find of the matter in the boys' medical records because in all her too frequent nosiness and her friends' general distrust of everyone that wasn't her, the two hadn't been able to resist looking into the Todoroki family, but her new partner was a very private man. Theo wondered if his son was too. His demeanor certainly wasn't drawing anyone in.

For someone just barely fifteen to carry himself in such a fight or flight manner should've been unsettling and at the very least, it raised some alarm bells that Theo would be looking into, Enji and his privacy be damned, but even after having only worked with the Flame Hero for just under two months now, she wasn't surprised that his son was so off-putting, even from a distance.

But Shouto Todoroki was perfect on paper. His references, none of which surprisingly came from his father or any of Endeavor's thirty fucking plus sidekicks, were absolutely glowing and he had aced the written portion of the entrance exam that frosty February morning. Still, watching Endeavor's son as he prepared for the practical portion of admissions testing, surrounded by the nervous and excited faces of the other U.A. hopefuls, it was clear how much different this way for him than it was the rest of them. Theo could practically feel the weight on his shoulders from where she sat.

Apparently, so could the currently frail Hero beside her. "It'll almost be harder for him than it will be for them," Toshinori said in a bittersweet manner, his words soft-spoken and his voice much less boisterous than when he stood before the masses. "Won't it?"

Theodora looked away from the students to meet the questioning eyes of Japan's Number One Pro. The All Might here with her now was a far cry from the one she had grown up watching across the world, even different so from the one she had met at her first staff meeting two weeks ago. The Toshinori Yagi here now was unnaturally thin and skeletal, made up of nothing but sharp edges and bone, a two-piece pinstripe suit hanging off of his frame like a wet blanket. With an angular face and long limbs, he looked like he teetered somewhere just barely between life and death, his eyebrows practically nonexistent and the jutting features of his forehead casting a shadow on ocean eyes. It had been unsettling the first time Theodora had seen Toshinori so slight, but she had quickly gotten used to it.

She had to. Her Grandmother and her long-time client had a standing dinner date every week and Anju was getting tired of going to him because she was too old to be sneaking around, dammit so Theo was suddenly seeing more of the Number One Hero than she ever imagined.