[MHA Characters are test subjects in a secret, underground lab, because for some unknown reason they were born with strange and mysterious powers. They were all brought there against their will, nineteen because they had powers, and one to see if those powers could be given to, or awakened in a regular person (part four) The circumstances surrounding, and events leading up to Mr. Enji Todoroki's termination.]
The situation regarding Subject 01 and Enji Todoroki, one of the children's trainers, was a sensitive one, complicated and fragile. Dr. Inko Midoriya always made sure to keep a close eye on the two of them and their relationship to ensure that things didn't get messy.
Years before, Enji Todoroki had been an officer in the military, and received a commendation and an honorable discharge at the age of thirty-two, at which time he was able to return home to his wife and son, Toya. Over the next few years, his wife gave birth to two more children, a daughter, Fuyumi, and another son, Natsuo, before Toya died at a young age, trying to re-create a dangerous stunt his father had shown him. Shortly after the death of his eldest, for which Mister Enji blamed himself, he discovered that his wife was once more pregnant.
It is after this point that the story gets jumbled. Mister Enji believed that on January eleventh, his fourth child was stillborn in room three of Rikabari hospital's maternity ward, while Subject 01 was being born alive and healthy in room four, right next door.
It's a tragic coincidence, to be sure, Mister Enji losing both his eldest and youngest sons in a span of less than a year, and it broke him. He was never the same after that. He ignored his own children in favor of taking out his frustrations on the young subjects in the underground lab by giving them vigorous training regimens and no mercy.
His youngest would have been about their age. His youngest would have been exactly Subject 01's age. Subject 01 who looked like the left half of one child welded together with the right half of another—the right half of his stillborn son, who had inherited his wife's albinism. These children were unnatural and inhuman, and their existence alone wrought chaos and misfortune, or so he chose to believe in order to justify his own misplaced aggression to himself.
What actually occurred, however, was not the same as what Mister Enji remembered. His wife had given birth to a perfectly healthy, if odd-looking, baby boy, who was very much alive, and despite his strange appearance, Enji had loved him wholeheartedly. He swaddled the newborn child in blankets and held him, swaying gently, smiling to see how absolutely tiny the infant looked nestled in his huge, muscular arms.
When the child reached out with a right hand scarcely larger than a bottle cap, and tugged on Mister Enji's red beard, the man had chuckled, even as ice crystals formed on the follicles. His baby boy was special, and if that meant other people were afraid of him, or that they would exclude and oppress him as he got older, then he would protect his boy until the sun went cold and hell froze over. At least, that's what he thought.
Then the lab caught wind of the strange child born, and quickly snatched him up, altering the family's memories, making them forget him altogether.
It was a risk, bringing Mister Enji in as one of the children's trainers, but he was the best fit for the position, skilled, powerful, disciplined, and he had come out of retirement to train cadets for the military after the deaths of his sons, so he had experience both with teaching and with children, of which their other trainer had neither. Mister Enji's results spoke for themselves, and so once the subjects were old enough to crawl, he was brought down to the lab along with the other trainer they had chosen, a highly skilled master of martial arts named Shota Aizawa.
Explaining the situation and purpose of the lab to Mister Enji without giving away his relationship to one of the young subjects was not as difficult as Miss Inko had expected it to be. Mister Enji was too deep in his grief and anger to consider the truth to be even a remote possibility. Instead, he focused on driving the twenty small children to their breaking point every day. When Subject 15, Yaoyorozu, was brought down to the lab, Mister Enji was in charge of getting her up to the level of the other subjects, and he did so without a shred of leniency. He always worked the kids to the bone, pushing them past their limits with every training session.
"You're downright heartless, man," Mister Hizashi told him once, only two weeks after Enji's career in the lab began. Mister Hizashi had been working at the lab since before the kids were born, and had been in charge of their language studies since before they could properly speak. "They're just kiddos, don't ya have any sympathy at all?"
"They're guinea pigs, Yamada," he had responded.
"Hey, I thought you had your own little tykes at home. Where are your paternal instincts? Before these little punks, I totally never dealt with kids yo, and even I give off more dad vibes than you. Hell, that Aizawa guy that got hired on with you gives off more dad vibes than you do, and he always looks like a sleep-deprived hobo."
