MHA : Shoto Todoroki - Modern-day Terrorist

For a week, it had been raining non stop in Tokyo.

Some parts of the city were flooded.

The sewers could no longer contain the excess rain and entire streets were filled with a mixture of waste, excrement, and dirty water. Whole neighborhoods had been preemptively evacuated. Some schools had been closed, and a couple of gymnasiums had been requisitioned to house the inhabitants in makeshift shelters.

Yaoba Mitarashi, a man in his forties wearing a black suit, watched the gray city roll behind the window of his car. Beyond the weather it was the heaviness in the streets, the darkness on people's faces that worried him.

Japan had been hit hard during the last year - Japanese people's trust in their officials was crumbling, crime was rising, and many teenagers who should've enrolled in Heroic schools didn't bother sending the paper.

He didn't need to get out of his luxury car to smell the stench of corruption and chaos spreading through the city.

On his lap rested heavily the last unresolved case he'd been assigned.

He was the fifth person in charge of the investigation and, like his predecessors before him, he'd failed.

He'd watched the surveillance footage of that infamous night and had, like so many others, been frozen to the bone as the boy released Sung Jin Woo's body, his red eyes looking straight into the camera as he did so, daring them to stop him.

What they most feared had happened.

The boy who'd killed All for One had snapped.

If – when, insisted the shrinks – he came back, nobody would be able to stop him.

In the eyes of the general public, the boy was acquitted for his "contribution to the capture of a dangerous criminal". There had been no murder, no special forces recruitment, no mental breakdown.

The one whose mere existence had almost sent Japan into civil war had fallen from the face of the earth.

People talked about him like they did an urban legend, voices hushed and eyes gleaming, mystified as though he'd never been human.

Yaoba felt that everyone was moving on too fast : solving the critical unemployment and finding a way to get tourists - as well as their own wealthy citizens who'd fled - back was more important than someone who couldn't be found if he didn't want to be found.

They'd forgotten the very tangible threat he posed to their country.

And worse: they still hadn't understood why he'd killed Sung Jin Woo.

There was no point in serving a man for four long months if you intended to kill him.

The car rolled on an uneven patch and Mitarashi hit his head against the window.

He bit his tongue and cursed, rubbing his head as he did so.

His wife was right, maybe it was time he found another job.

The car slowed down and he met the driver's eyes in the rear-view mirror.

"Another deviation, Mitarashi san", apologized the man.

The road ahead was blocked by security bands and police officers beckoning them to turn right. They had water up their ankles and were wearing large black parkas.

The car smoothly turned right, water whooshing behind the wheels.

It was late – if it hadn't been for the sudden emergency meeting from HQ...

Despite hiding under a blurry curtain, Tokyo was beautiful, thousands of lights glittering in the middle of the night.

They passed the police station and Yaoba noticed that their parking lot was flooded : none of their armored vehicles or untaken police cars would be available.

It truly was the perfect night for a crime, he thought dryly.

Yaoba relaxed against his seat, the heated seats unknotting his shoulders and back. He blinked, suddenly tired. The lights mixed with the rain, turning into indistinct and colorful shapes.

Suddenly someone knocked on the window.

Yaoba jolted awake.

His driver smiled at him from there, parka on his back and umbrella in hand, ready to open the door.

Yaoba brushed his hair, hoping it wouldn't be too messy, smoothed his clothes, put a trench, and hid his suitcase under his arm to protect it. It was fox leather damn it.

The icy cold bit his skin before he put a foot out.

"Thank you" he grumbled, grabbing the umbrella.

A hail of rain pushed diagonally by the wind splashed on his face.

"I'll wait for you in the car, sir"

"Don't. It may take a while", He hoped it wouldn't "Get home and I'll just call a t-"

Mitarashi's yellow eyes snapped to the left.

Slit like a serpent's, his pupils narrowed further.

He scrutinized, unblinking, the lamppost behind the driver.

"Mitarashi san?", asked the driver, confused, following his gaze

A handful of seconds passed during which the intensity of the investigator's gaze did not waver until, seeing nothing happen, his shoulders relaxed.

He sighed, put a hand on his face.

"I must be tired", Yaoba murmured before taking off his glasses and wiping them on his sleeve.

It would not be the first time that fatigue played tricks on him, Hawks' eyes or not.

"Oh, all right" the driver mumbled, still slightly surprised.

