[MHA] Shoto Todoroki : Modern-Day Terrorist

[Nar_cisse]

Fulgenzio Scarsella was a small man with olive skin and a trumpet nose.

He had deep wrinkles that furrowed his face and cheeks that hung like a bulldog's, chubby little fingers with no nails, and short legs that wouldn't get him very far if he had to run.

Fulgenzio was no threat.

He was a retired old man, a prominent member of the Mustafu Bridge Club, married to an equally old woman, an active practitioner of yoga and tennis.

Fulgenzio was my psychologist made in Italy and paid for generously by Teka for almost six years.

He was one of the few people I could describe as incorruptible - or at least fairly aware of the consequences of opening his mouth in the wrong place to the wrong person.

He didn't aspire to much more than eating out with his wife on Sundays and donating most of his six-figure salary to charity.

A rare breed. The kind of man you don't find on the streets anymore.

- How was your week, Shoto ? he asked me, stretched out on a sofa, his eyes looking up at the glass ceiling.

Lying on my own sofa, I watched the clouds move across the sunny blue sky.

Fulgenzio had arranged our 'lazy session', as he liked to call it, because I'd once told him that being the only one lying down while he watched me made me nervous, as if I were sitting an exam that I'd have to cheat to pass.

- Fine. I guess.

He listened to me talk about my days in Nagano, the countless restaurants Hawks had dragged me to and the distinctly endless feeling I got at each new lenghtened meal.

I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was wasting my time repeating nonsense, but at the same time I knew it was necessary.

I've got enough to worry about without having my psyche threaten to collapse.

- Be positive, Shoto. Be positive: 'It could have been worse'

- It could have been worse, I admitted.

I knew he was smiling, his little moustache shadowing his upper lip.

- This Hawks doesn't look like a bad guy to me, he added. He seems to take good care of you.

I shrugged, though he couldn't see it.

- I suppose

- He could have told you to look after yourself, that managing you in a town that had suffered such a tragedy was part of your 'punishment'.

I didn't know Hawks very well, but that seemed to me to be the antithesis of his personality.

- I can't imagine him doing that.

A sudden thought flashed through my mind.

Maybe he's trying to gain my trust so I'll side with the Commission.

- Exactly! You have to trust your judgement, Shoto.

The last time I trusted my 'judgement', I decapitated a man in a public place.

- Hmm

- You're a very logical and rational boy, Shoto. If you don't let your emotions get the better of you, you can trust yourself.

Could I ?

I frowned and concentrated on a cloud that floated like cotton wool above our heads.

If I focused hard enough, I could make the black outlines of the glass tiles that made up the ceiling disappear.

- I've... had other episodes.

For a moment Fulgenzio said nothing, and I knew that the turn of the conversation had taken him by surprise.

- Didn't you tell me that your paranoia had practically disappeared?

His voice was high, three octaves above normal.
He asked the question even though he already knew the answer: his Quirk was absolute memory, the impossibility of forgetting even the smallest sound, the slightest smell, the faintest sensation.

But he gave me a way out, a way to explain myself without feeling as if he had cornered me.

- I lied

Fulgenzio didn't answer.

He knew that I more or less occasionally lied for more or less benign reasons.

- How are the episodes ?

They're spaced out, but more intense.

- Spaced out but more intense

- How exactly ?

I didn't answer.

Fulgenzio continued:

- Has anything important happened recently?

My left hand twitched nervously, but I didn't answer.

- Does it have anything to do with the quarrel between you and your father?

- No, I...

I remained silent, my ability to express myself fading as I searched for the proper words - or at least the correct words.

- Take your time, Fulgenzio said.

From anyone else, these words would have sounded patronising.

But I knew Fulgenzio well enough to know that he could keep quiet for an hour if that's how long it took me to express myself properly.

- There's this thing I did recently. A very big mistake.

- The kind I'd rather not know about, right ?

- Exactly

I licked my dry lips, trying to get my thoughts straight.

- It was... I had a sudden burst of anger and I did... something I could have avoided. That's why Hawks 'punished' me.

- Does your father know?

- No, he doesn't.

I heard Fulgenzio inhale sharply and then close his mouth again, his lips slapping together with a smack.
I could hear his thoughts without having to be telepathic: 'What? The crazy boy didn't tell daddy Todoroki, even though he always tells him everything ?'

- Why ?

Because I'm afraid of how he'll react, because I'm afraid that the gap between us will widen.

- Because I'm afraid he'll realise there's something wrong with me.

Because I'm afraid he'll think I'm not worth it and abandon me.

- Don't say that, Shoto. You've come a long way: don't let a simple relapse ruin years of hard work.

- I still can't control myself, I said. I'm trying, but there's this thing...

I am already at a loss for words.

- The ball of anger

- Yes, the ball of anger : it gets stuck in my throat, my thoughts become blurred and then- then- I can't control myself.

I grew silent, unable to go on.

- But it's better than before, isn't it?, said Fulgenzio.

I'm not so sure.

- You don't fight with your comrades for no reason now, right ?

True.

- Yes, I muttered.

- You see ? That's progress !

Maybe he's right.

Suddenly the colourful, vivid, perfect image of the man with his legs crushed in the burning shopping centre came back to me.

I remembered his smell and the metallic flavor of blood I could already taste on my tongue.

I remembered his shining eyes and the way he had begged me to put him out of his misery.

I remembered the ease with which I had accepted, the way my hand had covered his mouth as his warm, living breath, brushed my fingers.

He had died like all the other men I had killed, no more spectacular or ordinary than the others.

I knew that if I hadn't activated my sharingan at that moment, the outline of his face would have already faded from my memory.

- Fulgenzio ?

- Yes ?

- What is a murdered?

Fulgenzio squirmed, his clothes rubbing against the sofa, and I imagined him wriggling like an earthworm emerging from the ground after rain.

- A murderer ? Hmm, if I remember the terms correctly, a murderer is a person who commits voluntary manslaughter without premeditation. That's the big difference with an assassin, who commits voluntary manslaughter with premeditation.

Without premeditation...

- Furthermore, murder is considered a crime against humanity, whereas assassination is a crime against public order...

I smoothed my perfectly pressed trousers several times in a row. My knee twitched and I put my hand on it to force myself to calm down.

I could no longer see the blue sky or the clouds passing overhead.

- Do you think...

My heart stopped in my chest and for a second I thought I wouldn't dare finish my sentence.

- Do you think I'm a murderer ?

There was a moment of silence.

- What makes you think that?

- Sometimes I get the impression that...

...that I could kill people without realising how grave it is.

- What?, Fulgenzio asked gently.

- I just...

I raised my arms slightly before letting them fall back onto the sofa, helpless.

- Sometimes I feel disconnected. Like nothing makes sense.

As if I didn't make sense.

- Meaning ?

Is he doing it on purpose ?

I suddenly became angry, and for a second I imagined straddling the old man and strangling him.

Then I blinked and the only thing I could see was the pure, fluffy clouds.

I took deep, discreet breaths to calm myself and counted to ten three times in a row until the ball of rage returned to its dark lair.

Slowly, almost in fear that it would wake if I spoke too loudly, I continued:

- I'm just trying to... make sense of it all.

And I vaguely waved my hand to indicate the famous 'it'.

- You mean life, Fulgenzio murmured, his tone as hushed as mine.

Life, death, everything in between.

- Indeed, that's an excellent question, Fulgenzio said. The answer is not something you can find after a few hours of reflection, but something you have to live to understand.

- And what do you think ?

- Well, to tell you the truth, I don't really know.

He laughed and I felt disappointed.

- But I think we find meaning in the little things, you know ? In the beauty of a sunset or the joy of a laugh shared with loved ones. In a meal prepared with care, or a gesture of comfort when things go wrong. In the hand of a stranger who reaches out to us when we've hit rock bottom.

I leaned on one elbow, all my attention on Fulgenzio.

He kept looking up at the clouds, his hands crossed over his chest, his eyes glazed over, as if he wasn't really there anymore.

- I don't believe that life has a 'hidden meaning' or that we have to do 'great things' to make our lives meaningful. We're the ones who give it meaning, you know ? It's you and me and everybody else on this earth and what we choose. There is no past or future: only the present and what we choose to do with it. Do you understand that?

- I... think I do.

I thought about the fishing rods left on a rock while my father and I swam, about Teka showing me around the Italian countryside for hours in the blazing sun, about my father's face when I gave him the original copy of Lorenzaccio, about the short stay I'd had with the future members of my Familia, all the mischief Leo, Natsu and I had gotten into that should have gotten us expelled from our schools, the time I'd almost gotten into a fight with Katsuki in the locker room, the way Hawks - Keigo - had reached out to me and forgiven me for something no one else but my father would have done.

Maybe I'd been wrong.

Maybe I hadn't blown it all yet.

- Out of curiosity, Shoto, why did you bring advance our appointment to this week ?

- I needed to talk, I said.

My first thought was that I'd already said too much, that he'd use it against me, that it would all come back to bite me.

My second thought was that even if he did use it against me, it wouldn't be a problem because it didn't really matter.

Fulgenzio turned his head towards me and smiled.

- I'm glad, Shoto. I hope this has made you feel better.

It did.

- I know you must have good reasons for not telling me about your recent 'mistake', and I won't ask you to explain it to me - and I certainly won't tell your father. But I would like you to take this opportunity to discuss it with someone: someone you trust, someone who might understand.

- ... I'll think about it

Fulgenzio's smile widened.

- That's all I ask.

For the first time in weeks, I had real hope that I could change.
*

Author's note :

We finally reached 300,000 words on every platform !

Very happy about it, honestly I didn't think I was cut out to write as much lmao.

Tell me what you thought of the chapter in the comments or whatever else you want to talk about.

Also, started 'Battle Royale' by Houshun Takami (you know, there's even this movie adaptation with the teens killing each other) and it is giving me plenty of ideas for my next fanfic (yeah I know, should only focus on one thing at a time but the closer I get to the end the more my mind drifts away).
Anyway, if you want to read ahead of schedule, then go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you in the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

Just as my brush traced the last loop of the seal, I flung it aside and let out a grunt.

I rolled my shoulders to get rid of the stiffness in my muscles, grunting as I felt the beginnings of soreness.

That'll teach you to not hunch over your desk for hours like an old man with a crooked back.

I stretched my arms back and stood up, pacing around to get the blood circulating in my body.

I shook my legs and arms and cracked my neck several times.

I stifled a yawn and rubbed my eyes with two fingers.

An owl leapt from its perch, wings wide open, and swooped down on a mouse. Its talons dug into the mouse's furry skin, and the owl flew away, while the mouse let out a small cry that faded into the darkness.

How long ago has the night fallen ?

I blinked, my attention returning to my desk.

Dozens and dozens of incomplete, crossed out, or torn matrices covered my desk from one side to the other.

Even though most of my clones were focused on the 'final' project, I'd still got quite a large team working here.

But the prospect of eating Genjutsu all evening didn't appeal to me, so I preferred to work on it myself.

My life has become so pathetic that I have to choose between something I don't want to do and something I want to do even less.

I smiled and pushed my hair back.

I really need to cut it before it starts falling in front of my eyes.

I sit back down at my desk and took a few sips from my water bottle before putting it back on the floor.

Clearing my throat, I took the ultimate fruit of my labor and studied the matrice one last time, trying to find any problems.

Three concentric circles inside each other, the entry key and the exit key, the instructions didn't drool...

I reread the various kanji that made up the circles to make sure none of them had smudged on the others and compromised the seal.

I blew a lukewarm breeze over the sheet to dry the last of the glossy ink stains, then made the Ram handsign with my right hand.

From the outer edges to the center, the circles began to glow.

My heart raced and I leaned forward, my mouth open.

Don't tell me I-

Then a puff of black smoke exploded in my face.

I dropped the sheet and coughed, pulling my chair back as ash fell on my desk and knees.

I grabbed the first book I could find in my open drawer and it instantly transformed, a fluorescent bluish light enveloping it, the words on the pages running in all directions before stabilizing.

With my left hand, I took my bottle and drank a few sips to soothe my irritated throat, reading the lines that appeared in my Chakra Encyclopedia.

'It is impossible to reproduce the Mokuton without the genetic mutation of Hashirama Senju. It is impossible to reproduce any hereditary bloodline without being a descendant of this line. It is highly unadvised to place unstable seals on individuals at the risk of their premature death'.

I clicked my tongue against my palate in displeasure.

I licked the tip of my thumb, then flipped backwards through the pages at high speed, sharingan activated for faster reading.

The encyclopedia had said the same about the Sharingan, but I'd still managed to reverse-engineer it from the insect with the best reflexes in the world...

Well, that wasn't entirely true.

I'd managed to recreate the tenfold perception of the Sharingan, which gave me the impression of seeing everything in slow motion, as well as the best visual abilities possible without a proper Quirk.

However, there was no Mangekyo Sharingan or Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan: I couldn't recreate the illogicality of these two evolutions because I didn't understand how to do it in the first place.

Seals are complex products, where each kanji must be written and connected to the others with meticulous precision: to miss even the smallest loop is to ruin the whole thing...

Wasn't that my problem? Did my inability to understand how they worked make it impossible for me to recreate them?

Is it even possible to reproduce it ?

Recreating the Mokuton from a seal was only my second option - the first had been a silly theory that by injecting the exact ratio of Suiton, Doton and Chakra, I, too, could make entire forests sprout from the ground.

But this possibility required two things:

- Exceptional control of one's chakra, which I had
- Exceptional mastery of Suiton and Doton.

While Suiton was as easy as breathing, my control of Doton was abysmal.

And when I say abysmal, I mean that I hadn't been able to learn more than one E-rank jutsu in almost eleven years.

Be positive, Shoto. The things you can do with Raiton are just unreal - and I'm not even talking about Katon and Suiton.

I couldn't be too stingy.

But it still pissed me off.

I lifted the sheet with the Mokuton matrice up to my face, looking at my hours of hard work from a new angle, hoping that the solution would jump out at me.

Shit... I think I'm going to have to give up on this project.

I hated giving up - it was like telling myself that I was a coward unable to carry out my own will.

But the recent events in Nagano had shown me that All for One would soon be leaving its hideout, and that I had to be ready for any eventuality: I couldn't decently waste my time on a project that would surely never bear fruit.

If reproducing the Sharingan in its entirety is impossible because all of its abilities are illogical, if trying to recreate the Mokuton is impossible because Senju Hashirama had a mutation that defied the laws of reality, then I'm not even talking about trying to recreate something like the Edo Tensei...

If only I had data to fall back on...

The essence of Mokuton was its ability to drain chakra from Bijuus.

Once I'd succeeded in recreating it, I could have looked into Aizawa's case, understodd exactly how his Quirk canceled out others', and then try to modify the Mokuton to suit the inhabitants of this world.

I'd cover the planet with lush forests that would drain the energy from everyone's Quirk.

I would have succeeded in rendering humanity impotent and would have made meta-human society a parenthesis in history.

Three generations later, people would believe that their grandparents, who told them stories of flying heroes and fire-breathing villains, were the victims of a collective hallucination.

I could have made all my problems disappear with the snap of my fingers...

It sounds so quixotic now that I know I can't.

I looked up at the moon.

It shone coldly, stretching the world's shadows ominously.

Let's call it a night.

I got up, hands in my pockets, and shuffled through the house.

The creaking hardwood floors made no sound under the lightness of my ninja steps.

The door next to mine was ajar.

I stopped in front of it.

I tilted my head to one side and listened intently.

Steady breathing.

Suddenly there was movement and the purr of a hibernating bear.

I smiled and quietly closed the door.

He's still snoring like a chainsaw.

I left again, mechanically extending my senses to the entire Todoroki estate.

I could feel my father sleeping in his room, my two clones watching over him day and night, the servants in the outhouse, Rei and the other two in the east wing and Teka's two henchmen, who were as much responsible for watching over Touya as they were for protecting my father if he tried to kill him.

Of course he's the only one not sleep.

Touya had trouble sleeping, it seemed. He was always awake at odd hours and slept very little during the day.

My theory was that he was afraid that I would kill him in his sleep.

It was, of course, a tempting idea. Although I'd managed to control myself so far, it would have been harder if I'd been forced to see his horrible rat face every day.

I guess that's why Dad refused Rei's suggestion that everyone move in with us in the west wing.

I took a bottle of water from the refrigerator and drank, leaning against the sink.

When my thirst was quenched, I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve and put my mask back on before dipping my head into the refrigerator.

I'm so damn hungry.

I had a very strict diet, adapted to my daily training level, from which I was not allowed to deviate.

My eyes fell on a chocolate cake under a dome, only one slice missing.

....we're all going to die one day anyway.

Dying of a chocolate overdose seemed enviable, considering my current prospects.

I grabbed a fork, pulled a chair from the kitchen island, and sat down with my improvised meal facing the porch.

The edge of the forest rustled under the caress of the wind, the leaves crumpling like paper rolled into a ball.

Soon winter would come, and with it the snow.

And the rainy season will soon give way to the biting cold, but everyone knows it's easier to hide a body when it's raining...

I thought of Nagano and the rivers of pink water that had carried the evidence of my murder into the city's sewers. I thought again of Hawks with a burned back and of Fulgenzio telling me that I had to confide in someone.

This time I had narrowly escaped the social earthquake.

Even if I had participated in the rescue of Nagano, the consequences of killing a man - even a terrorist - after my grand speeches about my "lack of choice" would have been tragic.

No matter how much I thought I was in control, there was always something or someone - me - that would betray me in the end.

I made mistake after mistake, I didn't care about the consequences, and if someone other than a PAN's fanatic farmer had found that head, I don't know how I would have gotten out of it.

My fork hit the plate with a shrill sound.

I strained my ear, motionless.

He's still asleep.

My shoulders relaxed.

I took another bite of cake.

I had decapitated a man who stood in my way, and I wasn't sorry I had done it, only that I had been caught.

I killed a defenseless old man because he begged me to end his suffering, and I felt more guilty about that than anything else, even though he'd guided my hand.

Try to find the logic in that.

In my mind, it all made sense.

Rationally, I wondered if I wasn't just talking nonsense to justify all my bullshit.

'Murder is a crime against humanity'.

I ran a hand over my face, feeling the icy chill in my dark circles that meant I needed at least a good ten hours of sleep to make up for all this.

But since I don't have the time, I'll just sleep four hours and pat myself on the back for another excellent night of sleep.

What could I do now that my 'Mokuton: The Quirks Devourer' project was gone?

Shit, if Edo Tensei was impossible, this means I can't reverse-engineer Izuku's Quirk to automatically resurrect me if I ever hit the bucket prematurely.

I had to find a way to drastically increase my power: the 'Capitals' project couldn't be the only trick I had up my sleeve.

That would only scare the officials. What I need to do is find a way to make sure that no criminal ever comes after me...

And then there was All for One and his Nomus and who knows what else trying to take over the world behind him.

Why had I decided to be the 'protagonist' again?

Maybe it's time for me to withdraw from everything.

My father had paid enough because of my lack of brains, and the more days passed, the more I risked getting a one way ticket to Tartarus.

But the old man will kill himself if - when - All for One decides to blow it all up.

My Hero Academia was originally supposed to be a Shonen - and in Shonen, the heroes always win in the end.

Does this mean that Dek- that Izuku is the key to all my problems?

If he wins back the One for All, he'll be able to deal with All for One and all the other villains lurking in the shadows, and all will be well that ends well.

All I have to do is get All Might to give him his power, and everything will be alright.

But All Might hate my guts and he probably thinks Izuku is a whiner...

And then there was the problem with Touya.

If I really decided to get out of the whole thing, work for the Special Forces or become the Don or whatever, I refused to move on until he was six feet under.

I had to find a way to kill him that was natural, logical, and that I couldn't be blamed for.

I thought of Hawks and his burns.

...I'd be a really shitty person if I did that.

And yet...

I hesitated, weighing the pros and cons.

At that moment, the clock struck four.

I blinked, chasing away the jelly that had clouded my thoughts.

Forget it, we'll think about it tomorrow.

I finished the cake in a few bites and stood up.

I put the bowl in the sink and walked away with my hands in my pockets.

Someone will clean it...

I stopped on the threshold of the room and hesitated for a second.

Then I turned abruptly, picked up the plate and cutlery and put everything in the dishwasher before walking away just as abruptly.

If I do one last bad deed to save myself from thousands of others... isn't that a good deed ?

I didn't have to submit my reasoning to general objectivity to know that I was clearly persuading myself to do something stupid.

And yet...

If my father's life is at stake, I'm capable of anything.


*

Author's note :

I have been told that the cover of the story and the description were not very readers attractive.

I want to know if it's a common sentiment shared by many among you (if you skipped the story many times before starting it because the cover was not nice or the description too boring).

Either way, see you in the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

Further out on the lawn, dressed in shorts and t-shirts that almost made me wonder if they'd all developed a resistance to the cold during the night, were a mix of students from Elite Class and 1-A.

They were stretching, doing push-ups, laughing merrily before slapping each other on the back to encourgage each other to get back to work.

Hands in my pockets, I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up, feeling Katsuki getting out of the shared showers.

My attention was caught by the shadow of a body suddenly moving in my periphery.

Kirishima and Dek-Izuku were in full hand-to-hand combat, exchanging blows more for the sake of form than to actually hurt each other.

Kirishima stopped, spoke quickly and mimed a blow, taking care not to overdo it.

Izuku nodded and imitated him, but his poorly supported right leg twitched as if it wanted to follow the movement.

Kirishima nodded and the two boys smiled, then clapped their hands.

Immediately, Izuku turned around and I raised my head towards the door, looking as if I had something else on my mind.

There was an imperceptible creak, as if he'd just stepped on the season's icy beginnings and, seeing me, hesitated to move forward.

He hung there for a moment, hesitating, then trotted over to the faucet that came out of the wall and served as a water fountain.

I turned my head toward him and he suddenly looked away, leaning forward to drink from the hose.

The sound of his wet, disgusting sucking annoyed me almost as much as the lack of diligence of the group of teenagers behind him.

Izuku sat up, wiped his wet lips with the back of his hand, gave me a hesitant look, looked away, pretended to walk away, stopped, and finally stammered nervously:

- Are you waiting for Katchan?

He seemed to shrink into himself.

Even under his baggy T-shirt, I could see the hardened line of his once sluggish shoulders.

I looked away.

- Yeah

Izuku continued to fidget nervously with his hands and I was suddenly very irritated to see so much anxiety in one loose body.

I looked at the time on my cell phone again and my irritation increased.

What the hell is he doing?

I was almost tempted to go up and drag him out by his hair.

I glanced sideways at Izuku, who was watching the other students.

Hesitantly, his lower lip quivering, his right foot twitching nervously, as if he wanted to walk towards them, but something held him back.

He met my gaze and gasped.

- Hey

He stopped, rigid as a pillar set in cement.

He stuttered.

- Yes ?

I felt like grabbing him by the collar of his T-shirt and slap hm.

Urging myself to calm down, I continued in an indifferent tone:

- When you strike, your posture must be more solid.

He blinked like an owl waking up in the middle of the day.

- What ?

I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth, looked up to the second floor where I could still feel Katsuki's pampering himself, and then took two steps towards Izuku.

I spread my legs and put both my fists in front of my face.

- Each of your punches must start from the bottom of your body, I said. If your posture isn't solid, you'll lose power.

I mimed a sharp blow to my opponent's jaw.

- People are fragile. If you use the right amount of power in the right place, you can beat just about anyone.

People made fun of martial arts more than ever now that children could be born with the ability to fart fire.

What's a flamethrower against good hand-to-hand combat ? Answer: barbecued meat.

I threw a few more hooks at my imaginary opponent for form's sake before straightening up, feeling Katsuki the princess finally bring her royal butt outside.

Izuku lost his air of frightened childishness, mimicked my stance to perfection and sent three sharp blows straight ahead.

