134The next day, Izuku arrived at the Todoroki estate at exactly fifteen minutes to six. Though that was a little early, he had no desire to fall afoul of Shoko's demand that he not be late–and besides, it quickly turned out that those extra few minutes were nearly all eaten up by the Todoroki House Guard.
More than a mile out from the actual manor, they hit the first roadblock. It was a relatively straightforward process–Lord Enji knew he was coming, after all–but it was still a stark upgrade from the last time Izuku had come down this road. The men manning it waved him through quickly, but he still got a good look at their bearing and equipment, and found himself once again recalling that Lord Enji was a military hero. The men with modern, well-maintained rifles weren't cocky, weren't aggressive, weren't even rude. They were professional, and that made Izuku's estimation of House Todoroki's strength increase considerably.
When they hit the second roadblock two minutes later, he revised that estimate again. And again by the third two minutes after that. By the time they reached the fourth one, he found himself wondering just how paranoid Enji Todoroki was, even considering how close the nobility of Japan were to open warfare.
He couldn't help the snort that rose from his chest as soon as he had the thought. It was like the old saying went, after all: "It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you."
When he at last reached the front door of the Todorokis' estate, he found himself struggling with his patience. He had time before he was due to dine with Shoko, yes, but he'd just received a reminder of how often chunks of that time could be lost to minor distractions. When the door was opened for him, he expected it to be a butler, as it had been before.
Instead, he found himself eye-to-eye with none other than Lord Enji Todoroki himself.
Izuku came screeching to a halt, caught off guard. "Lord Todoroki," he said. "Forgive me, I wasn't expecting you."
Enji raised an eyebrow, but said nothing until Izuku had stepped inside, and the older man had closed the door behind him.
"I apologize in turn, Lord Midoriya," he said evenly. "For surprising you. But I know your time is short before you dine with my daughter, and I wished to speak with you briefly."
Izuku frowned. Something about Enji's demeanor suggested a second layer to his motivation–a layer that might be related to the fact that, like Izuku himself, Enji was not noble-born. The elaborate protocols and rituals that governed even the simplest interactions between high lords came as naturally to him as they did to Izuku–which was to say, not at all.
It was an odd feeling, realizing that he might understand this legend of a man, his House's most significant rival, better than he did any other noble in Japan. The two of them, raised outside this whole bizarre structure, able to see so many trappings of it for what they were–elaborate farces, founded not on tradition but on the illusion of power and stability.
Izuku nodded slowly. "Very well," he said. "What did you want to discuss?"
Instead of answering, Enji turned away from the door, motioning for Izuku to follow.
"Walk with me," he said simply. "My daughter is still making her final preparations for your dinner. We have some time, but I will show you where she wished to meet you, nonetheless."
Izuku wasn't sure he appreciated having his question ignored, but neither was he stupid enough to raise the issue. Whatever Enji wished to talk about, he clearly intended to say it on his own time.
That time proved to be after a short period of silently striding through the ghostly, cold halls of the monument to traditional Japanese architecture that was the Todoroki manor. Again, Izuku found himself just a little bit intimidated by Enji; the man didn't walk through the halls of his home so much as prowl through them.
"I heard about your duel against Lord Monoma," Enji said at last. "I must say, I was impressed."
Izuku recalled the first meeting he'd had with Lord Enji, and decided that meant he had, at least, earned some small amount of respect from the man. "That's a high compliment, coming from a man like yourself," he answered, not even having to fake the honesty in his voice, for all that it was a diplomatic response through and through.
"Hmph," Enji grunted dismissively. "You're still a little clumsy with the flattery, boy. But I can't deny that you have potential. That's good. We'll need you desperately in the days to come."
There was a dark tone to his words that Izuku recognized instantly, as one soldier speaking to another. He came to a halt in the middle of the corridor.
"You're talking about a war," he said softly.
Enji turned to glare at him. Even without his burning beard, his icy blue eyes alone seemed to sear into Izuku's soul.
"I'm talking about the war, boy," he said tersely. "The one that's going to start any day now. The one that will turn every Great House against one another."
Enji turned, and began to walk again. It was all Izuku could do to keep up.
"Lady Shoko and I are trying to stop it," he told Enji as he caught back up.
Enji sighed, then. It was a less dismissive sound than before. Instead, it made him sound…tired. Old. "It can no longer be stopped," he murmured. "Delayed, maybe. Redirected. But it will come."
Izuku was struggling to reconcile the picture painted of Enji Todoroki in Yagi's briefings and political lessons—that of a ruthless, aggressive man entirely willing to solve problems with violence when necessary, and with a burning ambition to boot—with this softer-spoken, seemingly contemplative man. "I have to admit," he began, "I would have expected a man like yourself to be less…"
Enji saw right through him, and raised an eyebrow in anticipation of his words. "Less concerned with the approach of a war that might well see my house able to crush its rivals and gain even greater power?" he finished dryly.
Izuku fought back a wince. "I was..trying to be more diplomatic about it," he said sheepishly.
Enji snorted again. "Diplomacy only works when both sides believe that war can truly be avoided," he said, sounding tired still.
Izuku did not like where this conversation was going. "And you don't anymore?" he inferred.
Enji nodded. "I do not," he confirmed. "And though it may surprise you to learn this, I do not relish the thought of open warfare among the Great Houses. I think you don't, either."
All Izuku could do to that was nod.
Enji turned to him, then, in the dark hallway of the manor with its rice-paper walls.
"For all that your experience was closer to that of a common hoodlum than that of a trained soldier," he said, "I believe that you know more of war than any other noble in this country, who all seem obsessed with the glory of it. Any noble, that is save for me. The two of us, we know war. We know what this war will cause. We know the songs of glory ring hollow when the air is thick with death and your ears ring with the screams of the damned."
Izuku couldn't speak. It was as if Enji had reached out and seized him by the throat.
How had this man been hiding beneath the Lord of House Todoroki?
Had he even been hiding?
Enji nodded as if to himself, and continued to walk. "I do wish you the best of luck in your efforts to stave off this war," he noted. "But perhaps it is age, and what passes for wisdom, that tells me that your efforts will not succeed."
Izuku found his voice again, finally. "I hope to prove you wrong," he said, packing as much conviction as he could into every syllable.
Enji shrugged. "I hardly fault you for the effort," he replied. "But I have a message for you, boy. Take it to your father, when you return. Tell him that for all our differences, I am as little interested in the collapse of our world as he. I am prepared to stand with you, in what is to come."
Izuku once again slowed to a stop in the middle of the hallway. Only his iron will kept his jaw from dropping. "That is…a very serious message," he noted
Enji seemed to see every iota of his shock with ease. "Indeed," he agreed. "And I don't make the offer lightly."
Nor should he. An alliance like that, informal as it may be…that would shake the very foundations of Japan. The two greatest Houses in the country together could take on all comers. They could dictate the direction of the nation itself. They could even finally dissolve the tenuous, fragile balance of power between the nobility and what little remained of the old Japanese government, and claim true control of the levers of power.
In other words, they could become kingmakers.
"I understand," Izuku said, meeting Enji's eyes. "May I ask why?"
By the time Enji seemed ready to answer that question, he'd led Izuku up into one of the many towers of the manor. This one had a large window in the top-floor landing, looking out to the west where the sun was setting. Enji looked out of it, his back to Izuku, watching the sun fade away, long tendrils of darkness creeping down the hills, claws extending towards the manor itself.
"Do you know why I hate Lord Yagi?" he asked.
Izuku would have been caught off guard by the non-sequitur, had he not had months to get used to Shoko doing something very similar whenever she'd decided to more properly explain something. It seemed that it was a tactic she'd learned from her old man.
"I…would presume that it's because he's stronger than you," he said, both dry and honest.
Enji scoffed loudly, turning to fix Izuku with that cold, deadly glare. "You really do have a mercenary's mouth, don't you?" he huffed, shaking his head. "Were you one of my men during my military days, I'd have had you thrown in the stockade for that. Regardless, you're only mostly wrong; I hate your father because, no matter what I do, no matter how much wealth and power I amass, not only does he have more, but he…he achieves it with so little sacrifice."
Izuku blinked. "I…don't understand."
