(Note: This is my warning that this chapter is where it begins to get bloody, so if you don't do well with this kind of thing, I'd advise you take caution from here on.)

Chapter 4: Monster

This whole thing had been far too boring, Cleanse thought. When he had first agreed to take this job on, from that mysterious employer, whom he had worked for in the past, he'd thought that it would be a breeze, after all the assignment was just too simple to screw up. He and his crew just had to locate, and nab a stupid defenseless kid off the street, snap a photo to send to the police, hold him captive, in this specific location until the heroes and police located him, and then bail before they got here, and leave the kid to be rescued.

That was all they had to, and with each of their respective quirks, it would be an easy 3,000,000 yen grab. And it was, they had suffered no major complications, but that wasn't the problem, the problem was the job had been far too boring, and Cleanse didn't stand alone in that opinion. All they had been doing this whole time was stand on guard duty and play cards, the kid was no fun either as all he ever did was cry and shake violently. The only thing remotely interesting that happened was on day five, when all the notebooks in the kids backpack mysteriously went missing, but it was hardly an issue as the things had no actual value behind them.

For the past two weeks they had each stuck to a rotating sleep schedule during the nights, where at any given time, at least two of them would be awake, one would stand guard and one would monitor the cameras from a laptop. There were several cameras set up, one of which was one set up to a tripod and trained on the kid, and one for each entrance and exit to the building. Cleanse was right now on camera duty, cycling through each of the camera feeds for the thousandth time that night, the one on guard duty was Purple Talon, whose quirk gave him the ability to harden the feathers along his arms and head into deadly blades, he was the main bruiser of the group.

Blitz, who was currently asleep, could give himself temporary superspeed at the cost of a sudden wave of hunger after each use, apparently his quirk used up nutrients quickly for fuel, he would be able to fight alongside Purple Talon in a fight. Technatronic, who's quirk let him listen in on one radio frequency at a time from a few kilometers away, would be who they depended on to be aware of a coming police raid, and he also had great hacker skills. And of course Cleanse, the group leader had the ability to disolve detached organic material, a quirk that allowed him to dispose of things like blood and fingerprints, an ability that had saved him from arrest multiple times in the past.

Just then, as cleanse glanced at the laptop's monitor, he saw that the quirkless boy they had captive managed to break free of the ropes and was now standing up. Wasting no time, Cleanse radioed Purple Talon and told him to subdue the kid, then he rose from his chair to wake Blitz and Technatronic. This wasn't the first time a hostage of his had fought back before, but he was tired of waiting for the police to show up, and besides he was tired of playing babysitter. Once Purple Talon had pacified the boy, the four of them would beat him to a pulp, call the police so they could find him like the client wanted and then he and his crew would bail. One way or another, Purple Talon would be getting that fight he wanted.

When Purple Talon was called by Cleanse on the radio, and informed that the kid they went through all this trouble keeping captive had broken out of the chair, he thought nothing of it. He would just beat the kid into submission, to teach him a lesson, this would be over with, he hardened his feathers into blades and made for the door. But when Purple Talon unlocked the door to where the kid was being held, the thing he saw did not look anything like the weak boy it supposedly was.

As soon as the door opened, the thing came rushing at Purple Talon like a bullet, held positioned its hands, it held the camera and tripod that had been set up to monitor him, and wielded it like it was a weapon. In response to this threat, Purple Talon charged forward as well, this was not his first battle, and he wouldn't cower in the face of this petty resistance.

Roughly around the center of the room was where the two first clashed, a camera tripod colliding against Purple Talon's sharpened feathers. That was when he finally got a good look at what he thought was a weak boy. In actuality this thing was a monster, it was bleeding from the eyes, as well as across it's wrists and hands, and it wore a twisted and furious . As they continued to exchange blows, it had become clear that this "monster" had no real knowledge of combat, it used the tripod to attempt to hit Purple Talon with heavy swings that were blocked each time as they moved around the room in their battle.