His gaze was resolute, determined, the opposite of the fragile boy who walked around with his head in his shoulders, so much so that it took me another second to connect this assertive version of him with the fragility he usually exuded.

An immortal able of giving back blow for blow...

I suddenly felt a thrill of excitement.

Izuku straightened up and looked at me questioningly.

-... t's not as disastrous as it used to be...

The corners of his mouth turned up, uncertain, but I was already standing next to a grumbling Katsuki (for a change) who had just kicked open the front door, startling everyone within a ten kilometer radius.

- You took so long I really thought I'd have come and pull you out by your ass

He raised an eyebrow, then slipped his cell phone into his pocket.

- Waiting for me? (Then his lips curled over his sharp teeth) Oh yeah, I forgot I was the only one of us with a real Hero job. How's the community service going ?

- Don't make me believe that apart from bringing coffee to my old man's meetings, you're good for anything else

- Says the guy who wears a bricklayer's uniform and spends his days chasing pigeons

- Your dreams of glory must seem far away when you spend your days watching All Might in his tighter-than-a-thong suit.

Katsuki landed a blunt blow on my shoulder.

- Fuck you

I smiled.

- Did I hit a nerve?

And from the look he gave me, I knew I'd hit a nerve.

*

- Are you kidding me?

Hands in my pockets, bag on my back, I looked at the front of the noodle bar, then at my phone, then back at the bar.

- That's what Maps says.

I put my cell phone in my pocket.

Katsuki to my left was foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog.

- You made me miss training fo-

I pushed open the door and a bell rang, drowning out Katchan's barrage of insults.

To my right was a counter overlooking an open kitchen where two sweaty men in gloves and aprons were busy.

One of them poured oil into a deep frying pan and suddenly a geyser of flames erupted.

He barely pulled his head back, looking as if he was used to it, and I watched him appreciatively.

An old woman returning from what appeared to be the storeroom wiped her forehead with her sleeve, smiled at me and handed me a menu.

She had a strange scar from her ear to her chin.

I looked at the menu, fascinated, not used to restaurants without table service.

The bell rang again and I heard Katsuki's angry footsteps.

He stood next to me, shouting, and I didn't have to look up to know that his mouth was twisted like a scowling hen's ass.

- Do you think I should get soba or udon?

I've always been partial to cold soba.

- You made me miss training with All Might to eat at some restaurant?

Katsuki's fingers bent and unfolded frantically as if he was going to strangle me at any moment.

- Tsukemen doesn't look bad either, I said.

Katsuki opened his mouth and I closed the menu.

- Two katsudon, two portions of yakitori, two portions of tempura and teriyaki.

- Don't pretend that you can't hear me!

- Add some takoyaki to go

The hostess made a note in her notebook, typed quickly on the calculator, and asked me for the appropriate amount, which I paid by card.

It's the first time I've ever been asked to pay before eating.

Don't judge, Shoto: you need to be more open-minded.

I quickly scanned the room, then moved to the farthest seat, choosing the one facing the wall with its shabby wallpaper.

Katsuki, lagging behind (for a change), dragged his carcass to the corner of the sofa and eyed me suspiciously.

- What are you waiting for ? Sit down, I'm getting tired just looking at you

And his thick jacket and the scarf he wore around his neck as if he were Santa Claus made me feel hot by procuration.

Katsuki squinted, looking at me the way I'd looked at izuku after he'd suddenly discovered his immortal's Quirk.

- Hawks gave me the afternoon off, I said, knowing exactly what he was getting at.

- And ?

- I was starving.

Katsuki's eyes narrowed.

- That doesn't explain anything

- It does

It explains everything, if you leave out the fact that Hawks gave me the afternoon off on the sole condition that I spend it 'with friends' to 'clear my head' - and that one of his feathers has been stuck to my bottom all morning.

- I thought you had something to tell me, he said. About All Might and Endeavor

The reference to our conversation in my hospital room a few weeks earlier didn't get past me.

- I don't know what could have made you think that.

- I don't know, maybe your 'urgent' message, he said sarcastically.

- Yes, I needed to eat urgently

The hostess came and laid out the silverware and the first plates.

The cooks seemed to be having a blast cooking all the plates.

- Sit down and eat instead of complaining, I said. Besides, you're in the way.

And as if to support my suggestion, the hostess tapped Katsuki lightly on the shoulder as she walked by.

He gave me a sideways glance, his mouth still open.

Then, looking around the almost empty room, he slowly relaxed, crossed his arms and sat down.

- If you hadn't ordered so much food, I'd be long gone by now

The hostess came back with new plates.

- If I'd known you were going to be such a pain, I would have just taken enough for myself

He gave me a dirty look and called the waitress.

- Two large Cokes and a sushi platter, please.

Within minutes, a veritable buffet was laid out on our table.

Katsuki pulled out a bowl of rice and began to eat, dipping in and out of other dishes.

He pointed at me with his chopsticks, head down in his food.

- Stop being a wimp and eat

I felt the corner of my mouth turn up in spite of myself: I lowered my mask and started eating, glancing sideways at Katsuki, who didn't raise his head.

- Just because I'm not looking at you doesn't mean I don't know when you're looking at me, he growled.

- It's very honorable of you to protect my youthful honor.

He snorted and laughed dryly at the same time.

- I swear I'll never look at you again if you pay me lunch like this every day of my life

- Don't count on it

One of the clear soups at a nearby table caught my eye, and I asked the waitress to bring me some, my face hidden under a genjutsu.

I took a few sips, surprised by the spicy taste, then drank it all in one gulp, letting out an "ah" of satisfaction when I'd finished and slammed the bowl dry against the table.

- So, is it true ?

- About what ?, he asked casually

- That All Might's suit is tighter than a thong ?

Katsuki, his fork filled with fried chicken and vegetables a hair's breadth from his parted lips, closed his mouth and put it down.

- Stop it, I'm getting visions of horror

- I see him a lot these days in his red suit. It's a good thing he wears a cape, because it's winter, otherwise...

A shudder of disgust crossed his shoulders.

- Did you invite me here to eat or to make me throw up ?

I smiled.

- Weren't you the number 1 fan of All Might? You should be used to it by now.

- The Heroes' nut is Inaza, not I

A vague memory of the beginning of summer camp came back to me.

- Do you remember the case of his cell phone ?

Katsuki smiled ambiguously and started to eat again.

- How can I ever forget something like that ?

The nonsensical excuses he'd tried to make right after that had only cemented his craziness in everyone's eyes.

- In fact, I see him everywhere these days: he spends all his time training on my grounds.

- 'Your' grounds?

Katsuki shrugged.

- I'm the only one who's used them for training so far

Katsuki picked at the strips of raw salmon and devoured them one by one.

- By the way, have you heard about the new guy who's going to join the class ?

- Who is he?

- A guy from another school. Since there are less of us because of... you know (Katsuki glanced to the side), well, the teachers decided to swell the ranks a bit. At least that's what Aizawa said.

- In the Elite class?

- No, just the normal one. The others weren't too happy about it. They think we're trying to replace those who left.

Which is true.

- Which is true in itself, I said

- Yeah, but I don't know, I think it's still really early. I mean, it's only been a few weeks since Kaminari... left, and we're already trying to fill his shoes. Not to mention Iida and Hagakure who are still in the hospital...

Katsuki began to play with the rice at the bottom of his bowl.

He spoke in a low voice, much calmer than usual.

- Hey, about that traitor thing...

I leaned forward, suddenly very interested.

- Do you have any idea who it might be ?

Should I tell him ?

But Uraraka was the only thing that kept me on the All for One path: if I told Katsuki, it would come back to Nezu sooner or later.

And if they found out that I had known all along but hadn't said anything, what would happen?

No, no, you're thinking too far ahead, Shoto: we don't care about the others or what they think - what matters is that we find All for One and kill him to put an end to all this shit once and for all.

I looked up at Katsuki.

He was frozen, head down, shoulders hunched, fork motionless, ears alert.

I felt torn between putting my own interests first and helping the one who had defended me against the others in class when he had nothing to gain.

- I think it might be Uraraka

*

Author's note :

Only for webnovels readers : someone suggested to me that I should unpublish the story on webnovel and reupload chapters 3 times a day to create more traction on the website.

I think I want to do it, but I don't want to do it if it delete all of the comments I already have.

Also I heard the story's cover look a bit chuuni, dark sasuke and stuff like that - guess I am not the incredible designer I thought I was lmao.

Anyway, if you have suggestions or anything I would gladly take it.

If you want to read the story ahead of schedule, then go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you in the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

A warning costs nothing.

Katsuki suddenly raised her head and immediately lowered it to avoid breaking my 'vow of chastity'.

- Ochaco? No, she's the one who saved me at the camp. Without her, I wouldn't have made it to school before it was too late. She had no reason to help me if it was her.

I shifted in my seat, trying to figure out the best way to convince him without arousing his suspicions that I really knew what I was talking about.

- I don't know, I replied. But there is something about her that I don't like.

Katsuki smiled.

- Since when are you the kind of guy to have hunches?

He started to eat again, more relaxed.

I don't like that.

- It's not a hunch, it's just...

...that I fucking know.

-.... that her behavior is strange. She's the one who found Kaminari dea... out of it in his hospital room, right?

On the morning of the break-in at Yuei and the theft of the Aizawa card, Uraraka was the only one to leave class.

- Monoma was also there to see him, Katsuki countered. It's not secret information, everyone knows about it.

- Remember in the desert ? She screamed three times because of a bug

A bug I remembered perfectly well calling invisible - shit, how could she get me like that ?

- And then Kaminari blew up every camera and microphone in the oasis. Odd coincidence.

- What, you think she and Kaminari were in cahoots and she got rid of him?

I opened my mouth and closed it again, all my attention focused on Katsuki.

I was surprised to see that Katsuki rejected each of my suggestions without giving them a second thought.

He had no problem believing my flimsy theory about a potential spy in the oasis even before Aizawa confirmed anything...

- ... I've been seeing you with Uraraka a lot lately

- Yeah, so ?

The defensive tone gave me a bad feeling.

- I was just making an observation

He rolled his eyes.

- Don't think I'm biased or anything, but your arguments are completely wrong. Because she went to see Kaminari in his room - as did 90% of the class - that makes her a traitor ? I also don't see anything wrong with yelling at a mosquito, whether it's 3 times or 5 times (he smiled). You'd probably yell just as much if someone threw a dirty towel at you.

He's right.

- Okay, I said, shaking my hand. Forget about it.

- What would be her motives ?, Katsuki insisted?

Money.

I blinked for a second, feverish, hands shaking, puzzle pieces rattling together.

Holy shit, it's fucking money !

- See ? It doesn't make any sense. If you'd said Kaminari alone, it would have made more sense...

I frantically smoothed the folds of my pants, forcing myself to keep the excitement out of my voice.

- You're right, I said. It's just that I find it strange that despite the whole camp fiasco, the principal hasn't managed to catch anyone. It makes me a little paranoid.

- Yeah, totally get ut. I never imagined that high school would be like... this

And he waved his hand vaguely to encompass whatever 'this' was supposed to be.

- Life is hard

I nodded, surprisingly sincerely.

- And we're only sixteen, he added.

- Tell me about it

In my previous life I died when I was barely twenty, not even old enough to know what 'living' meant. That life was so strange that even though I was mentally over thirty, I didn't even feel eighteen.

I figured that was why all those old people liked to say that age was just a number and that they felt as young as ever inside.

I started to eat again, whereas Katsuki continued to shovel everything like a black hole.

The comfortable silence, the sound of conversations, the clatter of cutlery against plates and the smell of freshly cooked spicy noodles blended into a strangely soothing whole.

When the dishes were nearly empty, I sat back and pulled my mask over my nose.

- Hey, say...

Katsuki looked up at me.

- Yeah?

His red eyes swept me from side to side, attentive.

I hesitated for a second.

I took the easy way out:

- Your parents don't feed you ?

- Haha, very funny

He reached into the unopened bag of Takoyaki at the end of the table.

I pulled out the kraft paper bag.

- Don't touch

- I only want one, he said, leaning forward.

I pulled the bag back.

- Finish your plate.

He rolled his eyes.

- You sound like the old hag

The hostess came back with a new bill.

I slid it over to Katsuki.

He frowned.

- You're the one who invites, you're the one who pays

- You're the one who ordered the extras when I had already paid.

- I don't have any money with me

I blinked, suddenly remembering an expression I'd heard repeated several times by the students in the class.

- You're a rat

I slammed the bank card down on the bill.

Katsuki smiled triumphantly, took a sip of his coke, looked distractedly at the card and then coughed violently, almost choking on his own stupidity.

- Eat slowly, idiot.

The last thing he needs is to die because he's too happy to get a free meal.

Since I had paid for his meal, would I be responsible for manslaughter ?

I almost smiled at the thought of my one way ticket to Tartarus because no one had ever taught Katchan how to chew.

That would be really anticlimactic.

- You have a fucking black card ?

- Hmm ? Yeah I do. What's the point ?

Katsuki, his eyes shining, quickly tucked in his coat, threw his scarf over his shoulder, walked past the hostess who lifted the payment terminal, swiped the contactless card and left without looking back.

What's wrong with him ?

I followed him at a brisk pace, holding the bag of takoyaki in one hand and turning the collar of my jacket around with the other.

The bell rang behind me and I caught up with Katsuki on the street.

He didn't even look up at me, holding the card in both hands as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

- What's the limit on it ?

- I'm not sure. A lot. Care to share why you ran away like that ?

- Man, you know what you can do with that?

- Buy stuff ?

Katsuki stopped and I pivoted slightly to avoid bumping into him.

He shook his head.

- Buy stuff ? You don't buy things with that kind of money, you live experiences

I was skeptical.

- What kind of experience do you have in mind?

- You told me you had a fight with your old man, didn't you? And he's the one who gave you this card?

I nodded.

Katsuki held up three fingers.

- First experiment: find the limit of this card. Second experiment : Blow the limit of this card.

Katsuki smiled and showed his sharp teeth.

- Third experiment : avoid being killed by your old man

I smiled, feeling my blood boiling with excitement.

- Where shall we start ?

*

Bonus 1 :

Standing on the roof of one of the city's tallest skyscrapers, Katsuki and I watched the city below, the pedestrians wrapped in layers of clothing to withstand the bitter cold.

I exhaled a cloud of steam and turned to Katsuki, who, like me, was at the height of excitement.

- If we provoke an accident, I'll say it was you who got me into this

Katsuki pointed at the pile of luxury bags, jewelry boxes, ribboned new consoles, laptops, high-end phones, board games, and a whole lot of other useless stuff we'd bought.

- We paid for all this stuff with your card. If we get caught, I'll just say you forced my hand.

I picked up a dozen bags and Katsuki imitated me.

- Hey !

I turned to him.

- We're not going to cause an accident by throwing a PS5 at a driver's windshield, are we ?

- Let's throw the soft stuff and drop the big stuff on different street corners.

Katsuki nodded and tucked the straps of the bags into his mouth.

- Ready to go?

He nodded and with a geyser of flames we took off into the sky, raining Valentino and Prada on Mustafu.

Bonus 2 :

- It's Christmas before time in Mustafu, as an anonymous Santa Claus seems to have decided to spoil the town's inhabitants. We're not talking about sweets or board games, but gifts such as luxury watches, designer clothes and real top-of-the-line cars, which the lucky ones have been able to collect from garages.

The anchor's eyes lit up when he mentioned the expensive cars.

- Mr Shingeki here was one of the lucky ones to receive a gift that literally fell from the sky. Mr. Shingeki, can you tell us what happened?

The presenter turned to an old man in a beret and pointed the foam microphone at his mouth.

- Yes, so I was walking home when suddenly a bag fell in front of me, right at my feet.

He picked up the bag and showed the contents to the camera.

Inside was a black crocodile skin bag, a watch with shiny stones in a silk pouch, and a wad of cash.

- I'm told, said the anchorman, that the bag in question appears to be one of the famous Birkin 25s, which don't sell for less than a million and a half yen

Suddenly, a PS5 fell from the sky directly on the old man's head, splattering him like a starfish on a public highway.

The camera zoomed in on the upside-down luxury bag, and then on the old man, his mouth agape, stunned.

- Mr. Shingeki ? Mr. Shingeki !

Bonus 3:

Enji, on the phone with his banker, blinked stupidly.

- He spent how much ?

*

Author's note :

The cover you now see is the last one I will ever make.

This is the limit of my capabilities, I can't do better nor more coherent with the story than that (I am also not the genius graphic designer I thought I was, sadly).

Concerning webnovel readers : starting from this week-end and from monday onwards, I will unpublish all of the chapters of this story on webnovel to publish them in bulk and get way more attraction (yeah yeah, I don't know why I wrote 'traction' last chapter).

You'll still be able to get the new updates but for that you'll have to check one of the following websites : scribblehub, royal road, ao3, fanfiction.net, spacebattle or sufficient velocity. I believe you're present on at least one of these websites and if not, nice opportunity for you to discover new stories.

Anyway, if you want to read ahead of schedule (and see what Shoto's 'last' bad deed is) then go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

Otherwise see you in the next update everyone !

 

[Eggmaster]

I like the old old covet image but this new one is absolutely better in my opinion.

 

[Nar_cisse]

Tartarus: the underworld, the kingdom of darkness in ancient Greek mythology.

It was from the titans trapped within it that the inspiration for the creation of Tartarus, the prison island that was the glory of Japanese justice, had come.

If those who had once been above the gods couldn't escape it, how could ordinary men - albeit endowed with extraordinary powers - dream of getting out?

The island, lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, was only a few kilometers in circumference.
Black, menacing rocks closed around the island like the sharp teeth of a monstrous mouth.
No sea creature dared to approach, preferring to keep their distance from the anomaly that was this outcrop in the middle of the waves.

The sea around Tartarus was always choppy, the sky always the same deep gray, heralding the imminent onset of a storm.

Nezu watched the sky above the island swell and darken, as if it were waking from a long sleep to swallow them all.

Tartarus had many names: military prison, concentration camp, Japanese Camp 22...

But Tartarus wasn't really a prison.

Or at least not a prison in the traditional sense.

On the surface, a twenty-story building of pure armored steel served as a decoy.

The real prison was below, submerged beneath the ocean, more durable and resistant than any of the purest metals.
There were no windows and no means of access from below.

A single entrance also served as the only exit: it was the armored door that separated the steel prison from the organic underground.

Tartarus was more than a prison: it was also the executioner.

The speedboat made a quarter turn and docked between two large rocks.

One of the soldiers turned off the engine, and Nezu immediately wanted to go ashore.

But one of the soldiers forced him to sit down again.

A team of hooded men - only their eyes were visible - in fatigues, armed to the teeth, came towards them.

The soldier who had led their boat from the ship stayed on board with Nezu, while the second soldier stood up and pulled out a stack of accreditation cards.

He chatted in a low voice with the island soldier, who nodded; the cold, salty wind picked up, drowning out the murmur of their conversation.

Nezu stood still, paws together, smiling and letting the good soldiers take care of the umpteenth checkpoint of his journey.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the rest of the welcoming squad looking at him sideways, their hands on the machine-guns strapped to their shoulders.

All he could see were their narrowed, suspicious, almost paranoid eyes.

Nezu continued to smile, but didn't risk rocking back and forth.

With a gesture, he was invited to step out of the boat.

His shoes landed on the shore with a splash, and the mud on the pebbles nearly made him fall over.

No one stepped forward to help him.

Nezu took only two steps forward, then stopped when he saw the raised hand of one of the soldiers.

He let himself be searched by two different people in a row, and saw the eyes of one of them suddenly fluoresce as he felt his fur.

Then the men stepped aside and nodded to his guide.

The rest of the group - six men - formed an honor guard that resembled a firing squad about to do its duty.

The floor of black pebbles gave way to a large, smooth, cemented runway that served as a helipad.

All around them, the waves raged against the rocks, smashing them violently as if trying to break them.
The wind whistled, pushing the newcomers away as if to chase them off the island.

Above the noise, Nezu could still hear the faint murmur of the boat that had brought them back to the ship a few kilometers away.

It was protocol: no flying or aquatic object or person was allowed within five kilometers of Tartarus without permission from the island.
Breaking this rule was tantamount to being shot down, regardless of the individual or the reason for such an approach.

They reached the first door of the steel building.

A series of clicks sounded and suddenly, the door creaked open from the inside.

Nezu saw two of the three soldiers inside finish opening it, while the third held Nezu and his guide at gunpoint.

They were stopped by a new team - only three men - who searched him again.
The hands of one of them glowed piss yellow, and Nezu was intrigued, though he refrained from asking any questions.

His guide again presented the commission's access pass.

They stepped aside to let them pass.

- Thank you, Nezu said.

The soldiers looked down at him, but didn't answer.

Security and professionalism in Tartarus were so perfect that it was almost frightening.

Nezu followed his guide as he led the way and saw a soldier break away from the trio to follow them.

He was so close to Nezu that had he been taller, Nezu was sure he could have felt his breath on his neck.





With a single gesture, the guide and the second soldier clicked on their large, opaque goggles that resembled ski goggles.

The guide led him down a different path than the last two times Nezu had been here.

He might have known that the door to the real prison was on the first floor, but it would have been impossible to find it by chance.

The corridors were gray, smooth, perfectly intact and clean, so much so that you couldn't tell one branch from another.
Thanks to a strange architectural trick, each corridor was just as long as the one before, and there were no right angles: everything was twisted and turned in a way that made you want to throw up.

Nezu had to close his eyes several times as he walked to regain his composure and continue to mentally map the place.

He counted the steps and focused all his attention on the shoes in front of him, memorizing and filing away in a corner of his memory every slight movement to the right or left of the soldier in front of him that indicated they were turning right or left.

He couldn't rely on his own footsteps or movements to the right or left as his weakened legs kept shaking and lurching illogically to one side or the other, his vision blurred against the unnatural infinity of gray.

A sudden urge to vomit rose to his lips, and Nezu admired - not for the first time - who had built the structure.

He himself had suggested a few years ago that the prison's labyrinth system be updated to make it more 'efficient'.

The Commission had had the good sense to reject his 'help' before he could even finish his sentence.

This had been Nezu's only opportunity to study the scientific mystery that was Tartarus, and it had been snatched away from him in the blink of an eye.

The humans may have been less intelligent, but there was indeed wisdom in those fragile skulls...

They walked for so long that Nezu almost lost his way more than once.

Then his guide stopped, and Nezu, a little late, followed suit.

The second soldier behind him pointed his weapon at him, as was protocol, while the first soldier slid the shoulder strap of his weapon behind his back, then leaned over the huge concrete slab nailed to the ground.

No retinal scanner or complex code to enter: a heavy, rusty black handle set into the gray slab was the only way to open the door.

Tartarus didn't need to be protected: rather, it was from her that the Japanese government sought to defend itself.

The soldier grasped the handle with both hands and pulled with audible effort.

Nezu stayed at a safe distance, admiring what a force of nature this man was, able to practically lift a door weighing over a hundred kilos with the strength of his arms.

The hinges creaked and the door - like a trapdoor to the cellar - opened like a gaping maw to the real Tartarus.

A wind of decay and suffering blew from the monster's guts,

Pink protrusions as thin as fingers covered the metal door.

The first soldier took the stairs and Nezu followed.

He was careful not to step on any of the pink veins that seemed to beat like human hearts.

Nezu remembered a quote that was supposed to be engraved on the gate to the underworld: "Abandon all hope, you who enter here".

The second soldier did not follow: Nezu glanced over his shoulder and saw him kneeling, Swiss knife in hand, cutting away the veins that had covered the trapdoor.

Nezu's soles squeaked as they hit the floor.