"They aren't mere children," Mister Enji had reiterated sourly. "They aren't even really human. Monsters like them are only worth keeping as long as they can be controlled, as lab rats or tools or weapons, that's why we train them and teach them. We're not here to act as their parents or guardians, Yamada, we're here to hone them into something useful."
Miss Inko had heard the conversation via a listening device in the room, and it made her quite certain that bringing Mister Enji into the facility had been the right choice. With any luck his no-nonsense attitude would rub off on the other faculty members. Mister Hizashi in particular had always been soft on the subjects.
The greatest breach in protocol to that point was the day the subjects had somehow gotten a hold of a list of their true names. It threatened to damage the already delicate circumstances of Mister Enji's employment, but luckily the children rarely used their surnames. Miss Inko really felt like she had dodged a bullet when Subject 01 insisted on being called Shoto without even mentioning his family name. Thankfully his parents had chosen his name after he was born and manifested his abilities, or there might have been trouble nonetheless.
Mister Enji refused to call the children by their names, and they quickly gave up asking him to out of fear. Fear was among Mister Enji's most reliable tools, even against children who were always afraid, in a place that was inherently frightening to them.
Miss Inko hadn't seen a problem with that until about a year after the names incident when a seven year old Shoto Todoroki ended up badly wounded during a training session with Mister Enji. A mishap had occurred while using his ability, and he accidentally froze his left eye, and was too pained and upset to melt the ice properly until after the damage had been done. This mishap had resulted in a permanent ice burn scar over his left eye.
Miss Inko's own son, Subject 20, Midoriya, had been the one to speak out after the accident, insisting that Mister Enji be reprimanded. It was the first time that Midoriya had ever been so vocal about anything, and Uraraka had backed him up with equal adamancy. Though they were afraid, they would not allow what happened to their friend to go unpunished. Todoroki, bandaged, and blind on one side until his wound healed, tried to convince them to stop, telling them that it had been his own mistake.
He hadn't wanted their anger to get them in trouble, but they were right. Mister Enji had been specifically instructed not to be reckless with his training, and Todoroki's injury had been a direct result of recklessness by the instructor. Even so, this incident alone would not, in itself, have justified Mister Enji's termination. It was Mister Hizashi's outburst following the incident that ultimately led to Mister Enji's breakdown.
"I can't believe you would let that happen to your own son!" Mister Hizashi had yelled at his coworker in a rage. "I get that you're not exactly the fatherly type, and I know It's your job to push those kids, but if what you were doing before was harsh, that was downright abusive!"
"He is not my son," Mister Enji responded flatly. "Just because you have allowed yourself to become unreasonably attached to the subjects, do not assume that I feel the same."
"You're unbelievable, you know that, Enji?" Mister Hizashi scowled, looking moments away from launching his scrawny body at Mister Enji and shredding away at his flesh like a killer guitar solo. "I can tolerate your janky-ass coping mechanisms, disgusting as they are, but saying that these kids aren't human is very different from just letting your actual, flesh-and-blood son get marred for life because of your negligence!"
"What do you mean 'flesh-and-blood son'? I'm not related to any of the subjects."
"I'm sorry Enji Todoroki, are you trying to tell me that Subject 01, AKA Shoto Todoroki, whose right side inherited a distinct and rare genetic trait from his parents which your wife happens to share, and whose DNA shares familial markers with yours, is not related to you?"
"His name is..." Mister Enji trailed off, eyes going wide as, in his head, the pieces fell into place. He had been told early on that the children's parents had all had their memories altered. Miss Inko had said it was an act of mercy. His heart climbed into his throat. His blood boiled. "If you'll excuse me, Yamada." He stormed down the raised pathway toward Miss Inko's central office and forced open the door.
Miss Inko stood behind her desk, crowded with monitors, and he could read 'murder' on her smile, but it wasn't directed at him. "I'll have that loose-lipped bastard turned inside-out," she mumbled, knowing full well why he had come.
"How could you not tell me that Shoto is my own son!" he demanded.
