Monochromatic Ideals
Episode 10- jailbreak
Today was the day. The day he would finally leave this place.
One way or another, at least.
"I could do it today. Tomorrow works, too... any day, really. I'm in no rush." These were the thoughts running through Hikari's head as he did his daily amount of push-ups in his poorly-lit isolation cell that was mandated by his own desire to keep himself fit for the day he actually decided to go through with this. "But... I really want to do this as soon as possible. So I guess we're doing this today."
He'd about reached the limits he could train his Quirk using a cheap lamp all these years. That and having spent so much time storing light for breaking out. So, with having finally reached maximum confidence in his ability to escape prison, he'd decided it was about time for absolutely no better reason than "now works as good as any other time".
Letting a heavy breath out, he stood up to his feet and made his way over to the cell's door. He stopped right in front of it, and banged his fist on it three times. He was barely able to hear the footsteps approach it from the outside.
"What is it?" A squeaky, nervous-sounding voice asked from the other side of the door.
Hikari had to suppress a groan. "Ah man, Shinji's working today? I kind of like him."
The roster of guards that worked at the prison was fairly large, and like any other decent institution the shifts and postings were rotated regularly based on who was working what day and what time it was. Hikari'd seldom had any conversations with any of the guards. Not many people wanted to talk to a psychopathic, Quirk-using parent-killer. Shinji was the one exception. The most mild guard in the whole prison, really, and the one Hikari had talked to the most.
"Hey, Shinji," Hikari greeted. "How, uh, how long I been here? Approximately speaking?"
"T-ten years, give or take," the man on the other side of the door answered.
"Mm. Yeah, ten years. And how long we known each other, Shinji?"
There was some muffled shuffling on the other side of the door. "I-I-I mean we talk... I wanna say twice a year? On average?" he said. "Hikari, I'm really not supposed to converse with the isolation prisoners, so if you're asking I do it more often-"
"Nah. Nah. I mean, that would be nice, but we're a little late for something like that." Hikari began to curl his fingers in an out. A ball of pure, white light began to shine from his hand. "Look. I just wanted to say I appreciated the... very little company you've given me over the years. It was practically nothing, but hey, it's the thought that counts. You're not too bad, Shinji."
"Uh... thanks?"
"Mm." The ball of light was about the size of a softball. "You think they'll ever let me out of here, Shinji?" Hikari asked. "Out of prison? Or is what I did just that bad?"
"You'll probably get a retrial when you're officially an adult," the guard said, "but, well... you killed your parents, Hikari. With your Quirk. And one was a hero. I don't think-"
"Yeah, me neither," Hikari interrupted. "So I guess there's nothing else to say about that. We could argue the semantics of locking up a child for life for something they did, but that wouldn't change anything. I'm a teenager now and I'm still in the same room they shoved me in ten years ago." He held his arm out. "So do me a favor and move really far to the left. Or right. Just- just move away from the general vicinity of the door."
There was a moment's pause. "Why?" Shinji hesitantly asked.
"Eh, never liked being locked up. Finally doing something about it." The entire interior of the cell was becoming heavily lit by the ball of light. "Seriously though, you're probably gonna be vaporized if you don't move."
The high-pitched scream followed by the sound of retreating footsteps was the only prompt Hikari needed to proceed. So he aimed the ball of light at the door and let it loose.
If one were to describe what it was that had interrupted what was otherwise a calm, slightly cloudy morning, they would be hard pressed to describe exactly what it was that had shot up into the sky. The best description for it was light. A great, white pillar of light that shot up from the ground and reached up past the very sky itself. The beam itself was so blinding that it had stunned any nearby citizens who had looked directly at it, and the heat and force it produced was so tense that it scattered away any clouds that were even near the light pillar.
And then it slowly thinned out until it ceased to be. The only tangible pieces of evidence that showed the pillar of light even existed were two things: the scattered clouds, and the fact that the prison where the beam had originated from now had a large gash running through its ceiling.
Inside the prison itself was absolute pandemonium. Alarms were blaring off overhead, debris from the destroyed ceiling was falling all around, and guards were running around screaming orders while the prisoners in their cells were pressed against the bars to see what all the commotion was about. And where Hikari's cell had been, the part of the prison that housed the isolation cells, the situation was the worse. The wing of the prison was practically unrecognizable from how much was destroyed.
As far as Hikari's actual cell was concerned, it didn't exist any more. It was little more than a hollow piece of crumbling concrete and slag that wasn't even visible from the amount of smoke pouring out of it. And then came the sound of coughing. A white-haired form stumbled out from the smoke and destruction, coughing heavily as they shook their hands and leaned on what was left of a wall to support themselves.
"Ack- agh, ah man. I've never done that before. That sucked." Hikari fixed his red eyes down at his hands. They were slightly red, cooked from the large beam he'd used to break out from his cell. "Oh yeah, I overdid it," he grunted to himself as he pushed off the wall. "Alright, Hikari- alright. Just gotta... just gotta get out of here now..."
In his defense, he didn't know the upper limits of his own Quirk. How could he with the conditions he'd been practicing in? He'd spent so much time, weeks even, gathering light from that one lamp without knowing the upper limits of how intensely he could shunt out gathered light. Because of this, combined with the fact he had never exerted his own Quirk this heavily before in his life, he had accidentally damaged himself along with the entire prison.
Regardless, he pressed on. He staggered away from his cell, intending to go the opposite direction of the location he had been held captive for so long. His plan was simple in that as long as he maintained that direction, he'd eventually make his way out of the prison provided he maintained a straight course.
"Hey! Hey, you!" Hikari tilted his head to the side. A prison guard with a club in his hand was running straight towards Hikari, face red with steam coming out from his ears. Either it was a Quirk or he was just that mad.
When he was within distance, Hikari punched him right in the face. A good, solid punch that snapped his head backwards and carried enough force to send his body flying back and to embed it into the concrete wall behind him.
Blinking in surprise, Hikari looked down at his red, throbbing hand. He'd barely even felt that. "Thanks, mom," he mumbled as he continued to press onward.
He'd managed to stagger his way into one of the main prison wings. Prisoners were making a ruckus in all their cells, and some had even escaped due to the damage Hikari had done spreading to their cells and releasing them.
A shadow fell over him. He looked up just in time to see a guard right behind him, a taser in his hand ready to be shoved down onto Hikari's neck.
He never made it that far. The guard's body seized up, gasping out in pain as white, wispy air escaped from his mouth. Hikari watched as frost built up along his entire whitening, shriveling body before darkening into an almost blue color. He then promptly shattered into an unrecognizable pile of dust.
Hikari looked down at the pile of dust, and then looked up. There was a man with a pale, outstretched hand that had been standing behind the guard. A young man with dark, flowing blue hair who only looked a few years older than Hikari himself. The orange jumpsuit he had on made it obvious he was a prisoner, the same as Hikari.
"You gotta watch your back, man. Guards love kickin' the shit outta us prisoners on quiet days. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of us get beaten to death 'cause of this," the prisoner said, chilled air escaping his blue lips as he batted his light-blue eyes at Hikari. "What happened here, anyways? Haven't ever seen a party this crazy here."
