Chapter 173 - Clash
He tried to move around me, but I slid smoothly in front of him, blocking his path yet again.
This time his expression hardened, a flash of anger lighting up his eyes.
"Get out of my way"
Chin slightly up, back straight, shoulders tensed, I met his gaze defiantly.
"No"
He stared at me silently, the muscles in his left cheek contracting and relaxing so quickly they looked as if they were throbbing under his skin.
I heard the tyres screech against the wet tarmac a little later than I should have because of the thundering rain crashing down around us.
I wondered if we were going to fight.
"He tried to kill my son"
My legs started to shake - I swallowed hard.
My eyes burned as I stopped my sharingan from instinctively opening.
"You shall not touch Keigo"
I'd been raised by a father with absolute and unconditional love, the kind of man who had seen me kill time and time again and never held it against me, who had always believed in me and always had my back even when the whole world was against me. I was brought up believing that it didn't matter what I did, that as long as I did my best - even if I hurt the people around me - everything would be all right.
My father's morality - our morality - wasn't double-edged: I could hurt people and do harm without suffering the consequences, but people couldn't touch me without paying the price of it a hundredfold.
I'd never realised how unfair this ideology was to anyone who wasn't me.
He frowned.
"You're my son, I'm certainly not going to fight you. Now step aside"
He made a step to the side.
I slipped past him as smoothly as if I were his shadow.
I'd always loved the idea of being able to do anything I wanted and knowing that no matter how awful I became, there would always be someone who would love me unconditionally and would welcome me home with open arms.
I wondered if I would have become a better person if my father had held me accountable for my actions.
"Sho-"
My sharingan activated.
His shocked expression when he saw it seared itself into my memory.
Endeavor, forty-six years old, one meter ninety-five, Quirk : Hell Flame...
My throat constricted so much that I could barely breathe without showing him how nervous I was. Icy sweat broke out at the back of my neck.
...strengths: intelligence, speed, uncanny mastery of his Quirk. Weaknesses : me.
My clones exploded. The smoke cleared.
We stared at each other, me resolved, him shaken.
I didn't move and he didn't.
There was a cavalcade of footsteps in the stairwell.
"I don't want to fight you", I said coldly, "But if you take another step towards him, I won't hesitate"
The surprise and confusion stunned him.
I wiped my sweaty palms on my trousers. Gradually I managed to steady my shaky knees and stand straight and strong in front of him.
I liked to think Nagano's incident had changed me, that I'd become different, maybe not better but certainly not worse.
I'd decided that I couldn't go on living the way I always did, that I had to face the consequences of my actions alone and to the very end.
Planning Touya's murder was my idea - Keigo was my consequence, and I had to deal with it.
"You would stand up against me for him ?"
He looked at me in disbelief, his tense expression changing to one of astonishment.
His furrowed eyebrows rose, his bandaged muscles relaxed, his fists unclenched.
"I will stand up against you if you tell me that Touya's life is worth more than his. Is it ?"
He didn't answer, just stared at me with a strange glint in his eyes.
Wasn't that an answer in itself ?
To oppose him so directly was the antithesis of everything I had ever been.
I had spent my entire existence worshipping the ground he walked on, listening to everything he told me as if his word were a divine decree.
It had never occurred to me that one day I might turn against him.
But didn't the Greeks say you had to kill your father to become a man ?
"I can't hurt you", I continued, "And you know that"
I would push him away as many times as I needed to but I wasn't able to hurt him.
"But if you kill him I'll kill Touya"
Whatever his next words were supposed to be I never heard them.
He looked at me quietly as if he were seeing me for the first time.
He knew I'd do it - for that reason alone, he didn't move.
The door to the roof slammed against the cabin wall like a thunderclap.
"Get down, now !"
My father turned his head sharply towards the door.
I stared at him, blood pounding in my ears, blinking frantically until my sharingan deactivated.
I felt dizzy, weak, my thoughts foggy as if I hadn't eaten for days.
"End- Endeavor ?"
There was a clear clang, like metal hitting metal.
I turned to the entrance.
A man on his knees - dressed entirely in grey - had a quivering gun in his hand.
His eyes were fixed on my father as he slowly lowered the weapon.
Suddenly the rain at the level of his face, further to his right, coalesced into a ball of water.
It grew into a man-sized sphere.
The rain falling on it nourished it, accelerating its growth tenfold.
Two dark silhouettes appeared at the heart of the bubble, their outlines becoming firmer as time passed.
The bubble began to twist and turn until it became a water vortex.
Suddenly, two silhouettes emerged from the floating bubble, placing respectively pumps and trainers on the ground.
The one with the trainers was a woman in the same grey outfit as the previous man, her hand resting on her companion's shoulder.
The other, shorter woman, had ashen grey hair and turquoise eyes, with pronounced stress lines at the corners of her eyes and cheeks so puckered she looked like a dog.
"Hawks" she said, opening her eyes again, "I hope this isn't another thing that that damn kid-"
She stopped when she saw us.
Her eyes lingered on me for a second then focused on my father.
"Endeavor", she greeted him.
"President Pantu", he replied evenly.
So she's the President of the Commission.
I had nothing against her personally yet I choose to dislike her because of Hawks.
A few last wisps of white smoke swirled up from the hot roof.
The rain was still pouring.
Her water-green eyes roamed over the roof from left to right.
Her gaze lingered for a moment on the inert form of Dabi, then shifted until it settled on Hawk's body. Her gaze hardened.
"Sila"
The uniformed woman at her side let go of her shoulder and returned in the bubble.
The President turned her attention to my father, face closed.
"Care to tell me what you're doing here ?"
He didn't even bat an eyelid.
"I could ask you the same thing"
They stared at each other, not with hostility but merely with caution.
Technically, the President of the Heroes' Commission was above my father and all the other heroes in the country.
In reality, however, achieving a level of influence and power like Endeavor's gave him privileges equal to, if not greater, than the President's.
He had managed to save Touya from a one-way ticket to Tartarus, despite the Commission's best efforts to prevent it.
His career, which - had it been that of a lesser hero - would have been destroyed by all the scandals I had caused over the previous months was still intact.
"Is that your son I see lying there ?"
Two other people who looked like doctors burst out of the bubble with Sila and ran towards Hawks when she gestured to him.
My father looked at them briefly, as if with regret.
He turned his attention back to the President.
"Hawks tried to kill him"
I knew my father himself knew how fucked up we were.
"Did he ?"
She didn't look the least bit impressed.
"Your son is under house arrest, Endeavor. Aren't you able to keep him on a leash ?"
The doctors hovered around Hawks, taking his vitals and then placing an oxygen mask on his face attached to a plastic bottle.
They pumped steadily as I watched, relieved that someone had taken over.
"You know what this means", the President continued.
My father's muscles tensed and suddenly the air - already hot - became searing.
"We have no idea what has happened here", he said quietly. As far as we know, Hawks could be the one to blame for this"
"As the rules of our agreement have not been respected," she said calmly, "The permission that gave your son the right to stay at home while awaiting trial is null and void"
The temperature rose so quickly I thought I saw my father's skin turn blue.
"We're taking him straight to Tartarus"
*
A/N : I will be out of my country for the next two weeks, thus the upload schedule will change : for public platforms you will get all of your chapters as usual, but for Genin, Chunin and Jonin levels on P@treon you will get, starting from today, all of the chapters provided in the tier + 8 bonus chapters ahead of schedule.
Go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG