Tomura Shigaraki favoured the shadows. He lurked among them when prowling the woods in search of easy prey. His cracked lips peeled back as he recalled his and Toga's retreat when the knight brought forth a mob. Now, he lurked among the shadows once more as he slunk around the dungeons of the Castle of Chusei, fascinated by what he saw.
Torture weapons were hung up on the walls. A spider – also known as a breast ripper – was on display with an etching of a crown to symbolize its target: the queen, if she should ever be unfaithful to the king. Further down, two spiked wooden blocks with a screw at the back rested next to some barrels of aging wine. Tomura was familiar with the knee splitter, which was used against despised Court members in the early days of the cold era. With one turn of the screw, a knee was easily, and painfully, crippled.
On the first day that Tomura arrived, Stain had led a riot in the palace. Tomura had half a mind to join them just to relish in the destruction, but he did not want to interfere with the rogue, lest they be associated. Tomura Shigaraki was no mere rogue; he was a demon, a monster, the kingdom's worst enemy.
And my worst enemy is being dragged into the dungeons, he noticed. He stayed hidden, though he wasn't too concerned about being found; if it came down to it, Kurogiri could warp him away again, though he was getting tired of such undignified retreats.
The guards dragged many townspeople down the unpadded stairs, letting the unconscious and bound prisoners' heads and limbs bump against each hard stair. One in particular made a metallic sound. Tomura grinned, his dry lips splitting, when he recognized the knight who had brought the mob into the woods before he could lay down true destruction. And karma bites back.
On the second day, Tomura explored the rest of the castle, mapping out the entire area in his mind. He silenced a cook before she could scream; he did not kill her, for that would draw too much attention, but he desecrated her throat so she would not be able to report him. Very few servants knew how to read and write, and Tomura would bet his sister's hand that a scullery maid wasn't among them.
Satisfied with her whimpers and breathy croaks, he reached out with a hand as though to decay her, then snatched up a strawberry-and-cream-cheese tart. He held it with three fingers, sticking his middle finger out to prevent an accidental decay, and bit into it. Strawberry filling dripped onto the white tiles like blood.
"That looks scrumptious," a girl hissed, delighted.
"Toga," Tomura growled, crumbs spilling onto the floor.
Toga stood on her toes to steal the rest of the tart right out of Tomura's, her sharp teeth narrowly missing his fingers. He hissed and drew back, and she giggled. With a friendly wave at the cook, she skipped away. Her baggy sleeves bounced with her movements while her pants stretched tight against her legs; she could have adjusted the garments to fit her better, but Toga enjoyed conveying oddity in her ill-fitted clothes and her ill-fitting ways.
"What are you doing here?" Tomura demanded in a hushed tone, striding after her. "You'll get us both caught."
Toga put a finger to her lips. "No, I won't, I promise I won't. I just want to see a few people." Her lips pouted, reddened by the strawberry from the tart. "I wanted to see the handsome boy with the freckles, but he ran away with another handsome boy, this one with a scar." She covered the left side of her face, split her fingers to peek out at him, then snarled ferociously. Just as suddenly, her visage returned to its cheery, too-wide grin. "But the pretty girl is here, the one in velvet, along with another pretty girl, with shiny, shiny armour. I like watching them. The armoured girl is a knight, did you know? And the velvetine girl is a wonderful healer." She sighed wistfully. "They could have their pick of men. Would you prefer a knight or a healer?"
Tomura rolled his eyes and left Toga to her odd whims, and made it to the stables as the sun was beginning to set. Three horses were missing; Tomura doubted the royals would notice if one more disappeared. His jaundiced fingers reached out, hungry. The black pegasus was nearest, and rudest, whinnying and padding the hay frantically until it disintegrated to ashes.
On the third day, another rogue joined Tomura. He had either an excellent or a poor sense of fashion: the tail of his black leather coat was tattered, and his heavy boots would give his kicks more power but also slow him down. He must be well-connected to a leather worker, because besides his coat, he had skins sewn onto his skin—all across the lower half of his face, his neck, and down his forearms like sleeves.
Tomura mockingly bowed to him. "Well met, Your Fire-Marked Highness."
The disfigured young man didn't reply. His turquoise eyes gleamed with hatred that rivalled Tomura's. He walked away without a word.
Tomura later found him watching the royal siblings – a white-haired princess and her not-so-little brother, both of them disgraced and forbidden from ascending to the throne – the way Toga watched the velvetine and armoured girls: with hunger, longing, and loneliness.
On the fourth day, confident about the layout of the palace, Tomura approached the prisoners in the dungeon. Some of them cowered at the sight of him; his white hair, ruby eyes, and broken lips made for a horrifying, monstrous appearance. Others recognized him from the woods and yelled obscenities. The knight stared at him, his expression unreadable.
Tomura stood in front of him, the cell gate the only barrier—and then that was gone. Now all the townspeople were yelling for him to free them, too. The knight did not make a quick getaway or even thank his would-be rescuer. "What do you want, Shigaraki?"
Fool.
Tomura grabbed the knee splitter, knocking over a barrel of wine in the process. He kept his middle finger up so the torture device wouldn't decay. "Do you know what this does?"
Ida sniffed. "It was part of the futile attempts to discern who stole the sun twenty-five years ago. Clearly, it didn't work."
"Or they used it on the wrong people," Tomura added with a shrug. "More specifically, this is called a knee splitter."
Ida tensed, and Tomura smiled. "So you've heard of it. Or maybe the name is self-explanatory."
Ida tried to run away, but Tomura tackled him and inserted the knee splitter around Ida's left knee. He twisted the screw with a sharp flick of his wrist just as the doors to the dungeon burst open.