The pale man was interrupted by shouts from the other end of the wing. A four-man group of guards was running right at them, clubs and tasers in hand. Hikari's response was to raise a single hand.
"Middle of the day with a destroyed ceiling... all this sunlight spilling in here..." he thought as points of white light began to appear high over his shoulders. "I feel like I could keep going forever with all this light for me to use."
Eight small, pencil-sized beams if white light shot out from the points over Hikari's shoulders. They each found themselves going into the knee of one of the guards, all four toppling over and shouting in pain as their pants began to smolder.
"Hah ha ha!" The pale prisoner, with a manic look in his eyes, ran a hand through his hair. "Holy shit, man, I recognize those beams. You the one that cut up the whole prison!?"
"Yeah," Hikari answered. "I really wanna leave."
The prisoner barked another laugh out. "I can understand that. Well, since you were so kind to do this..." He turned around and walked towards the nearest wall. Immediately, he placed his hand on it. "Wanna help out a bit more?"
From the point the man had placed his hand, the off-white wall began to whiten brightly as cracks and ice spread over from that spot to the entire wall. In seconds, the entire segment of the prison was frozen over.
"My Quirk's Diamond Dust. Lets me instantly freeze anything I touch to near absolute-zero temperatures," he explained. "Shoot the wall so we can escape, wouldja?"
Hikari obliged. A thick laser of light came out from his palm, hitting the frozen section of wall. It crumbled to frozen dust the instant it made contact.
The two exited through the hole the second it was created. They had run a fair distance away from the prison, with the pair eventually closing the distance between them and a large fence that surrounded the whole complex. Beams of light made by Hikari made short work of it.
Panting, the two escaped prisoners looked back at the prison. It was obvious from the many guards swarming around and the few resisting prisoners that the situation was nowhere near contained. It seemed, however, that nobody was coming directly after them.
"Hah... hah... alright, cool," the ice-user muttered as he and Hikari turned around. There wasn't much to see around the prison other than the thick forest that surrounded it. "Five miles that way is the nearest city-" he pointed towards the woods, "- and the first you're gonna wanna do is lose those orange threads and get something to cover your face as soon as possible. They're scary fast with escaped prisoner response times. You'll have heroes breathing down your neck before you'll be able to do anything else. You're on your own after that."
"You're not coming with me?" Hikari asked. More of a genuine question than a legitimate request for him to stay with the white-haired teen. He didn't know how to feel around somebody who casually froze another person to death, but whatever he felt wasn't a good feeling.
"Nah. Got my own stuff to do." The ice-user waved him off. "Go on, scram. Guards'll see us if we hang around here too long."
Hikari didn't need any other words of convincing, especially from a villain. Or whatever one would call somebody that would freeze a prison guard to death. The only thoughts on Hikari's mind was leaving this place as quickly as possible.
A shining film of white light began to envelop itself over Hikari's entire body. His crimson eyes began to blow brightly, while his white hair glowed brightly while flowing as he glanced over at the villain. "Thanks," he said. "Seeya never."
And with that along with a burst of light, he was gone with nothing but a small, quickly dissipating trail of white behind him. By the time the ice prisoner blinked, that trail along with Hikari was already gone.
"Huh," he muttered. "Weird guy."
"Everything seems so... ordinary..." Hikari thought to himself. "There's a bunch of posters and advertisements and stuff I don't recognize, but other than that everything looks about the same as it did ten years ago."
He'd followed the other escaped prisoner's directions and wound up in the city right next to the prison. What city that was, Hikari had no clue. Nor could he just go up to somebody and ask them where he was. He didn't doubt news of the prison accident had already reached here, and even if a description of him didn't go out, he still had on his prison jumpsuit.
And even if he did know where he was, any clothes he ever owned were destroyed by Kyomu that night. So he couldn't exactly go back for those.
So this left him crouching behind a dumpster in the nearest alleyway he'd found upon entering the city, trying to come up with a plan. Any plan. All his efforts had been dedicated towards escaping the prison alone. He'd had no idea what conditions would be like upon setting foot outside, so he'd never thought about it. The plan had just been to improvise once he escaped.
He was beginning to regret that decision.
At least his hands returned to normal, so there was that.
"I need clothes," he thought to himself. "Different clothes, something that can easily hide me, or at least my face. Where am I supposed to get those, though? I can't just walk into a store and buy them- and even if I stole them, it'd attract too much attention to me. Unless I just take some clothes from somebody..." He looked up at the dumpster in contemplation. "It wouldn't be too hard, right? Just snag a guy walking down the street, strip his clothes, and dump him in the dumpster? It'd give me more than enough time. I could probably even snag his wallet and get some cash for transport if I really wanted to."
It wasn't a thought that sat well with him, but with the desperate situation Hikari had found himself in, he was willing to go to almost any length to escape. And fortunately for him, there were a couple passerbys right in front of the alleyway he was hiding. And they were alone, to boot.
"Hey, did you hear?" one of the two young men asked. They looked old enough to Hikari to at least be in college. "'Bout that runaway train and everything?"
Hikari listened into the conversation, wholly expecting them to be talking about the prison accident. He was surprised they were more focused on a train.
"Yeah," the second one said. "What are they saying? That one of the bullet trains got taken over by a villain or something? Some kinda hostage crisis?"
"Mm-hm." The first nodded. "Apparently a bunch of heroes are fighting the villain on the damn train." He looked up at the train tracks above. "Come to think of it, doesn't that train usually run through here?"
As if one cue, the tracks above the street began to shake.
The two young men turned their heads towards one end of the street, along with Hikari who peaked his head out more just to see the commotion. There was indeed a bullet train speeding right towards them- sparks flying out from under it suggested the brakes had been pulled and that the train was attempting to stop. There were also a number of colorfully-costumed people using various colorful powers to fight a man on the train who had an equally colorful costume and power.
"The local heroes fighting the train villain," Hikari thought. "So close!?"
There was a sudden, metallic snapping sound. A large piece of metal, likely a piece of the track, flew out from under the halting train. It wobbled from side to side, all those on board and fighting finding it hard to keep their balance.
And then, with a loud, screeching sound, the train veered off from the track halfway with the front half sliding through the air while the back half kept in line with the tracks. It continued to slip, however, with the front half of the train dipping so lowly from the tracks that it made contact with the sidewalk and began scraping through the concrete.
Unfortunately for the two passerbys, they were right in the path.
"They're not moving." From Hikari's perspective, the two young men seemed too afraid to actually move away from the large, rapidly-moving object that would surely kill them if it made contact. They were visibly sweating and shaking, but they made no effort to move away. "Come on," he thought, "just duck into this alley! Or run to the other side of the street! Something!"
Despite his silent protests, the two men didn't move an inch. The half-derailed train only grew closer.
"The heroes are too busy to do anything, and they're not gonna move out of fright!" Hikari felt himself bit at his lower lip. "They're gonna die if I don't... but the other heroes will... but..."
In that particular moment, Hikari's hadn't had enough time to think about all of the options available to him and the ramifications involving each outcome, never mind the time needed to actually choose which course of action to take. Even with the thinking speed granted by his advanced mind, there just simply wasn't enough time to think based on the speed of the derailed train and the distance it held between itself and the two men.