The swings had not actually caused damage to Purple Talon as they bounced off his feathers, but each time this monster struck, a few of his feathers were knocked away, for as tough as they were, they could still fall out. About 30 seconds into the fight, and neither of them had hit each other, the kid swung heavily each time, but every attack had been blocked and counter attacked by Purple Talon, to which he was answered by another heavy swing, this was the current pace of the fight.

"Okay, playtime is over!" Purple Talon said out loud as he dodged and brought his arm back for a heavy hit of his own.

As soon he swung, the kid let go of the Tripod before he struck and rushed away from Purple Talon, scrambling for the ground.

"What is this crazy kid doing" Purple Talon thought.

Only when the boy grabbed for one of the purple feathers that had been cast aside, did Purple Talon realize what was going on.

"Oh shit!" he yelled.

As the boy mindlessly ran at him with his newly acquired weapon, Purple Talon decided to go for the offensive as well, his arms were longer than the boy's and without the tripod, the boy no longer had the advantage of reach. He tried to slash him with his right arm, to cause a final blow, but as soon as their eyes met, he realized that he couldn't move, he had failed to realize earlier, just how terrifying this boy was. He was paralyszed with as he gazed into what looked like the eyes of death. He had managed to cut this monster in the right side, leaving a wound that was nearly a centimeter deep, but it was all for not. Everything in his life amounted to nothing, this was his final realization as his own feather, pierced his neck, and his spirit left his body.

Blitz was angrily yelling as he charged at inhuman speeds towards the monster who he had just seen murder his friend. He pulled back his fist, ready to strike at this creature, and his fist connected with his left shoulder, causing a popping sound. But then, Blitz noticed a pain in his own left shoulder. This monster had stabbed him with one of Purple Talon's feathers, he cursed, and then quickly backpedaled away from his opponent. This guy would pay, Blitz would make sure of that.

Blitz pulled a switchblade from his pocket, and held it in his right hand, and he stared the kid down. He only just now noticed that the kid wore this messed up smile that gave Blitz the creeps, and his eyes were bleeding and looked hungry for blood, as he still stood above Purple Talons still warm corpse. The mere sight of this monster sent shivers down his spine, but he put that aside for now and once again charged, but this time he was armed.

As soon as Blitz was at attacking distance, the kid leapt up and grabbed at Blitz's face, tipping him over by using his momentum against him. Blitz, in spite of his surprise at the sudden development, refused to hesitate against the monster who had killed Purple Talon not a minute earlier, and he drove the switchblade into it's left thigh.

The monster yowled in pain, but it did not relent in it's anger, it was currently unarmed but that meant nothing to it. As Blitz pulled the switchblade out of the beast's thigh and lifted his arm upwards, in hopes that he could stab the beast in the neck, he stopped. He was suddenly overtaken by a binding terror that barred him from action, he felt like he could barely move as he gazed up at those hateful eyes, and he dropped the knife as his train of thought came to a complete stop.

Cleanse and Technatronic couldn't even move as they saw what they were right now, this kid, no, this animal had just killed their best fighter, and was about to kill their second best. When Cleanse had awoken Blitz and Technatronic and told them of the situation, the former had activated his quirk and ran right down to see Purple Talon. Cleanse had, in that moment, believed him to be a fool for wasting his energy for something like this, but as he watched this monster now, he believed that they were all fools for not running away, for taking this job at all. No that made no sense, how could they have known that this weak quirkless child could have been such a nightmare to behold.

The two remaining gang members watched in a mix of awe and horror as the monster placed it's right hand on Blitz's face and forced it down to the concrete floor. It then opened it's ferocious flat-toothed maw, and bit down onto the poor criminal's neck, it thrashed it's head back and forth as someone's hideous pained screams echoed throughout the building. When the monster stopped thrashing, it let go of the mutilated throat and started spitting out the victim's blood and flesh, and reached over to grab the switchblade with it's one good arm, and gripped the object in it's bloody hand.

It then stood up on both feet, and began to slowly, and unsteadily move to Cleanse and Technatronic, all the while Cleanse could see It's now bloody smile filled with fury, and bleeding eyes filled with hate. But he refused to die like his friends had, he steeled himself as he took out his gun, a .45 caliber pistol, there was no way he would die in this dump. A shot rang out in the building, and the monster halted for a second, Cleanse was sure he had got him, that he had won, but that hope diminished as the monster slowly raised its head, and their gazes inter-locked.

