//heres where the angst kinda starts my dudes its a slippery slope//
"I'm so tired..." Midoriya droned as he trudged out of the school, Chousuke walking next to him slurping noisily on a carton of chocolate milk. He pat him on the shoulder and chuckled through his drink. Suddenly, a hand was placed on Midoriya's shoulder, and he flinched before turning around to face them. "Iida!" He shouted out, clearly surprised.
"Is your finger healed?" Iida asked, concern lacing his voice.
"Yeah, thanks to Recovery Girl," Midoriya took out his bandaged finger to show it to Iida, who nodded and then decided it was appropriate to crash the boys' one-sided conversation.
"I was really taken in by Aizawa-sensei," he held his finger and thumb to his chin in thought. "I even thought 'this is the best of the best' and such. I didn't think a teacher would encourage us with a lie." Midoriya nodded, while Chousuke only gave a dead stare to the wall next to them and drank his milk.
"Hey! You three!" Oh god, more people. "Going to the station? Wait for me!" The three boys turned to see Uraraka running towards them, Iida identifying her as 'the infinity girl'.
"I'm Uraraka Ochako," she introduced herself to him, before pointing to the remaining duo. "You're Yamamoto Chousuke, right? I've seen you on the news and talk shows and stuff, your mom's super cool." She beamed happily, seemingly starstruck by his presence. Chousuke didn't want to part with his milk, so he simply gave her a thumbs up. "And you're Midoriya Deku, right?"
"Deku?!" Midoriya wailed in shock.
"Huh? But during the fitness test, the boy named Bakugou said," she pointed upwards and made a weird angry face. "'Deku, you bastard!', right?"
"Uh... My real name is Izuku, but Deku is what Kacchan calls me to make fun of me..."
"An insult?"
"Oh, is that right! Sorry! But 'Deku' sounds kinda like the Japanese word for 'you can do it', so I kinda like it!"
"I'm Deku!" Midoriya blurted out, his face turning completely red as Chousuke sighed through his nose.
"Midoriya!" Iida called out. "You're accepting it too easily! Wasn't that an insult!"
"It's like a Copernican Revolution..."
"'Co-pe'?"
The group chatted for a while as they walked, Chousuke stayed silent the whole time and took to slowly drinking his milk, until Uraraka perked up again.
"Ne, ne, Yamamoto-san!" He turned to her, the girl having stars in her eyes as she spoke. "What's it like living with Serpentium?!" He could already guess what his relationship with this girl would be like. He removed the carton of chocolate milk from his mouth and shrugged.
"She's like any mother, really. Overbearing, a little harsh, but ultimately quite sweet in her own way." Uraraka grinned at his answer and nodded.
"Do you train with her?"
"No. My sister and I train on our own. She trains my brother, though. You've heard of Hiro, I'm guessing?"
"Yeah! He's her successor, right?" Chousuke nodded, and Uraraka paused for a moment. "Weren't you illegitimate?" The three boys choked on air at her words, and Chousuke sweatdropped and she immediately began apologising. "I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean it like that, there are just a lot of rumours and, uh..." Chousuke smiled and waved her off.
"It's alright. Yeah, my mom didn't want to publicise it but she had an affair a year or so after Hiro and Fumi were born. I never met my dad, don't know his name or what he looks like, but I got my quirk from him." She nodded slowly, a slight look of pity on her face.
"I'm sorry you never got to meet him. What happened, if you don't mind me asking?" Uraraka questioned softly, placing a hand on Chousuke's shoulder. He paused for a moment and sighed.
"I don't actually know. My mom never told me anything about him, she just said he left before I was born. She always seemed kind of weary about the subject." Uraraka nodded, and the three of them gave their condolences to Chousuke in regards to his absent father, before returning to their normal conversations. Chousuke began to get a sinking feeling in his stomach as he let his mind wander- not for any particular reason, just the thought of his father suddenly made him feel sick with shame.
The shame came mostly from 'stealing the spotlight'. It was stupidly common to grow up without a father, but he felt that just because he was famous in Uraraka's eyes meant that he was receiving special treatment because of it. Midoriya never knew his dad either, the two of them bonded over it in a way, but he didn't even seem phased by it anymore. Chousuke couldn't understand why he hung onto his father so much.
He'd thought it was because he yearned to at least know something about him. Midoriya knew his father's name and the reason he left- something about his job and him having to live abroad, resulting in his mother raising him on her own. But Chousuke's father was nameless and faceless. He huffed quietly through his nose in an attempt to ease the sick feeling in his gut and made a mental note to man up and ask his mother about it later.