The result of this situation was that Hikari had made an unconscious choice to act. Even he himself was not aware of the fact he'd made the choice to begin with. He had merely felt his body move on its own, and following his unconscious choice his mind was automatically made up, as if he knew exactly what to do once he was moving.
"Speed of Light."
A white blur sped out from the alleyway and towards the two men. They both had no time to react as they felt themselves be grabbed, only to be moved to the other side of the street faster than they could see. By the time they'd gotten the motion sickness from their heads once they stopped moving, the train had already moved past where they had been previously standing. And much to their relief, it was stopped completely at the other end of the street.
Above the two men who were lightly panting on the sidewalk stood Hikari, who was looking down at them in relief while simultaneously and mentally cursing himself out for the exposure. Questions such as "did I do the right thing" and "am I in danger now?" popped into his mind, but he soon pushed them out as soon as they arrived. Looking down at the two men, he realized that he had saved their lives by doing what he had done. To his surprise, he didn't feel any regret.
"Y-you saved us...!" one of the men gasped. "Hey, man, thanks-!" his breath caught in his throat when he looked up at Hikari. His companion had a similar reaction when he looked up at their savior.
"Uh..." Hikari took a step back from them. "You're welcome?" He tried to give off a light laugh, but that didn't do anything to put them at ease.
It was now that Hikari began to grow nervous. "Is it my jumpsuit? Or do they just recognize my face? Did they put an alert out on my personal escape!?"
"Hey, you!" Hikari's body went ramrod straight at the voice calling out to him, though he managed to slowly turn his head around to the person who had addressed him. He only became more distressed at the sight.
A woman had walked up right behind him. And she either dressed very eccentrically, or she was one of the heroes involved in the train incident. She was panting lightly with a sheen of sweat over her body, but otherwise she seemed okay. To Hikari's alarm, however, she was staring right at him.
"You the one that just pulled those two guys out to safety?" she asked. Hikari dumbly nodded. "Alright. In that case, I'm gonna have to take all three of you down to the station."
The words spoken were so far from what Hikari had expected that he wasn't even able to formulate words as a response. Instead, he merely made a sound. "Huh?"
"You heard me. I saw you use your Quirk," she said. "Unauthorized Quirk usage is prohibited, and if we don't take care of this the fact you did this around the site of a hero battle could classify this as vigilantism. So c'mon. We're all going to clear this up."
Hikari blinked at the woman, and then looked down at the two men, and then back to the woman. "But-but they would have died if I didn't do anything," he said. "I was just- you're telling me I'm in trouble for saving their lives?"
"I don't make the rules, kid," the hero sighed. "Look, it's really not a big issue. Some boys in blue'll probably yell at you, your parents might get a fine, but that's it. You should count yourself lucky. This country doesn't look down on Quirk usage like that too fondly."
"They would have died if I didn't...!" Hikari had to repress a groan. Quirk restriction laws were just as strict now as they were back before he'd been sent to prison, it seemed. This, however, wasn't what he was concerned about. What he was concerned about was the fact that a hero was trying to take him to the police. And to make matters worse, the two men he'd saved were still gawking at him in particular.
Suddenly, the hero's face scrunched up. "Wait a second..." she leaned in closer towards Hikari, and after her eyes briefly looked him up and down, they widened dramatically. "Hey, wait! You're one of the escaped-!"
Those were all the words the hero managed to say before Hikari's fist landed straight into her face. He felt bone and teeth shatter under his own force as her knocked-out body was sent flying away down the street. This automatically drew the attention of all the other heroes who were at the train.
"Oh, this is just... perfect..." Sighing, Hikari turned to the two men. "You both might want to run. It's likely about to get real bad."
To his incredibly small relief, they obliged him by getting up and ran away. The screaming didn't help matters very much, but to Hikari what mattered was that he was gone.
"Shinka Hikari." Upon the calling of his name via a deep, baritone voice, said teen's shoulders sagged as he turned around. There was a hero standing not ten feet from him. Other heroes were close right behind him. "We all got word about an hour ago that there was an escape from the local prison," he said. "Apparently your name came up as the prime suspect for wrecking the place."
"What kind of workout regimen is this guy on?" The red-haired hero in front of him was so large and muscled that he could have easily been a body-double for All Might. The key difference was the fire all around his dark-blue costume. And much to Hikari's confusion, a beard and small mustache made of literal flames. "I don't even... why, though?"
"You're under arrest, villain," the flame-hero announced. "Come quietly and things won't have to get any uglier than they already are."
After a moment of silence between the two, Hikari spoke. "Your fire mustache looks ridiculous."
The hero was either sensitive over his fiery facial hair, or he took his words as an act of resistance. Either way, the hero's face scrunched up in anger as he tossed a ball of fire right towards Hikari. It was quickly destroyed by a beam of light that passed right through it and grazed the hero's side. He winced as he looked down, teal eyes widening at the small, red gash at his side.
"Hrr..." What sounded like a growl escaped the hero's throat as he turned to the other heroes. "Everybody, stay back," he ordered. "I'll take him."
"But Endeavor-!" one of the heroes protested, but a flare-up up the flame-hero's flames quieted them all down. They moved away as Endeavor faced Hikari once more.
With a scoff, the flame-hero crossed his arms. "I remember reading about your case a bit after your trial was over," he said. "I knew your mother, GACT, too. She was a pretty useful hero until you disintegrated her."
"Ah-huh." Hikari's crimson eyes narrowed as he and Endeavor began to slowly circle each other. "And I guess you're of the popular opinion that I deserved to be locked in a room forever, is that it?" he asked.
"You're a Quirk-happy brat and who used his power to murder," the hero said. "Of course you belong behind bars."
"That's harsh, man. I was four." White light began gathering in Hikari's open hands. "So Endeavor, huh? Pretty sure I can guess your Quirk real easy. Fashion Disaster, right?"
Three fireballs were sent at him this time. And three beams of light passed through them, destroying them and grazing the hero.
"So I guess heroes can just get away with tossing balls of fire at teenagers these days, huh?" Hikari remarked. "Or am I an exception just 'cause I'm a villain?"
"You don't get to the number two spot without using a bit of force from time to time," Endeavor stated. "You should surrender now before I get serious. You don't want me to get serious."
"Ooh, number two. Good for you. A single step behind All Might." Crimson eyes went to the heroes muscles. "Guess chugging fifty protein shakes a day to get so cut wasn't enough to get you to that number one spot, huh? Guess it's not that surprising. I'm no fan of the big man myself, but at least his look doesn't make me wanna vomit." Hikari looked down briefly. "Wait, what does he even look like these days? He probably changed his costume or something," he muttered.
His quips seemed to get the hero riled up. Veins began to appear on his face, and though he kept his composure, the flames around him began to intensify.
"He's a hothead too, huh?" Hikari thought. "Alright, maybe I can use this."
