MHA : Shoto Todoroki - Modern-day Terrorist

I twirled the pill between my fingers, marveling at how it gleamed under the light.

"My first soldier pill"

Working on drugs to isolate the components that made me more energized and helped my chakra reserves get full faster had been a whole ordeal without me being able to try the drug.

I'd never been more aware of my shortcomings.

I threw it to my clone.

"Try it"

He did.

His chakra spiked, a sudden boost making him go from a measly 5% of energy up to 8%. He popped before I could fully evaluate how useful the pill was.

Clones were made with a set pool of chakra bestowed by myself.

More chakra - like pills - was akin to overwhelming their pool, which meant that they'd just burst like balloons.

"Synthesize more and try to see if there are any undesirable side-effects"

I'd have to try the pill myself at some point – as nobody else could – and hope I didn't die (or worse) from it.

But it was too useful, too revolutionary for me to abandon it for fear of testing.

Next stop on my list was my bastardized Hiraishin.

I shunshined all the way down the courtyard, between orange groves and flowery bushes.

A couple of my clones were working on a seal that would anchor my shunshin.

Shunshin worked like fishing : you used your chakra as if it were a string-thin rod, and then you had to use your hook to grab onto the place you wanted to get to. This was the anchor.

Once the anchor was well set, you pulled, and the chakra string guided you to your destination at breakneck speed.

I had theorized that shinobi must've been able to break other people's anchor, cutting the chakra strings with their own, but no one in this world could see my chakra, and there were even fewer people who would be able to break my link to my anchor.

Here the goal was to combine two things : the high speed I was able to get to in dire situations with a seal-based anchor that would allow me to 'pop up' anywhere as long as my seal was there.

Problem was, the lack of a proper chakra string linking me to my anchor made transportation more difficult. I felt the pull but wasn't compelled to follow it and could lose the lead if I wasn't properly focused. I also needed to follow the laid road while spinning and turning to avoid obstacles on my path (like people or places), least I left a trail of blood behind me with every pseudo-Hiraishin.

Furthermore, the high speed I was traveling to – my own speed, far better than the shunshin-induced one – meant I had to go from normal to 300% in a split second.

This kind of shift from unmoving to unnatural speed was stark enough that a few of my bones could break in the process if the pull of the anchor didn't tear me in half before.

That's the point my clones were at : each time they tried the pseudo-Hiraishin, they ended up torn in half at the waist, no matter if they'd activated the anchor-seal while running or sitting, or if the distance was barely a couple of meters between location A and location B.

I wouldn't be able to spawn out of thin air like the Fourth, but it'd be close enough that it wouldn't change a thing.

Still, I wondered how Tobirama managed to create a seal that was – certainly – akin to pure teleportation.

Hiraishin was a space-time jutsu ; I was cheating my way out of it by using pure speed, whereas Hiraishin's speed was but a consequence of compressing space (from what I could guess) in such a way that you looked as if you appeared somewhere else at high speed.

One of my clones popped up, his memories hitting me suddenly.

Teka was sitting behind her desk, hands clasped, a myriad of crystals around her.

"It has regenerative properties", she explained. "I had someone infuse healing energy inside"

Even though it was a second-hand memory I could feel myself as weirded out as my clone had been, wondering if she truly was an old witch after all.

"It is good for your health and skin"

She looked slightly grayish, and both my clones and I wondered if we should tell her it seemed it had the opposite effect.

Her eyes snapped open, icy blue narrowing on me.

"Considering the lack of answer", she said. "I assume you are but a mere doppelganger. Tell Shoto we are to leave, it is time for the initiation"

I perked up.

"And dad ?"

He asked because he knew I'd ask.

"He's busy", she said. "He said he'll come soon but wouldn't be able to make it"

I held back my disappointment in favor of my relief that he was alive and well, if only because he'd told Grandma he couldn't come.

The time in between each of the news we received was nerve-wracking, and if Teka hadn't been actively trying to keep me busy here by giving me assignments, I'd have left to get him back long ago, be damned respecting his wishes.

"I'll meet you at the front door in five minutes"

I felt my clone pop, and the movie-like memories ended.

I shunshined to the front door, and a few moments later, off we were to Sicily.

*

Thinking that the Honoured Societies – or sworn sects – were anything but a bunch of violent, highly organized groups, was false.

There was nothing good in the mafia : romanticizing it was pointless, as was trying to see it as something 'good', an independent group that would fight for the rights of the majority.

It is a clandestine sect of opportunistic murderers, not unlike the military.

Fraternity is its core value : mafia members belong, they are brothers and sisters who have sworn their lives to each other until death do they part.

I have extensively studied the origin of the mafia, as per Teka's demands, and I know for a fact that our traditions are utter lies.

Old mafias used to see themselves as groups with dark, mysterious origins.

The Camorra assembled a myth of its Spanish origins from whatever cultural flotsam and jetsam it could find.

We repeated the pattern, gave the Todoroki founder a larger-than-life aura, twisting in some lies that gave him a mythical presence, said his wife had a foresight gift, and had predicted his ascendance as a Mafia Lord.

With time – it had been more than a century and a half since our family came into power – the fake legend grew true, and who is to say that our founder's first wife didn't have foresight, as our family truly supplanted every other ?

Facimmo cacciaor, 'Extract gold from fleas' has always been a consensus among the various mafia groups, and that's exactly what our family did.

We used civilians when they saw them as nuisances, we used women because they underestimated them, and we took advantage of the political unrest not to squeeze every penny worth out of the population but rather to squeeze the population herself until we got our own little militia.