Enji raised an eyebrow. "I know you don't," he sighed, still staring out the window. "But Lord Yagi, the arrogant, smiling bastard, he has it all. Wealth, power, glory…and where I have sacrificed so much, destroyed so much, all in the pursuit of him…he proves himself the better man, on top of everything else. The better husband. And most certainly the better father—after all, only one of our children will stand before his family's most hated rival and bristle at the slightest insult to his father."
Izuku glanced down to find that Enji was correct; he was bristling, his hands clenched into fists, the air around him smelling faintly of ozone.
"I…" he began, only to catch himself, take a deep breath, and get a handle on his emotions. What Enji was saying rang true, though—and it left Izuku nonplussed to find himself with such a complicated picture of the man he'd never quite known how to read before.
Enji turned away from the window, having apparently tired of watching night fall on Japan. "Lord Midoriya," he said brusquely. "I do not make a habit of meddling in my daughter's affairs—but I think it quite obvious that you wish to marry her, yes?"
Izuku stiffened. This conversation could lead nowhere good. "Yes, Lord Todoroki," he replied.
Enji raised an eyebrow. "If she decides not to geld you, that is," he observed. In any other man's voice, it would have been a joke. But not his.
Izuku did not respond to that, beyond stiffly repeating, "Yes, Lord Todoroki."
Enji's scowl deepened yet again. "Hmph," he grunted. "You really are something special, boy. Even your obeisance reeks of ill discipline. But you and Shoko…together, you, and our Houses, would be formidable indeed. Perhaps formidable enough to defeat all the other Great Houses combined, should it come to that."
Izuku's eyes narrowed. "Is this your plan, then?" he demanded. "A betrothal to cement an alliance?"
To Izuku's surprise, Enji shook his head. "I made a promise to my daughter, years ago, that I would not choose a husband for her," he answered. "I intend to keep that promise. But she is not a fool, nor ignorant of the calculus of power. The thought has doubtless already occurred to her. She will decide if you are worthy of it. But if you are…then for the first time in our history, House Todoroki and House Yagi will stand together against the storm."
So. Enji didn't intend to interfere with the courtship…but he did clearly expect them to get a move on. And if things were formalized before the coming war could truly get out of control…well. Fear of the combined might of Houses Yagi and Todoroki might just stamp out the flames before they truly caught.
"I will…do what I can," Izuku managed to say.
Finally, Enji seemed to approve. "Good," he said, nodding. "That's all any of us can do. But I must know—have you managed to gauge whether any of the other Great Houses might stand with us?"
Sensing that the conversation was moving back into more familiar and comfortable ground, Izuku answered readily. "The Kaminaris will," he said. "House Iida as well, if we can help them discover who attacked their train. Other than that…I don't know."
Enji hummed thoughtfully. In that moment, Izuku could see the tactical mind that had brought down a warlord on the Sea of Japan thirty years earlier once again setting to work. "I see," he replied. "It's better than nothing, I suppose. Whenever this war does come, it will be Kendo and Monoma that come for you—and by extension, us. Chisaki cannot be trusted; the man's an opportunist and a snake of the highest order. Ashido and Kirishima will form another power bloc—they're not likely to attack us unless given reason to, but a direct battle with them will be costly indeed. It will be the neutrals you'll have to sway if you can—the ones liable to strike out aimlessly in every direction if given cause to believe threats will come from all sides. Houses like Tokoyami, Asui, Ibara, Sero, and Yaoyorozu. The more of them align with us, the less blood will be spilled. But I digress. There will be time for strategy later. For now…I believe you're late for dinner with my daughter."
Izuku glanced at the sliding door in front of him, the one that might well hide the future of Japan—to say nothing of his own personal future—behind it.
No pressure. Absolutely none at all.
"With all due respect, Lord Enji," he said stiffly, "I think that dinner with your daughter requires strategy to survive."
For the first time, Izuku saw Lord Enji Todoroki crack a smile. "Hah!" he chuckled, lips curling into a grin that was half bloody-minded and half proud and fatherly. "You're not wrong. Shoko is magnificent when she wants to be…for all that she would never accept my praise for it. Good luck, Lord Izuku. You'll need it. My daughter likes to play with her food."
With that, Enji headed for the staircase, leaving Izuku alone before the door.
Well, no point in wasting any more time. Izuku pulled the door open, and stepped inside.
The first thing that struck Izuku about the room on the other side of the door was what wasn't in it.
There were no elaborate decorations on the walls, no exquisite furnishings. The room was small, lit with candles and tasteful lamps, but leaving plenty of room for the shadows to creep in. The table and chairs were simple, well-made; expensive to be sure, but not designed to intimidate or overawe.
After all, why would they need to? The woman sitting before an intimate dinner for two did a fine job of that all by herself.
Shoko Todoroki, as always, sent a lance of heat right through Izuku's chest. She wore a simple blue sleeveless dress, tight and shimmering, with a slit up one side that exposed a long, pale leg. Accentuated with gloves, earrings, and makeup on her lips and lining the eye not irreversibly scarred by boiling water, she lived up to every whisper, every story about her: the most dangerous woman in Japan. The most beautiful, too. Odd, how easily one lended itself to the other.
Her mismatched eyes landed on him the second he entered the room. "Ah, Lord Izuku," she said, a smile on her lips that didn't reach her eyes. "How…fashionably late of you."
Izuku shrugged as he approached the table, noticing that there were no servants, save for a single waiter standing at the far wall. This was not a full-course meal, after all; the food and drink were already arranged on the table, a small, intimate dinner for two and two alone.
"My apologies, Lady Shoko," he said, smiling easily. "I found myself somewhat distracted on my way here."
Shoko scoffed as Izuku took his seat. The fork in her nimble fingers stabbed into a piece of expensive seafood. "I do recall instructing you not to be late," she lectured him. "After all, I'll need the whole night to properly work on seducing you."
Izuku chuckled, then, falling right into the easy back and forth with far fewer reservations than he'd had, once upon a time. "Well, far be it from me to stop you," he said mildly, setting into his own meal. "Though I should warn you, I'm not so easily seduced."
Shoko grinned, baring gleaming white teeth. "I should hope not," she agreed. "It would be terribly boring if all it took was me showing you my tits to get you to crack."
Izuku raised an eyebrow. "As I recall, you tried that already," he pointed out.
Shoko didn't stop smiling. "Let's just call that a test, shall we?" she replied. "One you passed."
Izuku kept his expression even as he sipped at his wine. Odd, how easy it was to learn these habits; he was far more used to the coarse, rowdy drinking at Mercy's Bar, and yet here he was supping on fine vintages in the halls of power. He flitted between worlds, straddled them, perhaps even mastered them—and yet he'd never felt truly part of either.
"How long will I continue to face your tests?" he asked.
Shoko's eyes gave nothing away as she set her fork down. "How long before you get what you want, you mean?" she asked, her voice honey-sweet, and deadly as a viper.
Izuku recognized a trap when he saw it. "Do you think you know what I want?" he rumbled, his voice low as he met her blue-grey eyes.
She bared her teeth again. "Please," she chuckled. "I'm beautiful. I know what men like you want when they look at me. They want to fuck me."
Izuku couldn't help the chuckle that bubbled through his lips. Something delicious and dark came up with it, something that filled the space between them.
He grinned. "I thought I told you, Lady Shoko," he replied lazily. "There are no men like me."
Shoko's eyes flared, and for a second, Izuku wondered if he'd finally gotten past those tests of hers.
Unfortunately, a moment later, she sighed, stabbing at another morsel of food with a particularly pointed jab.
"So," she declared, "Why don't you tell me more about what you want, then? If it isn't me naked in your bed, begging for your big, fat—"
Izuku coughed, leaving Shoko to grin triumphantly at him. "Well," he mused, doing his best to put that image out of his mind, "I don't particularly know what I want, if I'm being quite honest."
Shoko's eyes flashed again, this time with a colder, darker light. "Oh, so you decided to enter a courtship with the most eligible bachelorette in Japan without knowing what you wanted, is that right?" she asked.
She sounded slightly insulted, which Izuku knew could be genuine, or it could be a complete fabrication, a ploy in some scheme to unbalance him.
Either way, he rolled his shoulders lazily as he answered, "I'm more…taking it as it comes. Enjoying the hunt, so to speak."
Shoko's eyes narrowed, just a fraction. "I don't enjoy being compared to prey," she said evenly.