Absolutely everything in the basement was covered in the pinkish mucus: from the floor to the walls to the ceiling, the whole of Tartarus gave the impression of walking in the bowels of a titanic beast.

The soldier activated a one-hour stopwatch on his watch and set off. Nezu followed quickly.

His shoes whistled, the spongy floor sinking slightly under his footsteps before rising again as the pressure disappeared, like a sponge being squeezed and then released.

On the walls, pale pink brambles moved with the slowness of a snail, so gently you'd think you'd hallucinated. Short vines tumbled down from the plateau like filaments, brushing the shoulders of anyone who ventured inside.

As always, Nezu felt uneasy in the prison corridors.

He felt as if the prison floor was beating beneath his feet, as if it had a heart. The shifting walls gave him the vivid feeling of knowingly walking into a rat trap.

He tilted his head slightly to the side and watched the watch on the soldier's wrist.

54 minutes.

If the building on the surface was a decoy, so was the second floor of the underground.

There had never been any prisoners on this level: the goal was to waste as much time as possible on anyone who, by some miracle, managed to get in.

Then they would be locked in and waited for an hour.

After that, the prison would begin to devour them.

Nezu didn't know exactly how Tartarus consumed its inhabitants.

But he knew that madness lay in wait for them all.





They walked to the other end of the floor and then down the spiral staircase.

The mucus barely covered the ends of the stairs, as if metal wasn't Tartarus's favorite food and she wasn't interested in it.

The first cells were at level -2.

Armored glass doors opened into small white rooms, every fourth wall covered in metal, the rest nothing but mucus.

At each end of the steel wall was a camera. In the middle was a bulletproof glass window overlooking a room presumably used for interrogation.

In the very first cell, a violet-haired woman lay on the floor with her back to the mucous membrane, large pink veins winding around her neck, arms, and throat.

From the widest veins, tiny pink branches separated like twigs from a tree, covering her skin like blood vessels.

Her skin was translucent, revealing the pink threads running through her flesh.

The former hero's eyes were glassy, her chin resting on her chest, a trickle of saliva dripping from the corner of her mouth.

Her chin quivered as she seemed to pick up the sound of their footsteps, but she didn't look up.

They walked on in oppressive silence, deeper into the interior of Tartarus.

Everywhere, the same desolate scene repeated itself.

Nezu wondered what would happen to the world if they stopped feeding Tartarus and removed the metal walls.

Would they face an apocalypse caused by an organism created thanks to the arrival of the Quirks ?

They went down to level -4.

Then they stopped in front of the door that Nezu had come to see.

Tomura Shigaraki was written on it.

 

[Nar_cisse]

Shigaraki sat against a pink membrane wall, arms outstretched on his thighs, palms limply turned towards the ceiling.

Veins ran from the walls and wrapped around his neck and forearms, fine threads breaking off and burying themselves in his flesh.

Nezu knew from the last director of the Commission that it wasn't painful: on the other hand, he also knew that no one really knew what it was.

Tartarus was one of the many anomalies that had appeared at the same time as Quirks : it was an organic, living mass that fed on and devoured any living being that remained within its reach long enough.

It would plunge its captives into a state of dreamlike euphoria, gnawing away at them until they were as meek as lambs.

They would die after a few months, consumed by ecstasy, but not before the Commission had extracted as much knowledge as they could out of them.

- Hello Shigaraki

The young man did not move.

- I'd like to ask you a few questions about All for One.

He tilted his head to one side, his eyes wide open. His mouth, pasty, had all the difficulty in the world to function.

- Sensei... Sensei...

Shigaraki continued to look left and right as if the man would appear out of nowhere.

- You said you'd come for me...

Shigaraki burst into tears.

Nezu watched him, unperturbed, sensing an opportunity.

- He has abandoned you, he said. He is the reason why you are here.

Shigaraki shook his head with less conviction, his chin rubbing against his chest as he moved.

- No, no... I'm here because one of my own betrayed me...

His tongue slipped from his mouth, grazing the hollow of his chin, his head following the gesture as if weighting heavily.

- It was your body he desired before, wasn't it ? It was you that All for One wanted to inhabit

Shigaraki rolled his shoulders and managed to sit up, pushing his tongue back into his mouth with a tired hand.

- I recognise you, he murmured. I know your voice. You're the failed lab experiment, aren't you ? The thing that acts like a human...

- Where's hiding All for One ?

Shigaraki didn't answer, chin up, head against the wall, mouth slightly open.

His glassy, haggard eyes could see nothing, as if he were already dead.

- You gave it to him, didn't you ? The video of the boy

Nezu stood as still as a statue.

He felt the camera pointed at him with the same intensity as if a whole crowd of people were watching him.

- What video ?

A silent laugh shook Shigaraki, his shoulders jerking against the pink membrane wall.

- Sensei was right. It's a good thing you're just a rat without a Quirk, because otherwise you'd be the most dangerous of them all

- What video are you talking about ? Nezu insisted. Which boy are you referring to?

Shigaraki stopped laughing but continued to smile, his cheek resting on his shoulder.

- I thought he was going to kill me in the police station. He grabbed me by the throat and held me like this

Shigaraki raised a limp arm and pretended to strangle someone with one hand. Then he let his arm fall dry against his thigh.

- He didn't hesitate, you understand ? I know he also didn't hesitate when he killed Twice and all the others.

Nezu opted for silence, hoping that Shigaraki would continue to talk and let him learn things he didn't already know.

- Do you think he'll hesitate when he'll learns that everyone knows about his Quirks because of you?

Nezu had never been more aware of the presence of cameras than at this moment.

- Shoto? Are you talking about Shoto Todoroki?

- Sensei said he was a threat because he was strong but had no purpose

A trickle of saliva ran from Shigaraki's lip to his chin.

He continued to speak, eyelids down, eyes staring into the void, spraying his shirt.

- He said that his weakness was his father, but that we shouldn't pick on him until we knew for sure what his abilities were

Nezu had easily deduced that, but he was surprised by All for One's interest in the question.

- Why is… Sensei so interested in Shoto?

- Sensei... it's something the doctor said

Nezu tilted.

- All Quirks come from somewhere, you understand ? He said you could make a genealogy of Quirks starting from the children all the way back to the parents to the grandparents. He did the same for the boy.

Nezu felt a mixture of excitement and worry that made him nervous.

- Are All for One and Shoto Todoroki related ?

The scientific implications of such a breakthrough...

- I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not.

- What was the doctor trying to do?

- He said... he repeated that if the All for the One took, the One for All gave and the boy created, then by combining the three, we could reach the Origin of Quirks.

Nezu froze in astonishment.

The Origin of Quirks was a purely speculative scientific theory based on the history of the appearance of Quirks : it was assumed that the time between the very first Quirk and the possession of such a power by over 90% of the population was far too short to be the result of the evolution of a single mutated individual.


The Origin of Quirks was based on the premise that there was a primordial individual, an Original Adam, who would have carried all the Quirks and all their possible variants, and that from his blood the powers would have been divided and distributed among his descendants.

Genetically speaking, all individuals endowed with Quirks carried the gene for the Origin of Alters: on the other hand, only a combination of very specific alleles was activated in each, which explains why an individual had only one Quirk or - in very rare cases - at most two.

If the origin of Quirks really exists, it means that any Quirk can be created synthetically...

Nezu, feverishly drunk on the revelation, felt his blood heated by pure adrenalin rush to his head.

He held on to the thick glass that separated him from Shigaraki, blinking rapidly to dispel the dizziness that had taken hold of him.

Synthetically create Quirks and grant them to whomever you want...

Head bowed, a wide smile revealed his small rodent teeth, giving him the frightening air of someone about to commit a crime.

He didn't care if the Commission knew what he had just learned since they didn't even know what One for All was.

But Nezu didn't want to give them any more food for thought than they already had: he pretended to rub his face with a paw and stood up with his mouth open in astonishment, looking as if he had just learned that he was going to die.

- But that's impossible, he muttered. The Origin of Quirks can't even be scientifically proven

Or at least undemonstrable given the ridiculous level of current superhuman DNA sequencing.

Shigaraki smiled almost lazily.

Nezu's heart began to pound furiously against his chest.

- Does All for One have the means to create it ? Can he reproduce the Origin of Quirks ?

If All for One has such a weapon between his hands...

Shigaraki's head rolled from one shoulder to the other, as if to say 'no'.

- If he could do that, you'd all be dead by now.

Nezu felt his heart slowing.

- But that doesn't mean he won't try.

*
Ochaco, towel in hand, absentmindedly dried her hair.

She leaned against the corner of her desk, her eyes glued to a mathematical formula she'd been trying to memorise for far too long.

She reached for the apple on her desk and bit into it, the sweet juice running down her chin.
She wiped her lip with the back of her hand, her eyes never leaving the paper as she nodded at each new line of the demonstration she read, trying to take it all in.

She ate the apple in silence, the sound of the clock clicking steadily in the background, and-

Wait a minute. Since when did Ochaco have a clock in her room?

Surprised, the girl looked up at the wall on the other side of her bed.

There was no clock.

But the seconds were ticking away on the blank wall.

Ochaco put her apple on her maths sheet and carefully crossed the distance to the wall.

The ticking increased. The clock seemed to be inside the wall.

Ochaco raised her hand hesitantly.

She brushed her fingertip against the wall and felt it vibrate like a beating heart.

Suddenly there was a howl from the bowels of the building and the wall shuddered under the fists of someone trying to escape.

Ochaco stumbled backwards and fell, her chest rising and falling rapidly, recoiling onto her buttocks, her eyes riveted to the wall, which vibrated like the shimmering surface of water.

With each new blow, the wall lost its consistency, becoming as thick as milk and as supple as elastic.

Ochaco saw a fist strike the wall, the imprint of his fingers in the thick liquid. With each new blow, the whitish fabric expanded like the roof of a tent, the thing trapped within the wall pushing against it again and again until a whitish pyramid was formed.

Pale and wobbly, Ochaco crawled backwards.

She raised her hand to the thing coming out of the wall, ready to use her Quirk, but nothing happened.

Terrified, unable to understand what was happening, Ochaco's back hit the foot of her bed.

The thing continued to press against the wall, its body glued to the white canvas that covered it like a second skin.

An ovoid skull continued to push against the wall, then a wide open mouth - as if screaming - appeared, and suddenly long hands with unnaturally slender fingers at the end of arms, bent like the mandibles of an insect, pushed the wall back violently.

The thick veil moved abruptly forward, and suddenly the creature disappeared behind it.

Throat dry, hands clammy, Ochaco lay trembling against her bed, knees bent.

The wall, smooth and thick, had advanced a good half meter, stopping at the end of the rainbow carpet, barely big enough to encompass both feet of her bed.

Ochaco waited, heart pounding.

The wall remained motionless, smooth as stone.

Ochaco raised her hand again, Quirk activated.

The wall didn't move.

She faltered, then finally touched it.

The wall vibrated at her touch, like the shimmering surface of a pool when a stone is dropped into its midst.

Ochaco stood still.

The wall did not move.

The thing screeched and threw itself against the wall.

The wall buckled and the hooked fingers pounced on Ochaco, mouthfuls of fangs tearing through the canvas.

Ochaco screamed and fell onto her back, her arms clutching her face as bits of canvas and saliva splattered onto her face.

The fangs were a hair's breadth from her throat.

Suddenly Ochaco fell.

The thing let out a howl of rage, then tried to grab her with its clawed paw.

But Ochaco continued to fall into a black hole, the window of the howling monster fading like the headlights of a car in the night.

She fell violently onto her back.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Jolts of electricity shot between her vertebrae, making it painful to breath.

Ochaco rolled onto her side and propped herself up on one hand, breathing through her nose until the pain subsided.

The floor under her fingers was black and cold.

She cleared her throat, felt her breathing return to more or less normal, then massaged her neck with one hand as she looked around.

There was no horizon, no sky : everything was black and still.

Ochaco looked up at the window of light, hundreds of metres into the sky.

The thing was gone.

Ochaco staggered to her feet.

The sound of her footsteps echoed in the void.

Suddenly, Ochaco felt her stomach growl.

Then something rose to her mouth.

She put her hand to her throat and suddenly her gullet tightened violently.

Ochaco bent over and vomited all over her feet.

Maggots spewed from her mouth and fell in layers on her shoes.

They swarmed, alive, wriggled against her and began to crawl up her legs.

Ochaco screamed and began to push them away with loud slaps on her shins.

She jumped to escape, but another convulsion split her in two.

She regurgitated a mountain of bloody maggots.

The two groups merged into one, crawling along the floor, up her shoes and arms.

Ochaco tried to activate her Quirk again.

The maggots stirred and swarmed, damp against her skin.

Ochaco screamed.

Then she blinked, and suddenly she was back in the middle of her room, standing at the foot of her bed.

Facing the wall where the heartbeat had come from was Shoto Todoroki.

*

Author's note :

Wanted to portray what it would feel like to be caught in a Genjutsu without knowing.

Pretty sure you'd feel as if you were in a nightmare, hence the title.

Tell me what you thought of the chapter in the comments, if there are things that were not clear enough/could be improved

If you want to support the story/read up to 27 chapters ahead of schedule, then go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you in the next update everyone !

 

[Eggmaster]

Genjutsus are scary man. They represent why mind controlling powers are one of the scariest things out there.

 

[Nar_cisse]

Hands clasped behind his back, head raised towards the white wall, the teenager stood motionless.

In front of him, the wall suddenly appeared gigantic, distorted, as big as an iceberg and as menacing as the gate to hell.

Shoto turned towards her calmly, as if everything was normal.

- Ah, Uraraka. Please sit down.

She followed his outstretched hand and saw, a hair's breadth from her knees, a metal chair she'd never seen before in her life.

She didn't sit down.

Shoto smiled - his eyes turned into crescent moons - grimly, and suddenly Ochaco was sitting in the chair.

- Did you like my little game?

Ochaco wanted to bite her nails, but forced herself to remain calm and spread her fingers across her lap.

- What have you done to me?

- A better question would be, 'What are you going to do to me?'

He eyed her, his eyes gleaming with malice.

- What do you want? she growled, feeling the tension begin to leave her body, though the nervousness remained.

She was neither mad nor in the grip of a dangerous psychopath with a Quirk capable of altering reality: even if she was wary of Todoroki, the familiarity of his personality calmed her somewhat.

- Ah, you've obviously misunderstood the situation

Suddenly, Shoto's eyes turned red and Ochaco screamed, struggling against the leather straps holding her to the wooden chair.

She felt as if liquid fire was being poured into her ears, seeping like poison into her veins, melting her body from the inside out.

She writhed against her bonds, scraping the armrests of her chair until she was bleeding, splinters digging into her bloody fingers, screaming against a gag that was pressing down on her throat and choking her.

Her skin heated and, lacking air, Ochaco pressed the flat of her feet against the floor, trying to break the straps with the pressure.

Lava poison runned inside her torso, her elbows, rolled down her forearms, descended into her pelvis, seeped into her thighs...

Ochaco blinked and was back in her room, her damp hair clinging to her neck.

- Even if your mind knows it's an illusion, all I have to do is convince your body that you're dead and it will stop working

A flash of red crossed his heterochromatic eyes.

- But perhaps you'd like a demonstration?

Ochaco felt panic tighten her throat.

- No, no, no ! I'm sorry, I'm sorry !

Shoto eyed her with unhealthy attention, as if he really intended to carry out his threat.

Ochaco felt something stirring and swarming in her stomach, and suddenly she was sure it was the maggots, and they were going to rip her belly open to get out.

- Please

Then Shoto smiled - his eyes crinkled - and the rumbling in her stomach subsided.

Ochaco's desk appeared behind him and he leaned against it, his arms crossed over his chest.

- I saw what you did with Denki, he said. Clever, since no one else should know about the cards.

Ochaco felt her blood run cold.

- I don't-

He raised his hand and Ochaco fell silent.

- No lies if you don't want me to get really angry

The teenager's mouth closed.

- I've been thinking a lot about you, you know. I could kill you after staging your runaway. I'd make you write a letter confessing to Ashido and Kaminari's murders and you'd just disappear.

He snapped his fingers.

Ochaco, dripping with sweat, jerked at the straps that dug painfully into her skin.
Her dry, rough tongue, rubbed against her teeth.

Shoto watched her squirm like a fish out of water with relish and turned up the heat.

- But I talked to Katchan recently and he gave me an excellent idea...

The gleam in her eyes at the mention of the teenager displeased Shoto greatly.

- What are you smiling at, you imbecile ?

The maggots began to swarm violently in her stomach again: looking down, Ochaco could see them pushing against the barrier of her stomach, buzzing against her skin like bees in a hive.

- I'm sorry, she said hastily. I'm sorry !

The maggots subsided.

Worried, she asked quietly:

- What did you discuss?

- I've been thinking about your behaviour during the championship. Do you remember the way you waited for me in the locker room after I announced that I'd offer a million to the winner ?

He smiled (his eyes turned into crescent moons).

- Katchan made me wonder what could have made you switch to All for One's side. That's right: what could have brought you to work for him?

He held up two fingers.

- He couldn't have threatened you and your family : you cut all ties with them almost a year ago.

The hairs on the back of Ochaco's neck stood up.

How did he know ?

- He must have offered you something you desperately wanted, something you'd be willing to die for. It could be many things. But I think I know you well enough to know that you're only interested in money.

Shoto suddenly clapped his hands together.

Ochaco jumped, startled.

- That's good : I've got plenty of money !

Ochaco, uncomfortable, deflected the question.

- What do you want ?


- The exact location of All for One

Ochaco swallowed, hesitant, but asked anyway:

- What are you going to do with it ?

Shoto's eyes narrowed and, for a moment, Ochaco thought she felt the maggots stirring again in her stomach.

- What do you think I'm gonna do with it ?

- I don't know it, the teenager murmured. He never tells us where he is : he only tells us what to do.

Shoto's gaze was icy.

- 'Us' ?

Ochaco bit the inside of her cheek.

- Be very careful what you say next

His eyes turned blood red.

She cleared her throat.

- He's... we...

She dropped her eyes, intimidated.

She'd only killed because she had no choice, because her cover was in danger of being blown.

He, on the other hand, had no reason to kill the villains in the camp - and yet he'd done it in cold blood, showing no remorse, even shamelessly blaming Aizawa-sensei for his actions.

He'll have no problem killing me.

A lump tightened her throat.

- There's another spy in the class, she muttered. It's Aoyama.

Shoto made no sound.

- Does he know where All for One is?

- No, she replied hastily. If I don't know, then it's impossible for him to know.

If I lose my usefulness, he'll kill me.

- Hmm

The toes of Shoto's shoes entered Ochaco's peripheral vision.

- I'll give you two options: either I kill you here and now with, let's say, a nice little cardiac arrest...

Ochaco stiffened, her eyes riveted to the ground.

Beads of sweat rolled down her neck.

- Look me in the eyes when I speak to you

She obeyed.

Her cheeks were flushed, her hair a mess, her eyes filled with tears she refused to shed.

Shoto sniffed, scornful, not the least bit impressed.

He tapped her head with his fingertip.

- But I'll put you through a thousand years of suffering in there before I end your torment, so that you'll beg me for mercy and death

His eyes crinkled into a crescent.

- Or maybe the second All for One comes out of his hole, you let me know. In that case, I won't kill you and I'll even give you some money to get the hell out of here.

Something must have changed in Ochaco's expression because Shoto spat in disgust :

- You really like money, don't you ? A real whore

Ochaco, humiliated, swallowed all her weakness, tears and mucus.

- Why do you want to hurt me ?, she snapped. I've never done anything to you !

He could have given her money, told her he'd turn her in or kill her if she didn't do what he wanted, but to torture her - to make her suffer before killing her - was like saying he had a personal grudge against her.

The boy's expression darkened.

- You seem to think that just because a few bad weeks have passed since the camp, everyone has forgotten what happened

There was something malicious in his look.

- But I haven't forgotten that it was you who distributed the explosive cards to everyone

Ochaco's fingernails dug into the palms of her hands.

Shoto spread his hands as if to encompass the whole room, like a politician in the middle of a campaign to show his voters that the world will be within their reach if they elect him.

- The choice is yours, Ochaco. Will I keep you here a little longer, or will you choose to leave this nightmare ?

Her nails hurt so badly she thought they would bleed.

He whispered.

- Remember : there are worse things than death

Instinctively, Ochaco sank back into her seat, trying to get away from Shoto.

All for One inspired a well-founded fear in her, but also a healthy dose of respect for his almost professional pragmatism. He had clear goals and would do whatever it took to achieve them.
There was a pattern, a logic to All for One. You could criticise him all you wanted, but All for One was no fool.

Shoto, on the other hand...

Shoto frightened her because he was an unruly cold-blooded killer.

He scoffed at villains and had no intention of being a hero, yet he was born with powers beyond logic.

He had no ambitions, nothing he wanted to achieve : he moved forward blindly, acting on his whim without thinking of the consequences. He was often violent and sometimes irrational.

Ochaco had once thought of him as a villain on the rise, but perhaps it wasn't quite that.

If villains and heroes were to clash, which side would he take ?

His powers could change the course of any war.

Both sides would tear him apart until there was nothing left of him.

If I could guess it... then he must know it too, right ?

Ochaco swallowed the knot in her throat.

- As soon as I hear from All for One, I'll let you know

Shoto smiled and leaned forward.

- Good girl

Then he grabbed her hair with one hand and lifted her head violently.

- I guess you don't need to hear what will happen to you if you try to play it smart ?

Ochaco shook her head in horror.

Shoto studied her in silence, disgusted.

Then he unceremoniously released her, almost shoving her away.

He looked down at her with bloodshot eyes before exploding like a supernova at the end of its life, illuminating the surroundings with a blinding white light.

Ochaco covered her face with her forearm and turned her head away.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in the doorway of her room, the towel around her neck, her damp hair clinging to her face, her maths paper in one hand.

But the apple on the table was gone.

*

Author's note :

Genjutsu in full action everyone !

This was so funny to write, honestly had a blast.

Tell me what you thought in the comments, if some things could be clearer or anything else you want to talk about.

If you want to support the story (or me and my reading addiction)/read ahead of schedule up to 27 chapters, then go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you in the next update everyone !

 

[Eggmaster]

Yooo was that some ochako and bakugo insinuation there??

I loved the horror aspect of being trapped in a genjutsu and having no way to escape it.

 

[Nar_cisse]

Hawks liked me.

It was less an idle remark than a certainty.

He liked to tell me irrelevant facts about his life, to take me to many restaurants for long meals and to lecture me endlessly. When the days were 'good' ones - according to my deductions - he liked to drink, and when he drank, his tongue loosened.

Or maybe he was just a chatterbox.

A chatterbox. Surely that was a species of bird that already existed, wasn't it?

- Hey, you're not listening to me

- If you want me to listen to you stop telling me useless things

- Am I boring you ?

- Absolutely

Hawks laughed.

He raised his hand and called to the barman to bring him some more spirits with long names and more synthetic smells than the previous ones.

I pointed with my chin at the brownish liquid that rolled like a wave in his glass, smashing against the ice cubes like a raging ocean against icebergs.

- I don't know how you drink this stuff, I said, wrinkling my nose. Or how you can stand the smell of it

Even strong perfumes had a way of irritating me because of my overdeveloped sense of smell: I couldn't even imagine what something as stinky as this would do to someone with senses as acute as his.

Hawks took the glass, eyes half closed, and raised it to his face, looking at the alcohol as if it were gold.

- When you can't feel anything like I do, you need at least this much to feel alive

He drank the glass in one gulp and let out a satisfied 'ah'.

His comment piqued my interest.

I asked in a conversational tone:

- When you say you don't feel anything, do you mean...?

His mouth curved into an amused smile, but his eyes narrowed menacingly.

When he looked at me like that, his eyelids heavy, his vertically slit pupils scrutinising me intently, he made me feel more like an animal than a man.

