Drip, drip, drip went the walls. So covered in wonderful red as they were. The boy stood on the floor with his teeth going crunch, crunch, crunch with every bite he took. The meat was tasty and warm as he took and took and took until his daddy stopped screaming. Louder and louder daddy screamed at him. He hit and hit and hit while the coat held the boy's arms in place. It wrapped around him like a hug whenever daddy did that. He cried and cried and cried as his belly growled for something yummy but daddy would just hit him again and again. The crying stopped when his ugly teeth hit daddy and made him scream. His friends told him to eat and so he did until he was sure that his belly would burst.

Yuuma snapped his eyes open at the sound coming from the hallway, the solid black of his iris adjusting quickly to the darkness. They were shouting again.

"Well why the hell do I gotta do it? Didn't you take up the job?"

Said a female voice that he recognized too well.

"Because I have more important things to do right now then babysit him. Look, just hang out with him for maybe an hour or two and that's it. Besides you've been doing nothing but sitting in your fucking room all day for the past month and need I remind you who's fault it is that we're in this situation to begin with?"

A somewhat deep masculine voice replied in turn. No more words were said after that as two sets of feet marched in different directions down the hall. He slowly arose from his bed with the squeak of the springs echoing off the walls. It was five in the afternoon, he needed to take his pills. He picked up the bottle on his nightstand and rolled out a single capsule of the thing he needed to keep the voices away. It tasted bitter but it was better than the alternative.

Glowing yellow eyes stepped silently into the room with the door swinging open behind them. Darkness remained as the two clearly saw each other in the absence of light. Had he the energy to muse on the matter he would have chuckled at the poetic beauty of the fact, yet as of now he barely wanted to do anything.

Anger never truly came to him, he was too unhinged for that pure intention to ever be the usual sort of emotion unless he had good reason. Such as what happened thirty six days ago.

The child who had raised him from a jabbering idiot into his former self was gone now and at first he wanted to rend and rip away at the people around him but that subsided into an unfeeling state that left him not quite numb, but simply removed from things. It was as if he was watching his life through a television screen and he was a viewer to the robotic actions which his body made. He knew what this was though never had he done this for a reason aside from killing.

He was waiting. Waiting for the right moment to strike when the opportunity presented itself to him. Like a spider in a web he waited for the signal that would have him pounce on his goal. Again, he felt strange. He had no desire for meat or blood, no this was something far nobler than what he would have considered himself able to do, but he had a debt to pay.

The girl approached with an undercurrent of shame that he could taste, it also was bitter but with it came a spark of anger, hot and pure as he met the eyes of the person he unknowingly tricked his boy into trusting. Her expression was oddly conflicted as she took a seat by the door, shutting it behind her with a click.

Part of him wanted to strangle her, to watch her face slowly grow blue from the lack of air and feel her heart stop in retaliation for what she'd done to his friend. Another part wished to hug her and forgive the mistakes. At times he loved her like a daughter, it was only natural for him to feel that way when he knew what it was like to live with such a warped vision of the world, but still like a father he wanted to lambast her for her actions.

Regardless he allowed her to remain so long as he felt like doing so. Laying back down on his mattress he shut his eyes in an attempt to return to sleep. He would have succeeded if it were not for her voice ringing in his ears.

"Can I ask you something?"

He did not rise to meet her but spoke in kind as his eyes stayed closed.

"Yes."

A pause came from the girl.

"When did you realise what kind of person you wanted to become?"

He was silent again when his mind thought back to the better parts of his past, however few they were.

"After I found something truly worth living for, that is when I decided to mold myself into a better person."

Hesitation filled her voice when she tried to voice another question.

"What-"

"Child, if you ask me what I know you shall ask then I will rise up from this bed and show you my answer and you will not enjoy it."

Her mouth shut closed with a clamp of teeth. He wrapped the blanket around him as he tossed and turned, the leather of his suit denying him the soft touch of cotton save for his face which was uncovered. Eventually he found himself staring at the ceiling for what was two hours judging by the beats of his heart and with that he addressed one of his largest issues with the world.