By the time the three of them got onto the train Chousuke was no longer in a talking mood. He made an effort to look tuned in on the other's conversation and nod or chip in every now and then, but other than that he stayed silent and took to staring out of the window at the scenery rolling by. Nobody really seemed to notice, which was good for him. Iida and Uraraka must have just assumed that Chousuke wasn't the talkative type. Midoriya probably knew something was up, but they'd been friends long enough for him to know that Chousuke prefers being alone when he's upset.
Chousuke was left alone on the train in the end. The others' stops all came before his, since he lived practically at the edge of town, and he was left clutching his bag in his lap and staring out of the window behind him. Granted, doing so made him feel even more sick, but the sight of the setting sun glaring out from behind darkened buildings and the blue and orange gradient of the sky outweighed the churning in his stomach. He had long since finished his chocolate milk and was holding the empty carton in one of his shaking hands.
Eventually, his stop rolled by, and Chousuke jumped off the bus all too eagerly and threw his carton in the nearest trash can. The weather was still pretty warm, so he could take his time walking home without it being dangerous for him. Knowing this, he still unconsciously speed-walked back to his house, hoping to catch his mother in case she was going out.
Once he got home, he wasted no time in shoving the door open and kicking off his shoes. "Mom?" He called out. His voice echoed through the house and received no immediate reply from her, earning a sigh from Chousuke as he trudged upstairs, pulling his blazer off along the way. As he tapped lightly through the hallway, he heard the floorboards creaking in his mother's room and paused.
"Chousuke? You home?" His heart sank a little when his step-dad's joyful tone rang out from the master bedroom, the brunette revealing himself a second later as he stepped out with a mountain of clean, folded clothes in his arms.
"Yeah, hey Fujio-san."
"Ah, welcome back! How was your first day?" He questioned, walking towards the slightly taller boy and placing a few t-shirts, boxers and socks in his hands for him to take back to his room.
"It was okay. Our homeroom teacher's a little crazy, but I think his motives are straight." Fujio laughed and entered Hiro's room to put his clothes away, Chousuke following behind him and leaning against the doorframe. "Where's mom?"
"You just missed her- she went food shopping with Hiro and Fumi about ten minutes ago." He felt a slight pang in his chest at this, but quickly shrugged it off. He'd gotten used to being left out like this.
"Do you know when she'll be back? I need to talk to her." Fujio hummed and smiled.
"About what? You know you can talk to me, too, right kiddo?" His smile was almost angelic, and Chousuke suddenly felt bad for his reasoning.
"Thanks, Fujio. But it's... Not really something you can answer..." At this, Fujio stopped what he was doing and turned to Chousuke with a weary look.
"A-ah, I see... Is it, uh... Female-based... Problems...?"
"Fujio, I know what periods are. I've been getting them every month for three years. That's not what I needed to talk about." A look of sheer relief washed over his face, and he sighed in content as he resumed putting Hiro's clothes back in his drawers.
"Well, are you sure I can't help? I'd be happy to tell you what I can." Chousuke paused in thought for a moment, that sick feeling still swirling around in his gut as he opened his mouth.
"It's about my dad," Fujio's smile immediately dropped, and he stuttered a bit in his actions. Chousuke averted his gaze to the floor. "It's nothing personal- you've been a really amazing father figure to me all my life and I couldn't have asked for more, I just-"
"You wanna know about your real dad, right?" Looking back up, Chousuke could see that Fujio was closing the drawers and walking towards him with an understanding smile on his face. When he reached him, he placed a hand on his shoulder and nodded. "I don't know much about him personally, I'll admit. But I certainly know more than you do. I think it's time you know." He explained, before walking out of Hiro's room and down the hall to his study, gesturing for Chousuke to follow him.
He did so, and watched and Fujio sat down in his desk chair and switched the monitor of his computer back on.
"His name is Orochi Genishi. They met about 17 years ago now while your mother was on a mission."
"A mission?" Chousuke chimed in, leaning over the back of Fujio's chair as he opened up a chrome tab. "Was he a police officer or something?" Fujio only sighed and typed his father's name into the search bar. The first thing that popped up was a news headline from around half a year ago.
"Feared villain Orochi Genishi escapes from prison- citizens are urged to take safety precautions until he is contained."
Chousuke's heart dropped. His face visibly contorted into one of a confused, pained expression. This had to be wrong. There was no way this could be real. 'This wasn't supposed to happen'.
"This is why your mother never wanted you to know about him." Fujio clicked on the article, and a page from the news site popped up. The first thing Chousuke saw was the mugshot displayed just under the headline. The first picture of his father he'd ever seen. He stood just below the 180cm mark on the board- he was tall, or at least taller than everyone else in his family. But he could barely pay attention to that. He was utterly fixated on his father's face.