"As I was saying you can just go home, take your night. I'll grab a taxi"

If he finished before the end of the night.

They parted ways, Mitarashi sinking in his coat's collar to warm his icy nose.

As he zigzagged through the cars - and why were there so many people at this hour ? - he made sure not to walk in any puddle.

If he ruined another costume because of this damned weather...

He exhaled happily as the double doors slid open and a wave of warm air hit his face.

The sliding doors closed gently behind him, two red dots strained on him vanishing under the curtain of rain. 

He entrusted his umbrella to one of the security men.

"Mitarashi" called him his colleague Hayate. "To what do we the pleasure of this emergency meeting ?"

Yaoba frowned.

"What do you mean by-"

The doors slid open and Hayate stepped aside.

"Hayate, Mitarashi, you're both here" exclaimed a man as he entered the lobby. "I'm glad I wasn't the only one late"

Both men stood ramrod straight.

The second security man ran to grab his umbrella.

"Thank you", said Nishimura. His two subordinates bowed deeply ; he shook his hand and clicked his tongue. "No time for that; let's go to the meeting room"

They took the elevator straight to the second floor.

Hayate and Nishimura were too nervous to chat with their boss there: even though he was younger than them both, freshly forty, Ryota Nishimura had emerged as the only viable choice after the abrupt resignation of President Pantu.

Yaoba decided to address what had been bothering him for a while : he didn't know when he'd get the opportunity to see his boss again, considering how busy the man was.

"Sir about the case you put me on..."

Nishimura was tapping on his phone furiously, mouth pursed.

"Damn network" he muttered, putting the device in his pocket.

He looked up at Yaoba.

"Yes, detective Mitarashi ? Did you find anything new ?"

Yaoba was embarrassed to admit so clearly his failure.

"No, not really, but something disturbs me..." Nishimura looked away, his interest fading. Yaoba felt obliged to add hastily : "I thought it was good to ask Yuei's principal for his opinion on the psychological portrait made of Shoto Todoroki, as I found it rather incomplete, and what he told me was rather... disturbing"

Nishimura hummed noncommitaly. 

"Thus", Yaoba resumed trying to catch the President's eye, "According to him, Shoto Todoroki does nothing by chance. If he attacked Sung, he had a specific reason for doing so ; if we could understand what drove him to act, we might know what he will do next"

"He could have killed himself, too, couldn't he ?"

This was the theory that most of his predecessors who'd worked on the case had believed.

"This seems unlikely, President. Most of our experts agree that he sees suicide as cowardice"

The doors of the elevator opened.

"You'll tell me all about it on Monday", Nishimura cut him as he strolled out.

"Of course" Mitarashi murmured.

His colleague shot him a sorry look and scampered after their boss. Mitarashi's shoulders sagged. He sighed discreetly.

"What the hell is happening ?", loudly asked the President.

The headquarters looked like a buzzing hive. More than fifty people were running around, files piled up in their arms. It was too late for so many people to still be there.

It looked as though their whole department had been called back urgently.

"Sir !", a young woman nearly hit Nishimura head-on. "It seems that we have a black code – the Prime Minister was allegedly attacked at his home by individuals who used their Quirks. I've just arrived and I have yet to have anyone on site able to give me more details but-"

"President !", said somebody else. "We've got a problem with our internal circuit. We had to call back the technical service in urgency: many of our classified files have been lost"

"President Nishimura, we were only waiting for you to start the emergency meeting. Squad one and two are geared up. What are your instructions ?"

That caught his attention.

"My instructions ?" he frowned. "The emergency meeting was called by Hayate"

Said man turned white.

"I did no such thing. The alert came from Mitarashi"

"How can it be ? Barely half an hour ago I received a notification from President Nishimura summoning an emergency meeting"

They exchanged confused glances.

"Let's rewind a bit," said Nishimura. "If I didn't call for an emergency meeting and neither of you did, then who ?"

And it was at this precise instant that the first screams echoed through the building.

*

His left hand was shaking atrociously, his fingers folding and unfolding frantically.

"Pace yourself"

Shoto closed his eyes briefly, breathing deeply in and out.

He was crouching on a lamppost facing the Heroic Commission's HQ, moonlight shining diagonally across his hair, his face in the dark.

He was clad in black, sheathed sword on his back, pouches filled to the brim with knives, ink staining his fingertips.

His eyes snapped open.

They were blood red, burning coals glowing ominously.

