Chapter 35

Endeavor fell from the sky like an avenging god.

Blood trickled from a gash in his eyebrow, staining his eyelid and beading his lashes. He blinked to clear the droplets that were turning his vision red.

His skin was glowing, burning, streaked with veins the color of lava. Steam seeped from every pore, heating the air on contact, as if he wanted to set it on fire.

"Endeavor !"

His sidekicks fell from the sky a few meters away, out of breath from the flight.

"Wait-"

One of them bent over and vomited.

Under Enji's feet, the dock caught fire. The water around bubbled under the heat.

His blood pounded so hard in his ears that he couldn't hear anything else. His feverish gaze was fixed on the boathouse.

He kicked open the door.

A sickening smell of burning flesh and urine wafted back.

He stepped forward without noticing, his crazed eyes piercing the place from side to side. His heart pounded against his chest. An icy sweat rolled down his burning skin - Shoto, Shoto, Shoto - a terrible foreboding gripped his chest.

There was blood everywhere.

Blood on the floor, splattered on the walls, turning the water red. There were headless bodies, breasts with holes in them, arms-

His eyes fell on a silhouette drawn against the blue horizon of the sea.

He breathed heavily, his shoulders rising and falling unevenly. His two-tone hair fluttered in the sea breeze.

His blazer was long gone, and all that remained of his shirt were torn shreds. He stood in the middle of a pile of corpses, a long knife in each hand.

Enji exhaled in relief.

He stepped on a crushed head, almost slipped on a severed arm and barely noticed. His blue eyes could not turn away from his son even for a second.

Shoto turned slowly - as if the sound of the door being kicked in had reached him a second later. His eyes met his dad's.

"Ah, dad"

Enji's heart missed a beat.

His child was covered in blood, as if he'd bathed in it.

"Shoto" he whispered.

Ignoring the potential danger, the man rushed to his son. He checked his head, his small arms and his stomach to make sure that he was really there, that it wasn't an illusion. The boy flinched when his fingers brushed his cheek.

Endeavor cupped his face and gently turned it to get a better look at the wound on his left cheek.

They've gouged out one of his eyes.

An icy fury gripped him.

Slowly, Shoto ran his fingers from his eyebrow to his eye and down to his cheek, as if he was just realizing he'd been wounded.

He looked at the blood on his hand before muttering:

"So this face was fated to be marked, whether I liked it or not..."

Endeavor frowned, not understanding what he was getting at. Shock, surely. His heart sank to see him in such a state, looking haggard and with lost eyes.

He took his child in his arms and carried him out of this horror hangar. The bridge would serve as a temporary helipad.

His henchmen took care of putting out the fire he'd started. The sea was no longer boiling.

Black vans emblazoned with the logo of his agency arrived with screeching tires.

His deputy, Masami, jumped out before the first car had stopped.

"The helicopter will arrive any minute now"

His eyes fell on the child his boss was holding. So this was his only son - the one for whom Endeavor had dispatched nearly three hundred people.

"Close the hangar's doors and don't let anyone in"

Masami watched the building. The sliding door was half smashed in, but it was too dark to see anything.

The smell, however, was unmistakable.

Masami nodded darkly.

"I suppose no one survived ?"

An helicopter appeared on the horizon.

Masami dropped hiss question and took charge of getting everyone off the makeshift runway.

"A hangar like this must have cameras. Find them. And find out who the fuck they are"

Masami nodded as Endeavor and his son climbed into the helicopter.

*

As soon as the chopper landed on the roof of the hospital, a team of doctors with stretchers rushed to the new arrivals. Endeavor placed his son on it, then stepped back, his imposing presence still nearby.

Shoto was forced to lie down. A nurse attached an oxygen mask to his face.

"He's lost a lot of blood! If we don't take care of his eye..."

Wouldn't this be the best time to attempt another assassination ?

Shoto laughed. The sound surprised Enji. The injection must have worked.

He turned his head to the side, his pale hand reaching for Enji. He came closer and wrapped his fingers around hers.

His skin was unusually cold.

*

To say Endeavor was worried was an understatement.

He hadn't slept since they'd picked up his son the day before, and he had been at his bedside ever since. He'd been directing operations over the phone, giving orders to begin the witch hunt. Masami had sent him a report on the scene and an initial expert assessment of what had happened.

He hadn't realized it at the time, too obsessed with the idea of getting his son out of here, but seeing the pictures of the carnage in daylight and in peace was another story altogether.

It had been a slaughter.

Arms had been ripped off and heads torn from their bodies. So much blood had been spilled that you couldn't even see the ground.The water had turned red. The worst part was the bodies.

Endeavor had a long career behind him and he'd rarely seen this level of violence.

Slit throats, fine. Limbs torn off, fine.

But there were at least three bodies with gaping holes where their hearts used to be, two that had been burned so intensely - but that wasn't fire, fire didn't burn like that - that their flesh had turned black, and three that had been found drowned. And the others...

Enji put down the polaroids, disgusted.

His eyes trailed back to his son.

An intravenous line was attached to his arm, and a mask allowed him to breathe properly.He had been placed in a medically induced coma until the two doctors arrived from the US with the right Quirks to regrow his eye.