Sometimes the way he acts is really familiar...

Hawk's smile widened as he looked around.

Then he took off his jacket and threw it on the sofa beside him.

Hawks was wearing only a black sleeveless top.

Whitish burn scars covered his arms down to his neck.

They curled around his forearms and elbows, wrapping around his skin like snakes.

He looked as if someone had thrown him down a chimney to burn like a log.

It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen.

Hawks scratched absently at his right cheek, the only part of his face the flames had managed to reach.
There was a small white triangle on his jaw, its tip pointing towards his eye.

- Ugly, isn't it ?

I looked up at Hawks.

He smiled casually.

- It's something that happened when I was a child. That day, some of the nerves connected to my brain just snapped. I was in so much pain that I had a stroke on the operating table as the doctors tried to save the charred lump of flesh that I was.

He spoke nonchalantly, as I would have done in his place.

I had the distinct impression of seeing myself in the third person as I told my psychiatrist how my brother had tried to drown me and why I was glad he was dead.

- After that, all my senses: poof!

He mimed an explosion, or maybe it was something flying away.

- I've had hypoesthesia ever since. I can't feel hot or cold or pain.

He pointed to the row of empty glasses piled up on the coffee table between us.

- Now you understand why this is my thing ?


I especially don't understand how you haven't gone mad.

Hawks raised his arm and asked for a new glass, which was brought to him along with a full bottle of Daniel's. I stared at Hawks without thinking.

I leered shamelessly at him, trying to imagine the pain of burning alive while no one helped you.


The burns are too clean, too precise to be the result of an accident...

- How did it happen?

Hawks smiled enigmatically and looked at me over the top of his glass.

- Don't pretend you haven't guessed

I didn't answer.

- Why didn't they erase them ?

The Commission's golden goose must have been worth at least that much.

Hawks picked up the glass and the bottle, looked at them both, put the glass down, pulled the pin out of the bottle and took a big gulp from the swig.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, wedged the bottle between his thighs, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one.

I turned my head towards the barman, who was cutting slices of lemon without paying any attention to us.

The lights in the bar were dimmed, the chairs almost empty, the customers glassy-eyed and rarely accompanied.

Even though we were at the far end of the bar, in the most isolated corner of the sofa, there was no reason why the barman shouldn't see us.

If Hawks is indulging in a shit show of himself in such a public place, he has to know that no one is going to bother him here...

- I know what you must be saying to yourself, said Hawks. 'What? He's their golden boy and they haven't even thought about his public image?'

He took a drag, the tip of his cigarette reddening like embers. He pushed his cigarette aside and took a sip of Daniel's with his left hand. Then he reached for the crackers with the free fingers of his right hand and took a bite.

- The thing is, I wasn't 'Hawks' back then: I was just 'Keigo', a kid with a decent Quirk who'd survived... well, who'd survived something else no one should have survived. It would have cost far too much money compared to my potential. The cost-benefit ratio wasn't really in my favour.

Hawks smoked slowly, thoughtfully.

- I couldn't even walk back then. That's how worthless I was.

- Why ?

Ash fell on his hand.

He didn't notice.

- Burnt nerves, he said. It's the sense of touch that allows you to walk and balance. If I hadn't had my wings to help me...

He opened his arms wide, smiled suddenly - as if his face had convulsed - before resuming his apathetic expression.

- But I managed to get the hang of it. They were very happy. But it was too late for the scars

Hawks shrugged indifferently, as if he didn't care.

But when he took another drink and looked up at the ceiling, the cold, restrained rage I saw in his eyes was all the answer I needed.

Hawks smoked slowly, his eyes glassy but his gaze intense.

When he finished, he looked at me again.

- And you? he said. What's your tragic story?

He had already lit another cigarette.

I looked away, watching some sickly-looking old people walk away.

- There's nothing tragic in my life.

Just a little too much drama in my personnal opinion.

Hawks pointed with his chin to my left middle finger, where a whitish, barely visible scar in the shape of a spiked crown hugged the base of my first phalanx.

- Ah, this

I raised my finger to my face, pretending to recall an old story as my brain spun at breakneck speed.

Hawks - Keigo - was confiding in me, telling me a little bit about who he was, why he was, exposing his weaknesses, knowing full well how much damage I could do to him and his career with this information.

He was trying to cut me some slack, to give me the means to counter-attack (albeit on a smaller scale) if I ever feared he'd spill the beans about what had happened in Nagano.

Suddenly I understood why he'd taken me to a bar in the middle of the day on an average Thursday.

He's trying to show you that you can trust him.

Nagano wasn't information I'd willingly shared. But the story of Keigo's burns was. He asked me to do the same, to tell him a bit about who I really was.

I hesitated.

In a way, I understood Keigo.

His way of talking, acting and observing was so familiar to me because it mirrored my own.

He hadn't been raised to be a functional adult, but a weapon: my father had tried to make a decent man out of me, but I'd never been able to shake the idea that my powers were my essence, that I was worthless without the blood I could spill.

I was pretty sure that Hawks had already killed for the Commission, and I'd spilled more than just blood for my own sake.

Keigo and I had led similar lives in some ways, and yet we were completely different.

I was... I had a lot to work on.

Keigo, on the other hand, had chosen to turn to others, to become a hero and help people. The way he lit up inside when he helped a fallen old woman to her feet, the sparkle in his eyes when he managed to persuade villains to surrender without violence...

Sometimes, when I looked at him, I felt like I was looking at my father.

- Come on, he urged. You can't expect me to believe that life was easy with a brother as crazy as yours...

A sudden smile strectched my lips.

Keigo was the man who had decided to put himself aside for the common good, but who at one o'clock in the afternoon was drinking and smoking to stave off who knows what.

He had made his public persona that of an angel, but the look on his face the first time I gazed at one of his burns was the opposite.

- I was five, I think, I said. That was about ten years ago.

Eleven years, seventy-eight days and thirteen hours.

- Touya...

I raised my hand to the light of the dim ceiling lamps.

The pale, whitish scar looked like it was made of fire in the light.

- He didn't really like me, you see. So one night he came into my room and tried to kill me.

I put my hand down and smiled.
Hawks, his cigarette floating a few millimetres from his mouth, watched me in silence.

A thin puff of smoke rose from it as it burned itself out.

- We fought. He bite me and nearly tore my finger off.

The intensity of Hawk's gaze made me uncomfortable.

I continued in a playful tone:

- My father arrived, Touya disappeared and I had eleven years of peace. I'd rather he'd gone with the whole finger if it meant a lifetime of peace and quiet.

I smiled.

Hawks didn't imitate me and slowly went back to smoking, his eyes glued to the wall behind my shoulder.

His silence made me nervous, itched my nerves to the point where I could feel the blood in my veins heating up.

- What was that ? You shouldn't have asked if you aren't satisfied with the answer

Keigo turned his gaze to me.

I saw my reflection in his unusually bright eyes : smooth face, hard eyes.

- There's no need to get upset, he said.

- I'm not upset, I replied evenly.

Hawks smiled indulgently.

- You may wear a mask, but I can see all your emotions in your eyes.

I found Hawks condescending, contemptuous, belittling.

My blood began to boil.

- Do you hate him ?

- I'd love him to die

Hawks stopped.

What are you going to do with that, Hawks?

He joked.

- That's the kind of brotherly love I like.

My fingers brushed the underside of the coffee table and a seal unfolded to silence our conversation to the outside world.

- You hate him too, don't you?

Hawks smoked quietly.

- I don't have any particular feelings about him

- How long were you in hospital, I asked. How many summers alone, wondering if you'd ever get out ? How many nights crying over your ruined life ?

Hawk's wings quivered, rising sharply before falling back, like a bird of prey about to swoop down on its target.

- What's the matter with you?

His jaws were clenched, a hard line crossing his forehead.

I inhaled sharply, the suggestion about to leave my mouth.

No, not yet.

I bit my tongue until it bled, forcing myself to remain silent.

I swallowed my misplaced anger and fever into the depths of my insides.

- Tell me you hate him.

Hawks studied me in silence, one elbow on the back of the leather sofa, smoking slowly. He refused to answer.

- Tell me you haven't forgiven him.

He stared at me, chin up, whitish smoke coming from his lips as if he were exhaling snow.

If I am the only one driven mad by his very existence, then-

- I wished he'd stayed dead.

His eyelids were low, almost closed, his lashes forming two iron curtains that framed eyes of icy brilliance.

He smiled wickedly.

- Even if he had to keep a finger with him.

The pounding in my chest subsided.

Somehow, I understood Keigo. In a way, he and I were the same.

That's why I knew that he would have done the same thing in my place.

The last remorse I'd had about carrying out my plan died down like burning logs on which a bucket of ice water is poured.

*

Author's note :

I wonder what kind of game Shoto is playing...

If you want to read up to 27 chapters ahead of schedule/support the story, then go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

And as always, see you in the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

- As the winter holidays get closer, the Japanese are used to...

The presenter paused: a technician wearing a headset with a microphone stepped into the camera's field of view. He handed her a piece of paper.

The presenter glanced quickly through the documents, then raised her sharp eyes to the camera: her face hardened, her gaze became sharper.

- We've just learned that a new Hero was found murdered in his Tokyo home last night

Ryota turned up the volume.

- Investigators immediately ruled out suicide, as the method of murder was similar to that of Heroes Yoneda Mitsuharu and Kikyo Kosami, from Maebashi and Saitama respectively.

Ryota leaned forward, his mouth half open, his leg twitching nervously from lack.

- An internal source has informed us that this is a gang dispute and that the aforementioned heroes are part of a drug importing network that was recently dismantled by agents of the Heroic Commission.

Ryota smiled.

Divert attention and seize the moment.

The Commission had just killed two birds with one stone, avoiding the social uproar that would have inevitably followed if it had become known that Tokyo's terrorist kingpin, All for One, was still alive and targeting Japanese Heroes from now on, while at the same time highlighting the Commission's excellent skills.

All for One may have been trying to destabilise the country, but it wasn't the first terrorist group Ryota had had to undermine.

It had taken nearly a decade to wipe out the Yakuza, but they'd done it: he refused to let his predecessor's clean sweep be ruined because some cockroach who refused to die wanted to kidnap a weird teenager.

Even if his Quirk was worrying, there was no need to panic : All for One wasn't the first, and certainly wouldn't be the last, to possess a power capable of threatening the integrity of a nation.

The proof : Shoto Todoroki.

Even if no one really understood what he was capable of, Ryota wasn't worried.
Hawks - not one to get ahead of himself - had repeatedly assured him in his weekly reports that he was developing a relationship of trust with the boy, and that if the need arose, he could easily convince him to join forces with them.

Yes, All for One wasn't exactly Ryota's main concern: the Peace Symbol duo wanted him dead just as much as he did, and they'd swoop in as soon as they heard he'd grazed Japanese soil.

On top of that, the Commission's agents had spent the last few weeks flushing out the All for One bases and destroying them one by one...

Perhaps he should thank Todoroki for that. Without his legendary violence, they wouldn't have been able to identify any of Nagano's attackers.

All they had to do now was wait for the day when All for One would come out of his hole.

If things got out of hand, Ryota would ask his superiors to call in the special forces. As long as Jin Woo was around...

All for One was not Ryota's top priority.

What preoccupied him at the moment was the rat.

- I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to, Nezu's smooth voice replied on the other end of the phone. Could you be more specific?

Ryota blinked.

He opened his desk drawer, rummaged around and pulled out an old caramel candy still in its wrapper.


He unwrapped it, smelled it, licked one of its sides and then, feeling no sourd taste, tossed it into his mouth and began to suck on it.

Leaning back in his chair, hands clasped over his stomach, Ryota stared at the ceiling, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the dreamlike images that had populated his days for the past few years.

His leg twitched violently.

Ryota put his hands on it to immobilise it, his eyes still up.

- What is the one for all ?

Silence.

Of course.

- Are you referring to the conversation I had with Tomura Shigaraki?

Ryota snorted disdainfully.

A short pause for thought, then a question to divert the conversation.

The rat really thought he was a complete idiot.

- Have you ever mentioned the One for All in any other conversation ?, Ryota asked calmly.

- It was the first time I'd heard of it.

Fluid, imperturbable.

Lies flowed as easily as truth from his verminous mouth.

- And yet you seemed to know everything about what Shigaraki was talking about, since you didn't see fit to question him.

- You yourself know that the lucidity of the prisoners of Tartarus is more than limited, countered Nezu. I decided to concentrate on what seemed to be the most important thing before I lost all his attention.

- So you preferred to waste your time discussing children's stories? (Ryota laughed dryly) And you're the one who's supposed to have the superior intellect !

A pause.

Ryota put his hand over his mouth to hide his smile, although Nezu couldn't see it.

- I decided, Nezu said, articulating every syllable correctly, That since we didn't have access to All for One's location, we'd better find out what his plans were.

Which was exactly what anyone else in his position would have done.

- And what plans, Ryota said, scorn oozing from his voice. All for One wants to turn a myth into reality

Another pause.

Nezu may have been the smartest thing in the world, but he was still an animal with more instinct than reason. And he had a monstrous ego to boot.

All you had to do was brush his fur in the wrong way long enough and he'd go off the rails.

After all, intelligence didn't equal wisdom.

- ...until proven otherwise, All for One isn't crazy. If he's interested in the Origin of Quirks, he must see a possibility in it...

Which - Ryota painfully admitted - he agreed with.

But once again, Nezu tried to distract him.
Even if Ryota was sure that All for One was really trying to recreate the Origin of Quirks, he wouldn't be able to predict his course of action until he had a global view of the situation - which included understanding point 2 of 3 of All for One's delirious project, i.e. understanding what the One for All was all about.

Worst of all, Ryota was sure that Nezu had this global view.

And if Nezu had it, then Ryota could only imagine the worst.

Because if the rat managed to get one over All for One and get his hands on the method for making synthetic Quirks...

- This One for All, you must have some idea what it is, right?

Short wait.

- In name, it seems to be a power opposite to that of All for One.

Ryota didn't answer.

He'd deduced as much: on the other hand, he'd expected Nezu to evade or even force his hand.

But perhaps Nezu had anticipated Ryota's predictions and cut him off to silence his suspicions.

- What kind of Quirk does that make you think of ?

Ryota was pushing his luck as much as he was testing Nezu.

- If we consider that the All for the One takes the Quirks, then I imagine that the One for All should be able to redistribute them. Hence the name, which would imply the idea of 'all powers for one' and 'one power for all'.

Ryota didn't answer, pondering.

- Well, that would only cover part of All for One's power, since we know he's able to take and give Quirks. I'm afraid the semantics don't shed much light on the matter.

Perhaps he was telling the truth.

Or maybe he was trying to fool him with false benevolence.

Ryota began to pick dead skin from his lower lip, his sharp gaze riveted on the phone.

He'd completely forgotten his craving.

- If you have nothing else to tell me, I'll leave you to it. I've got some worrying business to attend to.

- Nothing serious, I hope, Ryota replied in a tone that both he and Nezu knew was indifferent.

Ryota would have loved to have Nezu followed, but it was impossible : even if he wasn't the only one to distrust him as if he were the devil himself, Nezu was very powerful and had an excellent network of friends.

And this country was a democracy : dubious practices were good for dictatorships.

- Nothing serious compared to the matters that concern you, said Nezu. Have a nice day, Mr Nishimura. Don't worry, if I ever find out more about this famous One for All, I'll come to your office as soon as possible to tell you in person.

Bastar-

He hung up.

*

Author's note :

Is it merely a theory or the truth ?

Meh, who knows...

Tell me about your theories (or whatever else you want in the comments).

If you want to support the story/read ahead of schedule up to 27 chapters, then go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

As always, see you in the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

- Have you ever copied Shoto's Quirk?

The question surprised Monoma.

Eyelids heavy, mouth dry, the boy ran his hand over his face to wake himself up.

The headmaster had summoned him on a sunday for something so... trivial?

- At the USJ, yes

He remembered touching his neck, and he also knew that Shoto had let him do it without flinching.

- Did you feel anything strange when you used his Quirk?

Ah, so that was what he was getting at.

Monoma himself had tried to remember what it felt like to use Todoroki's power after learning all the unimaginable things he could do.

Except for the duality of his power, Todoroki's Quirk had been no different from anyone else's.

He shook his head.

- I could try again

The headmaster seemed thoughtful.

- Not the slightest strange tingling sensation? Not the faintest hint that there was more to it than fire and ice?

- It was a Quirk like any others, Monoma said. I just copied what there was to copy.

The remark seemed to plunge Nezu into a new abyss of reflection.

Behind him, the sun was rising, turning the treetops pink.

Monoma, dazed and confused, was painfully aware that the question wasn't as harmless as it seemed: he tucked the information away in a corner of his mind, to think about it later, when he was less inclined to fall headfirst to the floor and sleep on the carpet.

- I could, uh

Nezu turned his inscrutable gaze on him. Neito cleared his throat. His voice was hoarse.

- His room is not far from mine. I could-

The headmaster shook his hand.

- I thank you for your concern, boy, but it won't be necessary to take such measures. Shoto is in no way our enemy : I only asked out of scientific curiosity.

Neito wondered what kind of scientific curiosity it was to keep him up at five in the morning.

And the strange way the headmaster talked to Neito without really looking at him - as if he wasn't talking to him...

He felt a corner of his mind stir, felt the veil of sleep lift over his nosy side.

He forced himself to turn off the cogs of his seething brain before the machine could really get going.

It didn't matter to him anyway: for all he cared, Nezu could be fomenting a coup with Shoto as his key player and he would still fall asleep as soon as he left that damned office.

Besides, his uncle owed Nezu a debt : Neito wouldn't stick his nose into his business unless he was specifically asked to do so.

- I'd like to organise something, Nezu murmured. I think you're free on Wednesday afternoon, right?

- I'm training with Aizawa Sensei, the boy reminded him. He had planned to take us out of town in the early afternoon and let us work through the night in an unfamiliar environment.

To see how they would react in an 'unfamiliar' environment, Aizawa had said.

Uraraka had been happy because she 'wanted to be an international hero' and 'this is a great opportunity'.

Monoma had found her enthusiasm worrying and had tried to talk to Aizawa-sensei about it, who had brushed aside her concerns by telling him, quote, 'I know what I'm doing'.

Surprisingly, Nezu mimicked the exact same gesture that Aizawa-sensei had used to shrug him off - a dismissive hand gesture with the tip of the hand hanging down arrogantly, accompanied by a dry flick of the wrist.

- Don't worry about Aizawa, Nezu says. I'll take care of it

Which meant that Neito wouldn't be allowed a night out in the middle of the week.

Great: he could tell his uncle that he didn't need to keep his men on the lookout in case something happened.

- Just out of curiosity, Neito asked, What do you want me to do on Wednesday?

The headmaster smiled.

- Curiosity is a bad habit, Neito.

Eyelids down, body limp, Neito offered his contrite smile - half asymmetrical - which made him look strange and, above all, very, very harmless.

He started to apologise, but the headmaster cut him off:

- I was thinking of making you copy All Might's Quirk

Neito's heart pounded in his throat.

Shit, testing the Quirk of the Number 1 had to be in the top ten of 'things Neito would dream of doing before he died but which will never happen'.

- I see you like the idea, Nezu said.

Neito replied modestly :

- I'd be lying if I said I hadn't wanted to do it more than once when we had lessons with him.

Nezu smiled indulgently.

- Curious, eh ? We're a lot alike in that way

Neito smiled politely and Nezu added nothing.

- I'll let you go back to sleep and won't take up any more of your time.

- Of course, thank you

He was about to leave, but hesitated.

- Yes?, the headmaster asked, seeing his reluctance to leave

- I was wondering about the camp... You know, about what I told you...

The headmaster's face lit up, as if he already knew what the boy was talking about.

- Don't worry, Nezu said. I've got everything under control.

Neito wanted to insist. Nezu cut him off:

- Everything is really under control. Sleep well

Nezu smiled without showing his teeth.

Neito nodded confidently, because that was what the headmaster expected of him.

He left, closing the door behind him, his mind - which he would have preferred to shut down - already buzzing with activity.

When you find a traitor, logic dictates that you get rid of him, right?

Neito racked his brain, trying to piece together what little information he had.

Neito was clever - cleverer than most people gave him credit for - but he was no Holmes. Understanding the headmaster's nebulous thoughts was a world-class mystery.

Still, he had the unpleasant impression that Nezu was playing several games simultaneously.

*

Panting, Katsuki looked Ochaco straight in the eye.

His forearms were on either side of her face, his leg wedged between the teenager's, slightly apart.

He could feel the warmth emanating from her skin without even touching it, intoxicated by the scent of sweat and fruity deodorant emanating from her skin, as if it had been the most delicious drink and he'd been thirsty for a lifetime.

Out of breath from the effort, Ochaco breathed loudly, her chest brushing against Katsuki's with each exhale.

Still dizzy from the fall, she looked around in confusion.

Katsuki watched her skin, reddened by the training, admired the soft curve of her neck, looked up at her rosy cheeks, where strands of hair clung to her lips and jaw.

A bead of sweat rolled from her ear to the hollow of her neck, leaving a wet, salty groove on the skin he knew was soft.

He clenched his fists to keep himself from falling on top of her and lapping her throat with relish.

His heart was pounding in his throat, his blood was pounding in his ears, his foggy brain was just the bead of sweat he wanted to drink and his reason preventing him from moving a millimeter for fear of breaking the spell.

Katsuki was on dangerous ground, he knew that.

He should have stood up. He should have.

She looked up at him, chocolate eyes with low lids and a misty expression.

Katsuki leaned over and kissed her.

*

Author's note :

What ? Romance ?

There's also romance in this story ?

I know many of you saw it coming (hoping I still surprised some).

If you want to read ahead of schedule up to 27 chapters, the go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you in the next update everyone !

 

[Eggmaster]

Goddammit bakugo don't sleep with the enemy!!

 

[Nar_cisse]

Clumsily, his lips barely brushed Ochaco's.

He flexed his forearms and straightened up, frightened at what he'd had the audacity to do.

He felt himself blush violently, and the shame of blushing made him blush even more.

Ochaco slowly opened her eyes again, fluttering her eyelashes.

He was waiting.

She didn't push him away.

Then slowly, gently, his clenched fists scraping the floor on either side of her, Katsuki bent down again and kissed her shyly.

He felt as if he were dying and in ecstasy.

Supporting the full weight of his body with his left arm and right knee, he raised a tense, nervous hand, hesitating whether to take her by the waist or pull her to him by the neck.

Breathless, he stood up, his hand returning to its position on the cold gym floor.

Ochaco opened her eyes again, looking haggard.

Katsuki smiled shyly at her.

Then she burst into tears.

Mortified, Katsuki jumped to his feet and moved away from her, his hands raised in a soothing gesture.

- I didn't mean to- I just slipped-

Ochaco sat back down, shoulders twitching, wiping her face with the back of her sleeve even though the tears hadn't dried.

- It wasn't on purpose, he said. I swear I didn't mean to...

The more he talked, the more she cried and the more he panicked.

- I won't do it again, he said. I thought - you looked -

All the speeches his mother had given him about never touching a girl without her consent suddenly came back to him.

His palms became sweaty.

He wiped them on his tracksuit, hesitating whether to approach Ochaco to comfort her or to step back so as not to frighten her any more.

Suddenly, Ochaco lifted her head from his hands and shook it.

- No, no, it's not you

She hiccupped, then sniffed.

- Do you have a handkerchief ?

Katsuki rummaged in his pockets and found a towel that he must have taken from the cafeteria at lunchtime.

- Here you go

Ochaco blew her nose loudly.

Katsuki waited for her to finish and when he saw that she didn't get up, he decided to sit down next to her, keeping a good distance between them.

- You okay ?

