Fading into the background

Chapter three: Hell on earth

Trigger warning: Child abuse, (probably innacurete) medical procedures and gore??

Because of his injuries Shoto was now missing half of the sensory input he was used to. At the beginning he didn't think much of it, but when he stumbled into one too many doorframes he came to realize that dodging and fighting would now be much harder. His next training session proved his assumption correct, his father would relentlessly throw kicks, punches and fire to his blindspot catching him by surprise every time. As weeks went by Shoto started developing the ability to dodge the fireballs as he could feel their heat before impact. From there he began to pay more attention to the changes of the air temperature and with the help of his quirk, Shoto could now see a 360º image of his surroundings like a heat camera.

Without responsible supervision of any kind, training became more brutal than Shoto thought possible. He ended every session sobbing and crying, at least the times he managed to stay conscious. Eventually he began to beg his father to stop training him. That monster soon grew tired of the tears and snot and added a new activity to his routine. The seven year old was almost halfway through highschool so it was no problem to stop academics for a while. Endurance training was what he called it, pain for the sake of itself. It was soon that this "training" delved into torture and the little boy yearned for the beatings that no longer looked so bad.

As he grew older his injuries grew with him in amount, size and difficulty of treating. During one particularly bad day his father kicked him hard enough that one of his ribs snapped and went right into his lung, the "fight" didn't end there so he earned a wider collection of injuries than ever before.

When he got to his room he took out his medical textbook, went over the pneumothorax treatment and went to his bathroom. It would be the first time he would perform surgery as he was only eight. His chest felt tight but it wasn't nearly as bad as when he got waterboarded. He knew he had more injuries, but his priority at that moment was to remove the air from the pleural space. First he improvised a chest drainage with a plastic bottle, some tubes from the first aid kit and tape. He counted his ribs starting from the top of his chest and disinfected the site between his 4th and 5th right ribs, it was going to hurt so he bit down a cloth, he grabbed the scalpel and made a 5cm (2 inches) incision. Before he could regret it he stuck in the chest drainage tube and securely taped it to his chest. Not a moment later he began gagging and barely had time to lean to a side before he vomited. Everything was a mess around him and Shoto knew he had more injuries to fix, but he couldn't bring himself to move. After retching and dry heaving for a while he passed out against the bathtub.

He woke up later covered in a mix of sweat, blood and vomit. He decided to finish patching himself up before he cleaned up. His other injuries were mild in comparison to the pneumothorax, but still he splinted his dislocated wrist, stitched some of the bigger cuts and applied salve to his numerous burns. He couldn't shower as he still had the tube stuck on his chest so he used some wet rags to clean the dried up fluids from his skin. He dragged himself to bed with difficulty and setted up the alarm sooner than usual as he had to take out the drainage tube in the morning. The next day Shoto woke up to the annoying ringing of his alarm clock and checked that his injuries had not worsened overnight, dreading the process of taking out the tube. Luckily for him everything went smoothly and the rest of that week's training sessions were softer allowing the boy to somewhat recover.

Two years had gone by since the pneumothorax accident, during that time everything continued the same, the academics still left aside. It was 4 AM so the ten year old was sleeping as his schedule dictated when an enraged Endeavor bursted into his room and roughly dragged the still sleepy boy to the training room. As he crossed the doorframe he threw the child against the wall, hitting his head and leaving him gasping for breath and even more desoriented than before. Without giving Shoto time to recover he kicked him harshly on the stomach, making him throw up what little dinner he'd had. Enji was no longer pretending this to be training. The one-sided "fight" continued for what felt like hours, Shoto dodged every once in a while and made ice walls in an attempt to catch what little breath he could, but it was a futile effort.