"Himiko, tell me, why did you think it was wise to lie to him even after I explicitly told you not to?"

The fear grew in the girl at that, he knew she was shaking in fright and in a way he hated that.

"I...I couldn't make him stay if I hadn't."

He sat up with his eyes opening at once.

"I told you what to do and still you failed not only yourself but him as well. Are you aware of how badly this reflects on your future? On your sanity in the coming years?"

She looked away from his pitch black eyes.

"I-"

"You had one chance and you wasted it on your imagined fears. Personally my girl, I'd have you flogged but I know pain is already burning in your soul."

Leather squeaked with his movements as he found his bare feet touching the floor.

"Yet, that does little to enlighten my confusion. Had I not made it clear to you how to conduct yourself? Please Himiko, inform me as to what I had construed in such a way that you found it to be best to ignore. I'm positively dying at the idea."

His voice was calm and even as he ordered, he never was one to raise his voice. It added more fear when needed that way and provided the opposite effect more often than not when he wished. He glared down emotionlessly at the younger villain with his coal black eyes blending into the darkness with an almost supernatural ease. She fidgeted in discomfort at the confrontation between them yet somehow her voice was heard.

"I...I tried my best to follow what you said, I even stopped drinking so much of his blood and started using animal blood to get my fill, but...but I was just so scared of him leaving that I just wanted to know for sure that he'd stay no matter what and if he found out that I had done that then-"

He cut in with a throaty growl which caused the girl to flinch.

"Then you had no trust in him. He would have forgiven you, thanked you even for telling him about Shigaraki's plot, but instead you chose to hide from the retribution like a coward until it grew to consume you."

Her hands balled into fist as anger shone in her glowing eyes.

"I didn't trust myself! Izuku was the only person who actually loved me for who I was but I didn't! I hated myself for all the awful things I've done to people who will never get their lives back and I still hate parts of myself which is why I didn't tell him because if he forgave me then I'd have to accept that he isn't like me. That he was better than me and that I wasn't worthy of something as great as his forgiveness."

She shut her eyes with pain setting into the forefront of her mind.

"I wanted him to need me, to come to me at his weakest moments so I could nurse him back better than he was. That's why I did it and right now my only goal is to make myself into the sort of person able to make him stronger and even if he never wants to see me again, I still want to say I'm sorry."

Yuuma said nothing, his tongue scraping the back of his jagged teeth behind his jaw for what felt like an hour to the youngling.

"Better then what I originally thought would come from you, considering your more unorthodox takes on life, but who am I to call the kettle black in that regard? Still, I can say that I haven't forgotten exactly how much you harmed my boy and the main reason you haven't seen me truly angry is because I am mostly to blame. Even when he stopped discussing your private lives with me I didn't think much of it and due to that, you both suffered."

He inhaled slightly when he strolled past the girl, flipping on the lights in his room as he did and began to occupy his hands with sharpening one of his trusty cleavers on a nearby table.

"However, I suspect you have a plan on how to track him down in spite of everything that happened."

Himiko blinked in the dim lighting of the room as her feline eyes adjusted to the sudden change. The sound of metal rasping against stone only added to the fright upon seeing the cannibal's dwelling, she pushed it down and allowed herself to speak.

"Yeah...I know that he's with another group and that he's been doing nothing but minor crime while the dumbasses around him act like they're in a bad comic book. I still don't know where their base is and I'm working on it, so far I can at least tell they're been to a few towns around Tokyo but that's where it ends for how much I know."

The noise continued, indifferent to her words as the notched blade slid on the whetstone again and again until the owner lifted the utensil to the light and thumbed the edge. His silence was expectant, knowing full well that the young lady had at least one more question to ask. He knew what would come before she even spoke.

"...Do you think that I have a chance? That he'll love me again?"

He placed the knife aside and unrolled his kit, taking notice of each bit of steel and plastic and rubber which was used in his ungodly trade. He did not look up from his work as he addressed the youth.