Izuku grinned. "Everyone is prey, sooner or later," he replied. "There's no shame in it. Means you're worth chasing."
Shoko didn't seem impressed. "The mercenary life teach you that?" she asked.
Izuku shook his head. "No," he replied. "My father did."
Her eyes widened again. "I see. I suppose Lord Yagi's one to talk. My father has been hunting him all his life."
Izuku nodded, though he didn't speak. For a moment, Shoko left him to his thoughts.
When she spoke again, her voice was even colder. "So, you're simply…enjoying the ride?" she asked. "How does Lord Yagi feel about that? I would imagine he would be keen on you finding a wife quickly."
Izuku settled back in his chair. "He is," he sighed. "Though he seems less bothered by the fact that I'm courting you, and not some less-threatening girl with a good name and connections, than I'd expected."
That was true enough—Izuku had been expecting more of a reaction when he'd told Toshinori about the dinner he was attending with Shoko at the Todoroki estate. But the only response from his adoptive father had been a knowing chuckle, and an admonishment about keeping him in the dark about such things. Izuku got the distinct impression that Toshinori had known—or at least suspected—about his and Shoko's growing involvement all along. And far from being angered that Izuku had disobeyed him, Izuku thought that Toshinori approved. Sometimes, his father's mind scared him.
Shoko's smile was all teeth, then. "That just means he has good taste," she declared, before her grin soured again. "Although I do wonder if you'll get the chance for your nice, pleasant, aimless courtship, given the all-out war brewing on our doorsteps."
The room seemed to darken at that, as the thing they'd both tried so hard to avoid speaking of came out in the end, anyway.
Izuku sighed. "Your father thinks it's inevitable," he said.
Shoko's lips pressed together into a line. "My father knows very little about very many things," she declared, "But he knows war better than any other man alive. If he says so…I believe him."
Izuku felt the darkness close in even more. "What does that mean…for us?" he asked cautiously.
Shoko's gaze fell on him again. "It means," she said, "That if, as I suspect, my father intends to shock our world and align with Lord Yagi against House Monoma and their allies, you and I may well be on course for a wedding before the month is out."
Izuku frowned. "And is that what you want?" he asked.
Shoko's answer was a coy grin, the kind she used to give absolutely nothing away. "I'm a noblewoman of a Great House," she replied. "What I want is, at best, a matter for tragic songs and poetry written by people who don't know me."
Izuku raised an eyebrow. "Forgive me, Lady Shoko," he said, "But bullshit. Any man who tried to wed you without your consent would find himself dead and castrated within the hour—perhaps even in that order, if he was lucky."
Shoko let out a laugh, then. "Ah, there's the mercenary," she declared. "Crude, rough, and undeniably true. I'd missed that side of you."
Izuku raised an eyebrow. "I will keep that in mind the next time I think of something crude," he assured her. "But really…what do you want?"
She fell silent, then. Izuku watched her glance away, looking out the window of the towertop room they were eating in, towards where the sun was vanishing over the horizon, leaving darkness in its wake. Night falling on Japan, bringing death with it.
"I want power," she admitted at last. "I want people to step aside as I walk through a room. I want people to whisper my name—in love, in fear, in awe, I don't particularly care. Everything else…is secondary."
She turned her head back to him, and Izuku saw in her eyes the cold, deadly truth of this woman—or perhaps what she wanted him to see of the truth.
Shoko Todoroki was cold-hearted, scheming, and power-hungry. She would rule Japan with an iron fist and a velvet glove, given half a chance. She would be great and terrible. She would be a Queen.
"Does that scare you?" she asked softly, her lips curled into a grin. She seemed eager to know the answer.
She didn't seem ready for Izuku to look her in the eye, and laugh.
"No," he chuckled, deep and dark and heady with the rush of the truth. "No, it doesn't."
Shoko's eyes widened again, no longer even concealing her surprise. Izuku, though, just leaned back even further.
"It's refreshing, honestly," he continued. "I've dealt with so many people like you, who want power. They always lie about why; they have a cause, a crusade, a purpose. Or they claim to. But you? You're honest about it."
Shoko remained silent. At least, until a grin spread across her face.
"You know," she mused, "I think that's the first time anyone's ever called me honest."
Izuku grinned back. "You should try it more often," he replied. "It's not half bad."
Shoko hummed thoughtfully…until her expression sharpened, and Izuku's heart skipped a beat. Somehow, some way, she'd laid a trap for him. One he'd never even seen coming.
Perhaps she'd been the one hunting him, all along.
"Speaking of honesty," she said mildly, "I believe there's something we both know you're keeping from me. Shall we stop beating around the bush?"
Izuku froze. He'd known this was coming. He'd been fearing it all along. And he'd still let Shoko draw him in.
Sensing blood in the water, Shoko pushed. "Why don't we continue our little game, hmm?" she suggested. "A secret for a secret. A truth for a truth."
Izuku swallowed. Hard. Clenching a fist, he took a deep breath, and nodded.
"Very well," he sighed, resigning himself to what he knew would happen next.
As it turned out, though, he was wrong. Shoko took a breath of her own, glanced down at her hands, then back at him.
"Touya's dead, isn't he?" she asked quietly, so quietly that Izuku needed a second to actually realize what she had said. "That's the secret you're hiding from me."
Izuku's mind came to a complete, screeching halt. "I…" he began to stammer, knowing he needed to respond, but knowing he had no idea how.
Shoko's eyes hardened. She leaned forwards, laying a hand over his own where he'd placed it on the table. "Don't try and lie to me, Lord Midoriya," she said softly, intensely. Her mismatched eyes glimmered with what might have been sorrow, or grief, or ruthlessness. "Not even for my own sake. A truth for a truth, remember?"
Still, Izuku did not speak. He didn't know what to say. He owed her the truth, he knew that. Whatever odd relationship they'd built on this foundation of flirting and danger and line-toeing, she deserved to know what he'd done. What he'd done to her brother. And yet…he couldn't find the words.
Shoko's expression grew even deadlier, and he found himself reminded of just what kind of woman he was facing.
"Lord Midoriya," she said, cold as the Arctic wind and twice as deadly, her hand still atop his, searing into his flesh in a way that felt so familiar. "Izuku. Is. He. Dead?"
Izuku folded his other hand over hers, laying them both on the table. He felt the urge to look away from that terrible, deadly gaze. He faced the urge, accepted it, and ignored it.
"What do you want the answer to be?" he asked.
Shoko's eyes narrowed. "Do you not trust my motives?" she demanded.
Izuku's expression did not change. "Have you given me any reason to trust your motives?" he shot back.
Shoko's mask slipped, then, for just a second, fracturing to reveal anger beneath. But a moment later, she'd slammed that blank-eyed look back into place. She leaned back in her chair, fingertips drumming on the table.
"Hmph," she snorted, sounding more like her father than Izuku had ever heard before. "Suppose I deserved that. Fine."
She took a deep breath, then looked Izuku in the eye. Somehow, he saw past it all, past the power and the lies and the beautiful mask, saw the woman across the table.
"I want to know one way or the other," she whispered. "I want to know if I'm going to have to worry about a competitor for the heirship I've assumed to be mine by default for a decade. I want to know if the brother I barely remember is still alive, or if my family–what's left of it, anyway–is finally free to mourn. So tell me, Izuku. Is he dead?"
Izuku couldn't do it. He couldn't keep the lie. Not all of it. But neither could he give the whole truth—not in this house, surrounded by the ghost of the man he'd killed. So he made a ruthlessly pragmatic choice, as he always had. He hung his head, and nodded. "I…yes," he sighed.
Shoko did not cry. She let out a shakier-sounding breath than before, but remained perfect, remained in control. "So…that's it then," she murmured. "I finally got it out of you. And all it took was being honest. Fucking typical. For what it's worth…thank you."
Izuku wasn't quite sure how to handle that, so he chose to speak, instead. "How did you know?" he asked.
Shoko raised an eyebrow. "Despite appearances, I happen to not be an idiot, Lord Izuku," she said sarcastically. "When you started going abruptly silent and running out of rooms whenever I asked, I figured it couldn't be anything good. Now, I believe the deal was a truth for a truth, yes? Ask your question, and I will answer it."
Izuku would have been more suspicious about her desire to apparently move past her brother's death, and how she seemed uninterested in prying additional details from him, but instead he chose to be grateful for it; he felt as though he'd only narrowly dodged a bullet. "Any question?" he asked, his voice deep and thoughtful.
