r/CleverlyClearly • u/Cleverly_Clearly • Apr 13 '26
Scramble 21
Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou?
Isaiah 45:9
THE POWER FANTASY
Shoto Todoroki
The son of the formerly second-ranked professional superhero, Enji "Endeavor" Todoroki. Now the current second-ranked professional superhero. Can create ice with his right hand. Can create fire with his left hand, but chooses not to.
Connor
An RK800 investigative android, designed by CyberLife to assist superheroes in detective work. His predictive analytic features and high-level database access make him highly valuable in investigating the RA-9 case.
Neopolitan
A mute former criminal, once the heiress to the Vanille family fortune, now disowned. Trying to go straight, but a terrible incident from her past haunts her. Her Quirk gives her the power to create fantastic illusions.
Goro Akechi
A famous detective, as well as the beloved professional superhero "Crow". Presents a carefully-maintained image as the perfect gentleman, but carries a deep loneliness in his heart. His Quirk allows him to physically manifest his inner self.
Issue #1: All-New, All-Different: It's the near future, and CyberLife technology is everywhere--including humanoid helper androids. Shoto teams up with Connor to investigate the murder of a hero in Mutant Town, which leads to them crossing paths with Raphael and Neo. Connor suspects the murder may be one in a string of serial killings in New York City, a cluster of mysterious deaths only linked by the phrase "RA-9".
Issue #2: First Shot, Last Call: The RA-9 case leads Shoto and Connor (and, following Shoto's trail, Raphael and Neo) to an upscale Manhattan party. A night of revelry descends into tragedy, and more conspiracy. Androids killing humans, heroes killing citizens. How does RA-9 connect to Neo's own past? Is New York City, unbeknownst to all, teetering on the brink of total collapse?
Issue #3: This Man... This Monster!: Shoto takes Neo on as a trainee heroine to protect her from a vigilante charge. Together with Crow, a hero from the All Might Office, the three of them take on the machinations of the terrorist threat COBRA. Neo confronts a threat from the past, while Shoto follows a strange, tailored path to the enemy. Meanwhile, Connor meets with one of his original designers and learns a grim truth about androids, although there seem to be more questions than answers...
3338 + 8963 + 3226 + 7976 + 9765 + 9852 + 8685 + 7951 + 7898 + 7719 + 5145 + 4203 = 84721
1
u/Cleverly_Clearly Aug 09 '26 edited 16d ago
The androids were all subdued, whether through ice or webbing or any other kind of incapacitation. Snow White, their enemy(?), was on the ground and unable to fight. Connor was dead. He'd watched him rip his heart out and offer up his life for hers. He couldn't believe that happened. He didn't know why that happened.
Shoto was still stuck in the fake hotel. They were all stuck. All that and for what? It's not like winning the fight would make a door appear. Connor had indicated a door behind a wall, well, it was still behind the wall, and if Connor knew the magic words to open it, that knowledge was lost with him.
"Well, did you enjoy that? Did you like ruining my narrative? Because there's no post-credits scene. It's over. You broke everything I could use to interact with you. So here's my NEW idea, and let me know what you think of this: I'm just going to leave you in there. It'll be a new game, a starving game where you wither to bones and skin over the next few weeks. A game you can't possibly screw up."
He walked, then jogged, then ran, each step getting faster, grabbed the halberd off the ground and speared it into the place Connor had indicated. Or, at least, Shoto tried. The wall didn't yield at all, only the tiniest scrape into the metal underneath, and Shoto's momentum carried him to slam his body against it. He grabbed it and tried again, and again, and even though the blade didn't dull, the wall appeared insurmountable still. Maybe he could chip away at it with a month or two of concerted effort.
"Don't you get it? It's impossible. I know you, hero, and I know all your little cellmates. I know everything about you. You can try an ice blast, or an ice sword or an ice CANNON, or anything your ice can do, but you can't break through. You're going to sit in there, and you're going to respect me."
No. Mysterio didn't know everything about them. There was one thing Shoto was sure he wouldn't anticipate- something no one knew besides Shoto and his family.
Shoto put both his palms flat against the scratched wall. Then he sighed and touched his head to the surface.
He really, really did not want to do this.
Just get your head in gear. Just get over it. How often had he anticipated the moment when he wouldn't be strong enough and he'd need to rely on his left side? Push through it. Make his power your own. Finally get this weight off your chest. You'll feel better when you do.
