Capítulo 27: Reactions
Ashido slammed the doors open and ran into the common room.
"Ashido!" Iida jumped up from his place on the couch, "Please be respectful of school property."
"Have you seen the news?" She leaned down with her hands on her knees as she caught her breath.
"Does it fucking look like we're watching the news, Pinky?" Bakugo rolled his eyes.
"Turn it on! Channel 5!"
Kirishima ignored Iida's protests that they should be doing homework instead of watching TV as he grabbed the remote and switched channel.
"...won't be…how did you put it? Ah, that's right, coming home anytime soon. In fact, I don't intend to come home at all." A chill went through the room and even Iida shut up as they watched Todoroki stare down Endeavor, a member of the league of villains by his side. "I go by Freezerburn now."
"He can't be implying…" Yaoyorozu glanced toward the others, who were all staring at the TV with horrified disbelief. A short scream from Ururaka drew her gaze back to the TV, where Todoroki and Dabi had released fire on Endeavor.
"No!" Kirishima shook his head. "It's gotta be a body double or...or they're threatening him or something. Todoroki wouldn't turn villain, he just wouldn't!"
"How do you know, ribbit?" Asui said. "None of us were very close to him and he never really showed a lot of emotion, so he could have been considering this for months and we wouldn't have known."
"As much as I hate to agree," Shinso drawled, "Tsu's right. None of us know him well enough to know if this is real or not."
"Well," Ururaka frowned and clenched her fists at her sides, "shouldn't we be giving him the benefit of the doubt? I choose to believe he's being forced and this is all just an act! As soon as the other heroes show up, they'll save him!"
"Come on, Ururaka!" Kaminari gestured wildly to the TV, where high walls of flame were keeping the reporters in place. "He's holding people hostage! What kind of a hero does that?"
"...as a hero? Or my future as your masterpiece? Either way it's no great loss…"
"Apparently a hero who doesn't see himself as one." Shinso said.
The class listened as Todoroki described the abuse he'd suffered and they felt their hearts sink. It did sound like a realistic motivation if Todoroki really had decided to become a villain.
"That can't be true." Kirishima said. "He's gotta be lying. I know Endeavor isn't the nicest guy, but child abuse just isn't manly."
They all waited for Endeavor to deny that he had beat Todoroki and the mood in the room crumpled when he didn't even bother. Ururaka burst into tears while Asui and Yaoyorozu hugged her. Bakugo's hands started popping with tiny explosions as he yelled at the television set and Kaminari accidentally shorted himself out.
"The other heroes should be showing up soon, right?" Jiro asked hesitantly.
"Well, yeah." Sato said. "But will they be able to do anything? They've taken over a hundred hostages."
"Is that why Endeavor isn't fighting back?" Sero asked. "Normally he'd have barbequed Dabi by now."
"He probably doesn't want to hurt Todoroki."
"Doesn't sound like that's stopped him in the past." Shinso grumbled.
Todoroki ran at Endeavor, trying to catch him in ice, while Dabi came in with a sneak attack from behind.
"He's…" Ashido couldn't tear her eyes away from the TV.
"Acting like a villain." Bakugo finished.
The room exploded in yells when Dabi and Todoroki turned their fire on the hostages and some of the students jumped to their feets as though they thought they could do anything to stop the fight. The footage had erupted into chaos as the cameramen and reporters were injured and some of the cameras stopped working due to the heat.
"Fucking change the channel!" Bakugo yelled. "One of these stations has gotta have a working camera!"
It took a minute of channel surfing until they managed to find another station. This one had obviously not been at the press conference, but had shown up for the fight, because they were standing outside the police line as flames raged in the background and an entire fleet of ambulances drove by.
"There do not appear to be any fatal injuries at this time, although from what we are seeing almost everyone present was injured. The villains responsible for this attack are Dabi, a known member of the league of villains, as well as Shouto Todoroki, who was going by the name of Freezer Burn. Until recently, Todoroki was assumed missing after he was kidnapped by the league of villains at a UA training camp over the summer. All previous attempts to rescue him have ended in failure and well, now I guess we know why." The reporter held a hand to her earpiece for a moment, then nodded. "Dabi and Freezerburn fled the scene shortly after opening fire on the hostages. The number one hero, Endeavor, is currently in pursuit. We'll take you now to our chopper for a bird's eye view."
"Well, we currently have eyes on a building that Endeavor chased the villains into just a few minutes ago. It appears that the fight is taking place inside...oh my god..."