Had he missed? No, that was impossible, he was directly in front of him, Cleanse had thought until he noticed that a small wound had appeared on the right side of his neck, he had only grazed it. With his hand shaking uncontrollably from the fear, Cleanse dropped the gun and began to turn tail and run, leaving his friend behind, but he heard from behind him, a horrified scream that was not his own. Next he was shoved to the ground with a painful thud, and could hear heavy breathing from above him, and as he looked up he only saw the enraged eyes of a staring back up at him, before his life ended in fear.

At police headquarters…

Sitting at his desk, Detective Naomasa was currently reviewing the case file for Izuku Midoriya's kidnapping for the dozenth time. There was clearly something that he was missing here, he had managed to pinpoint the location of where the abduction occurred, and already knew that he was being held in an abandoned industrial building that was likely within the city, as he had received the photo within hours of the abduction. But that was the extent to which he had uncovered, there had to be some kind of clue that had escaped his notice, as two weeks of police searching old warehouses had brought up nothing.

"There has to be something we were missing." he thought to himself.

As the detective scanned the photo of the boy with his hands bound behind the chair, over with his eyes, as he had many times before, he noticed something that he had failed to before, "Could this be?" he asked quietly to himself. Was this just his brain failing him from the fatigue of many sleepless nights, or was he seeing what he thought he was seeing, because on the kids shirt and hair in the photo, there appeared to be some kind of red colored residue, and he knew for sure that it wasn't blood. He had seen plenty of blood over the course of his career and he could now sniff it out like a shark, even from a photograph.

He would have to run this by forensics first, and then get a list of all currently unoccupied factories that had previously manufactured red dye, and then, if he was right, Naomasa would have a phone call to make. He smiled to himself. He had a kid to save, and a friend to help redeem.

"Don't worry kid, just hold on tight we're coming for you." he said determinedly as he placed a pin on the city map.

Back at the chemical factory…

It had been six hours since the boy formally known as Izuku Midoriya had killed the four men who had held him hostage in a bloody rage. In those six hours, he had not wasted a single second on rest or recovery, despite the fact that he was suffering from fatigue and injuries like he never had before, in fact, in the last few hours he had been very busy.

He currently stood in the center of the bare room where he had been held for what had felt like an eternity. The room carried the same burning smell of chemicals that had tortured him for all that time, but it now had no effect on him, it had done all the damage it could do to him.

His right arm was outstretched and raised slightly above his head, in his hand he held a baseball sized shard of glass that he had found on the floor, just beneath a boarded up window. He was using that shard as a mirror in order to examine his new self.

The wounds that his late kidnappers had inflicted him had now been dealt with, the stab wound on his left leg, the deep slash in his right side and the small bullet wound on the side of his neck. He had sealed all of them shut with matches found on the persons of his dead kidnappers, and he had even relocated his left shoulder which had been dislocated in the fight. Under his eyes were dark bags that were the result of few hours sleep, as in his captivity he got very little of it and could only fade in and out of consciousness as the pain crawled across him.

The nastiest of his injuries however were seen on the hand holding the glass shard, scarring from when he tore free of the ropes lined the entirety of his wrist and hand, and left it looking as if it had been caught in industrial machinery. His fingerprints as well had been cut all over and cauterized in order to ensure that they would leave nothing behind again. All the pain that this transformation had caused him if he was to become the monster he sought to be, that was what he had repeatedly told himself throughout the entire process.

The shard of glass was then released from his grip, and shattered onto the floor into a thousand pieces. His gaze then shafted to the contents of his equally scarred left hand, in it was a lit match. Just like the ones he had used to cauterize his wounds, this match too, would be used to seal something shut, not a wound, but instead, it would seal closed both a past and a future. As he looked down to the gasoline spread carefully across the floors, connecting to vats of chemicals and fuel tanks, the match was then released from his grip and then fell freely onto the floor.

In order for a monster to be born, Izuku Midoriya had to die.