It was pouring.

You couldn't see further than a meter.

Shoto's hair stuck to his skin, raindrops running down his face and settling on his eyelashes. He blinked them away. 

All his attention was focused on the last cars hastily parked and the employees rushing back to their offices.

…347, 348, 349.

Everyone had finally arrived.

The tremors in his left hand resumed with renewed vigor.

He would've used a cigarette right about now.

"Pace yourself," repeated his father.

Shoto cocked his head towards him, drawing strength from his voice, regretting the times when he drew warmth from him too for this one didn't feel like the sun and now Shoto would forever be cold.

He raised his right hand, palm turned to the sky as if silently praying.

The rain intensified, the wind grew stronger. For a moment, nothing else happened.

And suddenly, lightning tore through the sky.

A massive white streak against a black background burst with the force of a bomb, momentarily illuminating the surroundings for several hundred meters so that one might think it was daylight.

In the blink of an eye, the business district went from relatively lit to fully illuminated, then plunged into complete darkness.

The electrical installations had blown up in a roar of crackling electricity.

Shoto bent forward, lightning focusing beneath his feet, yellow arcs crackling around him. His genjutsu broke under the power of the jutsu, revealing his dark silhouette haloed by lightning.

He propelled himself forward and disappeared in a flash of light ; in his wake the streetlight exploded in a glass and dust shower. The wind whistled sharply.

Inside the Commission's HQ, one of the security guards groaned as the lights went out.

"Again ? It's the third time this week," he grumbled, fumbling in the dark to find his keys.

Procedure would have them evacuate everybody, but it had happened so often this week they didn't bother to.

"Got the keys," replied his colleague, flashlight in hand. "I'm going to check the-"

There was a yellow flash, the sound of metal clicking.

Something heavy fell on the ground.

The security guard blinked.

From the outline, it looked like a fallen bag of potatoes. Right next to it was a tall man, way taller than his colleague.

The security guy licked his dry lips with a dry tongue, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple.

If the moonlight hadn't been lighting up his figure, he wouldn't have noticed him, for the man was as still as a statue, blood dripping from the tip of a sword and on what he now knew to be the body of his colleague.

He held his breath as he quietly retreated, hand fumbling under the entrance's desk until it bumped on a small button.

It clicked loudly as he pressed it.

For a fraction of a second, the guard's heart stopped.

The intruder didn't move - the guard stifled a sigh of relief. The police and the Heroes would be here soon ; it was only a matter of time-

"Took you long enough."

Bloody eyes snapped to his.

They were two bright dots in a face shrouded in darkness, pits of malevolence that glowed as bright as a flashlight.

The guard moved back as the intruder stalked forward, looming like a snake playing with its food.

The guard's hands lit up yellow as he said:

"I've got a wife and ki-"

His head rolled on the ground, cleanly chopped, one lone tear falling from his eye, blinked away by a last automatic contraction of his eyelids, before his eyes were glazed.

Shoto cocked his head to the side.

It was a clean job, no blood had sprayed on the wall.

His father appeared next to him, quiet, an ethereal being through which shone the moonlight.

"A few at ground level," he said, looking at the ceiling. "Most are upstairs."

Shoto opened wide the double doors leading to the maze of corridors.

Fire flickered on his cheekbones, red reflected in his eyes, turning a scorching blue.

He raised his hand, palm open towards the vast emptiness.

"LEVEL FOUR ALERT ! LEVEL FOUR ALERT !"

The screams were the first thing they heard ; the alarm rang and they winced.

Then came the smell of burnt flesh.

The red neon lights bathed the entire three floors in a semi-nightmarish glow : panicked, many tried to break the bulletproof windows or reach the emergency stairs.

Iron lids fell on every door and window, trapping them all inside, pigs to be slaughtered.

"It's the Knox configuration," whimpered one of the employees, pulling at his face as if to tear off his skin, his nails digging half-moons into his cheekbones. "We're trapped!"

President Nishimura swirled, frowning, screaming at everyone to calm the hell down.

Mitarashi was being pushed around and stuck to the wall, heart thundering. Chances were that he'd be trampled to death before he could even smell the smoke.

The giant screen perched on the wall in the middle of the corridor flickered to life.

The image went from black to a library full of books.

The camera moved, the screen trembling then stopped on a desk.

Mitarashi was slack-jawed.

Most people stopped running, a few that hadn't noticed what was going on bumping into others.