A massive jet of flame erupted from the side of the building and Endeavor jumped down onto street level. The camera zoomed in on Todoroki and Shouto, who were both crouched down the street, looking a little worse for wear. They stood up slowly and stared down Endeavor and the students held their breath as they saw Todoroki frost over his left side.
"They've gotta give up, now, right?" Kirishima asked. "I mean they're facing Endeavor, they can't win!"
Endeavor shot a fireball at Todoroki who blocked it with an icewalll and created an opening for Dabi to attack Endeavor. The students gasped when the attack not only landed, but appeared to hurt Endeavor.
"I hate to say this," the reporter in the helicopter said, "but it looks like Endeavor might need a little help with this one. Where are they other heroes? Are they all still on rescue?"
"That's what we're all wondering." Shinso said. "That's probably why they attacked the reporters in the first place."
"Oh! Oh my god!" The reporter couldn't even bring herself to give any commentary as Todoroki slammed his right foot down and shot knives of ice at Endeavor, who couldn't dodge fast enough. The dorm room went silent, the only sound the reporter's frantic muttering at the scene below her.
At first, Endeavor was burning hot enough that the ice melted, but after a few seconds, the ice stuck and from the angle the helicopter was recording at, they could clearly see the massive icicles going in his chest and coming out his back coated in blood. Todoroki stood still for a long moment after Endeavor went limp and the class wondered what he was going to do? Would he regret it? Would he turn himself in? Would he just disappear?
On the screen Todoroki threw back his head and laughed. He was surrounded by ice, fire, and blood, standing in front of the person he had just killed and he laughed. The class sat frozen as Dabi joined in his laughter and pulled him through a familiar purple portal just moments before heroes arrived at the scene. They looked at each other as the horror and realization of what had just happened set in.
That was the first time they'd seen him laugh.
Tsukauchi straightened his tie and let out a long exhale as he sat down across from a reporter from the most popular newspaper in Japan. Normally in a situation like this he'd hold a press conference, but well… Many of the nation's top reporters were still in the hospital being treated after yesterday's attack and the rest were understandably nervous about being targeted, so a private interview it was.
"Hello, Detective Tsukauchi." The reporter was a pretty woman with blue skin, lavender hair, and perfectly straight teeth that looked vaguely threatening from Tsukauchi's spot in the hot seat. "My name is Chitose Kizuki. Thank you for having me today."
Tsukauchi nodded, "Thank you for coming. I understand the media's hesitance to attend a press conference considering the situation."
"You mean how the reporters on scene were viciously targeted by Dabi and Freezerburn during yesterday's attack?" She laughed. "It's an occupational hazard. If you're chasing the biggest stories, you're always going to be the biggest target. We all knew that when we signed on!"
Tsukauchi was slightly taken aback by her slightly laissez-faire attitude toward the injury of her colleagues, many of whom were undoubtedly her friends as well as rivals, but nothing she said registered as a lie, so she at least she was honest about her attitudes?
"All right, so let's begin!" Kizuki leaned forward eagerly. "So, there were a few juicy revelations yesterday, weren't there? What do you have to say on the subject of Dabi's identity?"
"We are unable to confirm or deny Dabi's claims of being a Todoroki at this time." Tsukauchi replied calmly. "Endeavor did have a son named Touya Todoroki who was reported missing about five years ago. Touya did have a fire quirk similar to Dabi's cremation as well as a similar eye color, but his scars make facial recognition impossible. So, there is a possibility Dabi really is Endeavor's oldest son, but there is no way to know for certain until we can obtain a sample of Dabi's DNA."
"But don't you have a lie detection quirk?" Kizuki asked with a gleam in her eye. "Surely you can tell if he was telling the truth from the footage."
"Normally, that would be the case." Tsukauchi nodded. "His words registered as true according to my quirk, but there is always the possibility that he is delusional and simply believes that he is Touya Todoroki, in which case he wouldn't be lying, at least from his own perspective. Therefore we are waiting on genetic testing before we can confidently confirm Dabi's identity."
Kizuku nodded, satisfied, "Alright, next question. Both Dabi and Freezerburn accused Endeavor of abusing them as children, including accusations of him participating in a quirk marriage. Did Endeavor abuse his family?"