Shoko chuckled, her perfect red lips splitting into a wry grin. "If you were any other man, I would be having second thoughts right now, you know that?" she said playfully, her hand still atop his. "But for you…yes. Any question."
That was a dangerous thing to hear, and Izuku knew it. A guaranteed secret from a woman like Shoko Todoroki was not a thing to take lightly.
And he did not take it lightly. He decided to be simple, direct, and to the point.
"What am I to you?" Izuku asked, nodding ever-so-slightly to where her hand was still atop his.
Shoko didn't even look surprised. "Straight for the heart, I see," she observed. "In the spirit of things, may I ask why you want to know?"
Izuku could see the fairness in that, so he nodded. "It's like you said," he reasoned. "There's a pretty good chance that, one way or another, we're going to end up married someday soon. I want us to be on the same page, about this. I want us to be able to be honest with each other."
Shoko tilted her head thoughtfully. "You are a strange man, Lord Izuku," she said. "But very well."
Her hand withdrew from his, leaving a cold void in space, a lack of heat that made Izuku's skin sting.
He barely noticed. He was too distracted by Shoko's face, enthralled by the grin on her lips as she leaned in close.
"What are you to me, Lord Izuku?" she asked coyly. "Why, you're the only man who's ever gotten so close to me. You're the only man I've ever thought might be worthy of marrying me. You intrigue me; gentle until you're pushed, intelligent but content. Seemingly humble, until you drop the mask and reveal that you are supremely arrogant—unless you really are as good as you say, and I'm inclined to believe you are. And incredibly dangerous, but that goes without saying. Oh, and not to mention the fact that I've wanted to fuck you for weeks now."
Izuku choked on air. Shoko watched him with that coy little grin on her lips still, clearly enjoying his reaction.
"Oh, I'm sorry, was that too honest for you?" she teased. "I would like to remind you, I am technically a virgin."
Izuku blinked. "Technically?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Heaven forbid that a noblewoman like me not be "chaste and untouched" for her wedding," she replied, adding air quotes that made it quite clear what she thought of that. "But of course, in this day and age, with all the information at our fingertips…let's just say that I may be a virgin, but I'm not a blushing one. I know exactly what I intend to do to you, should the day arrive. Don't worry, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Eventually."
Izuku fought back another cough, feeling an intense sense of vertigo at just how rapidly this conversation had whiplashed from dead brothers to…well, to this. He wasn't complaining, mind you—and his ego really didn't need the most beautiful woman he'd ever met openly informing him of how much she wanted to fuck him—but he felt that it was reasonable to be a little bit out of sorts.
To cover up his struggles, Izuku took a deep sip of his wineglass, which was nearly empty. Indeed, by now they'd mostly finished eating, with servants removing the plates and refilling their cups. At this point, there was nothing left to distract them from each other, and whatever had grown up between them.
That left an opening for Shoko to speak again. Instead of continuing to tease him, though, she leaned back in her chair and asked thoughtfully, "Would you…like to keep this going? A truth for a truth?"
Izuku blinked. "Why?" he asked.
Shoko shrugged nonchalantly. "I…find myself enjoying it," she admitted. "Being able to…be honest with someone. I think you know as well as I do how rare a thing that can be."
Izuku could see dozens of ways that this ended badly for him…but Shoko was right. For people like them, honesty was a precious rare thing. Even between those who might be married within the month.
He nodded. "Very well," he agreed. "Would you like to go first?"
Shoko smiled. "So eager," she purred. "You'd think you would know better by now."
Izuku just shrugged his shoulders. "Life's boring without a little risk," he replied. "Go on. What would you like to know?"
There was a moment's pause as Shoko hummed to herself. Finally, she asked, "I'd like to understand why you seem so…mercurial. There are times where you seem meek and passive, and times where I think one comment will send you on a rampage. What is going on in that head of yours?"
Izuku fell quiet for a second, thinking to himself. And then, he sighed.
"I have had my life changed underneath me multiple times, Lady Shoko," he said. "For fifteen years, I was a common boy, living with a mother who worked sixteen-hour shifts in one of the Yagi factories to make ends meet. The most I aspired to be was a member of the Yagi House Guard, because they were the only ones who accepted quirkless applicants. And then my mother literally bumped into Lord Yagi on the street. One thing led to another, and, well...one day I came home from preparing to ship off to Basic Training to find the most powerful man in Japan sitting in our tiny apartment, telling me that he was going to marry my mother."
Shoko laughed. "I bet that was quite the adjustment!" she cackled. "Lord Yagi certainly chose well, I must say."
Izuku smiled faintly. "He chose my mother," he replied, conveniently leaving out the truth of One For All, and how he actually had been chosen some months later to fully inherit Lord Yagi's power and position. That seemed to be something that he should keep as far away from House Todoroki's heiress as humanly possible. "I was merely good fortune. But you don't suddenly change who you are because your mother marries a Lord. I struggled to adjust to being the common-born heir presumptive to the most powerful House in Japan, I'll freely admit that. I struggled so much, I eventually left for America, and became a mercenary."
Shoko hummed. "I bet that took some adjustment," she observed.
Izuku shrugged. "It did," he agreed, "But far less than I'd expected. I'd already been training to be a soldier, remember. And frankly…I turned out to be good at it. Very good. One of the best. And that…that left its mark, I'll freely admit it. You don't spend so many years doing something without carrying parts of it with you forever."
He fell silent again, piecing the last of his thoughts together.
"I've been three very different people in my life," he said. "A common boy, a feared mercenary…and now the heir to the House of Yagi. I've thought different ways, acted different ways. I've been comfortable in very different worlds. And I guess that bleeds through sometimes–I'll start remembering that I spent most of my life in an apartment smaller than most of my dinner partners' bedrooms, or that none of these people who love to menace and threaten have ever heard what a man sounds like when he dies. And sometimes I wonder who I'm becoming now, as I spend my days at fancy parties with the people who control Japan."
Shoko looked thoughtful–but she didn't seem satisfied. "And which one would you say is the real Izuku Midoriya?" she prompted.
Izuku shrugged again. "That's just the thing," he replied. "I don't think it's any of them. The real me is…somewhere between. I'm not a man wearing a mask—I'm a man with three faces. All of them are equally true. All of them are equally me."
Shoko's expression shifted again, and for a moment, Izuku wondered if she'd ever heard or thought anything quite like that before. "For what it's worth, I like the face you show me," she finally said, batting her eyelashes as if to chase away the thoughts circling both of them. "I'd like to meet the others, though. Before I decide."
Izuku blinked, confused by the abrupt change in topic. "Decide what?" he asked.
Shoko seemingly decided to answer that by offering her own secret in exchange for the one Izuku had just shared. "…Do you know why I've yanked you around so much, Lord Izuku?" she asked, leaning back in her chair again. "Made you jump through so many hoops?"
Izuku raised an eyebrow. "I assumed you simply like to watch me dance for your amusement," he said mildly, the faintest grin tugging at the corners of his lips.
An identical grin soon formed on Shoko's lips, too. "Unquestionably," she agreed, maintaining her mostly-straight face, before abruptly growing grave and serious again. "But I am also trying to learn from my mother's mistakes. I will know exactly who you are, before I decide to marry you."
Izuku frowned. "What do you mean?"
Shoko sighed. Though she didn't whisper, she leaned in closer over the table, as if trying to avoid being overheard by the servants around them "My mother…she married my father believing she knew who he was," she said darkly, eyes glimmering as they looked into the past. "He didn't merely trade for her hand like so many noblemen. He wooed her, convinced her that he was different to all the others. She thought he loved her. And then she learned she didn't know anything about him at all."
In the darkness of Shoko's voice, Izuku heard decades of pain, a lifetime of grief caused by decisions made years before her birth. In the echoes, he heard the empty house he'd walked through, with rooms that had not been filled in years, the ghosts of lost brothers and sisters, the hiss of water boiling in a kettle.
"So your father was a monster," he said simply.
"Yes," Shoko said, and her voice was even closer to a whisper now, not out of a desire for secrecy, but because of something else. "But she was a fool. She should have known. She should have been smarter."
Her voice took on an angry tinge as she finished speaking, rage dripping from every syllable.