A woman brought her hands to her mouth to stifle a shrill scream.

On the desk lay a human eyeball and a finger – a thumb, to be precise – bloody, freshly torn from a body.

Simultaneously was the most awful, blood-curdling scream Mitarashi had ever heard. He flinched and held onto the wall for dear life, knees nearly buckling under him for he'd just had the scare of his life.

Kneeling on the ground, one hand on his face, vomiting blood, was President Nishimura.

People screamed and steered clear of him as if he had cholera, scrambling and pushing each other to get away faster.

Mitarashi fell to his knees and crawled to reach his superior, getting a knee to the chin as he did so, his teeth snapping on his tongue, blood filling his mouth.

As if he'd heard them,a hand on the screen nonchalantly grabbed the eye and played with it.

Then came an eerie voice, low and calm:

"Can you guess whose they are?"

Nishimura looked at Mitarashi right as the man was pressing the eye between his fingers, a wet 'squish' resounding through all the building's speakers.

Nishimura's right eye was bulging as though it would pop out any second, bursting blood vessels running around the pupil, whereas the second eye socket was a gaping hole from which blood flowed.

He held his face with four fingers, his thumb cut at the base, threads of flesh sticking to his cheek.

A gloved hand passed in front of the camera, turning it towards someone they all knew.

Someone fell on their ass.

"No, no, no no no."

Someone started screaming and someone else joined, and suddenly everyone was, a choir of terrified children in the skin of adults.

One was standing limply next to Mitarashi and Nishimura, morbidly hypnotized by the blood dripping down his face.

Hayate took off his jacket to press it to the President's face but Nishimura hissed in pain and moved his head back, rejecting his help.

A woman was sobbing wildly in a corner.

Nishimura wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

Someone was screaming bloody murder at his phone, frantically typing and devouring his nails as he waited for somebody to pick up at the other end, but it fell short every time.

Nobody was in charge, there were no directives : the corridors were full of milling people, headless chickens curling on the ground and calling their moms.

On the TV Shoto calmly took off his mask, folded it neatly, and put it down next to the severed thumb.

The air behind him looked like it was shimmering.

"As I'm a good person," his lips quirked up but there was no joy in his eyes, making the resulting expression worrying, "I'll offer you one chance of escaping."

They all looked up, breathless. Hope swelled their hearts and tightened their throats.

"There's an open window on the third level that you can use to get out. As there are only..." He cocked his head to the side as though listening to somebody else whispering in his ear, "… 331 of you left, I trust you'll be civilized to walk in an orderly fashion and get out safely, won't you?"

He snorted mockingly.

The screen turned black.

The first screams came from the offices furthest from the stairs.

A woman with a broken heel burst into the long corridor, stumbling like a newborn fawn, arms flailing wildly, wet mascara dripping on her cheeks.

From the room she'd come from there were two consecutive crashes.

A bloody hand jolted out of it, gripping the corridor's carpet and holding on for dear life, muscles straining under the skin.

There was a high-pitched scream, another collision, and the hand went limp.

A figure calmly walked out of this office, a heel smashing the fingers intertwined with the carpet's gray threads.

Shoto stopped in the middle of the corridor, blood dripping from his blade, looking them in the eye one by one.

"Run."

Everyone scrambled for dear life.

People pushed each other, walked on each other, tried to get ahead, forgetting everything about year-long friends and colleagues.

Mitarashi, eyes never leaving Shoto's figure, stumbled to his feet and dragged the President with him.

"We need to get out."

Hayate was trying to tear a way for them in the overflowing staircase.

There were two staircases, and this one was the closest to the corridors.

"The other one," Hayate said, grabbing Mitarashi's shoulder. "Come, we need to get to the other one."

The Commission's President was leaking blood like a faulty gas tank.

Shoto watched them leave and got to the first staircase.

His blade cut through people like butter.

They fell like freshly cut grass, some missing half of the face, others half of the torso, blood spraying in wide half-circles on the walls.

The unluckiest lost an arm or a leg and stayed conscious long enough, screeching hysterically as they saw the merciless second blow come.

Shoto looked up towards the top of the stairs.

It was cramped up until the next floor.

Blue fire flickered on his skin and suddenly he was ablaze, lit up like a human torch.

Th fire's dancing glow reflected in his eyes.

A chorus of agonizing screams and cooking flesh made everybody run faster.

