(Private Middle School, Classroom 3-A. Tsubaki is seated at the back)
The noise of the classroom was a low, irritating hum—the chatter of children planning their futures, blissfully unaware of the true cost of power. Tsubaki sat hunched, staring not at the textbook on his desk, but at the reflection of the window in the dark glass. Nine years had passed since he made that vow in the cold bedroom. Nine years of tireless, consuming labor.
Nine years ago, my worth was measured and found wanting. Endeavor's mistake.
The training had been relentless. Every night, every weekend, Tsubaki had pushed his body. His regimen was brutal, calculated to break every physiological limit. He had mastered his endurance against extreme cold, a necessary tolerance for a Quirk that demanded intense, internal suffering.
But the physical cost was minor compared to the emotional debt.
Mother left.
The memory of the boiling water, the steam, the screaming—it was a chaotic, defining blur. In the aftermath, the house hadn't become quieter; it had become an active battlefield. Endeavor had intensified Shoto's training to manic levels. Natsuo's rage became an open, roaring storm. Fuyumi was a trembling peacekeeper.
And Tsubaki? He had vanished entirely. His success at maintaining distance was his greatest failure as a son and brother.
The scar on Shoto's face was the perfect, terrible symbol of the family's destruction, but it also solidified Shoto's status as the one who suffered, the one who was seen by the world, and by the family, as the victim.
"You had it easy," Shoto had once accused him, years ago. Tsubaki could still feel the cold, blinding rage that followed. Easy. When all he had ever wanted was a target, a blow, a sign that he was worth his father's cruel effort.
The only way out of the shadow was up—to the top. Number One.
Ten months left. Tsubaki let out a slow, silent breath. The air immediately crystallized on the surface of his desk, forming delicate, complex fractal patterns before rapidly sublimating into vapor. He quickly wiped the moisture away, his heart beating a hard rhythm against his ribs. He was strong enough now. He could feel the power latent in his hands, ready to be unleashed. He wouldn't rely on his father's filthy name for a recommendation. He would take U.A. the hard way. He had earned it.
Ring. Ring. RING.
The bell screamed the end of the school day, shattering his contemplation. Tsubaki stood, his shoulders aching from the heavy leather backpack containing his school books and his heavily weighted training gear.
Tsubaki headed for the school gates, purposefully cutting through the quieter, older section of the grounds. His deliberate isolation was broken when he heard a voice that always sounded faintly surprised to see him.
"Tsubaki."
He stopped, but didn't turn around, waiting for the inevitable, strained conversation to end itself.
Shoto Todoroki stood a few feet behind him. His posture was stiff and guarded as Tsubaki's, though Shoto's face bore the stark evidence of their father's tyranny.
"Are you heading straight home?" Shoto asked, his tone neutral, attempting the polite, disconnected conversation they maintained in public.
Tsubaki finally turned, his gaze passing over Shoto's scar without lingering. "Where I go is irrelevant to you, Shoto. But no. I have my own training to manage."
Shoto's lips thinned. He knew Tsubaki trained constantly, but he still couldn't fathom why. Shoto had spent years desperately trying to escape Endeavor's training; Tsubaki chased it in the shadows.
"You don't have to push yourself like that," Shoto said quietly, the genuine concern leaking through his controlled voice. "Dad doesn't care what you do. You are free of his curse, Tsubaki. That's a luxury I will never have."
Tsubaki felt the familiar, hot resentment flash behind his cold eyes. He fought the urge to make the temperature drop.
"Free?" Tsubaki scoffed, allowing a sliver of genuine, dark emotion to taint his voice. "You still don't understand, do you? You were given the whole damn picture—the perfect Quirk to erase your weakness, the attention, the destiny. And you reject the half that makes you great."
Shoto frowned, the subject of their father always grating on him. "I reject him. I use my ice to win, and my ice alone. I will become Number One without ever raising his disgusting flames. You are a fool if you think chasing his attention is worth destroying yourself over."
"Fool?" Tsubaki's voice was dangerously low, his mask tightening to iron. "You were told you had destiny. You were given the lane of greatness, and you stand there deliberately crippled, squandering your power! I was told I was a failure—that my Quirk was weak, that I would never have the raw power needed for the top."
He stepped closer, his pure white hair seeming to glow against the twilight. "You hold yourself back when you were given everything. I was given nothing, and yet I will prove him right about one of us achieving greatness—just the wrong twin. I will be the one who defies the odds."
His eyes narrowed. "You reject his destiny. I reject his verdict. I will be the one at the top. I will make everyone see who they dismissed, and I will be Number One with the power they claimed was insufficient."
Tsubaki took a step back. "Stay in your lane, Shoto. Mine leads to Number One, and it's not wide enough for two."
Tsubaki didn't wait for a response. He spun on his heel and walked away, his destination the only place he felt truly unburdened:
Sekoto Peak Forest.
The forest itself was a place of quiet, tragic recovery—a mix of vibrant, young second-growth trees and the dead, skeletal remains of old-growth timber, their trunks blackened and twisted by a catastrophic, high-intensity fire years ago. It was a place defined by both intense heat and the desperate fight to survive it.
Tsubaki pulled off his blazer, then the white shirt beneath, revealing a physique that was surprisingly lean but densely muscled—the result of years of high-intensity, Quirk-assisted training. The skin across his back and shoulders was faintly mottled, showing the healed, scar-like traces of constant frostbite from overusing his power.
He pulled a small, specialized metal container from his bag, one that hummed faintly with compressed cold. This was his Cryo-Regulator—a training device that released a burst of ultra-low temperature, forcing his body to adapt to working under extreme cold stress before he unleashed his own Quirk.
Tsubaki opened the container. The temperature immediately plummeted, and ice crystals exploded outward, momentarily shrouding him in a cloud of snow and vapor. He stepped into the rapidly cooling space, his bare hands already generating a pure, blinding layer of white frost.
He focused on a nearby tree. He wasn't practicing creating ice structures; he was practicing precision collapse.
Endeavor says I lack the necessary fire to ever measure up.
Tsubaki extended his fingers. He didn't use a blast, but a silent, concentrated pulse of his Quirk. A thin, focused beam of absolute cold hit a single point on the tree's trunk. It was a molecular attack, forcing the temperature of the wood to drop so violently and instantaneously that its internal structure became infinitesimally brittle.
Crack!
A small, perfectly round section of the trunk—no bigger than a teacup—shattered inward, collapsing into fine powder. The sound was barely audible, yet devastatingly effective.
Tsubaki practiced this for nearly an hour, pushing the range and the size of the collapsed area. He noted, without conscious thought, that one of the trees near his practice site was completely dead and blackened. He shot a pulse of ice into its base, testing how the brittle, charred wood reacted to the sudden cold—it exploded instantly into powder.
By the time he was done, the entire corner of the Sekoto Peak Forest was coated in a silent, brittle layer of white ice. His body trembled slightly, his chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged breaths. His Quirk, while destructive, demanded payment in intense, internal suffering.
He pulled on his clothes, his expression unchanged. The price was irrelevant. The goal was everything.
Ten months. Then, the world would finally see what the Todoroki family had discarded.
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Authers note:
I did the time skip because you'll learn more as the story goes so we are at the cannon time line of 10 months before the entrance exam this isn't some instantly op character so don't expect him to bull doze through every one he sees he's strong but not op.
I decided to update since I had a 2nd chapter already planned so I haven't decided on schedule yet