Tsukauchi sighed heavily, "Unfortunately, according to the evidence we have gathered in the past 24 hours, those accusations do appear to be accurate. We are still in the process of taking official statements from Endeavor's two remaining children as well as his wife, but the evidence as well as my quirk indicate the Dabi and Freezerburn were telling the truth."
He didn't want to give those details to the media. Already there was huge public outcry against the hero commission and the hero system at large even without confirmation of Endeavor's abuse, but the fallout would be so much worse if they were tried to cover it up and it got out anyway. Tsukauchi knew that there would be inevitable changes in the hero system as a result of Endeavor's abuse and Todoroki's turn to villainy, but hopefully they would be able to do enough damage control in the next few months that they could curb the worst of it.
Kizuku was smiling slightly and he could see the hunger in her eyes, "So I guess here's the million dollar question: how did a child abuser get to be the number one hero?"
"We are currently running internal investigations of both the police force and the hero commission to find the answer to that question." Tsukauchi said. "That being said, it appears to have been a mixture of bribery and people's willingness to turn a blind eye out of the belief that Endeavor could not be guilty of crimes simply because he was a hero. His violent attitude, which would have been a red flag under other circumstances, was glorified and popularized in the media because we most often saw his violence directed toward taking down villains. It is also important to remember that the hero ranking system is based not on the hero commission's data, but on popular opinion polls. We, as law enforcement, have to take responsibility for the fact that Endeavor was allowed to remain a hero in spite of his crimes, but society at large is responsible for putting him in the number one spot."
"So, Tsukauchi, you said that the responsibility lies both with the hero commission and with the people who voted for them." Kizuku leaned forward. "Do you believe the hero system is broken?"
"I would not go that far." Tsukauchi replied. "But I can confidently say that reforms are obviously needed if we expect the system to fulfill its responsibility to keep the people of Japan safe. Part of the purpose of our ongoing investigation is to determine what reforms need to happen so that nothing like this happens again."
Kizuku smiled, "Next question. In the last year and a half, a majority of hero deaths have been linked to Mastermind, most notably the death of the former number one hero, All Might. Do you beleive that Mastermind was behind Endeavor's murder as well."
Tsukauchi grit his teeth at yet another reminder of his failure. "Mastermind has been known to work extensively with the league of villains, of which both Dabi and Freezerburn are members. There were also a lot of moving parts in the opperation and the plan relied on exploiting the weaknesses of Endeavor's quirk, both of which are hallmarks of Mastermind's murder plans. So while we have not recovered any written plans tying Mastermind to Endeavor's murder, it is safe to assume that yes, he was most likely involved."
"The police and media have known about Mastermind's existence for quite some time." Kizuku smiled. "So why hasn't he been caught yet? He is obviously a serious threat to society, and isn't it the heroes' job to eliminate those?"
Tsukauchi clenched his fists. He couldn't let her get to him. "We have people working around the clock to uncover Mastermind's identity, because we believe that is the only way we will be able to safely resolve the situation without risking more lives, especially since Mastermind has proven time and again that he is willing and able to kill both heroes and civilians. However, the same qualities that have enabled him to kill so many top rated heroes are the ones that make him so difficult to find and catch. He is highly intelligent and extremely careful, but we have heroes working the case that are able to match him in intelligence, so it is only a matter of time before we catch him."
"Alright." Kizuki said. "I believe we are almost out of time, so this will be my last question. In the last six months, we have lost two number one heroes to Mastermind, who is beginning to be called the number one villain in Japan. How do you think this bodes for hero society as a whole and, more specifically, Hawks, who is next in line for the number one spot?"
Tsukauchi shook his head. "I honestly can't say. Both heroes were killed by villains who had a distinct reason to target them, All Might because he was the symbol of peace and Endeavor because of a personal grudge. Mastermind himself, however, is not purposely going after number one heroes, so I do not believe Hawks is in any more danger now than he was a few months ago. As for society, we will simply have to wait and see."
Kizuku nodded and stood. "Perfect. Thank you again for this opportunity detective. I hope to see you again."
Tsukauchi gave a strained smile and walked her out. He gave a sigh of relief as she got into a car that was waiting for her at the curb. He never wanted to do that again.
He went back inside and got out the Mastermind file, even though he'd practically memorized it at this point. It had been months since All Might's death and still they were no closer to catching him. Nedzu had complained that his fur was losing its shine because of the stress of the case, but he was the only one capable of getting inside Mastermind's head. Tsukauchi shook his head and closed the file. Maybe it was time he got a little sleep.
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