Fading into the background

Chapter eight: Back to hell and back to fight

Short chapter

Shoto jogged home as he had missed his morning stretches and exercises. It was late morning on Saturday and he felt full and happy from having pancakes for breakfast with his friends. During the run he thought about what transpired last night. How his friends did not know about his disabilities but behaved the same after finding out. How it did not seem so obvious to them. Maybe he should have told them he was twelve.

When he reached his house it was warmer than usual. "Tadaima" Shoto said. If his sister was home maybe she would come to greet him. Instead of his sister he felt a massive, burning heat signature going towards him. The news was on the TV, the hero conference had finished early due to an emergency in Tokyo. Endeavor was home.

To say he was mad would be an understatement. Shoto had rarely seen the monster so angry, only at the times he had received his worst injuries. He was scared. In fact, he was so scared he could not make out what was being shouted at him. Not trying to pay more attention proved to be a mistake as somewhere along the rant he was asked a question. For this Shoto was harshly dragged to another room. By the looks of it, training with Endeavor was being reinstaurated.

His remaining weekend became a blur of beatings mixing into each other. However, unlike when he was younger, the hits would only land on parts of his that he could cover with clothing. There were no injuries on his face, neck, wrists or hands. The injuries were also lighter than expected consisting of fractures, bruising and burns but no broken bones.

In spite of the care his father put into not injuring him in visible places, Shoto bought waterproof, thermostable makeup to cover everything. He still had to change on the lockers with everyone else after all. During Sunday morning he practiced a bit with the makeup before going to his 'training session'. Thanks to that he was able to cover every bruise with a liberal use of foundation on Monday morning. The burns were trickier as he could not place makeup over them. They were also easier to pass off as real training accidents.

School began again with their teacher looking like a mummy. After an unnerving speech it seemed they were going to have to keep fighting villains like the USJ. However it turns out he was only talking about the sports festival. Aizawa-sensei also gave the class his contact information including address in case of an emergency.

Shoto spent his lunch with his friend group. They kept looking at him and snickering whenever someone said something obvious. Sato made it look like his disabilities were some sort of state secret that no one else knew about. Not even Aizawa-sensei (who had his medical files) or the rest of their classmates (who changed in the same room as him). Overall it was quite amusing.

The rest of the week went by rather plainly. During the day he would go to UA and have fun with his friends. They began doing teamwork exercises during hero training which made his group even more tight knitted. Next week they would start to form their special moves that they would showcase at the festival. In the afternoons he had his 'training sessions' with his father. On the bright side, Shoto was certain that by Friday he would be a makeup artist. The only remarkable thing that happened that week was that Tokoyami asked him if they could train together on Saturday as he had some issues with dark shadow and fire would help.

Author note: Next chapter the meeting with Tokoyami