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Todoroki Natsuo is intimately familiar with fear. He has been since he was a toddler. Has learned fear since he was a child.
From the shouts, slams, thuds, screams of training that echoes from the dojo. First they’re from Touya, and then later Shouto. The quiet whimpers of his mother from his parents’ room at nights. The occasional bruise on mom or Fuyumi’s cheeks because when has Endeavour ever bother containing his violence? It says: you could be next.
Of the dead of night. When his mother’s, when Touya’s, when later Shouto’s whimpers, Fuyumi’s sobs echo loud in his ears. Of the early pre-dawn hours when it’s still dark outside, and he hears Touya’s and later Shouto’s cries of pain as Endeavour drags them to train. Natsuo wonders whether one day he’ll wake up from the cocoon of blankets he stays under and will see the monster that wears their father’s face waiting for him to take him next.
From the quiet that permeates the house when his father is not at home. The way his siblings and mother avoid each other at times. All of them uniquely alone despite being family.
Of how suffocating the house itself feels. It’s that way because of Endeavour. Even when he’s not there, it feels like the house is trying to choke him alive.
Of fire. Because Endeavour burns everything in his path. His family, their hopes, their safety. He burns. And then one day Touya burns. His mother used to burn. Not in the way Endeavour did. No her ice was a different beast. But it left frostburn on skin, marks of a different kind fire, until one day it exploded inside her, and she burned Shouto. And Shouto could burn but refuses too after their mother.
(And Fuyumi? Fuyumi is different.
Sometimes her pale skin seems waxy. Sometimes her pale blue eyes reflect scorched black plains. Sometimes her touch leaves burns on surfaces in the way Endeavour, Touya, and Shouto’s touch never do.
Fuyumi, Natsuo thinks, out of all of them, was always meant to burn. Not like their father. Not like their brothers. When Fuyumi finally ignites, she will devastate.)
Natsuo is worried he’ll wake up screaming like Touya flesh melting off him, charred to sinew.
(The Ravening Burn does love his family the most after all.)
Of being different in his own home. He can’t burn like his father and siblings. He can’t freeze like his mother. He is weak. He’s one of Endeavour’s biggest failures with no Quirk to call his own. He is different from his family. He is different from the world outside the closed doors and walls of the Todoroki family home as well. Quirkless are dying in this world, and like the rest of them, he has no place in it. Even when his father gets doctored papers saying he has the same Quirk as his mother, as Fuyumi, that starkness of how he’s not like the others stays. He feels like a stranger. A puppet playing at human in this house that hosts a façade of what a family should be.
His house is a monument to the various fears. And it is ruled by the iron fist of the despicable man who’s his father, Todoroki Enji, the Number Two Hero Endeavour.
There’s one fear, however, that Natsuo doesn’t share with his family. One not borne because of Endeavour, or Natsuo’s family, or even his house. No, this one is his own.
And this one marks him.
Once he notices it, it’s always there.
The wide blue yonder. The fathomless depths of the ocean. The vast expanse of space. Even the endless burning black plains in Fuyumi’s gaze. It’s always there, and it calls to him.
So much mindless space beyond human comprehension. It’s awe inspiring. It’s exhilarating.
It’s terrifying.
And he would belong to it, if he lets himself.
He doesn’t know when he senses the change.
Maybe it’s after he realises how his mother doesn’t look at him much these days. Not after he was diagnosed Quirkless.
His father barely bothered long enough to bribe a doctor to register him having a fake weak Frost quirk. Mostly he throws money at his mother to handle Natsuo’s necessities. Touya has long been battered by training. Shouto is too small to know anything.
Fuyumi is the only one to meet his eyes at the dinner table. He sees those scorched burning black plains in her eyes. Sees beyond the fire. Wide and endless and Natsuo... hungers.
Maybe it’s when Natsuo finds himself looking at his family, at Endeavour differently.
Natsuo loves his family, but as time goes by, he finds himself distanced from them. He is not like them.
More importantly, they are not like him.
Todoroki Rei came broken. Endeavour broke whatever little sense of self she managed to cobble up. Touya’s too immersed in chasing his ambition, he tries to burn for it, even though he was never marked for anything. The burn has long shunned him. Even the ever chasing shuns him, the same way it shuns their father. Shouto is the only smart one out of all his siblings. He sees it all at a young age and just tries his hardest to disassociate from it until he can flee permanently.
Shouto, Natsuo thinks, is the one who has the biggest chance of being normal out of all of them. The fears in the house envelop him, but none of them mark him. They don’t touch him. For different reasons they avoid their mother, and Touya.
As for Endeavour himself? The fear of his father is the first to go.
His loathing and anger and resentment, that wanes slower. But over time, he looks at Endeavour, looks at his farce of a family, and all Natsuo can feel is a growing indifference.
Endeavour is Japan’s Number Two Hero. Natsuo’s father is famous and powerful. He knows this.