"Oh he's Shoto now?" she remarked calmly. "Until moments ago he was nothing more than Subject 01, now why has that changed?"
"You know damn well!" he snapped. "I was devastated when my boy was stillborn, but that didn't happen, did it? You stole my son from me, and your 'act of mercy' ruined my life and tore apart my family! How dare you!"
"You were fine with all of this until now, why is it any different now that you know it's your son?" Miss Inko asked. "My son is part of these experiments as well, and I'm fine with it."
"You're a heartless bitch," he sneered, slamming his hands down on her desk. "My sense was clouded, but now that I know, I see clearly. I lost one son already, I thought I lost another and it almost killed me, but now I have a chance to get him back. I'm taking him home."
"That freak of nature is not leaving this lab." Miss Inko's authoritative voice gave Mister Enji pause. He was much bigger and stronger than Miss Inko, and certainly more capable in a fight, but something about her was undeniably dangerous, but he kept on.
"Then neither am I." He met her stony eyes with a defiant glare of his own. He had a lot of mistakes to make up for. He had to protect the children, and help them become strong enough to overpower this place, and leave the dreadful lab. He had to do all he could to be a proper father to his son, another son hurt by his own failures, another child suffering because of his own negligence, but one who was alive, and that alone gave him hope, something that had been completely crushed within him for years.
"I didn't think it possible that you could change so much so quickly," Miss Inko said, fixing his with a disapproving frown. "You are fired."
"What?"
"Leave now."
"Hell no!" he yelled, fully prepared to force her to let him keep his position if it came to that. He didn't quite understand what she said next, but the next thing he new, the edges of his vision were growing dark, and try as he might to fight it off, he blacked out.
"Is Mister Enji coming back?" asked Subject 01, Todoroki. Usually Mister Shota and Mister Enji took turns heading their training, but it had just been Mister Shota for almost two weeks, and none of the children had seen Mister Enji anywhere in all that time.
"Mister Enji retired to take care of his wife and his own children," Mister Shota said. He didn't have the heart to tell them the truth, especially not Todoroki. Call it a logical ruse, but the children didn't need to know everything.
"I didn't know Mister Enji had a family," Yaoyorozu said, thinking maybe she had missed that, since she was still relatively new to the lab.
"None of us did," Ashido whispered to her.
"I thought he might have been fired for hurting Shoto," Midoriya said.
"I don't think Miss Inko would have gone that far," Uraraka argued. "She never punished him for harsh treatment before."
"Just because Mister Enji isn't here, doesn't mean you get to talk instead of training," Mister Shota barked. "Get back to practicing your kicks, you should all have the form down by now, so if I have to correct any of you it's thirty push-ups." Mister Enji would have made them do twice that many. "And don't get too comfy because Mister Enji's replacement will show up soon enough."
"Yes Mister Shota!" the kids all shouted and they started back up with their training, which was rigorous as always, but not torturous as it had been before.
Mister Enji was sat around the table with his lovely family. His wife, Rei, had no idea what his job had been for the past few years, but evidently quitting had done him a lot of good because this was the first time all four of them had sat around the table and eaten together since her miscarriage, and he was like his old self again.
He was smiling and making jokes for Natsuo and Fuyumi, and giving her highly exaggerated compliments on her cooking. His children barely knew him, but they wanted to, and he was finally giving them the chance, and she was cautiously optimistic. It had been so long since she'd seen the man she married, and not the monster who had taken his place.
Mister Enji for his part, had forgotten everything. Not just about the job he'd been working at, but about his youngest child. He had no memory of Rei telling him that she was pregnant for a fourth time, no memory of the midnight trips to the corner store to satisfy her cravings, no memory of rubbing her feet and listening to her complain about everything, just so she could get her feeling out in the open, no memory of the strange looking baby boy who had tugged on his beard and left ice crystals there, and no memory of a tiny corpse, pale and cold and silent, as no child should ever be.
Back in the lab, Todoroki felt inexplicably very empty then, like he had just lost something important to him, but he couldn't remember what it was, or like he was missing something that could have been everything once, but wasn't anything anymore.
[Still no requests, so here's part three. Send requests! Love y'all.
<3 Raaor!]