"I have no doubt that he still loves you Himiko, for all your failings he still cherished you. But it isn't an honest love born of compassion and understanding, or rather as close as those such as us can get to, instead he wishes for you because of the comfort of the familiar and the fear of loneliness. As I've said in the past, people like us are doomed to walk this earth alone if we do not focus on what is truly good but that should never be at the expense of the ones we care for."

A lump formed in her throat that nearly held her tongue from biting out.

"I still want him though, I can't get him out of my head no matter how much I try and I keep expecting to see him next to me. I know I've done bad things, we all have but I just can't let him go. He was my future, and I can't, I won't let him go. I just...I just wish that maybe things went differently, that there was an accident and we ended up with a baby, then-"

The noise stopped. A pair of needle nose pliers were set down with a soft thud on the wooden table and a scalpel landed short of it's covering. He sat up.

"What did you just say?"

The air became cold with a chill that seemed to come from the monster's words. Himiko felt the same sort of spine numbing terror that any animal, be they human or otherwise feels when encountering something far worse than themselves. She stepped back unintentionally as her instincts began to slowly scream at her to run. Yet she babbled, trying in vain to ease the horror building in the room.

"I-I..wanted a baby. I saw how much you smiled when you thought about your son so I thought that if me and Izuku were to-"

Her breath left her lungs as he stood from his chair, the spare scalpel still in his hand dropping to the floor and embedding itself into the floor. The man stared solely at her, his soulless eyes colliding with the glowing paleness of his skin as he did nothing but stare.

Then he bared his teeth.

At once she moved to remove a knife from the holster on her leg, but black gloved fingers wrapped themselves around her neck faster then she could shake off the fear and with an almost demonic ease, hoisted her into the air with her legs kicking out into the empty space below.

"I never told you to do that! You stupid child, do you know what havoc that would have caused if your asinine plans went through to fruition!? You would have brought a life into this world that no one could help while you selfishly used them like a leash to bind him to you!"

He screamed as he throttled the girl's neck, feeling her windpipe slowly give way while she stabbed away at his limbs, drawing a bit of blood as the blade cut through the leather. He wanted to keep squeezing, to amend what could have been a monstrous fate for both this lost lamb and his caretaker, but that other part of him whispered in his ear, telling him to let go.

He ignored it. He continued to choke and choke and choke until she began to turn blue. Then he felt a hand caress his neck and a voice sang into his mind. It was Sayuri.

"Breath honey, breath and let her go. She has a better life coming and a lot of pain to suffer to get there."

The silk smooth sound robbed him of all thought for a moment, then without warning he released his grip and allowed the girl to hit the floor. Her breathing was uneven as she took in obscured amounts of oxygen to balance out the losses in her lungs and brain. Her neck was marked by where he strangled her with a dark imprint on her skin and she looked back at him frightened as a mouse when sense returned to her.

"Give me everything you have on where he is, I don't care if it's just a guess, I need everything."

Himiko nodded obediently, rushing herself out of the room, up the stairs and back to her own residence with a binder under one arm when she made a return. However she was stopped in the main lobby by a warp gate appearing on the far side wall. Out of the rip in reality stepped each member of the League and they all came to a halt when they saw her. The first one to react was Dabi but the sound of stomping boots coming up the stairs prevented him from commenting.

Moonfish was suddenly at the base of the stairs, his leather suit traded for a casual dressing of a polo shirt and blue jeans with a backpack strapped to him. He marched towards Himiko, taking the binder without pause and turned to glare at her.

"Is this all of it?"

She nodded rapidly while taking steps back towards the others who still hadn't quite processed what happened.

He put it into his bag and made his way to the front exit of the building with only Dabi being either brave or recovered enough to stop him with a gout of blue fire cutting him off from his path.

"Where the fuck are you going!?"

Yuuma stepped past the quickly dying fire and opened the door.

"Out."

That was all he said before slamming the door behind him and stepping once again into the night to pay old debts.