But the world is so wide and Vast. Humans can’t even begin to comprehend how big the universe is. They just reside in their own bubbles on an insignificant pale blue dot that’s their planet.
If Earth is but a paltry speck in the Vastness of the universe, what does that make Endeavour?
Todoroki Enji is a man so insignificant that the other fears delight in the terror he causes but they’re wholly uninterested in him. Even the Hunt, which loves making monsters of out men, which has a low bar for those it turns into one of its own, doesn’t care for his ambition to mark Todoroki Enji. It’ll take what he offers, but it won’t mark him. Neither does the Blood craze. And the ever burn abhors him.
It makes Natsuo laugh at his old man. He’s so desperate for validation and nothing gives it to him.
Fuyumi is the only one Natsuo feels attached too the strongest. Fuyumi is clearer. Realer. For all that the rest of Natsuo’s family brand her as someone to be relegated to the background, Natsuo can see, she’s not.
Fuyumi will burn one day. She will ignite. Scorch this house like the burning plains in her gaze while becoming anew. And it will be beautiful.
If Natsuo weren’t already marked by the Vast, Fuyumi’s presence alone would make him consider changing his allegiances. But he isn’t, and for all he and Fuyumi are close, they’ve been marked by different things. They’re paths may converge, but ultimately they are different paths.
The first time Natsuo feeds is an accident.
He’s accosted by a villain on his way home from school of all things. (And that’s another way he’s different from his siblings. All of them except for him are homeschooled.) Some poor mook with some grudge against his father.
One moment Natsuo is being choked to the point of unconsciousness hungrily trying to breathe in air, wishing for the wide openness he craves more than usual. The next he’s falling through an endless brilliant blue sky tasting pure air and ozone.
It’s serene. The constant whoosh of falling. The rush and the weightlessness. The brilliant blue searing into his brain and soul. The distant crackle of thunder drowning out screams – screams that Natsuo instinctively knows aren’t his own. Because he can feel his face and he’s smiling.
How long he floats, falls, flies, he has no idea. When his feet touch land again, the endless blue sky is now red sunsets bleeding into the bruised purple and inky blues of night. His attacker is nowhere to be seen.
(Natsuo isn’t sure how he knows, but he thinks that man is still falling in that endless sky.)
And Natsuo feels strangely full.
Like he’s gorged himself at a meal after a long long time.
He’d noticed he’s changing. The distance between him and his family grew every day. Even the love he feels for them felt like it’s so far away. He occasionally loses time, just like he has today, just staring at the sky or by the pier. He’s always been a small eater, but lately he rarely needs to eat no matter how hungry he is. Food tastes bland on his tongue. Both Mom and Fuyumi have noticed.
(Hell he’s sure Endeavour has noticed it too if the way the man avoids his gaze, but pretends not to notice Fuyumi piling more food on his plate, is any indication.)
Oh, this is what he’s needed. It should be strange. Horrifying even. But the surprise Natsuo feels isn’t from what he’s accidentally done, but how he feels nothing but satisfaction at doing it.
It’s when what he’s changed into truly sinks in.
And it doesn’t bother him.
Natsuo feeds more often after that.
If he chooses to exclusively hunt in Endeavour’s patrol area, well it’s because he’s also still a petty petty teenager.
He’s not indiscriminate in who he targets. He may be Endeavour’s spawn and now something else, but he’s still got some humanity and morals in there. Japan still has such a thriving underground organised criminal scene that it’s easy to constantly feed. To turn it into a game. Pick a target, induce fear, and wring them for as much of it as Natsuo can until he tosses them into the Vast.
It should say something about what the state of Japan is truly like under the shiny colourful exterior of the glamour of many Heroes that it’s so easy to do it right under their noses. It should say more about that there’s two yakuza families operating in his father’s turf. Natsuo idly wonders if Endeavour is even aware they exist as he tosses yet another of their bosses to his patron.
The authorities eventually notice. So does his father. Of course they do. They think it’s some new vigilante. Endeavour in a rare spark of some kind of facsimile of fatherly concern warns Natsuo not to hang around his patrol area too long because of said vigilante and the yakuzas increased presence. Natsuo openly laughs at that, unable to help himself.
And Fuyumi? If she’s realised what Natsuo’s doing, if she’s realised where Natsuo is getting the lighters he sneaks her, well she doesn’t say a single word. Fuyumi is probably the only one who understands. She’ll need to feed too one day after all, once she becomes.
Natsuo knows there must be others like him out there. Marked like he and Fuyumi are. But it’s not something that he gives much thought too.
Well he doesn’t give much thought to it until he runs smack dab into one of them.
And Natsuo’s first reaction is rage, because the avatar is a twerp. He’s probably Shouto’s age. Natsuo himself was young when he was marked, but the Vast waited for him to become older before fully taking him. This boy is a child. What fear would turn a child?