They chased the money and we chased the men, because Quirk-enhanced individuals were worth their weight in gold.

Sicily had been the last stronghold. It was why we were here today.

"Avanti" Come

The voice boomed against the dark cave walls.

A small hole atop let the moonlight in.

It was barely enough to see yourself and your surroundings, but my eyes were not that of normal people.

I took a step forward and a man in his early thirties did the same.

We both had knives in our hands.

"Inizia" Begin

It wasn't a fight to the death, it was a ritual.

We jabbed, dodged, our knives clicking against each other, sparks flying where we made contact.

I drew blood first, red drops falling from a superficial cut on his shoulder.

Polite applause came from the shadows.

We nodded to each other and he took a step back, vanishing in the darkness, whereas I stayed in the middle of the cave, waiting.

Right at the junction between the lighted circle and the shadows was a crucible. The picture of the Madonna of the Annunciation was inside.

With the bloodied knife that had helped me win my fight, I cut my palm, my blood mixing with that of my brother-in-arms, falling generously on the saint's face.

I grabbed it and raised it so that the light shone on it.

"I vow my blood to my brothers, my life to our cause, my soul to our familia. I refute the traitors, I will murder who stands in our path, I bequeath my existence to our matriarch"

The saint's picture caught fire, crumbling until dust between my fingers, ashes falling on my hand.

Torches flared simultaneously around me, a circle of fire lighting up the various faces surrounding me, and I knew it was Teka's doing.

She walked up to me, regal in the mafia's uniform, metal chest plate and arm-guards on a dark crimson, nearly black, uniform, a long, black coat billowing behind her, gray fur encasing her face.

I kneeled, head lowered, reverent.

She held a burning metal plate engraved with our family's crest, an eerie flame that looked as if it was moving depending from where you were watching.

"We hard and we accept"

She put it on my left biceps, but everyone here knew it wouldn't leave a mark - I'd have to get a tattoo like she did.

I waited the perfunctory ten seconds quiet ; if you screamed at this point, you were out.

I wondered what burning felt like for normal people - I couldn't remember a time when I hadn't been immune to it.

"Rise"

I was now a Made Man.

*

BONUS :

He'd been to I-Island a few times already and each time had been more baffling than the last.

The island, a pure product of wealthy people's – Governments and Military Private Societies included - need to conduct illegal experiments on neutral grounds, had turned into this humongous gathering of scientists from all over the world.

You could've been sentenced for illegal, unlawful, unethical human experimentation in twelve countries, as long as you made it to I-Island you'd be a free man who could rub shoulders with the cream of the crop scientists and no one would bat an eye.

Having one or two countries hot on your heels was the equivalent of a green card here.

This was a lawless place, an island lost in the Pacific that only maintained its independence from every other country in the world because everyone benefited from the product of the experiments.

As long as it did not happen on the grounds of your home country, it didn't happen at all : you had plausible deniability about how the weapon you'd bought had been built, and you could still use it to wage war elsewhere.

The scientists, as well as their families, lived in their own little world, shut from reality, not caring if it was the fifth or sixteenth world war because they made as much money when it was peacetime so why bother ?

Hence why when Enji, getting a tailored armor ordered by Nezu and that he alone could pick up because they needed to make adjustments once he'd tried it, had heard there was an ongoing conference about his son, he'd been more than a little baffled.

The room had been one of the largest on the island, packed to the brim, so much so that people had to sit on the ground.

He'd watched countless scientists especially coming from Africa, Europe, South America, China, and Russia to expose theories about how one individual was able to wield 'so many Quirks'.

Some argued that his body may be the reason - and they used a lot of data to prove their point. One even argued that 'a certain sturdiness is present among the Todoroki lineage. I've been provided by one of my benefactors with both Enji and Rei's Todoroki's DNA, the subject's biological parents, and can assure you that a scion able to wield both of their Quirks simultaneously is one in a billion occurrence. This goes on to show how special the subject is, and how strong his organism is to withstand two very opposite Quirks'. 

A German one argued that it wasn't about how many Quirks he had, but rather what were Quirks to begin with.

He'd sparked another discussion tangentially, and a few people had mentioned 'The Origin of Quirks', some calling it foolish, others saying it was baseless.

That's only when they started comparing his son to Nomus that Enji had left.

He'd been on a boat shipping him to Japan – something inconspicuous, with a few of Nezu's 'friends' indebted to him with adequate Quirks to make sure no one would follow him – when he'd received a call.

"Yes ?"

Talking about the wolf…

"I found the girl"

*

A/N :

Couple of last minute important notes :

1 - If you want to apply to become one of the two beta readers for my next FF, send an email to [email protected] 

You have until 19th January before I start weeding people out (in a very nice, no pressure involved kind of way) with a trial test of grammar correction, a couple of questions etc (and no it's not a job, I just want people that can bring something to the table and help me get the incoming FF to the next level). 

Write what is your pseudo on the website you read the story on so I can get an idea of who I'm talking to.

There are a couple among you who've written me great comments/analysis/questions throughout the story and that I'd like to see apply, but that's a choice you have to make on your own (be sure you have the time for that kind of stuff etc).

2 - I'm taking a break but the story will keep on getting updated, don't worry, I'll program chapters in advance and check from time to time that stuff's going well. 

3 - Didn't think I'd need to say it again but for those of you who'd like to finish the story in one sitting (and not read what's left in 1 month and two weeks) the story's P@treon is Nar_cisseENG

Thanks for all of your nice comments everyone, and as always see you in the next update.