"Endeavor. Pfft. 'Endeavor' to be the second-best hero more like it," he continued. "How long's All Might held that spot? He was still up there when I went to prison over a decade ago. I'd say you're slacking, but with muscles like those it looks like you're putting some genuine effort in there. Unless it's steroids. Which, after years of trying to get up there, I would still blame you for using. Wouldn't be a very heroic thing to do."
The flames grew ever larger.
"Your beard sucks, too."
That seemed to be the limit of insults the hero could take before a jet of flames came racing towards Hikari, so large it obscured the hero's form. Light glowed around Hikari as he ran forwards, jumping up high in the air right before the pillar of flames reached him. He twisted in the air, straightening his leg out as he fell to deliver a hard kick to the hero's head.
To Hikari's shock the ground below him was empty as he touched down.
He felt movement to his side. Hikari had just enough time do duck below the flaming fist and hop away from the flaming hero as he emerged from a wall of obscuring flames. His face was just as stony as it had been when Hikari had first saw him.
"If petty insults like that were enough to make me lose focus, boy, I wouldn't be the number two hero," Endeavor said. "Though I'm surprised you managed to dodge that. Most villains usually fall for that ploy."
"He was faking that anger just to try and drop my guard?" Hikari thought. "Who even does that? Agh... at least he made all these flames. Maybe I-"
"You're probably thinking you can use that Light Quirk of yours to suck up all the light from my flames to use against me," the hero said, interrupting his thoughts. The teen's eyes widened. "Don't look so surprised. I wouldn't be a hero if I didn't do at least some background research on any possible villains within my immediate vicinity. I have a reputation to uphold." He held up a hand and snapped his finger. "It's over, villain."
"I can't tell if he's diligent in his job or conceited over his own ego." A ring of flames appeared around Hikari's feet. "What's he doing now?"
From the ring surrounding the teen, flames erupted. They grew high up into the air. Soon enough Hikari was surround on all sides, trapped in a hollow pillar of fire.
Hikari began sweating. The heat inside the pillar was sweltering enough that the air in front of him was distorted. Above all else, it was bright. So bright he barely even noticed the distortion of the air from the heat.
"So his solution to stop be from absorbing light from his flames is to surround me in bright flames." Through the heat, Hikari managed to shake his shoulders in amusement. "Maybe he thinks I can't control the rate I absorb light and he's hoping to overload me or something. Or maybe, just maybe, he's- can't breath." Hikari's hands clamped to his throat as it began to tighten. "Not good!"
Coughing uncontrollably, Hikari fell to his knees as he began to weakly wheeze. The flames around him only grew hotter as his own vision began to darken.
"He's using this flame tunnel like a heat cyclone to deprave me of oxygen. He's trying to suffocate me!" Shakily, Hikari raised a hand away from his throat and pointed it at the ground directly under him. "He's good... too good! I need to get out of here!"
Light from the flames around Hikari flowed into his hand, and a short moment later a large beam shot out from his palm and destroyed the street under him. Concrete crumbled under him, and a sudden weightlessness fell over Hikari as he dropped down.
With a thud, Hikari soon hit the ground right below the street as he fell into the sewer. Immediately he started to breath extremely heavily. Stale, extremely nasty air, but air nonetheless that filled his lungs and allowed him the breath.
Slowly, Hikari sat himself upwards. He could still see the fire above the hole he'd made with his bleary vision and his jumpsuit was damp with sweat, but otherwise he felt fine.
"That... that crazy..." Groaning softly, the teen rubbed at his head. "Was he trying to capture me alive or roast me alive!? Gah... least I-"
Bubbling in the sewer water right next to him interrupted Hikari's thoughts. He was barely able to even turn his head towards the source of the disruption before something exploded right out from the water. He covered his eyes to shield himself from the splash, and then slowly lowered them to look at what had jumped out of the water and landed right in front of him.
The closest thing Hikari could come to describe the thing that stood in front of him was an anthropomorphic crocodile in a green and white suit. His scaly, extremely muscular arms were crossed and his yellow, reptilian eyes were fixed right on Hikari.
"Trying to escape through the sewers, huh?" the figure hissed at him. "Well, I'm afraid a feat such as that will be impossible. Not while I, the Sewer Hero Reptilio, live to-"
Hikari's hands stuck out in front of him, and two short beams of light fired out of them. The force of the beams propelled his body back away from the hero until he'd managed to flip his body to his feet. The film of light surrounded his body, and he took off in a dead sprint that the hero wasn't even able to follow with his eyes.
All glowing ceased approximately five seconds after Hikari began sprinting.
"What!?" The teen found himself tripping over his feet, his body skidding across the sewer floor as he slowed to a stop. "Ugh... used up all my stored light already. And in a dark environment like this- oh, hey." His foot brushed against something. When he turned around to see what it was, he saw that it was a small, blue toolbox. And sticking out of the top, along with an assortment of other tools, was a flashlight. "That works."
Slowly, Hikari reached out towards the flashlight. The distant sounds of footfalls slowly approaching made him reach for the light quicker, and soon enough the tool was in his hand. He flipped it on, praying the batteries weren't dead and letting out a small "whoop" when it switched on, and immediately stuck his hand over it. The light made from the beam coalesced into a wispy substance that was rapidly absorbed into Hikari's hand, who began to sweat once more when he saw a large, dark form approaching him.
Tossing the flashlight away, Hikari rose his hand to the sewer's ceiling and fired a beam through it. Sunlight instantly shined down on him the second the hole was made, which gave him just the energy he needed to fire a large beam at the approaching man-lizard as he reached out for him. The hero was blasted back the other end of the sewer as a result.
"Agh." With his heart rate slowly declining, Hikari dipped his head backwards. "Sewer heroes. That's just... man." Sluggishly, Hikari rose up to his feet and looked up at the hole he'd made. He jumped upwards, hands clinging to the edge of the hole as he climbed out of the sewers.
Where he had risen up into, he hadn't a clue. This was still an unknown city, and the street intersection he'd popped out of looked about as generic as any other city street intersection. The exception, of course, bein the citizens screaming at his sight and running away. He supposed villains had that effect on people.
It also told him that his presence was public news now. The fact alone seemed to exhaust him.
And then a jet of water hit him in the back and floored him.
"Vile villain!" screamed a costumed man who was waving his hands around an opened fire hydrant. "You won't be terrorizing the citizens here any longer! Not while I, the-"
"How many heroes does this part of the city need!?" Hikari screamed as he knocked the hero back into the nearest wall with a beam of light. "Seriously, you're the fourth one in the last two minutes! Give me a break!"
From the corner of his eye, Hikari saw two more costumed people rushing towards his position. Growling, he stuck his hand out towards the street they were running down. A solid, continuous beam of light was produced from his palm, the end of which was dragged along one end of the street to the other, creating a molten path of fire to block him off from the heroes.
"Hah... ah..." Panting, Hikari looked behind him. Even more heroes were coming at him from the other end of the street, forcing him to use a yet another beam to keep them at bay. The same process was repeated for every other entrance leading to the middle of the intersection Hikari stood in, effectively sealing him off. Sighing loudly, he plopped down on the street and rubbed a hand across his tired face.