Her chin moved shyly up and down.

Shoulders hunched, eyes downcast, Katsuki admired her profile. Remnants of tears beaded the ends of her eyelashes.

She wiped them away with her fingertips, then met Katsuki's gaze and gave him a dazzling smile.

His heart started to beat faster.

- I must look silly, she said. Sorry.

- No, no, don't apologise.

Her smile faded, but it looked more sincere than the first.

- I've just got all these problems at the moment and, I don't know, you were so nice that suddenly everything I'd been holding back came flooding back and... and I just wanted to cry...

- Don't justify yourself, he said. You don't owe me anything.

He meant it.

- I shouldn't have done what I did

He felt the tips of his ears heating up and chose to look away, towards the climbing wall, so she wouldn't see him.

He sat cross-legged, the soles of his feet flat against each other, nervously squeezing his shoes until his little toe cramped.

- No, said Ochaco. It was, uh, fine.

Katsuki looked at her in shock.

Now it was her turn to look at her shoes.

- Really?, he muttered

She shrugged as if she didn't know what to say without even really looking at him.

Katsuki looked around, a little lost, excited because she hadn't pushed him away and nervous because she hadn't pushed him away.

The silence dragged on as Katsuki racked his brain trying to think of what to say.

Finally, he cleared his throat and said in a tone he would have liked to have been casual:

- I'm hungry and there's, uh, a sushi bar down Yuei's street that's pretty cool...

Ochaco nodded slowly.

- Would you like to join me? (He added hastily) Considering the canteen's closed and all...

She opened her mouth, closed it and opened it again.

Katsuki already felt ready to pretend that he didn't care about the coming rejection.

- I, well, I used all of my allowance so...

Ochaco blushed, scratched her neck and looked down.

- I'm the one who offers, I'm the one who pays, he said.

Another lesson from the Bakugo matriarch : a man always pays for his woman. Al-ways.

He jumped to his feet in what he hoped was not too much of a hurry.

Katsuki reached out for Ochaco, as he would have done with anyone else, to help her up, before he froze, hand outstretched in the void, realising what he'd just done.

But Ochaco smiled and slipped his hand into hers, and Katsuki felt his throat go dry and his stomach do a somersault.

- Let's go then

*
Dabi wasn't the superstitious type, but he had a pretty good idea of how he was going to die.

He knew that one day, sooner or later, Shoto would find a way to kill him without it coming back to bite him in the ass.

There would certainly be a lot of physical suffering, but for someone who had spent years mutilating himself to use his Quirk, that was no big deal.

On the other hand, Dabi was determined to ruin the teen's life as much as possible.

On the other hand, Dabi was determined to ruin as much as possible the life of the teen who had ruined his own.

- Crazy, muttered Natsuo, popcorn crunching in his mouth, his eyes glued to the film. It's downright horrible to die like that !

Dabi snorted contemptuously.

- There are worse ways of dying

There are worse things than death.

Natsuo turned his head to him.

- Really ?, he said. Like what ?

Dabi, indifferent, watched Natsuo for a moment as if he wasn't going to answer.

Then he took a deep breath, looked at the ceiling and pretended to play along, because that's what Touya was expected to do.

If he had to think of a different, but equally unpleasant way to die...

- Don't know

Half of his nerves were fried : he could barely feel pain.

His sense of taste, smell and touch was completely gone.

He ate because food was the fuel of his atrophied body, but he derived no pleasure from it. He slept because sleep was the rest of the soul, but he woke up as if he'd only closed his eyes for a moment.

Sometimes the world felt like a museum he was allowed to visit but wasn't allowed to interact with.

He couldn't taste it, smell it, touch it.

There was a barrier preventing him from accessing it, leaving him only to gaze at what life was like as he tried to remember the few days of his childhood he hadn't spent angry.

He remembered the unpleasant sensation on his forearms after he'd scratched them to get out of the bathtub, the taste of tears on his tongue the first night his progenitors had threw him in an asylum.

He couldn't feel physical contacts, felt nothing but indifferent detachment from the human race and its aspirations.

Most of the time, Dabi felt dead inside.

The rare times he felt alive were when he felt the faint warmth of his flames licking at his skin like the rays of the sun had once done.

Maybe that's why he loved burning people alive.

- Come on, Touya, there's got to be something, Natsuo insisted.

Dabi raised his head slowly, almost curiously, and looked at the stranger who was trying so hard to believe that he was the same boy he'd known.

Seeing that big, awkward, childish smile and those big eyes looking at him with admiration brought back memories of another life of which he'd only been a spectator.

Dabi looked away.

- I don't know, he said. You tell me.

Dabi stuffed a handful of popcorn into his mouth because that's what Natsuo wanted him to do.

He felt like he was chewing coal and then swallowing ash.

- It's really hard, Natsuo replied. I mean, there are so many crazy things you could think of...

Dabi looked at him out of the corner of his eye.

Natsuo was a rich daddy's boy, a member of a prestigious university because the recruiters' hands had been greased. He wore polo shirts and loafers, and always wore his quarterback jacket so that everyone knew what his interests lay.

He lived in an expensive apartment in the US, played American football with his other daddy's boy friends and took private jets to Japan whenever he felt homesick.

Which, as winter holidays hadn't arrived yet, meant every weekend.

He whined that he wanted to spend time with his brother now that they were 'reunited', but Dabi wasn't fooled: he, Fuyumi and Rei seemed to have made it clear that one of them always had to be with him.

Rei looked after him during the week, Fuyumi in the evenings after university and Natsuo at weekends: it was a well-oiled plan that Dabi hated.

Between them and the two heavyweights who shadowed him day and night, he felt like a prisoner.
Every time he mentioned the idea of wandering - alone - in the forest surrounding their home, they looked at him like he was a complete idiot.

You'd think it was out of genuine concern for his safety - after all, the Commission was still trying to get him thrown in jail pending trial - but Dabi had the distinct feeling it had everything to do with what their bitch of a grandmother had said at the dinner table the other night.

They must have been afraid that Dabi would walk out without a word, just as he had done eleven years ago after burning down the house in a fit of rage.

- I think being locked in a box and thrown into the sea is pretty awful, Natsuo said. I mean, can you imagine dying by drowning ? You try to breathe and you feel the water rushing into your lungs...

Dabi almost said he'd have to ask Shoto for an accurate description of a drowning experience, but stopped himself at the last moment.

He settled for :

- Well, there's worse

Natsuo's eyes were shining, and Dabi had no trouble seeing that he was glad he was finally taking part in the conversation.

- Like what?

Dabi looked at him without feeling anything, exhausted by all these questions.

He remembered the childish Natsu who was always in his legs and asked him to explain a lot of things Touya himself had no idea about.

Now Natsuo was square-jawed, broad-shouldered and taller than Dabi. But when he stood like that, with a pillow in his arms and that silly grin on his face, he looked just like the Natsuo who had eaten so many burgers that he wouldn't get up and his parents thought he'd gone into a food coma.

Suddenly, Touya felt compelled to answer all his questions.

- Well, the psychological stuff

Natsuo opened a fizzing can of Coke, and Touya suddenly remembered that Fuyumi had once been addicted to drink. He almost asked if she still was, but thought better of it.

- Like what?

Dabi looked up at the television, searching not for the good words but for the right words.

Sometimes he had trouble expressing himself, or even understanding what he was feeling.

- Waking up one day and not remembering who you are, Touya said. Being hunted by people who want to kill you, but you don't know why

It had to be the ultimate horror and fear.

- Enough to give you a heart attack, Natsuo smiled.

His hand tapped the bottom of the popcorn bowl.

Dabi grabbed it before he could say anything.

- I'll get it

And if it prevented him from talking too much...

Natsuo leaned over the sofa.

- There's a box in the right cupboard under the sink, next to the biscuits

Dabi put the aforementionned box in the microwave and slammed the door.

He stood for a moment, hands flailing in confusion, looking at the myriad buttons on this high-tech object. He'd never used a microwave like this before.

He considered for a moment the idea of simply holding the box in his hands and suddenly heating it.

Since he'd always been rough around the edges when using his Quirk, there was a greater chance he'd burn the popcorn box - and the kitchen with it - by accident.

Eventually, he fiddled with the buttons at random and managed to start the machine.

He leaned against the island, crossed his arms and watched the film from a distance. Natsuo burped.

The microwave beeped: Dabi opened the door, picked up the box and slammed it shut.

He took a step forward, his eyes rising mechanically to the threshold of the living room.

He froze.

Standing in the doorway, shoulders square, was Shoto.

His resemblance to their father was so striking that, for a split second, Dabi put on his mask of docile, depressed young man.

Shoto's expression, hard and sinister, didn't change a bit: Dabi felt his blood heat up.

He felt as if they were about to fight.

Dabi cleared his throat.

- Have you been here long ?

Shoto didn't even blink.

Without answering, he stepped back into the darkness of the corridor and disappeared.

*

Author's note :

Ah, teenager's love...

Makes me wonder how it's going to end.

If you want to read up to 27 chapters ahead of schedule, then go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you in the next update everyone !

 

[Eggmaster]

Goddammit that segment was so cute it was disgusting. Sucks to know shoto is probably gonna end her life. But ehh she killed our classmates and is a mole so not much was lost.

 

[Nar_cisse]

- We've got news on that guy that you, you know

Hawks pretended to scratch his throat and smiled as he moved his thumb from ear to ear.

- Very nice picture, thanks, I said, appetite suddenly gone

Hawks rolled his eyes in good humour.

- Don't make that face: it's not like I've been showing you the autopsy photos

He drank the broth from his noodles noisily, then slammed the bowl down on the table with an 'ah'.

- The point is, he came to Japan by boat

Hawks lit a cigarette.


If he had tried to look the part at the beginning of my internship (why, I couldn't guess), he seemed to have recently decided to drop the mask and show me his wild side.

I looked around us: no one had ever told him not to smoke indoors, and this place was no exception.


- You hit the jackpot with him, because he's the only one of all the guys we've... picked up who could be traced

I thought back to the way the other soldiers - who I now saw as his subordinates - had looked mortified, a few rooftops away, as they watched me fight him.

- Someone important, then ?

- That's what we think, yes

- What does this have to do with the demonstrations ?

When Hawks didn't signal me to shut up or lower my voice, I concluded that my earlier assumptions were correct: some of the places he was taking me to weren't restaurants. Or at least not entirely.

Some sort of public Hero's HQ ? Or perhaps secure places where Commission staff can meet indiscreetly to relax and talk business?

- We believe that All for One is using the demonstrations to quietly set up a few operations around the country.

- That's why so many people are out ? Is he exacerbating public opinion to hide his schemes ?

- Possibly

I leaned forward, my forearms on my knees, interested.

Maybe things aren't so bad for Dad.

- But it could just as easily be any other country or organization that could benefit from a crisis of democracy in Japan.

I sank back into my chair, slightly disappointed.

Hawks was holding his cigarette between his index and middle fingers. He waved his hand, and in the dim light, the glowing tip looked like an ember.

- You think All for One is the big bad wolf, but every country has its own All for One and lots more besides. We have to stop him, of course, but not if we're going to leave ourselves open to further attacks

I was silent for a moment.

I wasn't naive enough to believe that good and evil were the only sides that existed, let alone consider the possibility that All for One was the only antagonist in the game.

But I knew from my knowledge of the original story that he was the final antagonist and that he was the one to watch out for.

Listening to Hawks, they - the Commission - were suspicious of him, but they had other things to worry about : for me, it was all about him, and once I got rid of him, whether Japan burned or not, none of that would matter to me.

...well, it won't concern me anymore once my father finally cuts some slack and retires.

But that's what's going to happen when I get rid of All for One, isn't it? Japan will have nothing to offer us anymore and we can leave everything behind.

The idea of starting afresh with my father - on a solid, trust-based foundation - was attractive.

- We were able to trace some of his comings and goings and noticed some interesting things...

He turned slightly to one side, lifted a buttock, and drew from his back pocket some thick, satiny sheets that immediately gave me the impression they were photographs.

He slid them to the centre of the table.

I glanced at Hawks, then leaned forward to take them.

Hawks put his hand on the sheet and held it there.

His expression was serious.

- No comments out loud and no mention to anyone of what you're going to see on it

We both knew to whom he was referring.

Then he let go and I turned the pictures over.

They were photographs of an almost supernatural quality.

They showed rooms with whitewashed walls supported by dozens of white poles. They seemed to be strengthened by iron reinforcements. Steel reinforcements, poorly set into the ceiling, provided the connection between the ceiling beams and the poles.

A presumably earthquake-proof structure...

The lack of windows and logic suggested that the building was built underground.

Everywhere, for dozens and dozens of feet in all directions, there were huge tubes in which strange fetuses and children were connected by an umbilical cord to a floating transparent bubble.

It was exactly like what I'd seen in Tokyo.

- Of all the bases we found, only two resembled this one. In both cases, the rooms opened onto a network of underground passageways that crisscrossed the cities from one end to the other, from police stations to hospitals.

Hawk's face was closed.

- I don't need to tell you what a threat these tunnels pose to our national security.

I put the photos down.

- You don't

If these things were indeed Nomus - or worse - it meant that All for One had the means to invade and destroy the entire command centre of the country in a matter of hours.

Factions would form and fight for control and monopoly of certain areas, while foreign groups would be sent in to loot or take over the country.

All for One would not simply bring Japan to its knees, he would plunge us into a civil war in which we would destroy ourselves.

Still, he'd have to have enough of those underground tunnels...

The more I learned about All for One, the more I realised that he was an intelligent and, above all, highly organised man.

Isn't it said that you have to fear the old in a profession where people die young ?


- You were at a base in Tokyo, Hawks said. You got out on your own just before your father...

He shook his hand to point out the masterstroke my father had pulled off that night.

A volcano is born either in a hot spot - an area where magma is hotter and lighter than the surrounding rock - or at the boundary between two tectonic plates, in which case it is accompanied by earthquakes.

My father had succeeded in artificially creating a volcano by suddenly heating the magma without damaging the Earth's crust: the ground shook under the eruption he provoked, but only in a very small area.

He had managed to contain and concentrate the power of the molten rock in geysers and lava pits without losing control of it: by the end of the night he had extinguished the volcano and calmed the earth, which - already an outstanding achievement - was something of a miracle given Japan's vulnerability to earthquakes.

Tokyo then turned the extinct volcano into a tourist attraction, christening it 'Kagutsuchi'.

The site became very popular - especially with international tourists - and most of the income from the attraction was used to rebuild the capital.

- Anyway, my superiors want to know if you've seen anything remotely resembling the images you've just seen

As my father and I had both destroyed All for One's Tokyo base, I understood the Commission's reluctance to close a public area - which would raise questions - to go sifting through the rubble.

The wisest thing to do was to question the only reliable eyewitness who had come out alive, which was me.

Or maybe they already have their answer and are just testing me to see if I trust Hawks enough to tell him what I know.

I scratched my neck and swallowed the bitter stench that had risen to my mouth.

- There was even more than the two photos put together, I said.

Forehead furrowed, cigarette resting on the edge of his lip, Hawks was pensive.

- One of them looked like you

He looked up with troubled eyes.

- Are you sure?

Despite the grey horns, yellow reptilian eyes and reddish wings, I wouldn't have been fooled for anything in the world.

- You're the only person I know with wings like that

Other - extremely rare - people had been born with wings, but none compared to Hawk's.

Usually these wings varied from tiny, grotesque chicken wings to featherless pieces of cartilage.

All Quirks that gave humans animal attributes or characteristics had a bad habit of looking grotesque or monstrous.

Staring into space, Hawks looked worried.

- Why do you look worried ? Is there something I should know about these... things ?

He shook his head three times, mechanically, not really listening to me.

His cigarette had died between his fingers, staining them with black ash without him noticing.

The story about the burnt nerves is indeed true.

- Those things in there, I said. Have you tested them ? Do you know what they are?

Hawks picked up the photographs and put them in the inside pocket of his vest.

- It's nothing you need to worry about

He said it in a tone that meant the subject was closed.

I squinted, cocked my head to the side to study Hawks' concerned expression, then asked:

- What about the hero's murders ?

- Hmm ?

He barely listened.

- Does All for One have anything to do with them ?

Hawks took a match from his pocket, struck it against the coffee table, then brought it to the cigarette between his lips.

- It's possible, yes.

Hands cupped, he shielded the flame until it ignited his death stick.

The flame licked his calluses: he barely shook his fingers to get rid of the heat.

- For what purpose ?

None of the murdered heroes were working on a compromising case, none were important enough for their disappearance to present a major security problem for the country.

Hawks exhaled a mushroom of smoke.

I waved my hand to clear the dark cloud coming my way.

- My superiors think he's trying to weaken us.

- They're not great heroes, I countered. It's not a big loss.

Hawks gave me a stern look and I immediately backed off:

- ... it's not a big loss in military terms. In human terms, it's a tragedy.

He nodded, satisfied, then made circles of smoke, into which he amused himself by sending other, smaller circles.

- The thing is, we used to think they were the only ones who died. Lately - and all over the country - a lot of heroes are dying, or being mortally wounded and die in the hospitals.

- More than usual?

The death rate among heroes was as high as their astronomical salaries: it wasn't shocking to hear of a dead hero, although the media didn't talk much about it so as not to (unnecessarily) panic the general public.

- Enough for the Commission to consider mobilising the army to make sure things don't get out of hand if, say, All for One prepares to launch a major offensive.

The idea of unknown tunnel networks under cities must really worry them.

- The military ? Isn't that a bit exaggerated ?

If - as my father had told me - the army consisted of even a few soldiers as competent as Jin woo, All for One would take the beating of the century.

- Armies are the true strength of countries, Hawks grumbled. Me - and all the other Heroes for that matter - are just soft power, the watered-down image of superhumans sold en masse to the populace to keep them quiet.

He tilted his head back, curled his lips into an 'o' and exhaled a ring of smoke that dissolved back into the first.

- If all the heroes were to die overnight, there wouldn't be a country that couldn't recover. Reassuring the population that no, society wasn't going to collapse, would be time-consuming, but far from impossible

Leaning over the coffee table, he shook his whisky glass to see if there was any left, and rattled the ice cubes.

He continued to smoke with his right hand and poured himself a drink with his left.

His last ring of smoke collided with the larger one, creating a greyish cloud that spread through the air like sugar.

- You see, he said, without looking up, The thing is, we think the world is at peace, that everything is all right in this day and age, and that intensified globalisation is keeping everyone quiet because peace is our common interest. There's this quote about trade being good...

A brief, obscure memory from a past life flashed through my mind.

- It's the idea of sweet commerce, I said. Montesquieu

He set the bottle down with a crystalline clink, then snapped his fingers.

- Exactly, he said. Le doux commerce

Cigarette in right hand, liquor in left, Hawks took a drag, took a sip, smoked again and drank again, alternating until he was halfway through his cigarette and three-quarters through his glass.

Cheekbones and nose flushed, Hawks sank back into his chair, glass balanced on his knee, cigarette resting on the armrest.

- Except it's not true, he said. Money isn't power. (He smiled) Power is Quirks.

I can see where he's going with this.

- Are you telling me we're at war?

I've always thought that given enough time on Earth, humans would end up killing each other one way or another.

The Quirks would only hasten our demise.

- Everyone is at war : we're even at war with our own allies. If one of them gets their hands on a child with a dangerous Alter, we eliminate them. Low-intensity warfare, no more, no less.

I was quite familiar with the concept.

- You see, we say we're at peace, but we're not. Peace is an anomaly in world's history : war is the norm.

- What's All for One got to do with it ?

Hawks put a cigarette between his lips, then leaned forward on the coffee table.

He placed his empty noodle bowl in the middle of the coffee table, picked up one of his chopsticks, broke it in half and pulled his matchbox from his pocket.

He placed the matchbox diagonally to the right of the bowl and the broken chopstick diagonally to the left.

- Can you tell me what it means to win a war ?

He moved only the left side of his mouth as he spoke, so as not to drop the cigarette.

- Defeat the enemy ?, I said. Defeat his army?

He raised a finger, then shook his head, his lips pressed together in a way that meant 'yes, but no'.

- There's a bit of that, but not really

He put his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and shook it as if it were a miniature sword.

- You see, wars used to be unilateral : there were only two sides, and the outcome was determined by victory or defeat. Today, even if you think you've 'defeated' the enemy's forces, the humans - if they're not defeated - will take over, and it'll never end.

He sniffed, wiped the tip of his nose with his sleeve, then continued:

- Today's wars are multilateral, with many nations, groups and individuals pursuing their own interests. There's always something going on. Winning a war no longer makes sense in itself, you know ? It's no longer enough to take a base or a fort or kill a general

I hung on his every word.

- Military operations are merely political tools to undermine the enemy, to deprive him of political support and, if possible, to convert him. There are conflicts in which military action actually produces a political result, and others in which it does not. As Clausewitz himself said: 'War is merely the continuation of a political relationship by other means'.

- Okay, I get what you mean, but what's All for One got to do with it ?

Hawks picked up the broken staff in his left hand.

- See, that's All for One

He pointed to the bowl containing his cigarette.

- This is Japan

He threw both ends of the broken chopstick into the bowl, then turned it upside down on the table.

- This is what would happen if he came at us head on : if he tried a straightforward military approach

- Japan would... swallow him up ?, I asked, unsure of the metaphor

- More like annihilate him," said Hawks. No one has ever heard of a single person who could take on an entire functioning army and single-handedly retaliate and destroy it.

Hawks smiled grimly.

- Either we don't let such people live past the age of ten, or they will be wiped out by this very army

He put the bowl back in place and replaced the broken wand.

He took the box of matches and opened it.

- What do you see there ?

I blinked stupidly, looking at Hawks with a wry expression to get him to continue, but he was waiting for my answer.

Embarrassed, I replied hesitantly:

- Matches ?

Hawks smiled, indulgently, not in the least mockingly, and I felt a little less embarrassed.

- As a whole, yes. I can take them and set a lot of things on fire with them, see ?

He took out some matches and handed them to the All for One camp, then poured the contents of the box into the bowl.

- All for One has a few matches left, and we've got enough to start a forest fire. Who wins, then ?

- We do.

Hawks nodded in satisfaction, then took another quick drag. The glowing tip of his cigarette crackled.

- Yet All for One isn't stupid : if he's after us, it's because he thinks he has a chance of winning. What would make him think that ?

I thought about the tunnels and the Nomus.

If the matches are his army, then...

- He's planning to attack key points in the country,' I said. police stations, command centers, hospitals, supply points, power lines, any kind of network-like infrastructure.

He could blow up aqueducts, cause floods, blow up schools and public places...

Prevent everyone from regrouping, getting to safety, communicating.

It would only take a day for the whole country to go mad.

Hawks whistled, eyebrows raised.

- Almost as if you'd thought of that yourself...

I didn't answer, and Hawks looked back down at his miniature diagram.

- In other words, All for One is waging a war of attrition against us. It makes no difference to him whether it takes ten years or fifty to 'win'.

He took one of All for One's games and played it against one of those in the bowl.

- It's not just the infrastructure and the army, says Hawks. To 'win' a war, you also have to win over the population

Hawks straightened up.

- All for One is waging a three-phase war, Hawks said, holding up a finger. First, he attacks the Heroes to make it look like he's about to launch a frontal assault

He pointed to the two crossed matches in the bowl.

- Second, he's using the socio-political context to weaken us.

He put three All for One matches against three others in the bowl.

- He sows panic on social networks, launches conspiracy theories that the entire government is corrupt and that all the Heroes are in cahoots-

- Which is undoubtedly true, I interrupted.

- … which may be true, Hawks conceded. In short, he plays on discontent and mistrust and exacerbates it as much as possible. Through your father and all the controversy surrounding him, he's trying to provoke a crisis of democracy in Japan.

