Chapter 16 Why am I on Fire? by Yojimbra

The soft sound of our alarm clock was enough to wake us both up.

The dream of being one to wake Rei up was reserved pretty much for Sundays at this point in our life, largely because Touya had started school so having his early schedule to keep in mind forced both myself and Rei to adapt. It wasn't much of a change as we were both early risers whenever we didn't end up spending all night acting like we were both teenagers.

"Enji~" Rei groaned snuggling deeper into my chest as we both fought against the dreadful curse known as being awake, though, with Rei around it was hardly a curse. If anything this was the real dream. She glanced up at me, a silver eye gleaming with malice. "Alarm."

No matter how often I saw it, seeing Rei in the morning was something amazing to me, and the fact that her cuteness levels were set to extra high before she actually woke up was just a big fat bonus. With great effort I partially rolled over, slapping my hand to turn off the alarm, at first I hit the game controller—the fact that Rei kicked my ass at Mario Kart nearly nightly was a secret I would take to my grave, I blamed my giant meaty hands—then after a few more missed swings, I tapped onto the alarm silencing it for now.

Before I could roll over and smother Rei in affection she did so to me. She pushed me further onto my back, her hand on my arm as she pinned me against the mattress and kissed me with more vigor than she could normally muster this early in the morning. To say the kiss was simple was to say that the sunrise was simple, it was an event that happened every single day, but that didn't make it any more magical.

"Happy anniversary," Rei muttered as she pulled back, the covers falling free of her body. She sat on my stomach, stretching and showing off just how cute she looked in her sleeping shirt. Ever since I let it slip that I really liked it whenever she wore one of my shirts to bed she had made certain to do just that. And I loved her for it.

Which was why when she said anniversary I panicked just a bit. Or maybe a lot because Rei started laughing.

"Don't you remember?" Rei smiled at me leaning forward and tracing her arms along my arms to hold both of my hands. Another kiss. This one shorter. "Today marks a year since I first caught you in the kitchen cooking pancakes."

"Ooooh." I blinked. Has it really been a year? "I guess it has been, huh? I'm surprised you remember it."

"Really?" Rei asked, squeezing my hand tighter. "Why would I not remember the day that my life started to get so much better? You know, I remember feeling hopeful for the first time that day, and slowly, I started to smile thinking about you, and then, we ended up here. Happy. A whole family."

"Oh, then, should we celebrate?"

Rei just shrugged. "That's up to you, I'll be down for anything tonight, but for now I think we need to deal with our kids."

"Right, well, I don't think it'd be good to celebrate this with them, for uhh," I looked Rei in the eye and swished my lips. "Various reasons."

"That's probably smart." Rei hugged me and then rolled off. "It's a good thing they're young enough, still, I'll do…" She flipped her hair back and gave me a smirk and a half. "Something special for you tonight."

"Great, now I'm going to be even more excited to come home than I normally am."

"That's the point."

A kiss to my cheek signaled the start of our morning.

Getting dress, cooking breakfast, making sure that Touya was dressed, and getting ready for school, making sure that Fuyumi was up, and just the general hectic forty-five minutes before my day as Endeavour actually started.

It still blew my mind that an entire year had passed. Was this technically my birthday now? When was my birthday anyway? Was it Endeavour's birthday or my birthday? Well, whatever, I'm sure that Rei would give me an extra sweet kiss on both days if I ever asked for it. Which meant I was totally going to mention it.

"Dad," Touya grumbled, a bright All Might backpack fastened to his back. "Do you have to follow me to school today?"

Technically speaking I wasn't. It was common practice for heroes to patrol along common children paths to school. Some customs such as children walking to and from schools were so ingrained into Japanese culture that no matter what they would find a way to make it happen, despite the relatively high crime rate. To accommodate this many heroes adjusted their morning patrols to overlap most school routes, especially the younger ones.

"If I walk in front of you you'll be following me," I rubbed Touya's head and was rewarded by a lunch box to the back of the knee. "Hey!"