"Okay. Alright, this isn't working," he thought. "They're just gonna keep coming in greater numbers and at this rate I'll be too exhausted to outrun them eventually. Haven't gotten a moment's break since the prison." There were explosions in the distance. When Hikari looked up, he saw trails of smoke in the distance that were progressively getting closer to him. And he could almost smell the heat coming from the source. "Oh, and that fire guy isn't giving up the chase, either. Great. No wonder they call him 'Endeavor'."
At this point, Hikari had closed his eyes in thought. Thoughts and plans whirled through his head as he tried his hardest to think of some way of the situation he had found himself in. Fortunately for him, he had more time to do this compared to what was available to him at the train incident.
His brows furrowed in thought, and very lowly, he sighed. As it stood, being a wanted villain surrounded by heroes wasn't doing him any favors. He did, however, think of one solution after considering all of his options. It was a solution that had the lowest chance of success, but given the time he had, it was all he could think of.
Unfortunately, it would require him to fight that flame hero.
"It's my only shot," Hikari realized as the environment around him grew hotter. "This isn't ideal, but... agh, no choice. So how do I go about defeating somebody who uses fire? What's their weakness?" At this point he could see the hero's dark-blue costume and flaming facial hair approaching him. He'd already stepped over the molten barrier Hikari had made with his light beams.
"Mm..." Groaning, Hikari stood up to his feet. "Well, worth a try."
By this point, Endeavor was standing right across from Hikari. The flames dancing around him seemed to have multiplied tenfold, and unless the teen was mistaken, the molten barriers he had placed earlier with his beams were now alight with fire, either intensified by the hero's Quirk or more simply having been doused with his flames. Hikari struggled to figure out if the purpose was to keep him inside or to keep other heroes out.
"You put up quite the chase, villain," Endeavor congratulated. "It ends here, though. You've caused quite enough damage for one day."
"Wait wait wait wait! Hold up!" Hikari hopped backwards, balancing on one foot as he pointed both index fingers at the hero. He quirked a flaming eyebrow in response. "Look, hero guy, I get it. I'm a villain, you're a hero. It's your job to catch me. B-but consider this." The teen began to piston his arms back and forth at the confused hero. "You're the number two guy, right? Which means you got a big reputation to uphold. And I'm warning you right now, if you fight me? You're a hundred-percent guaranteed to lose." Putting on a forced smile, Hikari shrugged his shoulder. "So come on, man. You can drop the fire barriers, I'll run away, we'll all get out of here looking on top. Well, mostly me, but still."
A moment passed between them. "You done?" Endeavor asked.
Hikari's arms dropped along with his forced smile. "Yeah, I gue- hey!"
A barrage of fire balls was sent in Hikari's direction, which he narrowly avoided by rolling to the side. It was when he touched down on the ground after dodging did he feel a warm sensation, and his crimson eyes widened when he saw the concrete under him begin to glow a red-orange color. He just barely managed to use his hands to spring-push his body away before a pillar of flame erupted from that spot.
"You don't seem to get it!" the number two hero shouted as Hikari continually used his hands and feet to dodge every part of the street where a pillar of fire emerged. "There is no situation where you make it out of here! You'd be best to surrender now!"
After the fifteenth pillar was created, Hikari slid to a stop, expecting another as he looked down. When he saw now glowing concrete to indicate this, he shot panicked eyes to the side. Two streams of fire, almost snake-like in their movement, were rapidly approaching him as the fire slithered over the street. He tried jumping away once they shot to his position, but to his shock they flew up from the ground they were on and reversed directions, hitting Hikari dead-on. His entire body was engulfed him flames for a solid five seconds before the two particular flames ceased.
It was a sight that made Endeavor grin, though when the two flames disappeared that grin disappeared. Hikari, for all intents in purposes, was completely fine except for the fact the top half of his prison jumpsuit had been completely burned away from the fiery assault. All that remained was a glistening, pale torso and crimson eyes that glared out at him from behind bangs of freely-flowing white hair.
"He can manipulate fire to a great degree as well as create it," Hikari observed. "Those pillars... he hasn't dismissed them, either. The fire barrier around us had only been getting bigger, and it feels like he's slowly increasing the temperature. So he can manipulate how hot the flames are, too. He's limiting my movement space while also trying to slowly wear me out." He had to fight from grinning. "Good. Keep it up."
"Hmph. You're a tough one to have come out of that unscathed." The fire hero held his hand out. A stream of fire began to condense around his closing fist. "Unfortunately for you, I aim to end this as quickly as possible."
What followed next was him making a shape with the fire he created. A javelin, to be exact. A mass of flames that was shaped exactly like a javelin. Hikari was given no time to even contemplate this before the fire javelin was thrown at him.
Hikari barely had any time to even yelp before he jumped to the side just as the javelin embed itself in the ground where he'd been standing.
"What the- fire isn't solid! How did it pierce through the ground like that!?" he thought as he stared at the javelin. "Ugh, looks like he's not above grievously injuring me as long as he takes me in alive. Huh. Wait. I wonder if..."
Flexing his right hand, Hikari held the appendage up to his face. Light began gather around him, and after a white flash an exact replica of the javelin Endeavor had thrown at him was grasped in his hand. Made of white light, of course.
Hikari's eyes jumped from the javelin to Endeavor three times before he threw it at the hero.
Endeavor's eyes widened, though he was fast enough to duck just as the spear went over his head. "Copying my moves, are you!?" he yelled. "Well, it's going to take more than that to- huh?"
Hikari was gone.
The hero blinked, looking left and right for any sign of the pale teenager. He'd even looked behind him, only to find no villain in sight. As if he'd just vanished.
"What's going on here?" Endeavor muttered. "I made the flames surrounding us too intense. He couldn't have just run right through them without getting scorched, even with that speed boost of his. Unless..." His eyes narrowed when some loose pebbles across from him were suddenly disturbed. "Could it be? It is!"
What Endeavor had referred to was the nearly invisible silhouette standing right across from him. A silhouette that completely resembled Hikari's shape. When the hero's teal eyes moved from the figure to the pillar of fire next to it and the clouds of smoke coming out from them, they widened in realization.
"I see now!" he exclaimed. "Your file on your Quirk didn't say you could use light to render yourself invisible! However-!" the flames around them grew even more intense. Blindingly so, causing the smoke billowing out of them to multiply. This made Hikari's silhouette even more visible. "The smoke coming from my fire is obscuring everything around you but your own body!"
"Heh heh." Faint chuckling was heard as white particles of light became visible. They flaked off the silhouette, having covered his whole body until Hikari was made visible. "Yeah. I can use light to cloak myself. Props for figuring that out." His breathing began to grow labored, and sweat was falling off him in copious amount. "Okay, I get it, you used smoke to flush me out. Think you- think you could turn it down a notch? It's, hah, starting to get a bit tough to breath."
"Is that so?" Instead of going down, the flames' intensity went even further. From the border surrounding them to the pillars of fire to the flames clinging to Endeavor himself. They were practically in a raging inferno. "I'll admit, most villains would have succumbed to his heat by now and passed out. I'll commend you for lasting this long."
"Hah... thanks, I... I guess..."
Flames began flaring up around Endeavor, and suddenly his face contorted to one of righteous anger. "But it all ends here!"