Hawks put the rest of the All for One matches in the bowl.

- Third, he's actually going to attack key points with his Nomus - the ones he must have left - and his mercenaries through his underground network.

I looked thoughtfully at the three matches.

- He's carrying out an onion-shaped plan of attack in which each higher layer is supposed to divert the attention away from the lower layers

My eyes returned to the broken stick. I pointed at it with my chin.

- What about it ? Once he's got all his pieces in place, what's he going to try and do?

Hawks laughed softly.

- If we only knew, he said, Do you really think I'd waste my time telling you all about it?

- What ?

Hawks picked up the matches one by one and put them back in the box, even the soggy ones.

- All for One is not stupid at all. If he's busy right now, it's because there's something he wants to get that's worth losing a few matches for

My brain raced.

One for All or...?

- Do you think he'll try to kidnap me again ?

- It's likely, Hawks said, relighting his extinguished cigarette. We're not sure, but it's our only lead

- And all this?, I said, pointing to the plates, the restaurants and all the customers-employees-of-the-commission whom I now suspected weren't even customers.

Hawks smiled a knowing smile that clearly confirmed to me that he understood what I was saying.

- It was unanimously voted that you should be informed so that you can prepare for the worst (He pointed at me with the tip of his cigarette) This gives you enough time to create another magical power to defend yourself.

In the back of my mind I tucked away the idea that they thought I could 'create' Quirks.

- What about my father? What about All Might? Do they know about it?

Hawks shook his hand.

- Don't worry about the logistics, we'll take care of everything

My eyes returned to the broken match.

He'd tried to kidnap me just a few weeks ago.

All for One isn't the kind who makes the same mistake twice...

I had a bad feeling.

*

Author's note :

I can't believe I foreshadowed this shit so long ago.

I know at least one among you is going to read the whole story again once I finish and you'll get how I played you all since the beginning.

One of the greatest chapter I ever wrote, The Eyes of God, will be dropped next week for the P@treon's members and I am so freaking excited for everyone to read it.

Everything you've read until now is absolutely nothing compared to this one. It will start the end of Part 2 and send us until the final chapter of the Purgatory arc.

Gosh I'm so excited, gonna stop my rant here before I spoil stuff by mistake.

You know the drill, if you want to read up to 27 chapters of schedule, you can go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

For everyone else we will have an excruciating wait but it's going to be so worth it.

 

[Nar_cisse]

My eyes fell on Iida, in a wheelchair, sitting next to the lectern.

He was wearing a high-quality black two-piece suit and a scarf tied so tightly around his neck that it looked like a hanging rope.

His gloved hands were resting motionless on his thighs, one on top of the other.

His face was as grey as the sky above us, his chapped lips covered with dead skin and cracked with trickles of blood.

A cold wind came up and blew the empty left leg of his trousers like a flag on a flagpole. The trousers slapped against the right leg, filled with flesh and blood, then inflated like a parachute before rolling up and falling onto his hands.

Iida, staring into space, didn't notice.

The man holding the handles of the wheelchair leaned over Iida and pushed the piece of cloth firmly back into place.

Black on black, the illusion reformed.

It was almost as if Iida had two legs.

- ...now a word from her family

The headmaster jumped down from his pedestal and let a brunette with a bun take his place.

Her wrinkled face was ordinary, except for her strange turquoise eyes that shimmered like a sea of diamonds in the blazing sun.

- Toru is... Toru was full of life

Apparently, it was Yaoyorozu who had found her in her room.

Even though she'd left Yuei, Momo - from what Bakugo had told me - had maintained close ties with the girls in the class.

She regularly visited Toru in her hospital room, hoping that she would wake up.

Bakugo thought it was because she was trying to convince herself to go back to Yuei, and I thought it was because she was lonely.

Last Saturday, while she was changing her flowers, Toru suddenly woke up.

She was in great spirits, asked to see her parents, asked Momo to order food for her because she was 'starving' and 'hospital food is terrible'.

She also asked for a mirror.

Momo said she cried when she realised she'd never be the 'invisible' girl again.

Then, late that night, when her parents had not yet returned from her grandmother's funeral, her blood pressure plummeted and her condition became catastrophic.

Momo had said that Toru had shaken her hand in a way that meant she didn't want to be left alone, but she had been forced out of the room when the doctors decided to start the electric shocks.

Soon after, Toru was dead.

It is called 'final lucidity', the last gasp of life just before the end.

- I would like to thank all of you, her friends and classmates, for taking the time to come here today

There was polite applause.

Toru's father spoke, followed by her uncle, brother and cousin.

I listened politely, my eyes constantly returning to Iida.

He just stood there, staring into space, impervious to the world.

I wondered why Nezu had put him up there, on the platform, so close to those who were wailing against the blow of fate that had taken their daughter, their sister, their friend.

I wondered if Nezu wanted us to feel lucky not to be Iida or Hagakure, if he wanted us to feel lucky to be mere spectators of their tragedy.

I wondered if Iida felt lucky in comparison.

He could never be a hero again, all right, but he was alive, wasn't he? He would find something else, another career, another passion. And yet I couldn't help feeling sorry for him and his infirmity and weakness.

Perhaps he would have preferred to die there, under the rubble, but the fierceness with which his brother looked after him made me believe that his family were more than happy that he had come back to them alive, even if he was in pieces.

Katsuki, standing to my left, nudged me lightly.

I turned my chin slightly towards him.

Behind his profile, I caught a glimpse of Uraraka tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

The scent of Katsuki was on her skin and hair.

- Kaminari's family, he said.

His gaze shifted for a second to the old couple, huddled together as if that would protect them if the world fell apart.

Kaminari's family had refused to allow the members of Yuei to attend his cremation, saying they wanted to mourn in private.

They didn't look like Denki at all.

- Adopted, I whispered to Katsuki.

He nodded.

The ceremony ended half an hour later.

The family had decided to bury Hagakure, which was a miracle in our country if you could get permission.

It must have been Nezu's way of making up for the chaos...

I was surprised that there had been no hysterics or attempts to strangle the rat for endangering so many students.

Everyone had been calm, polite, civilised, as if we hadn't buried a child.

There was a slight murmur in the crowd and everyone dispersed into groups.

Uraraka went off to chat with the girls - Yaoyorozu had come for the occasion - and I looked at Katsuki as he watched her go.

He met my gaze calmly.

- There's a cold buffet at their house afterwards, Katsuki said. Her parents would like to talk to everyone

Katsuki hadn't broached the subject and I wasn't the type to force his hand.

I pointed at Iida, surrounded by the boys, smiling weakly, his thin, hollow cheeks struggling to make the slightest movement.

Hanta and Kirishima were clowning around to amuse him, and it seemed to be working.

- Aren't you going to see them ?

He shrugged.

- I've never been very nice to him, he said. I don't feel like being friends with him now that he's...

He left his sentence hanging, his eyes riveted on the part of his trousers where there was no leg.

- I'll be off, I said.

- Hagakure's parents really insisted. You should come along

- Hawks wants me to keep working at the construction site as long as possible until we're done

We both knew it was a lie.

- Suit yourself

I took my motorcycle helmet from my rucksack.

- And , I added, Buffets at funerals...

The memory of a bright day and a teenage boy smiling and crying came back to me.

- ... are not really my thing

Do Hagakure's parents also believe that she died a hero ?


*


Author's note :

A short chapter today because the previous one was equivalent to nearly two chapters.

Tell me in the comments about your thoughts concerning the new lore I dropped last chapter and about the new developments for the 1-A students.

Honestly I don't think I could have become a Hero - beyond needing a good enough Quirk, being selfless enough to put your life on the line is something to admire and that not everyone possesses, so yeah.

If you want to read ahead of schedule up to 27 chapters (and read the infamous 'Eyes of God' chapter) then go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you in the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

Hawks knew something was wrong the moment he saw Shoto burst into his office.

The day had begun like any other.

Hawks had gone to Nagano, both to reassure the civilians and to make sure his apprentice was doing his job properly.

And the boy was doing well, from what he'd been told: apart from some grumbling, he didn't bat an eye at the workload, didn't refuse orders, and wasn't too unpleasant with his colleagues.

Hawks had lunch with some of the top brass at the city's hall, then returned to Tokyo to catch up on some paperwork at his office.

As the next day was Shoto's day off, Hawks, in a merciful mood, decided to leave the boy alone and spare him another long meal where he would (presumably) get more than a little drunk.

Thus he was in his office, filling out incident reports for the minor interactions he'd had with villains, a document of an entirely different nature - and of an entirely different gravity - in his hand, when Shoto had barged in unannounced.

Hawks had been working on his weekly report to the Commission for nearly half an hour.

Usually all he needed was a few lines - usually summed up in 'r.a.s.' - which were supposed to summarize events or information likely to be of interest to the Commission, but since he'd taken Shoto under his wing, his superiors had become much stricter.

They wanted information about the boy and had openly asked Hawks to establish a relationship of trust with him.

Which Hawks had done, like the good, loyal little soldier he was.

"A power like his... we don't want to rush him, but you know what I mean, don't you?", Ryota had told him, "He has to be on our side, first to clear our conscience, but most importantly to prevent anyone else from getting their hands on him".

Hawks understood, of course.

If he'd been any other Hero - say, a civilian who'd acquired a Hero licence at the age of seventeen through a Hero training school - he'd have thought the Commission paranoid, perhaps even abusing its powers for obscure purposes.

But Hawks had seen the world, the real world, the one that wasn't shown on television, the one that didn't revolve around costumed Heroes parading with movie stars on red carpets or in perfume ads.

Beyond the countries that had managed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps after the Quirks' arrival, there was chaos.

Small factions fought over land and resources, human trafficking and slavery were rampant, civil wars broke out here and there, and blood and despair spread like the plague.

Hawks wasn't there to say who was right or wrong : no one had that right.

What he could say was that he had seen children of six or seven born with powers capable of rivalling the gods and single-handedly overturning the balance of power in a region.

He had seen their innocent hands spread death like divine judgement, felt the terror and hope that the existence of even one such being could inspire.

First, you tried to control them - and when you couldn't, you killed them.

The first time he'd seen one of these children, Hawks was fourteen: the girl, standing on a desert dune in the blazing sun, had her arms outstretched, her eyes fluorescent, and suddenly a thousand men had fallen to the ground, dead.

No one had tried to control her.

"Men are born equal, but some are more equal than others", Ryota had told him when he was younger.

Hawks understood immediately what Ryota had meant.

If the girl's country had been stable and she'd been able to grow up in safety, then she would have had the right of life and death over all the other children in the world.

Hawks couldn't say whether that was the solution or not.

What he did know was that he was born in Japan, that he loved the customs and traditions of his country, the festivals and temples, the rich history of his ancestors, the smiles on the children's faces and the sense of security their society brought to so many.

He also knew that if children like the little girl were allowed to grow up and live, the world would be doomed.

Hawk tapped his pen on the paper, undecided.

He knew what lurked in the shadows of the spotlight, behind the swirls of glitter and flashes of fame.

Hawks fully understood the concerns of the Commission - the government's - about Shoto Todoroki.

The boy was a potential mystic rank without creed who had practically reached adulthood : he could either propel Japan to new heights, or destroy the country.

Hawks - and many others - could, however, credit him with the ingenuity that had enabled him to live peacefully until very recently.

If Shoto hadn't decided to reveal himself to save his father - no, if Endeavour hadn't been half the Hero he was, and Shoto hadn't decided to save him from death by stopping the Tokyo Giant - no one would have ever known.

Hawks was aware that the fact that a potential weapon of mass destruction had been living under the country's nose without anyone being the wiser had frightened many of his superiros.

It was the boy's loyalty to his father - who was loyal to Japan - that had prevented widespread panic and drastic action.

That, and the fact that the two most powerful men in the country supported the boy.

Hawks sighed, leaned back in his creaking chair and turned to look out over the city below.

Night had recently fallen and Hawks knew the building must be empty except for himself.

He glanced treacherously at his blank sheet of paper.

He knew better than anyone how well-founded the Commission's concerns were.

His conversation with Shoto in the bar a few days earlier came to mind.

Logic would dictate that he transcribed the conversation word for word - he'd been trained to do that - but Hawks felt that would be a betrayal of the teenager's meagre trust in him.

The fact that he had negative feelings towards Touya Todoroki was not revolutionary information: everyone knew that.

On the other hand, the fact that he wanted him dead was prime information.

The Commission could use it to bring the boy to them and force him into debt.

An equivalent exchange : such were the laws of the world.

Worst of all, Hawks was sure that the boy would accept without batting an eyelid, provided the Commission did not tell his father about the arrangement.

It would be easy: Hawks could write the few fateful lines, send them to the Commission, and on Monday, a meeting would be arranged with Shoto, so that on Tuesday, Touya would die at the hands of a designated culprit.

Hawks had the impression that Shoto would be delighted, and that frightened him.

Once the Commission got their hands on him, they'd never let him go: never.

He'd probably be asked to commit himself to the Commission for at least a year: then he'd be worked to the bone, would spread terror in the name of Japan.

Then, when his contract would expire, it would be casually mentioned that Endeavour might find some startling information about Touya, and Shoto would be trapped, because if he could lie to his father about the nature of his powers since he was three but sacrifice everything the second he was in danger, he would surely rather die than see the day when his father would hate him for fomenting the death of his own brother.

It was easy, really : all Hawks had to do was write a few lines.

Hawks bit his upper lip. The tip of his pen trembled on the paper.

Shoto would be no better than a dog tied to a post and thrown into an unmarked pit once he'd lost his utility.

Keigo, shoulders slumped, put down his pen with a heavy heart.

He wouldn't wish this life on anyone else.

Suddenly, the door to his office opened wide.

Hawks pushed his chair back violently, knocked it over and found himself hovering a few centimetres above the floor, his wings outstretched menacingly, sharp feathers already detached and floating around him.

Then he dropped gently to the ground, his adrenaline plummeting as quickly as it had risen.

- Shoto ? What's wrong ?

The teenager stood in his doorway, his hair a mess, his clothes rumpled, his eyes panicked.

He ran a trembling hand through his hair to smooth it back.

- It's- it's Touya

*

Author's note :

Any thoughts on the chapter's events ?

Anything you want to share ?

Check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG, if you want to read up to 27 chapters ahead of schedule (which is roughly 2 months in advance).

See you in the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

Hawks slowly approached Shoto, his hands held high to show he meant him no harm.

The feverish teenager glanced nervously from side to side, as if expecting something - or someone - to suddenly appear.

- Touya ? What has he done?, Hawks asked, still walking slowly.

Shoto looked up at him, then shrank away, moving fluidly around him to the window.

Hawks swung to his feet to watch him but remained motionless.

Shoto paused at the window, exhaled loudly and ran a trembling hand through his hair.

Hawks saw the shiver run down his shoulders, noticed the way his neck tightened as he suddenly dropped his head in despair and muttered:

- Shit, shit, shit

Without taking his eyes off Shoto, Hawks leaned back and closed the door. It slammed shut.

The teenager was startled but didn't turn around.

Hawks walked around to the right of his desk - Shoto was on the left - forcing himself to make as little noise as possible as he walked, so as not to startle him by accident.

He sat down on the corner of his desk and waited, arms crossed, for Shoto to say anything.

But the boy didn't speak.

Hawks observed his profile, his shoulders slumped, his arms flailing, his hands clenched and trembling in spite of himself.

He opened the first drawer and took out his pack of cigarettes.

He inhaled his own smoke through his nose and exhaled to get the nicotine to his brain faster.

- You okay ?

Shoto dropped the head he'd been holding in both hands and turned to face Hawks.

He had dark circles around his eyes as if he hadn't slept in weeks, a waxy complexion and prominent cheekbones that made him look sick.

A huge purple haematoma covered his eyebrow and temple.

Hawks made no comment.

Shoto held Hawks' gaze.

- I just...

His eyes shifted to the floor to his left.

- I didn't know where else to go

Hawks smoked slowly, his eyes narrowing.

- What did he do to you ?

- To me ? Nothing.

Hawks' eyes darkened.

He pointed at Shoto with the hand holding the cigarette.

- That's not what that bruise tells me

Shoto lifted two distracted fingers to his left eyebrow, passing right by the pale scar that crossed his eye, eyelid and eyebrow.

His expression twisted in pain for a second, then he met Hawk's gaze and pretended not to feel anything.

- It's not a big deal, he said

He looked down.

Hawks felt anger surge through him like a tsunami of fever: he took two long drags, his eyes riveted on Shoto, ash falling onto the tips of his fingernails, then he crushed the cigarette on the corner of his desk with a crackling sound.

- Shoto, what did he do to you ?

Shoto looked suddenly irritated.

- I told you he did nothing to me

Hawks preferred his mean expression and hard stare to the pathetic version of Shoto that had entered his office.

He made a dismissive hand gesture that would irritate Shoto even more :

- Who then ? Talk instead of making a show of yourself

There it was, the very expression of ill-contained rage he wanted to see.

Hawks lit a cigarette again, more calmly.

As long as Shoto had the energy to get angry, all was well.

- He took it out on Fuyu, he spat

- Fuyu ?

The file the Commission had given him before he took Shoto under his wing conjured up the image of a young woman with glasses.

- Fuyumi, he growled. My sister.

- What did he do to her ?

Shoto looked up at the city.

The red neon lights reflected in his eyes, casting unsettling shadows across his face.

- I was just about to go out, he said. I'd been planning to go and see Natsu and Léo for a long time... She was in the kitchen. I heard them talking. And, I don't know, he suddenly got angry and pushed her hard against the fridge

Hawks looked at Shoto's face.

- I wanted to... She's my sister, you know ? I couldn't leave her like that

A shadow of doubt crept into Hawks' mind.

Shoto wasn't close to his mother, brother or sister.

- I know she and I... I'm not close to them, you know ? But when he raised his fist and she cowered, I don't know...

He shrugged.

- It's like my legs just moved on their own

Hawks shook off the taste of paranoia in his mouth.

He was a kid.

Of course he was going to be upset when he saw his sister being beaten up. Of course he would want to interfere.

That's what any sensible person would do.

- But you didn't fight back, Hawks pointed out.

He looked equivocally at his temple.

Shoto looked down, almost... ashamed.

- I can't, I... they'd think I was lying

- They ?

Shoto began to fidget.

- My father, my mother, everyone, he said half aloud

He began to pace up and down, almost theatrically, but the worry in his eyes seemed real.

- I hate him, everyone knows that. They all think I'm just looking for an excuse to take it out on him: if I'd touched him, it would have come back to bit me

Hawks felt a surge of sympathy for him.

- Fuyumi could have backed you up, couldn't she ? Say that you did right, that he'd taken it out on her ?

- That's the worst part, Shoto said, She and Natsu are really happy that he's back. They say he'll get over it, that he's just trying to get rid of too much emotion, that we should leave him alone and not tell anyone about it.

- What do you mean 'they say'? I thought this was the first time this had happened?

- It's the first time I've been there, he said. But I know there have been other altercations when Dad wasn't home. Before, at least he was content not to touch her, but now...

He left his sentence hanging, his glassy eyes drifting across the city he couldn't see.

He clenched his fists and released them abruptly, powerless.

- If I take it out on him, he'll go crying to our parents, and my father will hate me

This emphasis on his father's reaction as the thing Shoto feared most fitted his psychological profile.

Hawk's suspiscions subsided.

- He'll end up killing one of them and-

His voice cracked.

- And there's nothing I can do about it

Dejectedly, Shoto rubbed his face with both hands and massaged his eyelids with his thumb and forefinger, remaining prostrate and motionless for a long moment, as if on the verge of crying.

Hawks wanted to stand up and squeeze Shoto's shoulder, but his fingers curled into nothing and he brought his hand back to him, powerless.

He opened his mouth to reply but fell silent, unable to think of anything to say.

He was the Hero, the one who was supposed to solve everything: so why couldn't he answer him ?

Shoto looked up at the city and sighed almost painfully.

The blazing headlights of the cars and the red neon of the signs drew scarlet furrows across his face, as if he were crying rivers of blood

- It reminds me... I feel like I'm five years old again and I know he's going to come and kill me but I can't tell anyone

He raised his left hand and looked desperately at his palm.

Red light threads ran down his bloody hand, curling around his forearm.

- Ten years later and nothing has changed...

The image of a blonde child with wings of bone was superimposed on that of Shoto.

He was sitting in a wheelchair, covered in bandages full of pus and itchy scars, his hands full of his own blood from tearing at the skin to relieve an ache that would never leave him.

Hawks blinked.

The unreal image of the bloodied Shoto faded like mist in the middle of the night, leaving behind an exhausted and desperate teenager.

Hawks whispered :

- Don't do anything you'll regret

Suddenly, Shoto blinked, as if waking up abruptly

He looked around, vaguely confused, as if wondering how he'd got there.

He looked at Hawks in surprise.

He turned sharply on his heel and walked around the desk.

Hawks, worried, followed him like a shadow, hovering around him, trying to find a way to calm him down without really knowing what to say.

- I don't even know why I came, Shoto muttered.

- Wait a moment

The boy stopped, one hand on the handle.

He turned his downcast eyes to Hawks.

- Can you... can you help me ?

Hawks felt his heart tighten.

He didn't answer.

- That's what I thought

Shoto left, slamming the door behind him.

Hawks' guilt tore at him inside.

*
Bonus : The construction site

She was as small as a child, dressed in a blue coat with fake fur on the cuffs and collar. Long blue stripes fell from her armpits to her elbows in an attempt at style that resembled a curtain of pearls or a fan of feathers.

Mouth slightly agape, nose in the air, she stroked her Chihuahua - purring with delight, ears back, lips curled over its tiny teeth - like a cartoon villain.

- That's Mrs Yakitsu, Yakima said. We're going to rebuild her apartment today.

Her mouth still open, she looked me up and down, her bluish eyelids half open.

She approached me in several short steps.

- You're the boy who came through the roof of my house, she said soberly.

I pretended to think.

- Now that you mention it, it does ring a bell

She didn't smile or frown and continued to look prim, playing with her pearl necklace with her left hand and scratching her dog with her right.

She let go of the necklace and her scarf, printed with a sea parrot and set against a coconut background, covered her throat.

Her hand, studded with rings, fumbled in her oyster-coloured handbag with the dog in it.

Without opening its eyes, the dog lifted a paw to let her take what she needed.

She took out a dry, round biscuit that looked like a pebble of sand. She blew on it, then ran her fingertips over it to remove the few dog hairs and the broken pencil lead.

- For stopping that brute from destroying more than my wall and ceiling

She handed it to me.

I felt the beginnings of vomit creep up my throat.

- ...such gratitude is unnecessary

I held it (politely) at a safe distance from my face.

She turned to Yakima and handed him a cookie.

He looked at her, a little surprised, then took the cake and mumbled an apology. He seemed touched by the gesture.

He looked at her and when their eyes met, Yakitsu's face softened slightly.

Yakima smiled foolishly at her cake as she looked away, combing her hair back with one hand.

The vomit was in my mouth now, barely contained by the barrier of my lips.

Yakima suddenly clapped his hands together.

- What are you waiting for, boy ? Haven't you heard? We've got a ceiling to rebuild ! Get to work !

*

Author's note :

Seems things are getting interesting with Hawks and Shoto... makes me wonder what will happen next.

Don't know if I said it last time but the things that Hawks mentionned when he was talking about AFO, wars, what it means to win wars etc is not something straight up from my imagination but things I took from a book called 'War From The Ground Up' by Emile Simpson. Check it if it's a subject that interests you, it is really interesting.

Also dropped the famous 'The Eyes of God' chapter part 1 today : go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG , if you want to read this one and the 26 other chapters ahead of schedule.

And as always, see you in the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

- Are you serious ?

Hawks, whistling happily, stopped at the sliding doors of the building, his hands in his pockets.

