Cold. Pain. Left arm.
Heroes were coming.
Hurt. Hot. Right foot.
Itchyitchyitchyitchy.
Burning.
Reset.
Hot. Coughing. Nausea.
Right hand. Fingers.
Coldcoldcold.
Reset.
Pain. Stomach. Throat. Dry.
Itchyitchyitchyitchy.
Help was coming.
Choking.
Reset.
Cold. Fingernails. Numb.
Eyeballs. Dry. Pain.
Screaming.
Reset.
Someone would come.
Pain.
Cold.
Pain.
Numb.
Someone had to come.
Numb.
Cold.
Numb.
Save me.
Darkness.
Reset.
White coats. Masked faces.
Black sand. Faceless.
Dripping. Screaming.
Reset.
...
Reset.
...
Reset.
...
Reset.
It looked down at him.
Black and wrapped in bandages.
Dark sand spilling out from the cracks.
Blood pulsed loudly in his ears.
Heroes would never come.
Reset.
White turned to red.
Screaming.
Black claws scratched and stabbed and pierced.
More screaming.
Desperate.
Furious.
Reset.
Silence.
Red.
No pain.
Red.
No numbness.
Darkening red, beginning to crust on the walls.
Claws slashed his restraints, carelessly slashing his flesh as well.
Pain.
This pain was good.
He was free.
Never again.
He ran.
Red splashed under his feet.
He felt like laughing.
He was free.
One common misconception the general public had about villains was that they did evil things twenty-four seven.
No one ever thought about villains going grocery shopping, doing housework, going to the theater, or doing anything else normal human beings tended to do regardless of their occupations. Now of course some villains stole from supermarkets (either out of necessity or for thrill of it), didn't care about house chores or watching movies and playing video games, but any villain worth their salt knew to balance evil acts with mundane, ordinary things.
Kurogiri, for instance, was currently on his way to take out the trash.
He could have used his quirk, but sometimes popping in and out of a purple mist portal was much more eye-catching than simply walking over to the trashbin to put the heavy, black plastic bags inside like a normal, law-abiding citizen would.
Luckily, his face wasn't well-known as a villain and so going outside for a few minutes didn't present any risk of compromising the League. The neighborhood wasn't as bad as it could have been, but everyone minded their own business, which was all the League wanted, really.
No one made small talk when they occasionally passed by one another.
No one even looked at one another too long.
So it was quite a surprise when, from the corner of the dirty little alley where Kurogiri was putting the black plastic bags in a large trashbin, a small boy appeared, running straight in his direction. Kurogiri had no intention of getting involved in whatever it was. He simply moved to the side, leaving the boy enough room to pass by without running into him.
But the kid slowed down, stopped in front of him and looked up with his eyes wide open in fear.
His right hand gripped the stained, tattered sleeve on his left arm.
If Kurogiri had had a nose, he might have scrunched it up at the unpleasant smell. The clothes the kid wore were obviously dirty, with old and new stains from mud, blood and who knew what else. They didn't fit him at all. The jeans waist band was too big, held up with a hastily wrapped and tied cord, and the pant hems had been ripped unevenly, presumably to avoid stepping on the legs. A greyed, worn-out long sleeved shirt had been thrown on top of that. Backwards. It literally looked like he had just found these clothes in the trash and had put them on in a panicked state because he had nothing else to wear.
Kurogiri didn't like the sound of that, and he really didn't want to get involved.
Then the kid opened his mouth and one word fell out of it, almost inaudible.
"Pl...ease."
The child's voice was rough.
Had he screamed himself hoarse?
Was it from lack of use?
Kurogiri looked down at him: dirty, disheveled appearance, blood splatters on clothes that were definitely not his, unhealthy complexion, jittery.
Again, the kid spoke.
"Please hide me f-for a while." There was something desperate in his green eyes that darted back and forth between Kurogiri and the entrance of the alley, like he was expecting someone to appear at any moment. "...I'll do anything, just hide me." Truly desperate. "Please," he repeated.
Kurogiri considered the situation for a moment.
He'd seen kids like him before, but usually they had more street smarts than that. No one would beg anyone for help unless they had nothing left to lose and no one offered "anything" in exchange for it. That was just inviting trouble. Maybe that was a spy from the police or a rival villain group? The League was pretty lowkey, and Kurogiri even more. They shouldn't have known to target him. But if it was the case, it might be safer to bring him to a deserted place then interrogate and dispose of him quietly.
Unsurprisingly, the jittery kid, that looked more nervous by the second, lost patience.
He closed his mouth and took off at full speed. Kurogiri watched him almost get halfway to the end of the alley. But then, abruptly, he ran back, opened the lid of bin and climbed inside, burying himself deep into it with far less hesitation than was healthy for a normal human being.
There was a small pause.
Kurogiri wanted to shrug off that encounter as maybe some kid who ran away from home or one who'd stumbled upon a villain doing, well, villainous things and panicked, but just as he was leaving, he heard footsteps from behind him.
The kid had just been running from that direction, hadn't he?
"Excuse me, sir?"
Kurogiri turned around and saw a man and a woman dressed in white at the entrance of the alley.
White bacterial masks on their faces, eyes crinkling with polite smiles.
"Have you seen a green-haired boy in a white paper shirt?" The woman asked, pupils darting around like she expected the kid to pop up at any moment. Or was she looking for something else? "See, there was a quirk-related incident and he needs to be quarantined before it causes problems for civilians. It is very important for everyone's safety that we take him back."