Izuku, who'd lost his father so young that he'd long since grown used to a world with only a mother, found it deeply uncomfortable.
"Do you really hate her so much?" he asked.
Shoko raised one eyebrow; the other's range of motion was quite limited, so stiffened was the ruined skin around her burning blue eye.
And then, just as Izuku thought he understood, she mused, "I don't think I do. After all, she gave me such a wonderful gift."
"A gift?" Izuku asked.
Shoko reached up to tap the ridge of her cheek, the raised boundary between scar tissue and flawless, beautiful porcelain skin. It was odd, how easy the scar, which on anyone else would have been so disfiguring as to completely obliterate the ability to notice any other features, faded into the background with her, just another piece of what made her unique–and yet she never let anyone forget that it was there.
"Without this scar, I would be just another pretty face in a sea of prettier faces," Shoko said, and there was relish in her voice, relish and something darker, too. "With it? The only way to avoid being the poor pathetic burned girl was to become something greater than any of them could hope to be. It ensured they'd never respect me, only pity me…unless I could make them fear me. My mother may have burned me for being too much like my father. But with the weapon she gave me, I could be better than he ever was."
Izuku nearly smiled, then, for reasons he couldn't quite explain. But he knew fear well, knew it from both ends; as a man who inspired it, and a man who felt it.
"Well, I'd say it worked," he assured her.
Shoko didn't seem inclined to merely accept the compliment. "Did it?" she asked, tilting her head. "Do you fear me?"
Her eyes pierced right through Izuku, as surely as a bullet would have. She searched him, demanding an answer, eager for it. Whatever it would be.
Under a gaze that could leave any man gasping for breath, his heart stopped, Izuku merely smiled lazily. "…What do you want the answer to be?" he asked, calling back to earlier in the conversation.
For a second, Shoko seemed surprised. Then, she grinned back.
"Why, I think it's obvious," she replied. "I want you terrified of me."
Izuku nodded gravely. "Of course," he agreed.
"Practically quivering with dread," she continued.
"Naturally."
"Completely awestruck by my terrible majest–" she started to say, only to pause and squint at him. "You're not scared at all, are you?"
Izuku was still wearing that same easy grin. "Lady Shoko," he said, his face the picture of seriousness, "I assure you, I live my days in absolute fear of you."
Shoko raised an eyebrow. Her skepticism was proven correct a moment later, when Izuku added, "Of course, fear's not so bad, once you get used to it. Keeps you sharp."
A chuckle escaped her lips at last. "You're a strange man, Lord Midoriya," she declared.
He spread his arms. "Comes with the territory," he responded. "But I don't see you complaining."
Shoko smiled even wider. "Point taken," she conceded. She pushed her plate away, and added, "Well, I believe that was my secret. Would you like to ask for one now?"
Izuku did. In fact, he had a suspicion that he'd been slowly building on for months now, with every tic and smile Shoko gave him, every hint of something deeper, every thought she left unsaid. And maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the night, maybe it was all the words and secrets they'd spilled out already, but he couldn't stop himself from speaking his suspicions into the world.
"It's all an act, isn't it?" he asked, his voice deadly soft.
Shoko froze. Genuinely froze, stiff and off guard. It was rare that Izuku believed Shoko's body language without reservation, but in that moment, he fully believed that she was surprised.
"Pardon me?" she asked. "What do you mean?"
"This," Izuku answered, raising a hand to gesture at himself, at her, at all that existed between them. "You. "Lady Todoroki." It's not who you really are."
Shoko's expression frosted over, bit by bit. Her eyes, so easy to set alight, easy to make laugh, were colder than death itself. "What makes you think this is an act?" she demanded. There were layers to her voice. Hidden ones, held close to her chest, kept away from the world. Secrets nobody was permitted to know.
Izuku wanted to learn them all. "You're too perfect," he answered.
Shoko snorted. "Oh?" she said, long eyelashes fluttering. "And here I thought you didn't know how to compliment a woman properly."
Izuku's eyes narrowed. "I'm not letting you distract me with quips, Lady Todoroki," he said, not unkind, but firm all the same. "I know you're trying to hide."
Shoko's eyes flashed, like lightning through a pane of frosted glass. "Then please," she said curtly, gripping the stem of her wine glass. "Explain to me what you think you know about me."
Izuku wasn't afraid of the blades in her voice, but he felt them cut nonetheless as he explained, "You're too good at this. Too emotionless. Your mask is too perfect. Nobody is like this-nobody is flawlessly cold, not really."
Shoko tilted her head, hand supporting her chin, fingers tapping against her cheek. "Perhaps I'm just a monster," she suggested, cold eyes glowing. Her expression was as open as the gates of a fortress under siege. Here was the Ice Queen of Japan in all her glory–flawless, inscrutable, beauty and danger entwined together into one single woman. Her eyes warned him just how close he was toeing to an precipice there would be no going back from. All the earlier lightness between them wasn't…gone, exactly, it was still there, but it was hanging by a thread. One wrong move here, and Izuku might just destroy everything.
He was used to that kind of pressure. It didn't scare him. Izuku didn't look away. "I've known monsters," he said, rough and heavy, scraping with the weight of all he had done. "I've called monsters my friends. Even they weren't perfectly cold. It's impossible to be–human beings aren't rational creatures. Everyone acts out of feeling, not reason. They might think otherwise, but reason's just a facade they put up to justify themselves. Everyone's got a crack–a weakness, a blindspot."
Her eyes bored into his. "Even you?" she asked. It was almost sweet enough that Izuku didn't see the venom beneath. Almost.
And still, he met her gaze. He nodded. "Even me."
The silence that fell then was stronger than any before it. Shoko had retreated completely behind that unreadable expression, her eyes frozen, giving nothing away.
Then, without warning, she rose from her seat. Turning towards the servants standing patiently by the wall, she sharply demanded, "Give us the room."
One of the servants hesitated. "My lady," he began, only for Shoko to freeze him in place with a look.
"Give. Us. The. Room," she repeated. The man bowed, wisely saying nothing more, and followed his coworkers out the door.
Shoko turned again, but didn't return to the table; instead, she paced towards the window, where the stars were beginning to come out.
With the room empty, Izuku became even more aware of every subtle move she made, every tic of her face; after all, whatever happened between them in this room now, there would be no witnesses at all. He stayed cautious, but not particularly tense, as Shoko spoke.
"It's not a mask, Lord Izuku," she said as she stared out the window, her voice slow and cold, practically glacial.
Izuku did not rise from his chair. "Well, it's not what you're really like, either," he said bluntly.
"And you have a right to my thoughts?" she demanded. "A right to this supposed true face of mine?"
Izuku still did not quail before the tone of her voice, cracking like a whip. "I asked for a secret," he said calmly, voice deep and dark in the encroaching night. "As you have. You get one. I get one."
Shoko's eyes flared again, visible even in her reflection in the glass, and Izuku found himself wondering if she would decide he had pushed too far. Neither of them had ever outright refused to answer, in this little game of theirs. Izuku himself had tried to dodge a question, but she'd gotten the truth out of him, eventually. What would happen if Shoko shut it all down?
It would be the end, probably. The end of their banter, the end of these dinners. Maybe the end of the burgeoning alliance to save their world.
And then, Shoko sighed, some of the tension leaving the lines of her shoulders.
"You mistake me, Lord Izuku," she said, still looking away from him. "It's not a mask because I don't have a face underneath."
Izuku…hadn't been expecting to hear that. "Excuse me?" he asked.
"You heard me," Shoko snapped. She turned around, then, facing him with her back to the window.
"I've been doing this all my life, Lord Izuku," she said, sounding bitter and venomous and totally, brutally honest. "Playing these games, making these deals, feeling the eyes of every backstabbing noble in Japan on me. You think wading into this snake pit as a twenty-four-year-old is bad? Try doing it as an eight-year-old. Any weakness, any mistake, any failure–I would have been eaten alive. I am the daughter of an upstart lord, the first heir to a newborn House; wealthy and powerful, but without the protection of prestige and respect. They could do anything they wanted to me, and if I broke, I would merely be a symbol of their superiority to the common stock—a reminder that true nobility will always triumph over those crass enough to demand entry. So yes, I created a shield to hide behind—a perfect, flawless, unbreakable shield. I grew spikes to ward off the predators—made them all afraid of how cruel I could be, or charmed them with my smiles. And I gave them all nothing of the real me."