He looked peaceful.

Enji smiled a little and gently pushed a lock of hair back from his forehead.

It was strange, this situation.

Enji had never really wanted to have children.

In fact, he would have adopted if he'd really wanted to. Then his father had died. It had set off a series of events he hadn't been able to stop.

His obsession with power.

His commitment to the army.

His determination to surpass All Might.

Enji couldn't - wouldn't - let him be number one. He couldn't help it, something- something visceral, primitive, something deep in his being urged him to give himself over and over again until victory.

But there had never been any victory.

When he found Rei, Enji was at one of the lowest points of his life.

He had not thought much about it : he had promised to take her away from her hateful parents and to give her a happy family.

She had heard him talk about his thirst for power, and she had accepted it: he knew she thought she could change him, and he knew it wouldn't work - because even if he sometimes lied to himself, Enji was like that, and he knew it.

Looking back, Enji knew that he had never felt anything but strong affection for her and deep respect as the mother of his children.

She had loved him, for sure. He didn't deserve it.

They had had children together - Touya, Fuyumi, Natsuo.He had loved all three of them, each with their own qualities and faults.

Even if they were failures.

And then there was Shoto.

He hadn't seen him like the others - hadn't perceived him as his child.

He was his creation. The one who would allow him to dethrone All Might.

But before he knew it, the boy had trapped him.

Enji had found the way he clung to him annoying, his tendency to fall asleep only in his arms annoying. Over time, he'd found comfort in this boy who looked just like him, and in those big eyes that looked at him as if he held the seven wonders of the world in his hands.

So Enji paid him some attention. Just a little, not much.

He'd listened to him talk about his favorite comic - Princess Sarah - and how he spent his days. What he wanted to do with his life. About his obsession with chocolate cake.

Shoto was unlike his three other children. He liked to seek him out.He wanted to spend time with him, and listened to everything he said as if his word was gold.

Enji felt appreciated. Loved.

Unconditionally.

So, greedy as he was, he asked for more.

Maybe Rei had been right. Maybe he'd always treated Shoto differently than the others.

And that was what- never mind.

Surely, that was why he found himself at the bedside of this child, his child, putting off his heroic duties to be as close to him as possible until he was cured.

When he opened his eyes, he wanted to be the first person he saw.

His mind returned to the boathouse.

There were no reporters yet, but it was only a matter of time. If he made a request to the Prefect, he could have the matter hushed up.

Because if the public found out what had happened there...

He would lie for his son.

He'd convince his henchmen and subordinates that it was all their work, that they'd been blinded by their desire to save him. He would talk about the guns, the fact that they had gouged out his eye. That his bodyguard was killed.

It might work. But the media fallout would be terrible.

It would look that they had been lèse, that their behavior was no better than that of villains. Endeavor could handle it: bad public opinion was nothing new to him, even if this time it would be particularly virulent. As for his subordinates…

No, this case wasn't supposed to get out.

Enji ran a hand over his exhausted face, his eyes still fixed on his son's pierced eye.

The scar from that fateful day would stay with him for the rest of his life.

He got up, grabbed his cell phone, and stepped into the hallway to make the call.

His eyes never left his child, whom he could see through the glass wall of the hospital room.

"Endeavor-san," said the Prefect's friendly voice on the other end of the line. "I wasn't expecting you to call. What can I do for you?"

Enji explained the situation, the attempt of murder on his son's life and what had followed.

He mentioned several times that he hadn't used his Quirks and that everything he had done was a result of his skill with bladed weapons. He added that he was training to be a hero, that he had the interests of others at heart - that he had lost control because he was very close to Kenzei and it had affected him personally.

Enji had closed his eyes after telling his lies, ashamed to use the old man's memory like that. He hoped that wherever he was, the old man would forgive him.

The Prefect was at first astonished, then surprised and finally deeply shocked when he saw the pictures.

Understanding, too; 'poor child,' he'd said, 'to have to resort to such means to save his life,' he had sighed, 'he must have been terrified'.

Enji said nothing.

The Prefect had finally come to the conclusion that there was nothing to discuss: the social uproar that could be caused by the release of such information to the newspapers... they had to cover it up, no matter what.

At no point in his explanation of the problem did Enji consider that Kenzei could have carried out such a massacre: the old man had been excellent in his youth and might have been able to do something similar in his prime, but his physical condition no longer allowed it.

Besides, Shoto was his son; Enji knew him better than anyone else.

Even though he looked like him, he wasn't really like him. And even less so since Touya.

Enji thanked the prefect and then hung up.

He took his place at his child's bedside again and listened to the steady beeping of the EKG.

His role as a father was to protect him at all costs, and that's what he would always do.

Even if it meant he had to die for him.

*

Author's note :

Here's the thing : even in the original MHA, I never believed that Enji was 100% a bad guy. Otherwise why would he havd tried to make a redemption in the recent seasons ?

And Rei wasn't also this feeble woman who saw nothing and did nothing - she knew what was happening but she decided to ignore it.

In the same way, Enji's love for Shoto is really dense - if I may say - but really raw, too, with what it entails. 

Neither Enji nor Shoto are perfect, but they need each other, and that's why their relationship is so strong.

Power stones goal : 120

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