BNHA Fics

Hellflame Heatstroke | Young Todoroki Siblings

A/N: This is an incident I referenced in a fic I'm serializing elsewhere (maybe I should cross post it here...?) and the more I thought about it, the more I was like, yep, that story deserves to be told... so here it is.

PS I looked up children's growth curves to get an idea of how tall the siblings would be since they're a few years younger, and the older ones would be about the same, but Shouto would likely be a mere 155 cm (5'1"), so he'd be shorter than Fuyumi at this age.  You're welcome.

Synopsis: Endeavor gets irritated with 12-year-old Shouto's over-reliance on ice and forces him through a series of exercises to train exclusively his left side, but he takes it too far and it doesn't end well.  When a villain attack elsewhere in the city calls him away unexpectedly, Shouto is left in the care of his siblings who quickly realize he has heat stroke and needs medical attention.

***CW: terrible parenting/neglect/abuse, hospitals

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"Those punches are sloppy!" Endeavor shouted, smacking Shouto's fist with the board he'd been holding up. "Tuck your elbows! You want a villain to catch your arm and rip it off? Keep punching like that! And relax your shoulders! Put that energy into your fist!"

Shouto exhaled sharply, rolling his shoulders to release the tension before straightening back into proper form and aiming again for the X in the center of the board Endeavor was holding in front of his solar plexus. Punch, hold, burn, repeat. Next to them lay stacks of boards with the centers burned out, and next to those a second stack with any board where he'd missed the X. After two hundred boards, for each one with the burn misaligned, he would have to run from the house to the nearby fish market and back - 500 meters - and then hold the plank position on only his right arm for thirty seconds while incinerating the "failed" board with his left. It was the last exercise in a lengthy fire-intensive workout Endeavor had tailored as a remedial lesson after the previous day's sparring session in which Shouto had used only ice.  Seeing this imbalance as a weakness, Endeavor forced his son to spend a day training the other side and getting accustomed to the intense heat.  After nearly three hours, Shouto's stamina was beginning to falter.  So far, there were eleven off-center boards.

Sweat dripped down Shouto's face and neck, beads trickling down his chest and soaking his singed tank top. With each punch, the air moving around his arms felt like the inside of an oven, even in between the moments his fire quirk was activated. Between boards 178 and 194, he added three more to the failure stack, and even though he just managed to strike the X on boards 195 through 200, he could hardly see through the sweat that was running into his eyes.

Endeavor counted up the fourteen boards in the off-center stack and shook his head. "93% accuracy. You think that's good enough?"

"No."

"Louder."

"No!"

"That's right!" Endeavor exclaimed. "You want a 7% chance of defeat with every punch? You'll have to do better than that if you want to surpass me."

"I'm tired," said Shouto, trying to wipe away the sweat from his face, but his arms were soaked as well and it made no difference.

"No complaining," said Endeavor. "You've got fourteen laps to run. I'll bring these boards to the courtyard so you don't have to stop and take off your shoes after every lap. Get going!"

Shouto laced up his running shoes and took off towards the fish market, ran around the back of it, and returned home, meeting his stack of failed boards in the courtyard. The first 30 second plank wasn't too difficult, though it was a bit challenging to balance on one arm while using the other to burn the board. As soon as the first board was reduced to ashes, Endeavor urged him onward to the second lap. Run, plank, burn, repeat. By the tenth lap - five kilometers in, and as many minutes straining every muscle in his body while he burned down his shortcomings - Shouto's whole body was shaking, and the heat from the fire seemed to radiate off his skin with every move.