A lie, not even a good one at that.
Would they leave him alone if he gave up the kid's position? Were they more likely to involve the police if he kept quiet or if he gave them some kind of information? It wasn't that Kurogiri wanted to protect the kid, it was that he had never seen or heard of these people before. They might be potential allies or enemies and any wrong move on his part might compromise the League.
So he needed to play the role of the ordinary, law-abiding citizen and avoid attention. Avoid lying too — people with Truth Detecting quirks had the annoying tendency to show up when it was the most inconvenient. It wasn't usually a problem but if Kurogiri was going to pretend he wasn't a villain, he needed to avoid saying outright lies.
"I apologize, I haven't seen anyone with that description," Kurogiri said politely and truthfully. If he'd been the betting type, he'd have wagered the boy they were talking about was the kid currently hiding in the trash, just a few feet away from them. It would certainly explain the change of clothes: looking like he'd just escaped from a medical facility was just too noticeable and suspicious.
"Are you sure? Anything you remember can help," the woman said, insisting, but keeping her tone light and friendly while her partner looked more and more nervous, his fingers twitching around his hip. Carrying a weapon? He mumbled something Kurogiri couldn't hear and the woman frowned.
"I'm sure. Do you mind if I go? I have a meeting with my boss and I would hate to be late." Another truth, though he didn't have to see him before much later in the afternoon.
"Yes, of course. Sorry for keeping you," the woman said pleasantly. There was still a tenseness in her brow but Kurogiri didn't pay it any mind as he turned around to leave.
Just as he was facing away from the pair, Kurogiri heard a gurgling sound from behind him. Quickly, he moved his head to see the woman with her back uncomfortably arched, floating a few feet above ground. Four fist-sized holes appeared in her midsection, darkening the white clothes with bright red. Her eyes and mouth were wide open in pain and a silent scream. Her partner swore and took out his gun, pointing it at the space just under the woman and firing several times.
Kurogiri considered simply leaving but he was trying to pretend to be a good citizen. A good citizen would be worried, wouldn't they? So he asked, "Should I do anything? Call the police? An ambulance?"
"Fucking brat..." The man swore before realizing Kurogiri had just talked to him. "No need. Fuck, just go away!" The man snarled, all pretense of being nice and polite forgotten. Then again, from the look of the woman, she was already dead. It must have had some kind of emotional toll on him.
If he'd had time to think about it with a clear head, the man might have found Kurogiri's reaction weird and called him out on it but, thankfully, Kurogiri's "face" was hard to read and the man seemed rather preoccuppied with making sure he emptied his gun wherever he thought the invisible creature might be.
Satisfied with how he'd handled the situation, Kurogiri left for good. He was somewhat wary of being attacked, but it was obviously targetting these two people for a reason and he had nothing to do with it. Still, he didn't linger. He didn't want to get involved in it, especially if the police started hearing about it.
He walked back into the bar, took the remaining trashbags and went back to the bin. He could have gone to another one, but part of him was curious about how the situation had evolved. Was the kid still there? Were there two or three bodies in this alley? He kept an ear out for police sirens but he doubted people would call them for strangers who were obviously already dead and the threat apparently gone as well. It was more likely scavengers and organ harvesteers would pass by first and take anything valuable. If they didn't, by the next morning, the garbage collecters would definitely give the police a call.
As expected, aside from the two then-white now-red bodies on the asphalt, the alley was deserted.
It wasn't silent, though. There were muffled noises coming from inside the bin.
Muffled sobs.
Kurogiri should have ignored it. Should have hauled the trash bags inside the bin and left like nothing was wrong.
Instead, he got closer. He wasn't one to take initiatives, though he knew Sensei occasionally appreciated when his underlings thought for themselves. He even had a blanket permission to find new potential recruits for the League. There shouldn't be any downsides to bringing the kid with him. He obviously had some sort of past that made him ideal for Sensei's use, some desperation, and if the invisible thing that had just murdered two people was his quirk, like Kurogiri was thinking, it was a dangerous and useful one if he was on their side. Even if Sensei wasn't satisfied, it wouldn't be too late to get rid of the kid then.
To be running around asking for help instead of going straight to the police, he was obviously not in the kind of situation where he had any friends or family around to miss him or search for him.
So Kurogiri made a decision.
"It's safe to come out now," he said, trying to come across as unthreatening as possible. There was a small chance the kid would lash out and attack him.
More muffled sounds.
"You might want to leave before the police comes and interrogates you."
A whimper.
Scared of the police? Good.
"I can bring you somewhere safe."
The lid was slightly raised. From the darkness inside, Kurogiri could see two tears-filled eyes. They widened in recognition.
No signs of aggression. Good.
"They were..." Kurogiri searched for a kid-friendly way to say it, "bad people, weren't they?"
The kid nodded.
"They hurt you?"
He nodded again.
"Are there other people after you?"
"I t-think so," the kid said. His eyes darted left and right, but there was nothing to be seen.
"I can hide you for some time. Do you want to come with me?"
The kid looked at him with a fixed gaze for a few seconds. Suddenly, the lid popped open and the kid gripped the edge of the trash bin — barely reacting as it cut his palms enough to draw blood — and jumping out of it.
"Follow me," Kurogiri said.