Fear fueled Mitarashi and Hayate as they dragged the President faster refusing to look back.

The bluish light lit up enough of the place that they could see where they were going and what they shouldn't walk on.

The ground was littered with bodies, some who were faking death and others who'd been trampled to death, one still alive and wheezing, eyes glassy, mouth half open.

This staircase wasn't as crowded as the other one: people were trickling to the top.

Mitarashi shot a nervous glance over his shoulder.

The murderer was stalking them, taking his sweet time to do so, his sword brushing tenderly fallen bodies' cheeks, sometimes plunging deep into eye or mouth, people contorting from pain and terror then crashed, defeated, boneless bags of meat.

People in the staircase pushed harder those at the front. Suddenly there was a breakthrough, and everybody moved forward as if they were one, nearly falling on each other.

Shoto stilled, surveying their agonizing faces, smelling their terror, delighting in their helplessness.

Mitarashi pushed harder, eyes round and big, two marbles that looked like they would pop from his face like a bottle's cork and roll comically to the murderer's shoes.

Shoto looked to the left.

He walked to a small, half-closed room, and pushed it open with the tip of his shoe.

A young man was hidden in a corner, holding a broom close to his chest, wearing a gray uniform that strongly smelt of detergent.

"I swear I did nothing!" he shouted quickly and desperately. "I'm just the guy who cleans, see ? Please don't come, please… No, please, I-I've only been here for a week. I lied about my age, I'm not even twenty, I've done nothing seen nobody been no one please you can't kill me when I haven't even lived and I-," he choked on his words whereas Shoto's sword rose, "My father needs me. He's sick and we needed the money and without me he'll certainly…"

Shoto paused briefly – almost imperceptible, as if he'd wanted to raise his blade higher but abruptly stopped, hesitating on the next step.

The young man noticed and jumped on the opportunity, hope painfully swelling his throat.

"Please," begged the boy. "He's got no one else. If- if I'm not here for him he'll- he'll certainly-"

His head fell into a half-full wash bucket, his lips still mouthing the words as the head rode the waves the fall had made, up and down, up and down.

"That's on you," Shoto said, turning around and cracking his neck. "Should've been faster."

Flames danced in the hollow of his palm, licking his fingers almost affectionately.

He knew he was growing partial to fire-based attacks yet he couldn't help it ; it was the only thing that made him feel the tiniest bit of warmth.

He mixed chakra with it and it burst from his palm, a continuous tidal wave which spread everywhere and devoured everything.

It was hell on earth.

Nothing was left.

Confidential documents, desks, bodies, everything was gobbled.

The smell of singed hair and burnt flesh – like overcooked pork – filled his nose.

People he'd forgotten to finish were clinging to the walls for dear life, heads turned towards the ceiling, trying to crawl on the vertical surface with the indomitable will of the condemned to death, hands and arms and legs missing, fire eating at bodies they desperately tried to detach themselves from.

The dead and the soon-to-be, painfully wriggling on the floor, were reflected in Shoto's eyes.

He stayed until there was no one else, their screams filling his head until he had no more space for thinking.

Slowly, Shoto sheathed his sword. His eyes turned towards the stairs leading to the upper floors.

He could hear the hurried footsteps, the fearful whispers, the hushed conversations.

The heat was rising quickly : the metal railing was a sick red, as if iron battered in a forge, promising burns and worse for anyone who'd touch it.

Upstairs, Nishimura and Hayate were running among a flock of other people.

They heard screams, felt the fire, tasted the bloody smoke.

They tried to find an exit.

Carrying the President around was hard : Nishimura was sweating under the added weight, yet he pushed on. Hayate was among those who kicked the office doors open, eyes running across the closed windows, cursing and running to the next one.

It was getting too hot.

Smoke was gathering at head level and they had to duck to avoid breathing it. He was feeling dizzy.

The ground was so hot their shoes were nearly burning, yet yanking them off would've been worse.

Every couple of seconds somebody let out a gut-wrenching scream, and each time it was that much closer than the previous one.

He was getting closer.

When they tried looking over their shoulders, all they could spot was a sliced body falling or a door closing but not him, never him.

The air was so saturated with blood they could taste it.

"There ! The exit's there !"

An emergency staircase led from this window to the garden. Those at the front ran down like madmen, some even jumping full sets of stairs, falling, and getting back up to do it more quickly.

Mitarashi gave Hayate the President and got out through the window.