He smiled and pointed to the 'Higanbana Senior Residence' sign as if he'd been a TV presenter and the shithole behind him was the jackpot.

The way he chose to ignore the little scene I'd made the other day in his office was admirable.

- Welcome to Higanbana, where we look after your parents as if they were our own children !

- Is this your 'incredible' activity ?

Hawks dropped his hands.

- At least pretend to be happy

- I can't, I'm trying to stop being a liar

Hawks clapped his hands.

- Exactly ! That's the state of mind I want to see

- You told me this would be a great outing

Which, in Hawksian language, meant either an extended meal or hanging out in some obscure bar that smelled of air freshener, where I'd be bored stiff listening to him rattle on for hours about obscure stories whose protagonists I didn't even know half the time.

Hawks straightened up.

- Just because I've given you two days off doesn't mean you're on a vacation

That's exactly what I thought.

Still, anything's better than working in a suit that hasn't been washed since I was born.

Hawks lifted his hand to rub my hair: I took a step aside, irritated.

- Stop treating me like a dog

He raised an accusing finger.

- Remember that I could have taken you to an orphanage, but I took your tastes into consideration and decided to do you a favour for our volunteer day

- Say clearly that no orphanage wants a murderer hanging around its wards

Hawk's smile widened.

- Touché

He looked up at the windows, his wings low but not touching the ground.

He liked to complain that his wings took on all the dirt of the city and that it always took him hours to brush them and make them silky and shiny.

Over his shoulder, through the sliding doors, a bespectacled woman and two orderlies could be seen - their eyes on Hawks - clearly nervous but patiently waiting for him to finish his big show.

- You told me you had a grandmother you liked, didn't you ?

- I never said 'liked'

- Now's the time to learn a few things if you ever have to take care of her

The idea that Teka could get sick - or die - seemed absurd to me.

To me, this ageless creature would cling to her ageless beauty until she'd buried us all.

- What's your motto ?, Hawks asked.

- Humility, I muttered in a low voice

Hawks put an arm around my shoulders.

- Smile, Shoto. This is going to be a great day.

*

It was anything but a great day.

The old people smelled of piss and drugs, the green carpet was full of dark stains that I avoided stepping on, the carers were sprawled on chairs, cigarettes and coffee in hand, as if they were the ones who needed help.

The whole building reeked of cancer and senility and every second I spent there threatened to turn me into a hypochondriac.

My eyes swept over the thirty or so chairs that had been set up in the 'living room' (note the irony) for the occasion.

Apart from a handful of occupied seats, the rest were empty.

In the front row sat an old black man with an unkempt afro, hands crossed on a wooden stick, chin resting on his hands, snoring.

Next to him sat an old man with a chessboard on his lap. He had only one pawn and was moving it from one square to another in a way that was so illogical it was maddening.

An old woman with stringy grey hair and a wrinkled chin tucked into her mouth, as if swallowing her lips, watched the scene intently.

A man sat alone by a window looking out at the falling snow. His eyes were pale blue, so clear you'd think they were made of water. His head was turned outwards, but his gaze was too low, fixed on the edge of the wall.

A nurse arrived with an old lady in a wheelchair: she manoeuvred her next to the one who gave me the distinct impression that she had no teeth.

Hawks laughed and threw a piece of curtain at my back, which I pushed back more curtly, annoyed.

Red curtains had been put up on either side of an old television set to act as a backstage area.

I could hear Hawks giggling behind the curtain, over-excited.

He's the only one having a good time.

My phone buzzed against my thigh.

I discreetly pulled it out of my pocket to check my Twitter messages:

Boom Boom Boy: Aizawa asked me to show the new guy around Yuei (11.21am)

Boom Boom Boy: He said he was a fan of your old man (11:22am)

Then there was a series of tweets and videos that had nothing to do with anything.

Katchan must have been really bored to send me so many in such a short time.

Boom Boom Boy: He emits waves from his whole body (1:10 pm)

Boom Boom Boy: He just turned the basketball court upside down (1:12pm)

Boom Boom Boy: Aizawa's going crazy (1.12pm)

It's just like him to talk about the new guy's Quirk without mentioning his name.

Probably he hadn't remembered and had already made up a nickname for him.

Icy/Hot: What do the others think ? (1.13pm)

Boom Boom Boy: Aren't very happy (1.13pm)

- Shoto, curtain !, Hawks shouted.

I put my phone away immediately.

Across from me a caregiver pressed the power button on the portable CD player.

I crouched down, numb, then slapped my palms together.

A thick cloud of steam left my hands and invaded the scene.

It was like a damp mist that curled up like smoke.

The old black man woke with a start and jumped to his feet, legs shaking, back arched, shouting something confused that sounded like 'what the hell'.

Hawks jumped onto the stage and I thought the old man was going to have a heart attack.

Dressed in feathers and what looked like a buffalo skin, Hawks walked noisily, banging his geta on the floor.

He looks like an offensive version of a native American.

- I am the great Chemnashaovirodaintrachivu, the man with the head of eagle and the heart of snake !

I think that's actually why we didn't go to an orphanage.

I watched Hawks from the side, arms crossed, trying not to look too disgusted by his performance.

- Hey, who is the big bird ?

- We want the wheel of fortune !

The old woman - with a face more wrinkled than a dried plum - took off her drooling dentures and threw them at Hawks.

Quickly, Hawks leaned forward and the dentures smashed into the television behind him.

One of the medic sighed, but none of them felt the need to leave the circle of peace - and depression - they had created for themselves.

- Fear my power !

Hawks straightened up, wings outstretched like an owl scaring off a predator.

Then he began to flap his wings and fly away with a great diabolical laugh, arms outstretched.

- I am the son of fire !

I stifled a sigh and raised my left hand.

A serpent of flame sprang from my palm and wrapped itself around Hawks - albeit at a great distance - like a vine around a tree trunk.

- Fear my wonder !

The volume of the music became deafening: knowing what was about to happen, I twirled the dragon around Hawks and then sent it flying over the audience.

Horrified, the nurses and patients watched as the monster opened its mouth as a deafening roar came from the CD player.

I clenched my fist and the dragon dissipated in a spray of sparks, extinguished in mid-air by the humidity.

The commotion had attracted other pensioners, who looked around the room with surprise and interest.

A little redhead with a mottled face was blocking the entrance with her walker : a nurse ran to help her, while the others helped the new arrivals settle in.

I glanced at Hawks : his malevolent god facade faded for a moment, giving way to a stupidly happy smile, then he returned to character.

- I am the king of the oceans !

He raised the palm of his right hand, and I condensed the moisture to create a vortex of water in his palm.

The old men looked on in amazement and I laughed dryly, slightly disdainfully at their silly expressions.

I increased the humidity and suddenly hundreds of water bubbles appeared in the air, floating like frozen crystal.

Some of them touched the bubbles and they burst, drenching them. They began to laugh, their faces lit up with an innocent light.

I could feel Hawk's gaze on me : it wasn't in the script, but it didn't matter.

- Fear my wrath !

A huge bubble of water formed in the centre of the room, just below the ceiling.

The other bubbles swirled around it like the planets in the solar system around the sun, before suddenly colliding with the largest one.

I spread my hands and a fresh rain fell on everyone.

The old people looked at each other with joy, and even the nurses had lost their glum expressions.

- I am summer and winter !

The heat rose sharply, drying everyone out, and then ice spikes sprang from my feet to Hawks, before a frozen castle was built behind him, from the ground to the top of the tallest tower.

There were delighted 'wow's', which I accepted without an ounce of humility : I deserved at least that much, given the years of hard work I'd spent honing my finesse.

At first I could only manage a ten centimeters cube...

The music got louder and Hawks got carried away, going completely off script.

- I am spring and autumn !

A gentle warmth and then the beginning of a rumbling storm echoed through the room.

- The beginning and the end !

How am I supposed to represent the beginning and the end ?

- Chaos and order! Light and darkness!

I did the first thing that came into my head without thinking, a slight desire to strangle Hawks suddenly taking hold of me.

- I'm-

I turned a deaf ear to his nonsense, concentrating on the entertainment as best I could.

Looking around at the lit up faces, no one really cared if the pictures matched the sound, as long as it was visually stunning.

I was almost tempted to put them in a mass genjutsu to avoid tiring myself out needlessly but the potential for failure was still too high.

Too long later, the music stopped and Hawks flew away in a swirl of feathers and sequins, which he tossed out of his pockets so eagerly that he looked like the Sandman.

The carers applauded, the over-tired old men stomped their feet on the floor or clapped their hands on their thighs. It didn't last long, though, due to their stamina.

Hawks, delighted, bathed in the cheers (little cries muffled by the toothless) and general joy derived from these walking corpses.

I may prefer old people to children, but they're so senile they're practically infants.

They clapped their hands like sea lions being taught a trick for a treat.

A group of old men in plaid berets and waxed canes, giving the impression of a clique - or a gang of snack stealers - approached Hawks and asked him to make them fly with his feathers.

He happily obliged, and - feeling a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on me - I slipped discreetly out of the living room.

I walked to the water pump and took a plastic glass, which I didn't fill, my senses glued to Hawks. If he asked why I ran away, the glass would be my alibi.

I leaned against the wall and counted the seconds until the end of the day.

My eyes went to the door before he had even stepped through it.

The old blind man was walking alone, his cane sweeping left and right in front of him.

Over his rounded shoulders I could see the nurses watching him go, not trying to help him.

He passed the top pump with ease and I moved my feet out of the way.

He stopped at my level, his crystalline eyes looking up at me for a moment.

Then he turned his head to the side, his gaze settling on my earlobe.

- You're the boy who did the show, aren't you ?

Head tilted to one side, eyes narrowed, I studied his face for a moment.

- Aren't you supposed to be blind ?

He smiled.

- Visually impaired from birth, he said, Is not the same as blind

- I don't see you wearing coloured glasses

- I'm not photophobic and I'm not ashamed of my eyes

I pondered his answer for a moment.

Suspicious, I held two fingers in front of his face.

His attention was drawn to it, albeit a little more to the left than necessary.

- I can make out shapes, though blurred...

His face crinkled in displeasure.

- And I still know when someone's giving me the finger

I lowered my hand.

His gaze reminds me of All for One...

- What's it like to be blind ?

He pressed his lips together, clenching and unclenching the cane in his palm, as if reluctant to leave the rough guy I was in the lurch.

- I can't describe it, I've never known anything else, he said. But from what my doctors have told me about my descriptions, I can only see patches of colour

- Were you able to see the show with this handicap ?

The wrinkle between his eyebrows disappeared and a slight smile appeared at the corner of his lips.

- Blindness doesn't mean deafness or insensitivity. I enjoyed the sound of the storm and the feeling of my hair getting up on my neck, just as I enjoyed the drops of water falling on my skin like fresh rain

I almost expected him to go off on a tangent and recite a poem, so I waited longer than necessary to answer, and he took another step forward.

- Would you like me to perform again

He raised his eyebrows.

- Would you mind ? (Then, hastily, as if afraid I might change my mind, he added Yes, very much, please.

The way his eyes widened in amazement and the childish nervousness that almost made him stomp on the spot reminded me of Kenta and slightly stifled my irritation.

- Chin up, I said.

He did as I asked.

I raised the palm of my left hand: a horse of fire sprang from my hand and galloped over my head.

The old man smiled with delight.

Without taking my eyes off him, I transformed the horse into a serpent of fire that wrapped around his arm and climbed up to his collarbone.

- What do you see?, I asked.

Distracted, he replied:

- It looks like a very hot red tube or cylinder revolving around me.

The snake was reflected in his glassy eyes.

Suddenly, a clone appeared to my right.

He covered himself with a genjutsu that would make him invisible to the outside world.

I scanned his face carefully, passing the snake in front of my double's face.

His gaze - always late - followed the snake, then he gasped.

He blinked and rubbed his eyelids with two fingers.

- There must be something wrong with my eyes, he muttered.

- How so ?

My chakra seeped into his nervous system as the clone dropped the illusory curtain covering him.

- It's very strange, he murmured, his eyes still riveted to my left, where my clone stood. The contours are very precise...

- You should see one of the nurses, I said. I'll call one for you.

I walked away without waiting for an answer, feverish from the discovery I'd just made.

All for One doesn't have a Quirk that allows him to see through my illusions : it's because he's practically blind that he manages to notice the finesse of what I'm doing over the chaos of his own perception.

I smiled.

All I have to do is gouge out his eyes.

*

Author's note :

I have a confession to make.

Sometimes the chapters' titles are extremely befitting, and sometimes I am just bullshiting my way out with some cryptic shit that means nothing.

But it's definitely befitting. Most of the time, at least.

Part 2 of the now infamous chapter, The Eyes of God, out today.

It's the beginning of the end everyone - the pace is picking up.

If you want to read way ahead of schedule then go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you in the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

The door opened wide.

- Hey, fire-maker ! Come back here !

I need to get out of here.

I turned and ran before one of them could grab my clothes.

They didn't look like it, but their grip was as strong as a baby's.

I found Hawks smoking outside next to some bins.

- Did the old men get the better of you ?, he asked, an eyebrow cocked

We did two more representations of the show.

- I got tired of playing the dragon

Hawks laughed between puffs of cigarette.

- You know that thing's going to kill you, don't you ?

- What ? This ? No, impossible, I'll die long before that

I couldn't decide whether he was serious or being sarcastic.

- What will you do after the Commission ?

He seemed taken aback.

- 'After'?

- You're not going to do the same job for the rest of your life.

Hawks - Keigo - struck me as a free spirit, someone whose essence was travel and connecting with people.

To imagine him chained to anything was antithetical to himself.

- There is no 'after', he said. Once people like me get into the Commission, they don't get out

My expression must have betrayed my thoughts, because he added, smiling :

- Don't look at me like that. The money's not bad. So is the food.

He tried to play it casual, but the corners of his mouth were turned downwards.

- You told me the same thing when we first met

- Because it's true

He continued to smoke.

- In a profession like mine, living to an old age is a mark of great success - or great luck. If I live long enough to get lung cancer, I'll be lucky

I shrugged.

- I don't see the point if you're going to end up like them

- Toothless ?

I scoffed.

- I'd like to live to be an old man, Hawks went on, smiling and raising his head to the grey sky.

- Why ?, I asked, You want children or something ?

- I don't know. I never thought about it. Maybe, yeah.

He smoked more slowly now, thoughtful.

The lights of the city shone in his eyes.

- You should adopt, I said.

He frowned.

- The Commission would refuse.

- Then find a girl willing to be a surrogate or, I don't know, kidnap a kid

Hawks looked at me with raised eyebrows.

- Did you really just suggest that I commit a crime ?

At least he seemed amused now.

- Big words

Hawks smiled.

- Sometimes I can't tell if you're serious or just talking nonsense to see how people react.

I smiled too.

He stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette on the sole of his foot, threw it into a pile of snow, rocked back and forth with his hands in his pockets and fluttered his wings.

- Come on, let's go home

He didn't light a second cigarette, and I felt a bit proud of myself.

*

- We've been through a lot in the last three weeks, the mayor said. It wasn't easy to recover from our fall, and it's even harder to rebuild. But it's thanks to your courage and perseverance that Nagano is still standing today and will stand again tomorrow, no matter what the villains do !

There was thunderous applause, punctuated by shouts of joy

The mayor, clinging to the lectern, seemed barely able to stand, with large purple bags eating half his face.

But he smiled, satisfied, and gave the excited crowd time to calm down before continuing:

- We haven't failed, and neither have our Heroes. I would like to give a warm welcome to the Hero who - lucky for us - was there at the time of this terrible attack, and who made it possible to organise the rescue teams and the defence of our city. Everyone, a round of applause for Hawks !

Hawks, standing to my right, smiled and walked up to the podium, waving to the ecstatic crowd.

- I-

The shouts and cheers from the crowd grew in intensity and Hawks smiled, waiting patiently for the excitement to die down.

But suddenly someone started to applaud and, like wildfire, so did everyone else.

The Mayor, who was standing to the right of the lectern, applauded and the other officials on the stage followed suit.

I applauded too, standing in front of the Japanese flag at the back of the stage, between the police chief and Ryota Nishimura, the man who was 'my enemy but not really, because your enemies are not where you think they are, Shoto'.

As the applause died down, Hawks began.

- Thank you for your speech, Mr Yoshimitsu. And thank you all for coming today

He paused for a moment, and although his back was to me, I was getting to know him well enough to guess that he was smiling.

- There are so many people who deserve a personal thank you. The incredible police team, led by Captain Yuko Kufoka, who were already on the scene and prevented panic from taking over. The fire brigade, who arrived in record time. Dr Garaki's clinic, which treated the most seriously injured in its care centre.

Hawks paused for a moment.

- I'd also like to thank all the Heroes who prevented the number of wounded from increasing drastically. Without them, the number of human casualties would have been very different.

The mercenaries didn't kill any civilians.

Only the people who had been trampled in the crowd or who had been in the mall at the time of the fire had been injured or killed - but they were collateral damage, not the intended targets.

The more I thought about it, the more plausible Hawks' theory that All for One was playing the long game seemed.

If he was targeting the population and the heroes weren't able to stop the killing spree, we would have been forced to call in the army or the National Guard. But since he was only attacking heroes - civil servants who had signed contracts stipulating the possibility of their death and the irresponsibility of the government in such an outcome - we didn't worry too much.

Hawks turned his head over his shoulder; I caught his eye.

He looked at me respectfully.

- I'd also like to thank my intern, Shoto Todoroki, who played a big part in repelling the villains

I nodded my chin humbly.

To my great surprise, I received a round of applause.

I looked down at the front of the stage where Mrs Yakitsu was holding her barking dog, the entire construction team I'd been working with for the past few weeks clad in overalls applauding loudly, perhaps more to embarrass me than anything else.

It wasn't a thunderous applause, and no one really joined in, but the surprise of the treatment pleased me.

I felt my chest warming.

- Thank you to everyone who came to help after the disaster and who will continue to help until the city is back on its feet. And most of all, thank you to the people of Nagano for not giving up when you couldn't be blamed to have done so

Hawks bowed and the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

Some people started chanting his name loudly.

Hawks greeted everyone and the applause grew louder.

Without moving from the front of the stage, he moved to the side and signalled for the mayor to take his place, who smiled good-naturedly.

- We know that even though the city is better off, the mayor said, We are far from having healed all our wounds. That's why I've decided to hold a charity gala in the town hall tonight to raise money for our town and all its people !

There was another round of cheers.

- Thank you all, fellow citizens, and let's all continue to do our best to lift Nagano up !

The speech ended and the curtain closed at the front of the stage.

The mayor turned to Hawks again and shook his hand warmly, continuing to thank him profusely.

Other officials approached and I waited patiently for Hawks to finish.

I pivoted and his step matched mine as we walked backstage.

- How was I ?

A brief smile curled my lips.

- Very cheesy

Hawks smiled and ran a hand through his hair.

- How can you say that after I've taken the trouble to thank you publicly ?

- Do we have to go to the gala too ?, I asked.

- Yes, because we'll attract a lot of good people. At least my presence will attract people - you'd better stand in a corner if you don't want to scare everyone away.

- Apart from acting like your shadow, what am I really there for ?

Hawks patted my head absently.

- Remember your motto, boy: hu-mi-li-ty

I shoved his hand away.

- No need to treat me like a dog

- You'll need it if you want to get rid of the monstrous ego that inhabits this body

I was about to reply when I saw Nishimura coming towards us out of the corner of my eye.

Automatically, I slid down beside Hawks to face him.

Hawks' smile grew tense, but he faced his superior with good humour.

- Hawks, Shoto, Nishimura greeted us

Hawks shook his hand firmly, as was customary in all professional interactions.

The fact that even a country like Japan has been influenced by such small Western customs to the point of incorporating them into its daily life still amazed me.

- Very nice speech, said Nishimura.

- I meant every word of it, Hawks replied in a steady tone.

Nishimura nodded.

He looked at us in turn, his eyes shining, an expression I couldn't quite make out.

- I can see that you two have become very close indeed

He seemed pleased, which I could only half explain.

Still, I thought he'd be less pleased to see me next to his golden goose after the Nagano fiasco...

Hawks nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders.

- As close as a tutor can get to his pupil

He still looked amused, but his indifferent tone suggested that our relationship was strictly professional.

Hawk's sudden change of personality took me by surprise.

- Don't give me that crap, Hawks, Nishimura said. It's obvious you get along like brothers

Nishimura gave me a knowing look and, for safety's sake, I opted to imitate Hawks' neutrality.

Hawks raised an eyebrow in bewilderment.

- I don't think I ever gave that impression, Hawks said. Shoto already has a family, it would be inappropriate for me to interfere

- Come on, it's just us, there's no need to be so tense. And it's not a reproach, quite the opposite: I'm glad you two are getting on so well

The more he spoke, the more withdrawn Hawk's expression became, and the less I understood the nature of the paratext with which they seemed to be communicating.

- ... if you say so

Nishimura's smile faded a little: he looked at Hawks, half questioning, half surprised.

- Anyway, I was just here as a representative of the Commission for this ceremony. It was nice to see you both

He waved again and left.

Hawks remained tense until he was out of sight.

- Something I should know ?, I asked.

Hawks deflated like a balloon: his serious expression vanished, replaced by his goofy grin and infectious joy of life.

- Nothing that concerns you, he said, putting his hand on my head

- Stop it, I growled

- Come on, we've got to find some fancy clothes for tonight

*

Author's note :

In another life, Shoto woudl've been the star performant of a circus.

In this one he's fated to become a terrorist tho.

If you want to support the story or read up to 27 chapters ahead of schedule (and read the penultimate arc before the end of Part 2 and the final climax) then please go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

And, as always, see you in the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

I'd always believed that tiredness was a state of mind, a laziness of the soul that anyone could fight by sheer force of will.

But as the days went by, it seemed less and less likely that my mind would ever be able to separate itself from the heaviness that weighed on my muscles and clouded my vision of the world.

Sleep had become a rare delicacy, one I rarely indulged in, and only when the lines of my seals became loops before my eyes and the loops started oscillating like savages jumping around a bustum.

Chakra was supposed to be the source of all life, the vitality of a body, yet I was depleting my reserves so quickly that even eating like an ogre wasn't enough to replenish me.

My physical abilities hadn't diminished, but mentally I was at the end of my rope.

A few months. It was only a matter of a few months.

The idea of diving back into one of my old projects - that of storing Chakra in case of a major emergency - was tempting but dangerous.

Chakra needed a living being to exist: locking it away in an inert container was impossible.

Tsunade had managed to store it in her forehead, something I still couldn't explain.

Cells were made to produce a certain amount of chakra in a given period of time: perhaps she had managed to recover the excess produced by her body from a 'threshold' she had set herself, but I couldn't see how she had locked it inside her without her skull exploding.

The answer seemed to be thanks to Fuinjutsu, but I had no idea why.

The fact that I'd managed to synthesise a Sharingan out of Fuin alone - and without a real Uchiha to explain how a Sharingan really worked - led me to believe that I was excellent at it.

However, I was barely passable at iryoninjutsu and was incapable of revolutionising the field like Tsunade or Orochimaru: research was neither my favourite area nor my strong point.

I regretted having only a dusty old book to explain things to me: having a real teacher would have made such a difference.

If I'd had someone as competent as Jiraiya or Minato to teach me Fuinjutsu...

I pushed my bitter thoughts aside to drive away the beginning of my bad mood.

But still, if I'd had a teacher...

Anyway, even if I wanted to, I didn't have the time to concentrate on all that.

I have to end All for One in the next few months : I can't afford to let him play the 'long' game.

But before I could do that, I had to deal with a more pressing problem.

My eyes easily found Hawks among the glittering gowns and chiffon skirts.

Hawks was laughing, head thrown back, mouth wide open.