"Sounds like a mask to me," Izuku replied.
"You still don't understand," Shoko growled, tapping her face again, fingers running over her scar. "There is nothing beneath this. That real me? It's gone, faded; I can't even remember what I used to be like. I don't have a…a secret face, a real face. I can't take this off, even if I wanted to, even at home. My father saw to that. I am this mask. If there was ever something beneath it…I forgot what it was a long time ago."
There was something animated in her now, something that had been missing from every interaction Izuku had ever had with her. She seemed more alive now that she was angry, instead of simpering and smiling and teasing. That was what clued Izuku into saying what he said next: "You're still just playing a part, Lady Shoko."
She laughed, then, and it was not the refined, tinkling sound of a queen, but a bitter, hateful, angry thing, full of venom and broken glass, sharp enough to cut. And beneath it all, it was tired. Resigned. "How long can you keep up an act before it's no longer an act?" she asked, shaking her head. "I'm long past that threshold, Izuku."
Whatever had done it, Izuku had gotten through the ice. This Shoko wasn't the glittering armor that nobody could see through. It was, perhaps, truer, more honest. Maybe it was the real her. Or maybe it wasn't.
Either way, Izuku couldn't help what he did next. Before he even knew what his body was doing, he rose to his feet. He crossed the room, half-expecting Shoko to snap at him. But she didn't, not even when he took her hand in his.
"If there's one thing I've learned in my life, Lady Shoko," he murmured, "It's that it's never too late to try something new. To change how you see yourself."
Shoko raised her head to look at him. Her eyes were shining, and she looked as if she was supposed to be crying. It wasn't clear whether she didn't want to cry, or if she had considered it, weighed the pros and cons, and decided against it. And despite it all, her sense of humor was brutally perfect.
"Are you suggesting I leave Japan and become a mercenary?" she sniffed, her voice dryer than a desert.
It was all Izuku could do not to burst out laughing. "If you want," he replied, grinning. "But I think you'd find it tiresome. Mercenaries don't get to drink much wine."
Shoko laughed again, and this time, it wasn't quite as angry. It still wasn't the perfect noblewoman's giggle; it was more like a snort. It felt far more honest, far more like the actual sound she made when she was amused.
And yet, that brief moment of honesty vanished like morning dew. Her expression shuttered again, and though she didn't pull her hand away from his grip, she did tighten her own grip on him as her eyes hardened.
"Is this how you think you're going to ensnare me?" she demanded. "With sweet words and understanding comments?"
Izuku frowned. "You talk like honesty and understanding are manipulation tactics," he said.
Shoko scoffed. "They are," she shot back. "Isn't that what you're doing? You're trying to romance me. Get me to come to your bed, your home, your House willingly, like a lamb being led to the slaughter."
Izuku heard the memory of Rei Todoroki echoing in her youngest daughter's voice, and didn't take the venom in her words personally. "Or maybe I'm just being honest," he countered softly. "Maybe I don't have an angle, or a master plan, or an agenda."
"Everyone has an agenda," Shoko scoffed again. She was returning to Ice Queen form, and quickly.
Izuku shook his head gently. "They don't have to," he insisted. "I don't."
Shoko's eyes narrowed. "How can I believe that?" she demanded. She was still looking at him, and not at their entwined hands. "With you being who you are, and me being who I am."
"How can I believe that?" Izuku noted. "Not "I don't believe that."
Maybe it was nothing, a random quirk of semantics. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe she really was looking for a reason to believe him, this woman who'd never once had good reason to believe a word anyone said to her.
So, as he'd already done far too much tonight, he told her the truth.
"It's like I told you once," he said. "If I wanted a pretty woman to be my wife, there's hundreds of pretty noblewomen. If I wanted a respectable girl with a good name, one that would satisfy my father and be a decent, reliable Lady of my house one day, there's dozens of those. If all I wanted was a list of traits, I could find them anywhere else."
Shoko's mismatched eyebrows furrowed. "I'm sensing a "But" here," she prompted.
Izuku nodded. "But I can't," he murmured, soft and quiet. "I've tried. Talked to other noblewomen. Considered courting one or two. But every time, I come back to thinking about you. Not because you fit what I'm looking for, or even because you're beautiful. Because whatever this is between us, whatever's grown while we were distracted with dinners and balls…it's special. And I think you agree."
The silence that fell then was long, but not cold. Not entirely.
And then Shoko did in fact finally pull her hand away from his. It fell down to her side, and his hand fell too. She turned away from him, back towards the window. He stood two paces behind her, watching her reflection in the glass.
"...Do you know why I hate love?" she asked, not to him, but to the reflection. The version of him she could see. Not the true him, but the closest she might ever get.
Izuku raised an eyebrow. "I get the feeling you're going to tell me," he said mildly.
"Of course I am," Shoko sighed. She looked out into the night, fists clenched, and said, "There's no better way to manipulate somebody with love. If you can use love, people will do anything for you. And yet…it's dangerous. I've always found that love is a double-edged sword. You can't use it without being affected yourself. Without being hurt. I've seen it happen, again and again. I saw it happen to Mina Ashido, who was so desperate to marry Ejiro Kirishima that she willingly became a puppet. I saw it with my father, how he wooed my mother solely for her quirk and her name, and yet something broke in him when she did. And yet…"
"And yet what?" Izuku asked.
Shoko turned once more. She looked him over, her eyes sharper than steel. "And yet I have to agree," she admitted. "Whatever this is…I've never felt anything like it. And if I let this slip me by…I don't think I ever will again."
Izuku blinked. "Are you saying–"
"That I love you?" Shoko finished, eyebrow arched. Her hands were on her hips, and she seemed fully back to her masterly Ice Queen self. Sort of. There was honesty in her eyes, now, and a warmth that seemed so special Izuku knew then and there that she'd never once allowed it to show before. "No. I'm not so foolish as to hurl myself off of that particular cliff so quickly. Maybe someday. But not yet. I am saying, however, that I'm considering throwing caution to the winds and doing something very stupid right now."
It was then that Izuku realized that she'd taken two steps towards him, erasing what little distance remained between them. If propriety and the rules that governed courting couples had ever mattered to her, they certainly didn't seem to now.
"I won't tell anyone if you won't," he offered, grinning.
She put one soft hand on his shoulder, and the other on his cheek, thumb on his chin. She was shorter than him, but not by much; she barely had to tilt his head down to meet his eyes.
"Ah," she murmured. "A secret. I do so enjoy those."
She leaned in closer, inches away from him. She seemed to be weighing her options.
Izuku met her eyes, grinning insufferably, fully aware that he was grinning, and not particularly caring. "Are you going to kiss me now?" he teased.
Shoko's eyebrow arched again. "Do you want me to kiss you?" she asked airily, smirking even more than he was. Whatever part of her she was no longer hiding, it seemed to enjoy bantering just as much as she usually did.
"Do you want me to want you to kiss me?" Izuku shot back, having, frankly, way too much fun for a man deliberately delaying a kiss from the most beautiful woman in the world.
Shoko's answering grin was eerily similar to the shark smile she'd worn when Neito Monoma had been reduced to paste. "You don't know what I want, Izuku Midoriya," she hissed into his ear. "Trust me, you don't want to know what I want."
Izuku just tilted his head. His own hands were on Shoko's hips now, entwining the two of them so close that there would be no way to make this look innocent if someone walked in on them. "Oh, but I think I do," he told her.
"It'll scare you," she warned him.
Izuku just smirked. "Fear's not so bad, once you get used to it. Keeps you sharp."
Shoko stopped pretending that she was still deliberating. "We'll see about that," she declared as she lunged forwards.
Her lips met his, and Izuku stopped worrying about whether or not she was going to stab him, finally. No woman luring a man to his death kissed like this.
It wasn't a long kiss, in the grand scheme of things. But Shoko did take her time enjoying it. She hummed happily against his lips, her hands around his neck, his hands on her hips. Izuku didn't have time to focus on the sensory details–the taste of her lipstick or the smell of her perfume–because his brain was so overwhelmed with the fact that he was kissing Shoko Todoroki.
When she pulled back, there was greed in her eyes. She wanted to kiss him again, he could tell. Maybe she never wanted to stop.
Maybe he was okay with that.
