Burnt to Ashes - Kenichi Todoroki

A World Without Kenichi

Coda's POV:

First the sirens. Then the chaos.

Chaos follows Kenichi everywhere, I've now noticed. It followed him to Downtown Toronto, where he saved me. It followed him to Nathan Phillips Square in Harbourfront Centre. It followed him to the bloody battlefield of Gold Viper territory, and now it follows him here, to one of the biggest events in all of quirk history.

I clenched Izora's hand and made a run for it, following my other classmates. Although there was a strict evacuation policy, nobody cared. It was a bunch of scared sheep escaping from the big bad wolf that was the Shirokage mafia.

"We're all going to die!" I heard someone scream.

"They're coming for us!" Yelled another.

I tried keeping a level head. I always had. I've been in situations as grand as this. But in the midst of all the chaos, my sanity got dragged in as well.

"Run," Izora said. "I'll drag you down."

We got outside of the arena. I spun to face her.

"You're stuck with me, 'Zora." I said. I held her hand tighter and kept running.

My class was in frantics. Ablaze tried counting all the students, but I counted quicker. We were all here, all except Kenichi. Kenichi was gone.

They were looking for him, afterall.

"We need to find Kenichi," Ryker told her. "He's going to be killed!"

Ablaze shook her head. "We can't split up to find him. Follow me."

We all started running. I could see from both sides of our class, other classes were running as well. To get to the safety of the school.

Then I heard the explosion.

I didn't bother to look behind me. I could hear it, and that was enough. Screams and tons of clanging as pieces of the arena hit the ground. My eyes were bloodshot and open, thinking about what could've happened to the people still there. There were people dead behind me, and I couldn't save them.

We got to Toronto Hero Academy, inside the doors, inside our classroom. The school was locked up with large metal caging, as if that could protect us from one of the strongest forces on the planet.

We sat at our desks, silent. Quiet. Not one word. I looked around at my classmates, and noticed immediately that some were trembling. Some had their heads down. Tears were even falling from Ryker's face, and Maxwell was praying to whoever would hear him.

"It's going to be okay," Seiryo said, maybe trying to lighten the mood, or maybe to convince himself. "The heroes will come to our rescue, they always do. Right, Ablaze? And they'll bring Kenichi back and stop the Shirokages?"

Ablaze stood up from her desk. "Ever wondered why I quit being a fulltime pro hero?"

The class was intent, as well as I.

"I ran into one. A Shirokage," she said. "Nearly killed me, never came that close to death in my life. That's why I'm a teacher now. And I would never wish that for any of my students."

No one said anything. But maybe that's how it should've been.

I felt slight rumbles that seemed to get worse. Like an earthquake, although Toronto had very few earthquakes, if at all.

The rumbles seemed to have gotten to our phones, because the backpacks we had left in the classroom all alerted at the exact same time.

I reached into its pocket and pulled out my phone, and there popped up an alert. An alert from the Shirokages.