Halfway between us, two men toasted, their flutes of golden champagne glittering like crystal.

The moment their glasses touched, Hawks' face appeared to me behind a curtain of bubbles, distorted and malevolent, the hand he ran through his hair giving the impression of running into horns.

I didn't know if it was fatigue gone madness or the paranoia that sometimes distorted the shadows and faces at the periphery of my vision, but either way I was fine with it.

As long as the chaos in my brain managed to drown out my guilt, who was I to ask questions ?

My psychiatrist would have told me it wasn't healthy, but I didn't have time for something as trivial as 'mental health'.

I had too many worries, too many adversaries and too little time.

You'll be seventeen in a few weeks...

If I ever made it to eighteen, I'll be grateful to whoever manages the mess of my life.

- Let's have a drink, Mr Hawks. To the saviour of Nagano !

The big laugh, punctuated by a diamond wristwatch shining under the light, drew my attention to the crowd around my oh-so-respectable mentor.

Hawks had asked us to arrive late because 'it's better to arrive late at a party so you don't look like you've been waiting for it' and also because 'everyone's already lost the stick up their ass', whereas I'd hoped we'd arrive early so I could get home relatively early.

Someone shoved a glass under his nose.

Red-cheeked, almost drunk, he seemed hesitant, uncomfortable, a smile frozen on his lips.

I wondered if he was afraid of drinking too much, knowing that he tended to talk too much at times like this.

He met my eyes and then gave me a pleading look over the crowd of his followers, surely wanting me to use my aura of acquitted murderer to scare away his groupies.

I looked at him boredly, scratched my cheek with my middle finger for his benefit, and then looked away, disinterested.

He has been happy to ignore me for a full hour and leave me to my own devices : let him stir in his shit.

Even without looking at him, I knew he was outraged by my vulgarity.

At least he won't be able to threaten to make me work at the construct-

My head turned towards the main door so quickly that I heard my neck creak with tiredness.

I could feel him before he'd even finished climbing the stairs, I could see him perfectly before he even entered my field of vision.

After all, there's only one man with the aura of the sun.

My father and All Might entered the place as if they owned it and, for a second, all chatter ceased.

A shiver of excitement ran through the guests.

The mayor, standing by the urns where the money was collected, looked as if he were about to have a heart attack out of happiness.

The two heroes looked around the room, the first with a blasé air, the second with good humour. Their diametrically opposed personalities should have been a detriment to their duo, but instead had cemented them together as that unlikely and 'refreshing' combination that the general public 'loved'.

His blue eyes swept the room just above my head, lingering a moment longer on Hawks, his face even, and I knew he knew I was there even if he couldn't see me, slumped against the wall as I was.

I saw the nervous, over-excited glances he was getting, and the neutral - almost bored - expression on his face.

A passing waiter looked at him wide-eyed and stumbled at his feet, knocking over a tray of glasses.

He crouched down hastily, head down, lips moving as he apologised. Even from where I was standing I could see the young man's hands trembling and the back of his neck redder than blood.

My father's face darkened and his scowl amused me.

The fact that anyone could find him intimidating had always seemed surreal to me.

It reminided me of the time we went to the Heroes Awards when I was ten.

I watched him stand next to All Might, politely answering the plebs' questions, trying to keep his irritation to himself, until he lost patience and decided to turn and walk away, splitting the crowd in his path towards the balcony.

I watched him go, realising distractedly that even if I'd been blind I'd still have been able to follow the trail of heat left by the sun in his wake.

Without a second thought, he opened the French window and slipped out. One of the long white curtains fluttered in the cool breeze, billowing like a sail.

Guests with little cloth and much jewellery shivered and walked away with furrowed brows.

I took a small cake from a passing tray and popped it into my mouth as I made my way to the balcony.

He was leaning against the railing, his head raised to the sky.

I paused for a moment on the threshold, hesitant, one hand on the door behind me.

The door creaked and he turned his head towards me.

- Shoto

No anger, no disappointment.

- Hi

He nodded, then looked out at the city.

The night was dark and the lights shone in front of him like fireflies.

I approached slowly, my shoes thumping loudly on the ground. He remained motionless, shoulders slumped, indifferent to my presence or absence.

I stopped not far behind him, to his left. He didn't ask me to leave.

So I went and leaned against the balcony, not very far from him, and looked out at the city for a moment without really seeing it. My chakra-covered fingers brushed the underside of the marble balustrade, a seal of silence sprouting from the tip of my forefinger.

He didn't turn his head towards me.

I pretended to scratch my elbow, then my shoulder, looking for a way to start the conversation.

Silence had never been a problem between us, yet I felt uncomfortable.

- Stop fidgeting, he muttered.

I looked up at him.

His face was calm, his iridescent eyes lighting up his face like beacons in the middle of a storm.

- It's making me nervous, I said

Saying it out loud only made me more nervous. My throat tightened and my palms grew sweaty.

I put my clenched hands on the railing to stop myself from rubbing them against my jeans.

- Since when do I make you nervous ?

I shrugged, even though he wasn't looking at me.

- Don't be nervous, he finally said quietly. I'm still your father.

I nodded slowly, swallowing the lump of stress that had formed in my throat.

I felt ashamed, too emotional, but I knew that if there was one person who would never use my weaknesses against me, it was him.

- I-

I cleared my throat to calm my voice.

- I've been thinking a lot about what happened at the hospital, I said. When you asked me to tell you exactly what my Quirk is, and-

He raised his hand and I shut up.

- Do you really think that's the point ?

He looked me straight in the eye, his eyebrows furrowed in disapproval.

- I don't care what your Quirk is, he said coldly. You could bring the dead back to life that I still wouldn't care

I fucking know it.

- I know that's not the problem, I know I should have told you before, it's just...

A lot of my reasoning was wrong, a lot of my actions were wrong, but I always had the best of intentions.

Yet you know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

- Just what ?

Finally I exploded.

- I was scared !, I said, Scared that someone would come after me again- before I was able to protect myself !

A dull, inexplicable anger burned in my chest, and suddenly I thought it was unfair that he should be angry with me for putting my safety first.

- I could have protected you-

- Yet you weren't able to !

*

Author's note :

Sorry about the disgusting cut in the middle everyone, but the chapter was way too long for me to publish it fully.

Also random info but I have been told that the 'terrorist' of the story may have shadow banned it on webnovel, and I decided to (at least) temporarily change it there to see what happens.

The title is now 'Modern-Day Villain' which is, in my opinion, quite misleading and not true but meh, let's see how it goes.

If you want to support the story AND read up to 27 chapters ahead of schedule, go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you friday for the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

His mouth opened slightly. His eyes widened. A flicker of pain flashed through his eyes and my stomach clenched.

- It's true, he said. I haven't always been able to protect you

His gaze dimmed, his features hardened.

- I'm sorry I haven't been enough

All my anger vanished and I felt empty inside.

- Dad...

Jaw clenched, he looked down at his folded hands before him.

- I understand why you didn't tell me then, especially now that we know someone had the hangar video. All those people who would have tried to kidnap you...

He clutched his hands together so tightly his knuckles were white.

His voice was hoarse.

- I completely understand why you didn't tell me, but it still hurts...

His eyes shone, and it wasn't because they were reflecting the moonlight.

- I've always done everything I could to protect you. I- I did my best to raise you, I did my best to support you whenever things weren't going well, I did everything I could to make you happy. I thought... I thought you trusted me, you know?

My eyes grew hot and my chin began to quiver in spite of myself.

- We could have... if you'd told me, we could have moved to Italy to live with your grandmother, where you could have been protected. If you'd told me, and someone had come for you, I wouldn't have hesitated for an instant to sacrifice myself if it meant you'd live.

Just imagining that he-

- I wouldn't have wanted you to die, I murmured. I don't want you to die

I'm doing all of this for you.

He smiled sadly.

- There isn't a more dignified death for a father

I turned my head to the side so he would not see my expression.

- Don't say that

I rubbed my burning eyes with my thumb.

My shoulders trembled in spite of myself, the corners of my mouth drooping as I couldn't calm down.

- We could have... so many things could have been different. You could have told me last spring, before you got into Yuei. You could have taken me aside and explained your reasons, why you hadn't told me until now. You could have... you've had so many opportunities...

I didn't want to look at him until I'd gotten back a cool expression, but I had the sensation I'd never be able to calm down enough to face him.

- The only reason I found out was because you didn't have a choice, not because you wanted me to know

I felt like dying inside because he was right.

- I didn't do it out of spite, I whispered hoarsely. Nor because I didn't trust you. It just... seemed like the right thing to do under the circumstances. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

- You were a child, he said in a low voice. You unlocked your Quirk before you were four. Its true nature must have revealed itself at, what, your sixith birthday ? You were six and you decided that I didn't deserve to know something that important. You were a child and you decided I wasn't worthy of your trust

I turned my head sharply towards him, deciding that my reddened eyes were worth less than the truth.

- Of course I trust you-

I fell silent, breathless.

His eyebrows were drawn low, his lips were tight, his eyes contained a sadness such that it broke my heart.

Never in my life had I seen him so hurt.

- And yet you kept it to yourself for eleven years

I couldn't deny it.

- I thought you and I were above all this. I thought you trusted me as much as I trust you

Looking him in the eye and seeing all the pain I'd caused him was the worst thing I'd ever had to do.

- Of course I trust you, I insisted, It's just that sometimes- sometimes-

Often I think of all the people who might come after you to get to me.

- Often I think of all those people and what they'd do to you to have me at their mercy, and I think... You know, there must be someone who can read your memories or make you say even the things you don't want to say. If you don't know anything, then there's less chance of someone coming after you and-

The chances aren't zero, but they're lesser, and less is the only thing I can afford that's as close to risk zero as I can get.

- It may not be very rational, I know...

Maybe no one would take it out on him, maybe I'd endangered our relationship for nothing, maybe I really was losing it...

But I still had the distinct sensation that the whole world was out to get me.

- I just want you to be well, Dad. And if you have to hate me for it, then...

My voice trailed off and I grew silent.

Chin raised defiantly, I stared out at the blurred city lights, fluttering my eyelashes to clear my vision, noisily clearing my throat to chase away the tremors.

Suddenly, I felt two arms around my shoulders.

I tensed for a second, my heart pounding.

Then the volcanic heat emanating from his body relaxed my muscles and I let myself go against him, wrapping my arms around his back.

- What made you think I hated you ?, he murmured, running his hand softly through my hair. I may have been distant for a while, but I've never hated you and I never will. You're my son. Nothing you can do will ever change that.

I nodded weakly, even though he couldn't see it.

- You know I love you more than anything, don't you ?

Of course I do.

- Yes, I murmured bashfuly, trying to hide the emotion in my voice

- Good

He held me tighter and I relaxed, my ear pressed against his chest, my breathing matching his heartbeat.

He smelled like a chimney fire in the middle of winter, his skin as hot as if someone had made a man out of the sun.

I felt as if the control of my life was slipping away from me, as if every move I made only pushed me deeper into the grave I'd dug for myself, as if every action I took only served to delay the inevitable, but I also knew that as long as he was there, everything would be all right.

- I'm sorry, I whispered breathlessly.

Sorry for dragging his name and honour through the mud, sorry for letting an intruder into our home, sorry for hurting his feelings.

He always looked so strong and in control that I often found it hard to remember that he was just a man navigating the world for the first time.

He was just a man, just a mortal like the rest of us, and I had put him on this divine pedestal that had stripped him of feelings and personality.

- It's behind us

I'd messed up, and yet he was the one consoling me.

He started to rub my back and I closed my eyes for a moment to rest.

The world was spinning out of my control, but right now he was the most stable thing in it.

- It's not your job to protect me, Shoto. Do what you want and let me deal with the consequences

He held me close until my vision stabilized and my hands stopped shaking.

Slowly, gently, he pulled away, his hands still on my shoulders.

His worried gaze searched mine as it had so many times before, and it did me good to see that nothing had changed between us.

- Feeling better ?

I lowered my mask and smiled.

- Yes. Thank you.

He smiled back, his face seeming to light up from within.

He gave me another quick, fierce hug, before letting me go.

- Teka told me there was something you had to do before you could tell me everything...

The reality of my problems suddenly hit me, but I felt I'd be better able to face them from now on.

- I'll be able to tell you everything soon, I just have to finish something first and then...

Then we can be like we used to be.

He squeezed my shoulder encouragingly.

- Take all the time you need : I'll be waiting.

I felt so grateful and unworthy and happy that he was my father.

He ran his hand over his face.

- It's been a long day, he murmured. I'm tired, I'll go home.

Then he gave me a sideways glance.

- Don't go to bed too late, you look like you can hardly stand up

- I'm not-

The stern look he gave me shut me up.

- Alright

I felt like a child, but this time it was a pleasant realization, different from the fear of not being enough - different from usual.

He let go of my shoulder, the ghost of his fingers still etched on my shirt.

He left as silently as he had come, and I watched the sun fade, feeling the coldness of a day without light sink its icy claws into my body.

Even frozen and alone, I hadn't felt this good in weeks.

*

Author's note :

Enji and Shoto finally start to mend things...

Such an awesome father/son duo.

If you want to support the story AND read up to 27 chapters ahead of schedule, go check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you tomorrow for the next update everyone !

 

[Nar_cisse]

Even though Katsuki was screwing up his life without even knowing it, he'd kept his end of the bargain by telling me everything that was going on in his little private study group.

I'd told him I'd help him become the next All Might ; it was time I did something about it.

- Is this where you practice ?

I whistled admiringly, hands in my pockets, strolling lazily.

Uraraka threw a right hook at Mirio, who suddenly crouched down to sweep her off her feet.

On the other side of the field, Katchan and Inaza were exchanging blows at high speed. Katsuki's nose was bleeding and Inaza was gritting his teeth as he struggled to stand on his right leg.

I stopped at the edge of the field next to All Might and followed the fight with feigned interest.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him watching me warily.

- I wondered where Katchan was disappearing to all the time : he's actually entitled to private lessons. I'm almost jealous.

I looked up at All Might.

His expression was blank.

- What are you doing here ?

He doesn't even hide how much he dislike me.

I continued my little game, pretending not to see the tension in his shoulders.

- I'd had enough of dormitories : I thought a tour of Yuei wouldn't be too bad to relieve boredom

All Might didn't buy my nonsense for a second :

- So your feet just happened to be walking in the right direction for almost four kilometers during our only training session of the day ?

My eyes were glued to the two duos.

- I could help them from time to time, I said with a nonchalant shrug. Practising with only the four of them will give them bad habits

The irony of my own words was not lost on me, having spent most of my life training with my clones.

I must have had a dozen bad habits that I wasn't capable of noticing myself, but which a real ninja would have had no trouble exploiting to kill me with the help of a nice kunai.

Yet in a world where people were as clumsy and awkward as newborn babies, I was a prodigy.

- I'll pass on the offer

- Don't be like that, sir, I said. It's almost as if you don't like me

He didn't even crack a smile.

- What do you want ?

I couldn't help but feel a tinge of respect spring up that he wasn't jumping into my schemes with both feet.

I straightened up abruptly and turned to face him, deciding to drop the act altogether :

- You know, All for One said something interesting when I confronted him at the Camp.

Arms folded, he didn't react. Praiseworthy.

- He told me about you and him and another woman before you. Nana, I think her name was ?

Jaw clenched, All Might kept his eyes on the fights, but his panicked expression betrayed his emotions.

- He spoke of a power, I continued. Something that could be transferred. He said he thought I had it. He asked if I was your successor.

All Might laughed curtly, his eyebrows raised in disdain, barely sparing me a glance.

- All for One has always been a liar, boy. I didn't think you'd be gullible enough to fall for his snake-like tongue, but obviously I was wrong

His tone irritated me.

- You at least owe me the truth after I got gutted for saving the others

- The only debt I ever owed your family was to your father, and I paid him by saving you from being forced into the army after the infamous video was leaked

I blinked at All Might.

He's not lying.

But dad never mentioned anything about that.

- Why did you owe him ?

- None of your business

I studied this All Might who wasn't really All Might in silence, trying to understand how he could be this calm, thoughtful, sharp man, and still be the giant blonde idiot who couldn't stop smiling.

All Might is a persona, just like Hawks is.

Suddenly it seemed easier to talk to him, knowing that I could appeal to his reason rather than his illogical and naive emotions.

- I know you don't trust me

He didn't deny it.

- And you're right. To tell you the truth, I don't trust myself most of the time too

He glanced at me doubtfully.

- If that's the case, I would strongly advise you to see a doctor

- I also know that you're treading on the last embers of your Quirk and that it's only a matter of time before All Might disappears

- Did All for One mention anything else during your, ah, gossip session ?

- No, I figured that out by myself after a bit of digging in the papers and all the stuff that has been written about you over the last ten years. Any hero with half a brain would have noticed that your time frame of activity has dropped drastically

He looked at me strangely.

Then, calmly, he asked :

- What do you want, Shoto ? Do you expect me to give you my Quirk ?

I was so taken aback by the remark that I burst out laughing incredulously, bordering on hysterically.

- I don't want your shitty power

Aside from the horror of having eight personalities coexisting in the jumble of my mind, I had enough trouble keeping myself alive to have my life expectancy drastically reduced in exchange for strands of chakra and black smoke.

All Might narrowed his eyes.

He was surprisingly calm for someone whose secret he spent his life protecting I had just revealed casually.

I wondered if, rather than having a cool personality, All Might wasn't taking it all in stride for he knew that this nameless mess would soon be someone else's problem.

- Are you also going to threaten to reveal that my power is transmissible if I don't do what you want ?

I tilted my head slightly to one side, unravelling All Might's sentence word by word.

'You too'...?

- It's a tempting idea, but I don't think I can get much out of a walking corpse

He sniffed, the shadow of a sardonic smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

- I'd like to know who you intend to choose as your successor

All Might looked at me disinterestedly.

- I don't see how that concerns you.

- It concerns me insofar as All for One is still on the streets and, until proven otherwise, he wants me dead : if you want to retire, fine, but choose someone who won't hesitate to kill him

Judging by his expression, he didn't like the last comment.

- It's one of these four you want to choose as your successor, isn't it ?

- Why are you so worried about who I'll choose ? Can't you beat All for One with your Quirk ?

All Might or the art of deflecting and eluding the conversation.

I choose to indulge him a little.

- I'm no hero, All Might. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it

- You're surprisingly lucid

He sounded genuinely surprised.

A few months ago the remark would have stung me, but since Nagano I'd decided to stop deceiving myself.

- But my father is one : I refuse to see him running around exhausted because your successor can't put an end to things when he needs to

- By 'put an end to things' do you mean 'kill'?

- If you'd killed All for One when you had the opportunity, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I wasn't more specific about the 'opportunity' I was referring to because I wasn't supposed to know about five years ago.

All Might's disillusioned smile turned bitter. I had clearly struck a nerve.

- Your successor must be competent and decisive, All Might. Because when I'm done with All for One, I don't intend to stick around to watch the resurgence of villains across the country

My plan was simple : I would kill All for One, convince my father that he could leave the future of the country in the hands of All Might's successor, take my father and get the hell out to Italy.

Stage two was the trickiest : if my father had the slightest doubt that the new All Might wasn't up to the job, he'd want to stay on - out of duty - and I refused to see him kill himself for people who had dragged his name through the mud.

- Do you think it will come to that ?

- Any change of power means more chaos

'Political instability is the root of all illnesses,' Teka used to tell me.

That was one of the reasons why she didn't try to run for political office in Italy.

On the other hand, I think she recently talked about running a member of our Familia for presidency...

- Until people have confidence in your successor, the country will be in turmoil...

He seemed to be considering the situation.

But his slowness to understand, the indecision in his eyes, the stillness of his features irritated me.

He was considering the situation, but he didn't understand.

I knew that All Might didn't like me, but it wasn't because I had killed people, not really : All Might didn't like me because he was afraid of who I was and what I might become.

So I decided to play on his fears.

- You know, deep down I kind of understand All for One

All Might looked stunned.

- I beg your pardon ?

I shot him a sideways glance, slightly irritated and more... conniving.

- I mean, all that power... When you've got the possibility of being on top of the world, I can understand why some people would do anything to seize the opportunity. The lure of pure, unadulterated freedom, no strings attached, is like the call of the void. Between you and me, All Might, can you really say you nerver thought about it ?

His eyebrows were so furrowed that wrinkles creased his forehead.

- He killed people

- Yes, of course, it's terrible, but I mean...

I searched for the right words, words that would ring true even to my ears, words that would convince All Might to find a successor capable of taking on All for One and the next one after him.

Because that's the way it always is, isn't it ? As soon as one hero falls, another takes his place. As soon as one villain falls, there's always someone worse to pick up the torch.

- What's the point of all this ?, I asked. I mean, we're born, we live, we die, and in between we spend our time suffering and enduring the undisciplined choices of people who have decided that their existence is more important than ours. To have the power to resist - to dominate - such people... that's freedom, isn't it ?

The words flowed freely from my mouth, pure and unfiltered.

- If I can't do what I want, if I can't live the way I want, then what's the point of me being born different ? Why do I have all these... all these abilities, all these capabilities that other people don't ? If I work from the principle that nothing has meaning, that everything is of equal value, then that means that those who inflict suffering and those who endure it are no more worthy than the other one. It means that suffering injustice doesn't make you a good person or a better person, it only makes you a victim. If a victim chooses to side with the executioners, the world doesn't stop spinning

My thoughts swirled in a refreshingly clear maelstrom of confusion.

I was an excellent liar, but even my brain couldn't slow the pace at which the truth was pouring out of my mouth.

- That would mean that killing and saving are of equal value, that there is no difference between the hand that strikes and the hand that is struck. So why shouldn't I, who was born with this power, be able to do as I please ? Why should I have to abide by a code of values and morals that others have no compunction ignoring ? Freedom... freedom means living my life as I choose. We are all born equal, but some are more equal than others. If others had the power, I know they would either try to subjugate me or destroy me. So why shouldn't I ?

I paused, confused, my eyebrows furrowed, unable to answer my own question.

Then the image of my father flashed through my mind, and I was relieved that I didn't have to answer.

I could continue to ignore my lack of morals, continue to follow the guidelines my father and Hawks had given me without thinking. Their rules were a safety net that kept me from falling into my own ways and consuming myself in my own madness.

I blinked, remembering where I was and who I was talking to, then looked up at All Might.

His eyebrows were two straight lines that shaded his gaze. His mouth was a thin, tight line, stridules parchmenting the tight corners of his lips.

His eyes were dark, polished like mirrors of obsidian. I could see myself reflected in their gaze, my distorted face seeming unnaturally malevolent.

I smiled and saw myself smiling in his eyes.

- I mean, I suppose that's how All for One must think

All Might looked at me with a mixture of apprehension, concern and fear, as if I were about to commit a war crime.

But I had his attention, and although his expression - as if I had already done the worst, as if I was already the worst - made me uncomfortable, I continued.

- Who knows, I said. Maybe one day I'll be the one facing the next All Might

All Might didn't answer.

I sent him a smile with crescent moon eyes, so fake that he should have had no trouble figuring it out.

He had to understand that All for One wouldn't be the last, that there would always be others, more dangerous, more vicious, and that he - we - couldn't afford for the next bearer of One for All to be merciful.

And if I had to hint at my intention to be the next All for One to make him really aware of the threat, well...

So be it.

*

Author's note :

So many stuff I want to say but I won't because I prefer to let those who will read the story a second time enjoy it in a different way.

Anyway, start of a very funny arc in a few chapters.

Hope you all are ready, I've been cooking some nice surprises.

If you want to support me, your nice, awesome, humble author, AND support the story in general AND read way ahead of schedule and see for yourself what I mean by 'nice surprises', then you definitely have to check the story's P@treon, Nar_cisseENG

See you monday for the next update everyone !