💥 ON HIATUS !!!
⎯ naoko todoroki decided she'd
go through a hell hotter than
her own fire for people who
never deserved it.
OR
⎯ in which the youngest todoroki
joins ua against her father's wishes,
and...
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The day after the incident at the Kiyashi Ward shopping mall, Naoko sat in class—less of a depressed and zoned out look on her face, replaced with more of an anxiety riddled visage.
Her boot tapped against the hard floor of the classroom, black sole clacking over and over on the sky blue of the ground. A single wooden pencil lay in her hand, her nimble fingers swirling it around and spinning it in her grasp. Her chair squeaked quietly with her fidgeting, Shoto watching worriedly at the girl's shaky shoulders.
Anybody could've thought that she had been anxious about villains attacking again, like most of the rest of the class. While Shigaraki did in fact force his way into her mind, it was for a very different reason.
For weeks, Naoko's thoughts have been so jumbled that she herself couldn't see through the mess to comprehend what she was feeling. But with the villain standing just in front of her, with his eyes boring into hers so clearly, her racing mind slowed to a steady pace and she had begun to make sense of things.
Twisted sense—but sense nonetheless.
The declarations the girl had made to herself as she settled on her hero name were holding onto the window sill of her mind, knuckles whitened by their tight grip—lips trembling with begging and pleas to not be thrown out. No longer could she envision heroes changing—becoming better, being influenced from the inside. No longer could she believe that as a hero, she would be able to fight the corruption that ran so rampant amongst those meant to combat it.
But to fight it—fight the personifications of that corruption, to fight her father... it made her fingers start to twitch with anticipation. The exhilaration she felt when pelting Cementoss with her fire, Gods, did she want to aim it at the man who ruined everything...
Thoughts of hurting Endeavor grew prominent, an almost soothing effect oozing from the violent images that flashed in her head. Her desire to hurt him how he had hurt her, hurt her siblings, her mother... grew and grew and it filled her mind to the point that she didn't realize it when her wooden pencil had caught fire.
Shoto saw the burst of light from behind her, especially since he was so focused on the girl anyway. Something had been different about her for a couple weeks, and he had no way of knowing what it was. Despite their shared efforts to patch their relationship, he knew that with his lingering fears and with her lingering anger, there would always be a strain.
Surprisingly, the flames had gone mostly unnoticed, as class hadn't yet started and the other students were busy gathered around desks toward the front of the classroom. Only one pair of eyes had watched the commotion as Shoto leapt from his seat to grab the pencil from Naoko's hand and cover it in ice. Luckily the fire hadn't been as strong as what she used in the Sports Festival, otherwise the ice would've melted quicker than Shoto could make it.
