Burnt to Ashes - Kenichi Todoroki

Izora's Origin

(Fun fact, all the dialogue is in Vientiane Lao dialect until Izora meets Maxwell in Canada.)

"Y'know Izora, we were really hoping to have more kids to carry our legacy until you did that." My dad said as he sat across from me at our long kitchen table. He was holding a mug and staring me down.

"Did what?" I asked.

"Your horn tore your mom's uterus." He said.

"What's a uterus?" I asked.

He grumbled a few words to himself and didn't answer my question.

"Daddy," I said, "what's a uterus?"

He still didn't respond. He looked mad, and that scared me the most. Dad was not fun when he was mad.

"Daddy," I said again, "my head hurts."

"Get over it." He finally told me. "You're not a baby anymore. It'll go away soon."

He got up from the table and left his mug, walking right past me. Daddy doesn't like me. Why?

I went to my room and stayed in there, organizing my stuffed animals. My head hurt really bad, and my stomach was growling hard, even though I had just ate.

"Go to sleep, Izora." I heard my mom say from outside my door, not even bothering to open it. "It's past your bedtime."

"But I have a headache!" I complained.

My mom took a few moments to answer, and I could hear my dad shouting from their room. "You're probably just going through a growth spurt. A lot of kids your age are growing right now."

I could hear her footsteps slowly fade.

I tried to sleep, but it was hard. Mom and dad were always arguing, my dad was always mad, then he would storm out of the house. He wouldn't come back for days sometimes. My mom said he had anger issues, and that she was glad I didn't get those anger issues passed down to me.

When I laid down, and my room got darker, my headache only worsened. My stomach felt like it was going to explode. And I felt a pain at the top of my head.

I fell off my bed onto the solid hardwood floor below me. I stared up at the chandelier that hung up on my tall ceiling, glistening as the moon's light hit it. I started crying; the pain was unbearable. I felt the horn on the top of my head, where the aching was coming from, and I felt it getting bigger.

Something was happening to me.

I started yelling and screaming at the top of my lungs. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't feel my body. Something. was tearing into me and I was in so much pain.

The last thing I could see before my consciousness dropped was my parents storming into my room.

Then, I could only recall small bits and pieces of what happened.

Blood splattered everywhere. The ground being ripped up. People scattering and screaming and running for their lives. Red and blue flashes of light that blinded my vision and made my headache worsen.

And next thing I knew I was locked up in a cell. My hands tied, my head still pounding like it was before, and utter confusion on the officer's faces.

"Are you aware of how many people she's hurt and killed?" One officer told my mom. "Hundreds. It's spreading to outside countries as a terrorism act. We can't have you here in case this happens again, this country doesn't have any facilities that can quickly be called to action when accidents occur such as this, and there are very few heroes-"

"Are you saying we have to leave Laos?" My dad snapped. "We've lived here for our entire life, we sacrificed everything to stay here, and you're telling us to just get out?"

"There are some very nice places in Japan, Canada, the US, Mexico, even the United Kingdom if you'd like some places with some better quirk care systems." The officer said. "But we can't have her here in Laos."

"I just.." I could hear my mom's voice break. "I just don't understand.. my whole family's genetically quirkless and my husband's quirk doesn't have anything to do with whatever.. that was."

"I don't know what to tell you." The officer walked away.

My dad took a deep breath in and exhaled very audibly. "Izora. When we get home you are staying in your room. You're not coming out, and you are to keep your light on. Until we find a new house in a whole new fucking country."

And so he did. For two weeks I didn't leave my room. For two weeks, the only interaction my parents had with me was to give me food and water.

And in two weeks we got kicked out from our house and sent to Canada, where my parents bought a mansion in Toronto, and sent me to a private school for kids with unstable or uncontrollable quirks. A fairly new private school that I was going to reside for my elementary years.

Before I was sent off on my first day of this school, my mom took a drive to some store. "Wait in the car." She told me.

A few minutes later she came back holding a navy blue box. She opened it and took a yellow ring out. She dropped it into my hand. "Izora," she said, "this ring will help control your quirk. Put it around your horn."

I slipped the ring on my horn.

She dropped me off at school and told me to follow all the other kids to figure out where I was supposed to go. So I did exactly what she told me. But I noticed all the kids were with their parents...

"Woah!" A girl bumped into me and knocked me down, and she fell with me. I could see a flash of blue and white hair.

And then I heard a loud hiss which made me jump.

The girl stood up and I could see a snake wrapped around her neck. "I'm sorry! Naga is just like that."

"You have.. a snake...." I mumbled. The way it was looking at me..

And then it hissed some more into the girl's ear.

"Are you Izora?" She asked.

I nodded. "How did you know?"

She shrugged. "I'm Nora! Me and Naga's name kind of match."

I slowly nodded again. "Nice to meet you."

"Let's be friends." She said. "I think we would be good friends!"

"Okay." I said, letting her help me up.

And that's how Maxwell and I met.

And don't call him Nora.