"You," Izuku muttered hoarsely, still pinned up against the glass, "Are a very strange woman."
Shoko laughed. "We make quite the pair, then," she replied.
"I suppose so," he agreed. "Are you…going to let me go?"
She glanced down at where her hands had shifted again, one pressed against his chest, the other still around his neck. "I don't much feel like it," she admitted. "If I had my way, I might just keep you here for a while."
Izuku raised an eyebrow. "While I wouldn't personally complain," he said mildly, "Your father is famous for burning men alive in single combat. I feel like being caught making out with his virginal daughter is a bad life decision."
Shoko rolled her eyes, but did pull back from him, allowing him to fix his rumpled suit. "I have half a mind to be furious at you anyway for dragging all that out of me, you know," she said. "I still might kill you for it."
Izuku shrugged. "And instead you kissed me about it," he replied.
Shoko nodded. "That doesn't preclude the murder," she pointed out.
"Guess I'll just have to bribe you to not kill me," Izuku said cheerily. "It's a good thing I happen to know you can be swayed with kisses now."
She narrowed her eyes. "You're quite smug all of a sudden, aren't you?"
He raised an eyebrow. "I'm not the only one, my dear," he said, gesturing back at her.
It was true. Shoko hadn't stopped smirking since letting go of Izuku. Indeed, she seemed to be on the verge of leaning back in for another kiss.
She was halfway through the motion to do just that when the door burst open, revealing not a servant, but a soldier wearing the insignia of House Todoroki.
Shoko did not do anything so crass as jump at the intrusion, but she certainly did whip her head around, her eyes full of fury. "This better be good," she snarled, not bothering to remove her hand from Izuku's chest.
The soldier looked apologetic. "Forgive me for the interruption, Lady Todoroki," he panted, having obviously sprinted the full length of the manor. "But…there's been another attack."
Izuku and Shoko exchanged a shocked glance, all thoughts of kissing discarded. Shoko turned to the soldier again, and demanded, "Who was the target."
The soldier looked sorrowful, as if he knew the news he was about to deliver would be terrible.
"House Yaoyorozu, my lady," he said. "They've been wiped out."
Kaina had forgotten how much she hated the smell of burning flesh.
It was odd, that her mind had chosen to focus on how disagreeable a single smell was when there was a full-scale battle raging all around her, but Kaina was used to the way the human mind tried to cope with war.
And so, as she stalked her way through a howling vortex of fire and smoke, as the screams of dying men and the rapid chatter of machine guns filled the air, her conscious mind was focused entirely on how bad it smelled.
To be fair, it wasn't like this battle required much of her attention at this point. The Yaoyorozu House Guard had been well-trained and well-equipped, and on high alert, but they simply hadn't had the mass to resist such an aggressive assault on their estate. They'd expected a war, yes, but not this kind of war.
But this kind of war was all Kaina knew. As Yaoyorozu tanks rolled through the forests just south of the manor, their perimeter breached by hundreds of armed men, helicopters chopping through the air overhead, she drew on her years as a mercenary—and on older, deeper training, from a time when she remembered wearing an insignia like the one on the uniforms of the men she was killing.
Blood spattered one such insignia through her sights, its owner crumpling to the ground, a hole through his forehead. A rocket landed close to her, sending her rolling, men—and bits of men—flying in every direction. She rolled with the shockwave, coming up on her feet, gun still level, scanning for threats. A helicopter screeched through the air above, its engine belching fire as it spun down towards the ground.
The explosion that filled the air as it struck lit up the night, silhouetting a laughing, deranged woman as she charged towards an old Russian T-90 main battle tank. The lumbering machine spat fire at her, but Miruko just laughed harder.
"God, I fucking needed this!" she roared, her bellow audible even over the chaos of the battle. The tank continued to fire at her, flashes of light scattering sparks in the night. Miruko laughed. "You want some more? Come fuckin' get it!"
She charged again, rearing back to kick the front of the 200-year-old war machine. When the teak-hard flesh of her foot met steel, the steel lost. The whole front of the T-90 crumpled inwards, the men inside reduced to billiard balls and shredded meat as the tank's back broke, its turret decoupling from its fractured mountings and starting to slide off as the whole tank flipped from the force of Miruko's kick. The shriek of rending metal gave way to an explosion so loud Kaina felt it rather than heard it when something ignited the tank's ammunition and turned the tank into an enormous Roman candle, firing the turret upwards into the war-torn sky.
Miruko barely even acknowledged what she'd done before she was leaping towards her next victim, and then her next, and her next. She was a one-woman killing machine, and she loved every second of it. She'd be coated in blood by the end of the night.
Kaina hated her. More than she hated most people, that is. Sure, her hands were no cleaner than Miruko's, but at least she didn't treat it like a game. She wasn't that far gone.
If it had been a game, though, it was one they'd definitely won. The House Guard's line, what remained of it, had come apart. They were no longer a cohesive military force, but a handful of scattered pockets fragmented and trying desperately to survive. It was a doomed effort; even as Kaina watched, the last few holdouts were overwhelmed, tanks burning, men falling, aircraft tumbling from the sky. A whole forest, burning in the night.
They didn't take many prisoners. Few of the House Guard were willing to surrender, and the motley horde of thugs and bandits that were the bulk of the forces they'd brought weren't the sort to accept a surrender anyway. Soon, Kaina found herself walking up the mountain the Yaoyorozu estate sat atop.
As she did so, she found herself reminded that there weren't just thugs and bandits on this attack. There were helicopters flying overhead—friendly ones. And she'd seen darker things in the woods, too, things she'd never seen before on a battlefield. Things that she knew meant something had changed.
"Dabi's found a collaborator," she realized. This was no longer a matter of bringing down all the Houses—or if it was, one of them had willingly agreed to the decimation. That could mean a lot of things. Kaina was pretty sure none of them were good.
When she reached the Yaoyorozu manor, she found it already burning. The front door was missing entirely, shredded, and flashes of gunfire were visible in the windows as men poured in, shooting anyone they could find.
Dabi stood out front, smoking one of his cigars, flanked by a dozen of the most capable—and least insane—men they'd recruited. He seemed totally unbothered by the gunshots, or the screams, or the heat rolling off the burning house—burning because of his own Quirk.
Kaina stepped up to join him in admiring the building and all it meant—both as a symbol of the wealth and prestige the nobility wielded, and as a reminder of how easy it was to strip it all away. A signal fire lit to herald a war.
"What're you gonna do if the actual Lord escapes?" Kaina asked, jerking her head towards the mansion. "We need the whole family dead."
Dabi snorted. "So little faith," he drawled. "Please, I ain't that stupid. One of those choppers put a missile through his bedroom window before the attack even started. House Guard didn't even notice until it was too late, stupid bastards."
Kaina ignored the part of her that quailed at the casual cruelty, and instead focused on the mission. "His wife, too?" she asked.
Dabi nodded. "His wife too," he confirmed. "The only one we need to confirm still is—"
There were more gunshots from inside the house. Faster. Louder. Getting closer.
There was another scream—but this wasn't the scream of a servant getting gunned down for sport. That was the cut-off death scream of a man getting cut down in battle.
A second later, a ragged corpse flew backwards out of the door, impaled on a long metal spear.
Dabi just grinned. "Well, well, well," he chuckled. "Speak of the devil, and she shall appear."
The woman who burst from the wrecked entrance of the manor then was a stark reminder of the kind of power Japan's nobility truly wielded. Wearing some kind of hastily-assembled ballistic armor with metallic spikes bristling from every gap, she crashed the party like an avalanche, a whirlwind of shapeshifting weapons and deadly precision.
Lady Momo Yaoyorozu fought like a fucking demon. The dozen men flanking Kaina and Dabi leveled their guns, showing zero hesitation as they opened fire. It didn't matter. A shield erupted from her outstretched arm, bullets clanging off of it; the metal dented rapidly under the hail of fire, but it lasted long enough for Momo to reach the nearest gunman. The man's cry of shock was cut off as a razor-sharp blade formed out of the palm of her hand, plunging down through his eye and out the back of his neck.
Dropping the dead man as soon as he went limp, Momo gave the others no time to re-aim; she reached behind her back, and only the faintest glimmer of light revealed that she hadn't drawn the submachine gun she produced from a hidden holster, but instead had created it on the spot, in the heat of battle.