"Sorry!"

"Look, Touya, it's part of my job as a hero to go on patrol and make sure that people, especially children are safe." I messed his hair up a lot and leaned down to whisper a valuable life lesson on my son. "Besides, it makes your mother happy."

"Mom's always happy now!" Touya grumbled.

"You're welcome."

The pouting continued until he met up with his usual group of friends.

One of which I recognized. It was hard not to. The girl bounced around a lot and had snow-white hair and matching bunny ears. Naturally, Rumi, the girl that would one day become the pro hero known as Miruko was feisty as all hell and put Touya in his place more often than not, the rest of his group of friends I really couldn't tell who they were at the safe distance I kept on my patrol path, but, it was nice to see Touya making friends so quickly.

"Hey, Touya!" Rumi ran up and punched my son in the arm hard. My years of reading and writing romance told me that was peak childhood friends trope in action. But there was no way in hell I was going to make that assumption about my own kid! Especially not with Rumi! "Your dad walk you here again?"

Touya rubbed his arm and pointed in my direction.

Should I wave? I felt like I should wave. I waved.

Rumi waved back, and so did Touya's other friends. Touya did not.

Was I embarrassing my son? Good! Just wait until he was older and I could start using the years of dad jokes I had been building up. Though, maybe I should be more considerate of how Touya feels? Was it okay to intentionally embarrass kids in front of their friends? That sounded like a great question to ask Mr. Google later. In the meantime, early morning patrol.

Once Touya was safe within school grounds I turned and headed towards my Agency, a relatively small office building that I had been renting for cheap, there were talks about building a larger building for me, but, I didn't exactly feel comfortable with the idea of having so many heroes under me that I needed an office building. Besides, I'm pretty sure the reason why Endeavour built his original tower was to match All Might's tower.

It made much more sense to me to just keep a small office space with a gym, locker room, shower, and a couple of offices and rest rooms for a few trusted sidekicks. But no giant umbral hero organization. I couldn't even fathom not knowing who I was working with. Besides, I was rather happy with my current sidekicks and would only replace them once it was time for them to grow up and open their own agencies.

XXXX

"Endeavour Sir!" Fourth Kind, my sidekick that insisted on wearing a suit—the tie had flames on it—came running up to me and wrung his quad set of knuckles nervously. The nineteen-year-old boy had become a staple of my daily life since I took him on and he was more or less my second or third in command, it was a toss-up between him and Maki. "We have a request for patrol today sir!"

I raised an eyebrow and looked towards the sidekick that made the most sense. She had been with me since I took over. A black-haired woman with an athletic build that stood just an inch or two taller than Rei and easily had 50 pounds of pure muscle on my wife, she had purple eyes and lacked the ability for anything feminine, she sought me out because much like myself she had a fire-based quirk, those her manifested in two-spirit like motes of fire that she could command.

Maki Oze; hero name: Fire Witch, with the quirk Fire Sprits. Though, I was of the opinion that she had a second quirk that allowed her to bench far more than a girl her size could. Seriously, with four arms I would have thought that Fuso could beat her in a spar, but nope.

"It's from your fanboy," Maki deadpanned and showed me the tablet that she used to cover much of the day to day stuff in our department. "He's holding a rally in a square and wants you to be there. He says for protection of course, but he probably wants to have his image associated with you, especially because he's basically running off of what you said that night."

I groaned, letting my shoulders slump. Great. A hard choice.

Associate myself with politics, or risk letting Redestro happen.

It was an election year so naturally, it was time for him to start campaigning and making progress towards becoming an elected official. It was a long hard fought battle and he'd need allies. And he was fighting for stuff that I believed in.

But I really, really, really, didn't want to get involved in politics. It just rubbed me wrong, having the influence of a hero and trying to push a political agenda. Just picturing All Might becoming the prime minister because he's All Might wasn't an image I wanted in my head. And I feel like that exact thing has happened at least once in the United States.