The rain was as much a relief as a pain for their scorching skin.

They pushed each other as they ran down, trying to get out faster.

A couple fell on their knees when they reached the relief of the ground.

Nishimura let the President go, catching his breath as he did so.

He looked around. There were barely twenty people here. A few were still getting down, but it wasn't much.

That's when they spotted him, standing proudly a few meters from them, face bare for the whole world to see.

Despite having the strong features of a man, something about him was painfully young, which made the blood splashed across his clothes all the more uncanny.

Nobody dared to run.

"You said we'd be free !," dared to scream somebody, though his voice was rickety. "You said if we'd got out we- we-"

Shoto unsheathed his sword.

"I'm a liar," he said dryly. "What a surprise."

The burning building's lights flashed on the cold blade.

Next second everybody was on the ground, Achilles tendon sliced cleanly, unable to crawl, wailing like animals.

Shoto grabbed Nishimura's hair and yanked his head up, forcing him to watch his agonizing subordinates. The fire's lights shone on Nishimura's face, red and yellow dancing on his dirtied cheeks.

"Look at them," he said. "Look at what you've done. Those are the consequences of your actions."

"Whatever I've done," Nishimura croaked. "It wasn't on purpose. I didn't-"

Shoto bashed his head on the floor until the grass turned red.

"Say it was a mistake," whispered Shoto threateningly, scowling. "Say you regret it."

"I do not know-"

Nishimura's head hit the ground so hard he saw stars, yet it wasn't strong enough to slide towards unconsciousness.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Not enough."

Shoto grabbed the closest person – a woman – and forced her to look up. Tears and snot were mingling on her face.

"Beg him to save your life."

"Please!" she screamed, her shin wobbly. "Please save me, President ! I don't want to die, please!"

Nishimura's heart sank and tightened simultaneously.

"What do I need to do ?" he begged.

"Say you're sorry."

His left eyebrow twitched – he didn't understand what was going on – but he screamed it with everything he had left.

"I'm sorry," he said, cradling his wounded hand close to his chest as though it were a baby. "I'm-"

Shoto chopped her head off.

"Not quick enough."

Guttural moans escaped a man further behind. Someone else made a strangled scream, a sound between an animal giving birth and a calf being slaughtered.

The woman's body fell on its back.

Her head dangled from Shoto's hand as though it were a trash bag, blown by the wind, swaying to the side until Nishimura could only see one half of her face, a sole, bulging eye mirroring his, and a mouth which, from this angle, looked like it was grinning.

He threw up.

Shoto put the woman's head on her stomach, face facing Nishimura's.

He went to the next person, gripped their hair, and yanked them up until they kneeled.

"Beg."

"I'm sorry!" the man screamed, confused and panicked, as Nishimura, bits of vomit flying from his lips, said, "I didn't mean to do it!"

"I've got my nephew to take care of," said the other one, tears free-falling. "My mom's old and she can't remember much, she lives alone, I bring her groceries on Sundays and Fridays I eat at the bar with old friends from high school, I'm not- I've always wanted to marry but I never found anyone, please please don't kill me, I-"

Off went the head.

"Did you forget what you were supposed to say?" Shoto asked Nishimura.

Suddenly he realized that whatever the reason was for this murder spree, no amount of begging would stop this madman from finishing what he'd started.

Yet each time Shoto grabbed another of his subordinates – people he only knew by sight, went to their kid's birthday party, or shared a drink when there was a late night at work here and then – Nishimura screamed harder, begging with everything he had, his throat hurting but his voice never falling short.

"Not sincere enough."

"Not loud enough."

And off went the heads, rolling one after the other, until Nishimura was standing alone in a field of bodies, his colleagues' faces accusing, blood dripping from their still warm necks and down the stomachs they lay on.

Shoto brushed away hair strands that had fallen on his forehead.

"Look at what you've done," he said. "Look !"

He forced Nishimura to watch, forcefully opened his remaining eye by pinching the lid.

"You made me do it."

"I'm sorry," cried Nishimura. "I'm sorry."

"Being sorry won't bring him back," Shoto spat out, wild-eyed, veins throbbing on his forehead and the side of his face. He bashed Nishimura's head into the ground once, twice. "Being sorry won't change the fact that your inaction killed him."

"I'm sorry," Nishimura slurred, vision blurry, though he still didn't know what he was apologizing for. "I'm sorry, I should've done better, I'm sorry."