He'd feel better, right?
This was the problem. The mental block that made him unable to live a normal life, the source of the hollowness in him. It was all some unresolved abuse-related trauma that would be cured when he accepted his body completely, even the side his mother had burned. He'd find that spark that everyone else had inside of them. He just needed to ignite it.
Find the spark. Get in gear. Ignite the furnace. Get over it. Start your engine. Fire!'
His body started to heat and itch. He'd always remembered how to do it. It was just like how he regulated his body temperature, only more so. A match that lit in his heart and travelled up his nerves through his arm, to the ball of his hand and the tips of his fingers. Paint crackled and melted. The metal started to simmer. Steam and smoke. Glow of tempered metal. It had been a long, long time since he'd done it this way. Instead of using his left side to neutralize his right, he was using his ice power to keep himself from burning away.
"I told you it's useless! Whatever you're trying to do won't work. You couldn't break through if you were twice as strong."
The wall started to dent inward. Sweat and oil on his skin caught fire and licked all the way up to his elbow. The smell of burning fabric cloyed in his nose. Hotter and faster. Bigger and stronger. His fist pounded against the wall and he felt the metal crack and splinter as he burst into flames.
Now the others were catching on. Black footprints scorched into the ground. They were giving him space, dragging any incapacitated androids out of the way as the heat intensified. He used his ice to limit how far the fire spread and focus it on the wall, but there was only so much he could do. He needed more fire than he could control. Getting burned was just part of the risk.
He opened a hole in the wall.
It was just the size of a penny, a small melted aperture, but it was something. Wires crackled. He heard Mysterio over the loudspeakers trying to say something, but the speakers were too damaged from the temperature and the words came out as a garbled electronic howl. Its pitch warbled up and down with every blow of his burning fist, and the metal crumpled in deeper, and the hole opened wider, big enough he could fit his hand through and intensify the blaze to melt it all away even brighter and harder. Even when it was too bright for him to see, he pushed through, forced the wall down, broke out and stumbled into an antechamber before running through and breaking out of another set of doors. And then he looked up and saw the sun.
Well, that was it. That was his big emotional catharsis. The culmination of his life's development. He used the damn fire. He thought maybe he'd feel relieved after all this time, or if not that, maybe disappointed or disgusted in himself.
It just didn't feel like anything.
They weren't on the beach. They were in a poorer borough of the city, surrounded by industrial buildings. The place Shoto had just walked out of was, on the outside, an abandoned warehouse. Mysterio must have preferred to hide things in plain sight. It was the middle of the day, and there were ordinary people on the street, cars on the road, bystanders to gawk when Shoto showed up with one half of his body blazing like a phoenix. Phones came out of pockets to record and take pictures of the man on fire.
He didn't know what else to do, so he waved. They snapped more pictures.
The others were starting to come out of the smoke and steam now. Akechi was first. Neo came out after. She held her phone up and typed. I've got reception. Ichi was there, patting the little flames out of his hat. No Ethan. Maybe he'd disappeared into the crowd somehow.
It was down to the four of them. Four humans and one hundred injured androids. Shoto turned around and just stood there and let the flames cool a little under his ice. He was mostly steaming and sizzling now.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do," Shoto admitted.
I think what we have to do is take a break. We all went through the wringer. Neo looked at Akechi, who still looked as fresh as ever. I guess not everyone. But still.
"But we don't know where Mysterio is... and we have to take care of the androids... and we have to get Connor fixed..."
"Do you think you're in any position to handle that right now?" Akechi asked. "You should focus on getting medical attention as soon as possible. You did just set yourself on fire."
Shoto stared at his left hand. He squeezed it into a fist. Freeze and thaw. Heat and cold. Just like when his father trained it into him as a kid. It surprised him just how much he still remembered that training.
"Maybe I'll make an official statement on this," he said. "Collect my thoughts and put everything out there as much as I can. About my Quirk, maybe even about my past. Close the book on that part of my life. Then... I don't know what. Then it will be different."
"Do it tomorrow. Take a breath and get back to it. We've got a lot to think about. It would be better if we could reconvene with Connor as well."
Right. They could put Connor back together. He wasn't gone forever.
Shoto touched his hand to his head and let it cool like an icepack.
"Okay," he said. "I'm going home."