He had vitiligo, just like him, only his spread to most of his hair and made the majority of it white. The parts that weren't lied more towards his ears and sideburns and around the back of his neck, where the hair was a mossy brown colour. The majority of his skin was covered with large, pale patches of vitiligo, but his natural skin colour was a pistachio green- the same colour of the scales Chousuke produced when he was regenerating. His mouth was pulled up in a sadistic grin, displaying rows of sharp crocodile looking teeth and a pair of slightly translucent fangs that were at least 3 inches long, along with a thin forked tongue that slithered out of his jaws.
The eyes were what got him, though. The sclera was a dark green and spotted with other shades of yellows and browns, and the iris was a bright shade of piercing lime with a slit black pupil. They were the eyes of a killer, he could tell just by looking at them, and he suddenly felt a wave of overwhelming nausea wash over him as the realisation set in that this monster was his father.
Chousuke caught his reflection in a dark area of the screen, and stared into his own eyes. He felt tears welling up in the corners of them the longer he looked at himself. 'I look like him. My vitiligo is his. My eyes are even the same shade." Fujio scrolled down the page a little, displaying another photograph of him in action taken by a journalist. He had hooked, black claws where his nails should be, and a thick green tail with black spines the same shade as his nails lined up the back of it. Chousuke looked down at his own nails. They had started staining themselves black a few months ago, and were becoming thicker and harder to cut. At this point, he was convinced he might actually throw up.
"He never worked independently. When your mother met him he was part of an organised crime group. Their offences were all pretty minor, mostly just robberies, until a family was found in their home murdered with a lot of notable stuff stolen. The group was found out, and the police took one look at Genishi and knew nobody else could have done it. They originally thought an animal had done it- it was awful. Their throats were bitten into and ripped out, and there was apparently some sort of toxic venom injected into them, like a viper's. They initially died of blood clots, but parts of their bodies had been eaten when they were found.
"Granted, police still don't know if it was Genishi who ate them or a wild animal that got into the house afterwards, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did it. There were three children in that family, all of them younger than 18. Your mother actually knew Genishi a few months before all this happened. They'd been seeing each other behind my back, Honoka doesn't even know why she did it. She said she liked the thrill and the danger of being with him when they first started going out, but that it quickly went away when she saw what he was capable of. She realised she'd been stupid and left him. She even spoke against him in court and got him 30 years in prison for multiple homicides."
Chousuke paused, staring at the full picture of his father in the middle of either snapping a police officer's neck or keeping him in a chokehold. He didn't dare read the caption to find out. This was too much to take in. He was the offspring of that maniac- that was something he couldn't comprehend. He began wishing he'd never asked. He just wanted to go back to being blissfully unaware.
"W-what about me, then?" He croaked out, earning a hum from Fujio. "Where did I come from? How do I fit into all this?" His step-father sighed, and scrolled down on the article some more, skimming the text over until he stopped and pointed at a paragraph describing the arrest and trial.
"Orochi insisted, even after his venom was found in the victims, that he was innocent. When sentenced, he vowed revenge on Yamamoto Honoka and her family for the injustice."
"Honoka found out she was pregnant right after this story came out. She knew it had to be his, but she was so terrified of what he'd done to those kids that she didn't dare tell him. His coldness was what attracted her to him in the first place, but getting pregnant sort of cleared her vision. She realised she didn't know how far his maliciousness went, or if he could even be trusted around his own child. So she never told him about the pregnancy. Her fears only increased when he made that threat- she knew he'd kill you if he ever found you. That's why we moved to Musutafu and made sure that no news of our family ever made it's way to him in prison."
Chousuke paused to let the information sink in. "So... My dad... Wants me dead?"
"Not necessarily. He never knew you existed. He might now, since he broke out of prison, but he should still think that you're one of my kids." Fujio explained softly, seeing his step-son nod in response with a sallow look in his eyes. "A-as for what he was like as a person, like I said, I really don't know. This is all just what I've heard from news articles and your mother, even then I don't think she's told me everything. If you want to know more, I'd ask her." Chousuke didn't respond for a moment, just stared blankly at the picture of his father on the screen, before he shook his head.
"No... I- I don't wanna know anymore..." He stood up straight from where he was leaning against Fujio's chair and stumbled a bit, before staggering towards the door. "I think I'm just gonna call it a day. Goodnight, Fujio. Thanks for telling me..." His voice sounded empty, almost dark- something his step-father wasn't at all used to.
'Not that I can blame him,' he thought solemnly to himself. It's not like he'd be at all fine after finding out his father was a mass murderer.