Shoto bashed his head into the ground until Nishimura's forehead cracked.

"You thought you could use me, didn't you ?" Shoto snarled, teeth bared, and he looked more animal than man. "You thought you'd get me to do the dirty work for you and get away with it ?"

Blood spurted from between Nishimura's brows.

"I bet you laughed when you heard I killed All for One."

Smash.

"I bet you all patted each other's back and said well done, the brat did the shitty job better than he would've if we'd asked."

Smash.

"You don't get to rejoice whereas I live in a fucking nightmare."

Smash.

"It won't end that way. I refuse. The only way I'll be satisfied is when I exterminate you."

When Shoto's anger-filled vision focused, he noticed he'd bashed Nishimura's nose in. His face was flat.

Shoto looked at it for a while.

Then he plopped down on his ass, took out a kunai, and cleanly chopped Nishimura's head.

He lit up a cigarette, cross-legged on the ground, the head facing the sky on his thighs, while absentmindedly stroking the long white hair. It was quite smooth.

His ash fell on the tongue lolling from the open mouth, rolling down backward and disappearing down Nishimura's throat.

Shoto smoked slowly, thoughtfully, vacant gaze roaming over the sea of chopped heads. Rings of smoke rose from his lips.

He checked his watch.

Any second now.

He looked to his left and there was his father, sitting on the ground too, arms on his knees, yet facing the opposite way, his back to the massacre, eyes riveted on the small garden ahead where people used to take their lunch during summer.

Shoto was bathing in light, the burning building's dancing lights flickering on his face, Enji cloaked by the night.

"Are you satisfied ?" Shoto asked.

"Are you ?"

The cigarette's tip was a glowing coal, yet Shoto's eyes were two shades brighter, shining ruby in a too-pale face.

"I think I'm insane."

Enji snorted, his face distorting in a mean and mocking expression that was too much Shoto's to be Enji's.

"You definitely are if you can see me."

Steps on the grass. A stop. A moment passed. Hesitation, running.

Neither Shoto nor Enji bothered to turn their heads.

They could sense him – they'd sensed him long before he'd even reached this street.

"What have you done?"

Viscera, pieces of arms torn off, bodies without heads- "Shoto, what have you done?" There was blood on the floor, blood dripping from the building's walls as though it were alive-

"What have I done?"

Shoto was sitting cross-legged on the grass, his cold, lifeless eyes piercing through him. He was bathed in blood from head to toe, and Aizawa knew better than to ask if it was his own.

"The right question to ask would be: 'what did they do to me?' "

Aizawa knew. Of course, he knew. Everyone in the secret knew. But such a massacre...

"Don't you think you've gone too far? Don't you think-"

Shoto laughed.

Aizawa shuddered, the hairs on his neck bristling. He had known Shoto since childhood, but he had never once heard him laugh.

"Why are you surprised? You told me yourself that I am not a hero."

Aizawa looked down, unable to hold his gaze any longer.

"I think it hurt my ego a little bit at the time. But you were right, weren't you?"

Shoto raised his hands in a theatrical gesture, pointing to the lifeless bodies spread like dead flowers around him, a ribbon of smoke following his gesture.

"All of this... all of this is me."

Aizawa was afraid of what it meant.

He licked his dry lips, clutching the hem of his windbreaker with shaking fingers.

He shouldn't even be here.

"So that's what you've become? Someone who destroys without caring about the cost? Someone who only does what he wants to do?"

Shoto's face darkened.

There was a storm brewing in his eyes, a kind of madness that was only waiting for the right moment to be unleashed onto the world.

"I've always been selfish, we both know that. It's just that, for a short time, I thought..."

He fell silent, unable to continue.

His eyes became glassy as if he were looking at something far away that he could never hope to reach again.

And then anger distorted his face. The corners of his mouth dropped, his features became as hard as stone.

Burning eyes locked with Aizawa's.

"You know very well what I'll say, Aizawa-sensei."

Shoto stood up.

Aizawa froze, horrified, his eyes never leaving the thing that had just rolled off his thighs and landed in a pool of blood.

It was a human head.

"You- and all those among you who knew."

Shoto leaned over Aizawa's shoulder, his warm breath brushing his ear.

Aizawa watched him out of the corner of his eye. A drop of sweat rolled down his temple as the eyes spun, red spreading from the iris like ink, the three black commas spinning lazily.

"You are next."