What followed next was a stream of fire sent towards Hikari's direction from Endeavor's body. The teen weakly held up a hand, light gather around his body before firing dozens of small beams to counteract the wave of fire. The two powers met in the space directly in the center of the two, coming into a deadlock between the thick fire wall and the beams.
"Hrn...!" Endeavor's face scrunched up. The fire stream began to grow smaller yet darker at the same time, and the concrete under it began to melt. "I won't let you win!"
"Just a bit more..." The beams around Hikari began to converge together to match the fire stream's growing strength. "Come on... I can't lose here..."
With a deafening roar, all the fire surrounding Endeavor was centralized to his hand. The concrete below the stream began to practically vaporize as the stream was turned into a thin, blue line of heat. From Hikari's end, the beams had all coalescence into one thin, incredibly powerful beam that still matched Endeavor's blue fire stream in strength. At the point the two powers met, a growing ball of pure energy began to expand outwards as the two beams began to to shift and become dim.
Before any of the two could act, the sphere exploded. Destruction and flames spread out all around, scorching everything from the streets themselves to any vehicles or structures within the border of flame Endeavor had created. Every surface within the border was glowing red-hot afterwards.
And through it all stood Endeavor, lightly panting but otherwise looking no worse for wear. There wasn't even a single scratch in his suit. He was, for all intents and purposed, unharmed.
"We damn near melted everything with that attack," he muttered. "With this much devastation... kid's strong, but his body likely isn't heat-resistant like mine is due to his Quirk." His eyes darted out to where his opponent had been standing. "He's probably suffering from third-degree burns or worse all across his body from that explosion. I need to take him into custody and to a hospital as soon as possible before-"
He saw something shift in the area where he was looking. His eyes nearly bugged out from his head when he saw it fully.
"Impossible..."
What Endeavor saw standing in the spot Hikari had stood in was, in fact, Hikari. He was not, however, covered in an horrendous burns or any other wounds. He was in the exact same state he'd been in before the attack that had obliterated the area around them.
Upon seeing this, the hero's eyes narrowed as he took a closer look at the boy's body. It was then he saw something just above the teen's skin: a clear, almost invisible layer of a glass-like substance with a barely-visible hexagonal pattern running through it. This material ran over the teen's entire body, from his skin to his head and over his hair. Almost like a suit.
"The file containing the details of my Quirk... is extremely outdated," Hikari began, voice completely calm. "It was made when I first received it at the age of four. It was only ever updated when I was incarcerated. It was especially never updated with the abilities I developed around my Quirk over time while in that isolation cell. The fact you didn't know I could use it to cloak myself only proves that fact."
"What have you done?" Endeavor demanded. "You couldn't have come out of a blast like that unscathed."
"Oh, but I did." Hikari gestured to himself. "You probably can't see it, but I'm surrounded in photons I used my Quirk to ultra-condense into a physical substance. Hardlight," he explained. "I wrapped it around my entire body like a shield. Extremely hardy and constantly repaired from all the light around us. It's been there since the beginning of the fight. I only dodged those flames from earlier to draw attention away from it as much as possible."
Endeavor scoffed. "Even so, all that jumping around you did only served to exhaust you. Though you're unharmed, you're so exhausted you can barely stand. A rookie mistake I'd expect from a inexperienced villain brat like yourself."
"Endeavor..." Hikari fixed his red eyes to the hero's teal. "That was the entire point."
The number one hero would have argued this point, but something happened that prevented him from doing such a thing. His breath hitched in his throat, and he found that it was growing harder to breath. At the same time, the flames all around them began to rapidly die down at a rate that they would be completely out in seconds. Hikari showed no reaction to these events.
"What...?" the flame hero gasped out, his fiery facial hair slowly disappearing while the flames around his costume died out. "What have you... done...!?" His eyes searched frantically, looking for something to justify the sudden weakness he was feeling. Through it all he found nothing while his throat only continued to tighten.
Hikari nodded his head to the side, and Endeavor followed. It was then he saw it: more of the hardlight substance. It was all around them, creating a dome that locked in both the hero and villain. And upon Endeavor looking closely, he saw that the dome's border began only about a meter outside of the fire border he had created.
"I sealed us in here with a dome of hardlight," Hikari said. "A sealed dome. Nothing, not even air, can slip past it. I even made the effort of using hardlight to plug up the hole I made to get here." The white-haired teen pointed his index finger at the gasping hero. "Fire requires three things to exist: ignition heat, a fuel source, and oxygen. Your Quirk seems to negate the first two requirements, as is its nature, but the third one, oxygen... it still needs that, doesn't it?" He threw his arms to his sides. "All that fire you created, Endeavor, the fireballs, the pillars, that beam, even the border, it all kept consuming the limited amount of oxygen that was sealed in here with us. But you never realized this because you didn't know this was my ability. No, you only kept increasing the temperature of the flames and continually threw more and more fire at me to try and exhaust me to the point of unconsciousness, but all that did was work against you by burning through your oxygen supply faster.
"As for me..." Hikari pointed to his back. A tube of hardlight was extending from his own hardlight suit to the dome around them. "I made a ventilation tube in preparation for this. I can breath just fine in here. You, on the other hand... well. I can see you're already feeling the effects of oxygen deprivation."
Veins slowly began to grow along Endeavor's neck and face from both the increasing exertion to breath and from his anger. True anger, and not the fake anger he'd used in his earlier ploy. At this point he was on a single knee, loudly wheezing and blinking rapidly to fight off the growing darkness in his vision. Through it all, he still found the energy to bare his teeth in Hikari's direction.
"I told you. My victory was a hundred-percent guaranteed." White light began to swirl around Hikari's body. The sun shone down through the dome brightly on him. "You've lost, Endeavor, number two hero. You can't muster the power to create the smallest flame without oxygen, let alone breath. Me, well..." The light around Hikari began to flow freely off of him. They separated, condensing into thick tendrils of white light that were connected to Hikari's body. Endeavor's bugging eyes widened as the ends of the tendrils took shape. "I may as well have an infinite amount of light at my disposal right now."
At the end of Hikari's explanation, the light that had bunched up and gathered around him had turned into arms. Large, very visible visible and prehensile arms of light that floated freely around Hikari and were connected to him. And at the end of the dozen of arms around him were tightly clenched fists.
Snapping his fingers, Hikari pointed directly at the number two hero. It was the only warning the hero received before one of the fists shot forwards and punched him right in the sternum.
Endeavor opened his mouth in a silent scream, blood splattering out. He was powerless to do anything as the force of the fist carried his weakening body all the way to the top of the dome, where he was flattened out against the hardlight. From began the barrage: all he light-comprised arms flew at Endeavor, pummeling his body and keeping him pinned in the air against the hardlight. Hundreds upon hundreds of blows rained down upon him in the short span of only a few seconds, at which point he'd already passed out halfway through. It was only when the dome behind Endeavor began to crack did the fists stop their punching, only to all gather together and combine into one, massive arm. With a final, mighty punch the number two hero was sent right through the dome's wall, spinning limply in the air as he crashed right into the nearest building.