The level of mastery and detailed memorization that must have required was breathtaking, nearly unimaginable, even. And her marksmanship with it was equally awe-inspiring: she leveled the gun, and the barking chatter was the last sound six more men ever heard.
Momo didn't bother reloading; she simply tossed the weapon aside, and met the next man—charging straight at her, seemingly frustrated by her refusal to die quietly—with a chop directly to the throat, seemingly open-handed. That might not have killed—but the solid, blocky reinforcement of steel along the edge of her hand sure did. The man's trachea crunched like dry pasta, and he fell.
A blast of fire from Dabi forced Momo back, but by the time a second fireball came screaming towards her, she had a counter: tiny pellets of condensed halon that exploded into a gas the second they touched the superheated air, replacing oxygen and instantly suffocating the flames. The fire died the second it came close to her, and the sparkles on her skin made it clear that she had more surprises coming.
But as it turned out, Dabi's attack had given his troops time to reload and re-aim. This time, they didn't miss. A round struck Momo right in the gut.
The bullet didn't penetrate whatever hyper-advanced voodoo materials Kaina was sure she'd woven into her hastily-created body armor, but the laws of physics were unforgiving bastards; it didn't matter how good your armor was, a hit like that imparted more than enough kinetic energy to break ribs and knock the wind out of you. Momo staggered, another round hitting her in the chest, and a third clanging off her helmet. She dropped to the ground, wheezing.
The men advanced, their blood up, firing at her again and again. She quickly curled into a ball, a bowl of solid steel quickly forming over top of her to protect her, but she was trapped now; the men drew closer, surrounding her from all angles, pouring fire into the rapidly-deforming steel cocoon. One of them marched right up to it, leaving barely any space between the muzzle of his rifle and the groaning steel.
It was a damn shame, Kaina decided as she watched from across the clearing. Yaoyorozu had fucking guts. It had been a risky idea to attack, but they'd had the house surrounded; the chance of escape was so low, trying to gun straight for command and control and hope the poorly-disciplined rabble broke and ran was probably the best option available to her. Shame it had to end with that rabble prying open her steel umbrella and riddling her with bullets.
That was as far as Kaina's thoughts got before that steel umbrella exploded. There was a clap of thunder, a flash of light, and a burst of smoke, and then every single one of the remaining gunmen was shredded by a hail of shrapnel. Kaina herself felt a sliver of steel open a three-inch-long cut on her cheek as it came within a hair's breadth of taking out her eye. She dropped to the ground on pure instinct, as did Dabi.
When she looked up again, her jaw remained on the floor. Momo Yaoyorozu was kneeling, looking disoriented, but alive and still completely unharmed. She sank onto one knee right in front of the ruined entryway of her burning, collapsing home, bruised and injured, panting, but with death in her eyes.
Kaina realized what the girl had done a second later, when she saw the darker, oddly-textured second metal cocoon at Momo's feet. She'd made her steel umbrella, then some sort of plastic explosive, packing it into the space beneath her last-ditch cover. And then, trapped in a tiny space full of explosives while men fired guns point-blank at her, she'd made a second defensive shield protecting her, and detonated the bombs.
The raw concussion should probably have killed her, except whatever metal she'd made that second shield out of—tungsten, Kaina suspected, just from the look of it—was so much harder and stronger than the steel of the first layer that the explosions' force had been almost completely directed outwards, ripping through the steel and turning it into a hail of deadly shrapnel that had turned the men attacking her into slushy chunks staining the ground.
She'd made explosive reactive armor, and then turned it into a nail bomb. And it had worked.
And now she, Dabi, and Kaina were the only things alive atop this mountain, a burning home the only light they had in the abyss of night.
There was a gun in Momo's hand, a square, blocky, dark pistol with no markings or unique features; a weapon designed to kill, and nothing else. The barrel was pointing squarely at Dabi, who had not raised a hand to defend himself. His only two attacks had been snuffed out—and still, he looked unafraid. His only concession had been tossing his cigar aside.
Perhaps that had something to do with the look on Momo's face. Her expression as she'd fought had been nothing but rage, the fury of a woman defending her home and family, attacked out of nowhere by an enemy she didn't know.
That wasn't the expression she was wearing now, sunk to one knee on the ground outside her home, her extended gun arm shaking, her body trembling, her armor dented and her clothing scuffed, burned, and torn. She was looking straight at Dabi, and her expression was nothing but shock. Shock, and recognition.
"You?" she whispered, brow furrowed. The barrel of her gun was still trembling. "It can't be. You're dead."
Dabi chuckled. "Long time no see, Lady Yaoyorozu," he drawled. "And I'm afraid not. Much as we all wish I wasn't, I'm still kicking."
Momo gripped the pistol tighter. "You're the one behind all this?" she realized, gritting her teeth. "You'll pay. I'll make you pay for everything you've done."
Dabi spat on the ground. "That so?" he asked. "Then you should start right now. Go on. Shoot. See what happens."
Momo looked tempted. But for some reason, she hesitated.
Dabi took a step forwards, spreading his arms wide. "Come on, girl," he snarled. "Let's see if you've got what it takes. Put me out of my misery, eh? Pull that trigger."
Blue eyes met black. Momo set her jaw.
"You're here for her, aren't you?" she asked. Her gun arm wasn't trembling anymore.
Dabi grinned. "Got it in one," he admitted. "Think I'll call home after this. See how the family's doing, eh?"
Momo's eyes snapped open. Her finger pulled back on the trigger.
A gunshot rang out in the cool night air.
A split second later, Momo Yaoyorozu toppled backwards as a pink-and-purple bullet struck home. She fell back through the burning doorway of the manor, and did not rise.
From the far side of the clearing, Kaina lowered her arm-rifle, folding it back into the hollow of her elbow in a complicated motion that always felt a little too mechanical to be human, and a little too biological to be truly machine. She felt nothing except the cool satisfaction of a good shot.
Only…that wasn't quite true. Something bubbled in her chest as she strode over to where Dabi was standing. She wasn't sure what it was, only that it meant nothing good.
He glanced at her scathingly as she approached. "Took you long enough, Nagant," he said dryly. "Did you want me to start doing jumping jacks while shouting "Please don't look at the sniper while I'm stalling!" so you could take a nice tea break before you got around to saving my ass?"
Kaina snorted. "The only thing I saved was my payment for this damn shitshow," she replied. "But I wouldn't mind an answer or two about why that girl knew who you were."
Dabi's eyes suddenly grew cold as ice. "Remember the deal, Nagant?" he asked warningly. "Don't ask about my past, and I don't ask about yours."
Kaina forced away the dread in her gut, and met Dabi's gaze. "I thought I told you before," she snapped, "I'm not interested in some noble power struggle."
Dabi's expression was still utterly cool. "No," he agreed. "You're interested in absolution. And that's something only I can give you. And on the topic of questions that are better left unanswered…"
He jerked his head back at the still form in the doorway of the burning building. Even as they watched, the building gave up the ghost, and four stories of burning timber came crashing down, completely obscuring the evidence that Momo Yaoyorozu had ever existed.
"The day I let you ask about my past," Dabi growled, "Is the day you tell me why you didn't just shoot that girl in the head."
Kaina frowned. "That's where I was aiming," she assured him. "I just missed."
Dabi raised an eyebrow. "Did you, now?" he asked. "I know you, Lady Nagant. I know you don't miss. Not from that range."
Kaina's expression soured. She gave no indication of the truth—not that there was much point. She didn't miss.
But she didn't know why she'd aimed for the shoulder instead of the head. Even now, she replayed the shot over and over in her head, wondering why she'd made that last adjustment—two degrees down, one to the left. She'd had Lady Momo Yaoyorozu dead to rights. And then she'd shot the girl in the shoulder.
Well, it didn't matter anyway. She was buried under flaming debris now. There was no surviving that.
She didn't speak again, not as they made their way to a waiting helicopter. She could feel Dabi's eyes on her, but she didn't care.
All she wanted was on the other side of his promises. She'd make it there.
She didn't know what she would do, otherwise.
The helicopter lifted into the air, passing through a plume of smoke so high and thick it was surely visible from Tokyo itself. The funeral pyre for a Great House. A sign to every noble that the tension had finally snapped. A revelation that the hounds were finally loose.
War had come to Japan.