“Oh I didn’t expect one of the Vast to be behind this. I thought we’d finally got one of the Hunt.”
Said boy doesn’t seem to mind Natsuo’s rage. Invites him out for coffee. And the only reason Natsuo joins the kid is because yet again, this is a literal child. Natsuo is reminded once again of Shouto, and can’t help the protective instinct that takes over him.
The boy – the child – is knowledgeable. He’s also a strange mix of arrogant, self-assured, and self loathing for a literal child.
(Yeah Natsuo is not getting over the literal child bit any time soon.)
“You should get over it. The worse of us is also my age. And he’s turned since he was a toddler.” The boy says. Then winces. “Sorry it’s my patron. Makes just knowing things very easy.”
“Not so easy if you thought I was with the Hunt.” Natsuo can’t help himself.
The boy grins widely. “I mean could you blame me? What you did was something that one of them would do.” And once again his mood sinks and he pouts. He really is just a child. “I was so excited to finally meet one too. You’d think they’d be common. Especially with the sheer number of Heroes and Hero wannabes and Vigilantes. They used to be. But they’re actually grown pretty rare since Quirks became a thing. Strangers, Forever Alone, and Viscera are more common now. And of course Eyes like me. Most of the ones you’d think belong to the Hunt turn out to be Pipers but even they’ve grown rare.”
“Then again,” the boy continues, “your kind are rare too. You don’t see the Vast claim anyone these days. Much less Endeavour’s son.”
Natsuo would agree. Ever since he’s become he’s seen others touched by entities like the one that claimed him. Most of the people he passes by stink of earth, and strangeness, and loneliness, and flesh, and being watched. The few rare ones stink of fire and ash and char like Fuyumi sometimes does. He’s never run into someone scared of the endless void and crackling ozone, until he induces it.
He wouldn’t know what the others would smell like until he passed by one of them. Not that he’s been curious about it, less curious about those who are like him, until now. The only person he knew who could become like him was Fuyumi, and she was marked for something different.
“So,” he says more because he needs something to say. Now that his curiosity has been aroused, Natsuo has so many questions and no clue where to start. “You said you’re an Eye. Are there others like you? Like us?”
The boy lights up. And as soon as the boy opens his mouth and begins to talk, to tell Natsuo just about who he is and why he was looking for Natsuo, Natsuo knows he’s in for a long, very long info dump. And that he has unintentionally aligned himself into something very troublesome with a very troublesome person.
Things change after he meets the Beholding avatar. Not by much, but they also change significantly.
Natsuo’s jaunts to feed have a different purpose now.
Natsuo learns what he truly is. Learns what all of them truly are.
Endeavour avoids him completely. Won’t meet his gaze. Natsuo realises that while the man may never admit it, even to himself, his father is afraid of him.
(It would be exhilarating if Natsuo cared. The mighty Endeavour scared of his supposed failure of a Quirkless son. He despises Endeavour yes, but ever since Natsuo welcomed and communed with the Falling Titan he’s long realised how miniscule in the grand scheme of things Endeavour is. He knows why the fears don’t bother with him. Todoroki Enji is not worth even the shred of energy for pity or effort to use him as food.
Natsuo only has rage for what the man has done to his family. But even that rage is a small thing, here one moment and gone as easily as it came in the snap of his fingers.
Truly in the vastness of the universe Endeavour is tinier than a grain of sand.)
Most importantly, Natsuo has a purpose now. One that he can feel his patron delight in.
Fuyumi worries for him. She’s obvious about it. They fight over it. But Natsuo doesn’t mind it. Fuyumi is worth the effort. Fuyumi hasn’t become yet. She won’t understand until she does.
Todoroki Natsuo is intimately familiar with fear. He has been since he was a toddler. Has learned fear since he was a child.
It’s probably why an alien entity of Fear chose him to be one of its human avatars.
It’s probably why he got drawn into forging connections with the other few avatars he’s met – all children.
And it’s this reason why he’s ready to welcome Fuyumi when she finally becomes. Ignites after he gives her that final push, lets her know about Touya. Watches as she decimates the Todoroki residence, that monument to fear that moulded both of them. Partly out of relief at finally having his sister by his side, and partly at having another sane adult to talk too and help him wrangle the kids. Sure the Beholding boy is the one helping run everything, but for all their smarts, they are also still dumb kids.
(Natsuo includes himself in that list too. He’s not stupid to know he makes dumb decisions a lot of the time.)
“Ready to meet your new family?” he asks his older sister as she walks out of the burning husk of their childhood home. She is ethereal now, reeking of wax and smoke, forever pale skin now taken on a new waxy hue. Her body finally matches what she was meant for and it’s clear the inner peace her metamorphosis has brought her.
She smiles, still ever soft and placid, but now it carries a new meaning.
“Good, because we have work to do.”