The arm of light disappeared. At the same time, white cracks began to grow throughout the entirety of the dome until it shattered completely. Pieces of hardlight shining brighter than any snowflake rained down on the destroyed intersection, where Hikari stood basking in the fragments. A large portion fell on him, with his body practically glittering amidst the smoke and destruction.
But those who were watching, the heroes, the police, the media, and a few brave citizens, paid barely any attention to this. Their sole focus was on the building Endeavor's unconscious body had flew into.
"This can't be!"
"E-Endeavor!"
"Endeavor, noooo!"
"How!? How could...!? This isn't possible!"
"Somebody call an ambulance!"
"We need to evacuate everybody away from this area!"
"Endeavor..."
"Against a single villain... do we even... should we even try?"
"What kind of question is that!? We need to stop that villain before he gets any further!"
Hikari paid no attention to any of the words being spoken around him. When a sufficient amount of hardlight particles fell around him, he wave a hand dramatically in front of him. Not a moment passed before he was rendered invisible. Amidst the chaos of confused heroes and frightened citizens, he'd run. Past everybody who was either running away or looking for him, he'd run with nobody ever even noticing his invisible body.
Even once he'd run to the next block, he'd kept running. His entire body ached from exhaustion and he was breathing nearly as heavily as Endeavor had been at the end of their right, but he'd kept running. Even when his body began flickering between invisibility and invisibility due to his weakening state, he'd kept running. The fear of being captured by the other heroes was too great for him to stop.
"I put everything... into that fight..." he though as he doggedly dragged himself along. "I can't... fight, not in- not like this. If they see me, catch me... they'll put me somewhere I'll never get out of. Not after this." Flashes of a person, someone with Hikari's face but with black hair and blue eyes, went through his mind. "Kyomu... my brother... I can't let them catch me! I need to see you! I need to see you, Kyomu!"
He had no way of knowing where he'd stumbled into, or why he had stumbled into this place for that matter. He only knew that in his exhaustion-addled mind, Hikari had been searching for the nearest place he could find for shelter. And so it was he'd stumbled into some place through an unlocked door. A small room with a shelf full of bottles, one that was poorly lit. There were two individuals, as well, though Hikari's vision was so blurred at this point he couldn't make them out. He knew one definitely wasn't human-shaped, though. More like a cloud than a person, or a mist.
These thoughts, however, were of no importance to Hikari. He'd fallen flat onto his stomach the moment he'd taken in his surroundings, and quickly he felt his bod shutting down.
"Please... don't... turn me in..." These were the last words Hikari uttered before everything went black.
12 hours later
Night had fallen upon the city. Traffic the flow of citizens had returned to normal, though the number of patrolling heroes had been doubled. Despite their best effort, nobody had managed to catch the villain that landed the number two hero in the hospital along with a few other heroes shortly after escaping prison. The Villain of Light, Shinka Hikari.
That's what the media was calling him, anyways.
Where the white-hair teen had ended up was a bar. A place that sold alcoholic drinks, which, for obvious reasons, was a completely foreign concept to the Light-user. And to his complete surprise, the owner- a person whose Quirk made them a literal mass of black mist with solid and glowing yellow eyes who still managed to wear a suit and even pull the look off well- and another person hadn't turned him in. To the complete contrary, they had actually helped him. Given him a bed to rest in while hiding from the heroes and police, and they'd even given him some clothes.
This lead him here. Wearing all-white clothing while standing on the top of the bar he'd been rescued in, looking down forlornly at the streets below. The bar wasn't that high, and it was conveniently nestled between some buildings, so the view wasn't the greatest. The fresh, cool air was a welcome change, at the very least.
"Hey there," a scratchy voice greeted. Hikari turned his head halfway to greet the person who just now walked onto the roof. The second person who'd been in the bar and had rescued him, and whose clothing color was the complete opposite of Hikari's. Light-blue/gray hair flowed freely in the air as the person approached, red eyes similar to Hikari's own eyes staring straight at him. "Feeling better?"
He also had a severed hand clamped to the front of his face. Hikari felt very concerned over this one fact alone. That and the fact the man's skin looked so dry despite the fact he looked to be in his early twenties at the most.
"... Hey," Hikari greeted back, turning fully to the man and leaning against the guard rail. He stopped right in front of Hikari. "Still a bit sore. I'll get better in a bit. Thanks for the clothes and the whole not-sending-me-to-prison thing and everything," he said.
"Oh, sure. Sure. It was nothing." The man, Shigaraki if Hikari remembered correctly, waved him off. "I wasn't just going to let those heroes take you away. I'm a big fan of your work!"
"Is that so...?" Hikari's fingers began to tap lightly on the guard rail he leaned on. It was something about this man. His disposition. The pitch of his voice. That hand.
Something was wrong with him. Hikari couldn't place it, though.
"You don't have a clue! There I was that morning, watching the regular news when I hear about the prison break." Shigaraki shrugged his shoulders and stepped next to Hikari, leaning over the railing. "I read the casualty reports, I get a few laughs in, I get on with my day. Then a while later Kurogiri flags me down to come and watch the news again. Almost didn't- hate the news." He quickly stuck a finger out to Hikari. "But then! Oh, I what I would have given to have been there in person. To see someone like you, some random, escaped prisoner and a kid at that fight the number two hero like that... humiliate him in front of the whole hero society..." he giggled. "It was almost... bliss. Yeah, bliss. It just felt so good seeing you do that to him."
"I take it you don't like heroes," Hikari said.
He could faintly see a cracked smile stretch across through the gaps of the hand's fingers. "I hate heroes," he corrected. "And seeing you singlehandedly take down a raid boss like that fire guy like he was nothing but a low-level mini-boss... it was beautiful." The euphoric shuddering going through Shigaraki's body stopped almost as soon as it began. "But you let him live," he sighed. "Why'd you go and do a thing like that? He was in a helpless KO state. You could have done it easily."
Hikari looked away. "I think I got enough heat on me without killing the number two hero. Pun not intended." He also didn't want to kill anybody, but this was left unsaid.
"Hah. You're funny." Shigaraki shrugged once more. "Anyways, I was beyond curious, so I did a bit of digging. Shinka Hikari." Something about this man saying his name set Hikari on edge. "Obviously, you got that Light Quirk. At the age of four, shortly after you obtained it, you spontaneously decided to go and use it to disintegrate your entire family with the only sole surviving relative being a brother. The reports say you confessed to it under the reason of you just not liking them." His own hand lifted up and scratched at the one grasping his face. "Killing your parents with your Quirk. I can... yeah."
Hikari remembered that confession all too well. It was the hardest lie he'd ever had to tell in his entire life. He would have done it a million times over to protect his brother.
"So after much deliberation, I made a decision. I don't normally like working with kids, but a player like you? A diamond in the rough? I can easily make that exception." Shigaraki slowly turned his head to Hikari's. "I want to officially extend to you an invitation to the League of Villains."
"... League of Villains." There was a pregnant beat between the both of them. "Is that like- like a band you got going on or something?"
"Nope. No band." The hand-faced man shook his head. "It's as it sounds. We're a group of villains who stand against everything the hero society represents."
Hikari blinked. "What did I just walk into?"
He stared hard at Shigaraki. Nothing about his demeanor told him that was lying. He was looking right at Hikari, almost expectantly, waiting for a response.
"You're serious," Hikari said.
"Deadly serious," Shigaraki agreed.
"League of Villains." Hikari waved a hand at the darkly-dressed man. "So just you and Smokey down there, that it?"
"Ah, well, we're working through some details, but... yeah. Pretty much. We're an up and coming organization, and I just started out. You're gonna have to cut me some slack," he said. "And I don't think you realize just how desperately I want you to join us, Shinka."
The white-haired teen swallowed. "I don't really think I have much to bring to the table," he apprehensively replied.
"Of course you do! With that power, that intellect... you'd be an amazing addition to the party," Shigaraki claimed. "And we really need you, too. The game's party is lacking as it is right now. Sure, we have the leader, we have a warper, we're working through on getting us some grunts and our strength-specced warrior is in the works somewhere else, but that's it. We don't have a healer, we don't have any thieves or anybody even specced in stealth..." He nodded his head to Hikari. "You, though. You'd make a fantastic black mage."
Half of the words and terms the man used were lost on Hikari. "Wouldn't I, uh... be a white mage?" He looked down at his clothing.
Shigaraki shook his head. "No, white mages deal with buffing the other party members and healing. Black mages specialize in the offensive spells." There was silence as the two blinked their red eyes at each other. "They're videogame terms. You're gonna wanna learn them if you're gonna be rolling with us."
"I haven't really touched a videogame in awhile."
This earned Shigaraki rolling his entire head. "You're missing out," he murmured before facing Hikari once more. "Come on! It'll be great. Think of it like getting revenge on all the heroes that took over a decade of your life away. Heroes like-" he dug around in his pockets and presented a photo to Hikari, "- him. This... thing."
Hikari leaned in to the photo. It was a picture of All Might, sure enough. All these years later and Hikari still managed to recognize the incredibly muscled, smiling hero.
"All Might. I want to kill All Might." Shigaraki placed all five of his fingers on the photo. Hikari's eyes widened when he saw the entire photo disintegrate in less than a second. "I hate him. I hate everything he stands for. Right now, that's the League of Villain's ultimate goal. Kill All Might."
"Riiiight..." Hikari really didn't want to be here right now. "Well I don't really wanna... do... that..." He shrunk back under Shigaraki's glare.
"Then what do you want?" he asked.
"... My brother," the white-clothed teen answered honestly. "Kyomu. I just want to see him again. Be with him. That's all I want."
"Well then I got bad news for you." Shigaraki stuck a thumb out to the streets behind him. "Right now your name is the one being plastered on all the major national news networks. You're the top most-wanted villain because of what you did to the prison and for taking out Endeavor like that. People are afraid of you. They're afraid of what you've done, and what you're capable of. You're already a villain!" He spread his arms wide. "I'm just offering you a place with other villains. A chance at making a difference."
"A difference?" Hikari questioned.
Once again, Shigaraki grinned behind his hand-mask. "Sure. Killing All Might? That's a short-term goal, though still our current objective. Afterwards, though? We're not just going to tear him down. We're tearing down his society, everything he built up. Everything will be different. I'm talking big time changes, too! not just the hero society, but society in general!" He leaned ever closer. "That brother of yours? You'll never have a peaceful life with him, not with how things are currently. With you being the country's most sought-after villain. Heroes would hound you with random invasions day in day out if you tried! You could even get your brother hurt! We win, though? We go and accomplish the League's goals and change it all?" He chuckled. "A quiet life with your brother starts looking possible. So what do you say?"
The words of Shigaraki had reached Hikari's ears very clearly. He didn't answer the man immediately, though he was deep in thought. So deep that his eyes were clouded over and his head hunched down in thinking. The darkly-dressed man noticed this, and stepped back to give the teen his space.
"Change society... kill All Might..." He repeated the words in his head over and over to gain as much clarity as possible. "I don't want to kill people, but... but would that even make my situation any worse than what it is? People already think I'm a killer. Now they think I'm some kind of super-villain running amok.
"Society..." Hikari's grip on the guard rail tightened. "Because of the rules set by society, I got sent to prison. A kid, forced to spend a decade of his life in that box... for what? Because of this country's Quirk-phobic laws? If I killed them with a normal way, a knife, poison, even a gun... would I have been sent to prison? No. I was so young that they likely would have been sent to a mental institution. But because I used my Quirk...
"That female hero." Memories of the hero he'd punched flew into his mind. "The laws haven't gotten any better. No, they're worse! I save the lives of two people, and the heroes want to drag me to the police for it! Would she have even bothered if I had just pulled them to the side normally? Or would that have still counted as a vigilante act?" Hikari grit his teeth. "Quirks. Society says it's come so far in accepting them, but then things like this happen. Kids get sent to prison. Saviors are sent to jail. Because nobody can use their Quirk but people with special jobs... or heroes...
"Heroes can use their Quirks all they want. They're heroes! They need them for their job! And nothing is going to change that, because heroes have been making not just this country but the world more and more peaceful from their influence. All Might especially...
"Kyomu. Shigaraki's right. I can never be with you as long as I'm a villain. Just because of Quirk laws made by society. Because of heroes. It's all their fault. And alone, I... I can't do anything to help that, Kyomu. It doesn't matter how smart or how powerful I am. I'm a single person." He glanced at the man with the hand on his face. "But Shigaraki... the League of Villains... I don't want to, but what other choice do I have? They're the only ones with a solution. They're my only chance at changing things so we can finally be together. Kyomu. I just want my brother back."
"The hero society created the rules that made me what I am." Hikari's words stirred Shigaraki. "Their strict Quirk laws, their villain laws... and you know what, Shigaraki? They'll never go away. Because the peace made by the heroes and their society works too well. And if All Might is on the scene, forget about it. He's the perfect villain deterrent because he's the number one hero. He's so strong major villains will never do anything in fear of him. He's the linchpin that makes it so that those rules that condemned me and separated me from my brother will never change." Red eyes widened and a chapped smile began to form. "If he died, though... that would shake things up quite a bit. There would no longer be a linchpin to hold things together. And if the League does what you want, change things... then through those changes, I could possibly reverse my status. I could have somewhere to go. But above all that, I could have my brother back."
"So you mean...!?" Shigaraki asked, nearly shaking in excitement.
"Yeah. Yeah, why not?" Hikari stuck a hand out to Shigaraki. "I'll join the League of Villains."
His final decision. He was doing the right thing. He would do anything to get his brother back. So if society said he was a villain, he'd be one of the worst ones out there. All for his brother. All for Kyomu.
In his excitement, Shigaraki stared down at the offered hand. "You really want to shake my hand of all hands?" he asked in a bemused tone.
Remembering what the man had done to the photo, Hikari pulled his hand back quickly. "Ehhh, yeah. Good call." Chuckling nervously, he rubbed the back of his neck. "So. What's first?"
"What's first?" A broken laugh escaped Shigaraki's throat. "I already told you what's first, Shinka. What's first is us killing the Symbol of Peace, All Might."