Zenith

by lazyfrogofjustice

Amidst the ongoing war between Heroes and Villains at the dawn of the New Age; comes something far, far different. A fluke in the cosmos has judged the rights of Earth's worthiness with one small change that would rattle the world as they know it. With a new terror dawning in the horizon, would Earth's mightiest remain as Symbols of Peace? Or will the new shadow take over them all?

15. Case 5 of 10 (Enji Todoroki)

AN: So. This is so inexplicably late. Originally, I have finished both parts and was ready to post after editing it back in early August, but an accident occurred, and all my data and effort on Case 5 was just erased. I literally felt so down and bummed out about it that it took me two weeks of doing nothing. Thankfully some of the motivation came back and I was able to retrace and rewrite about the plot points I remembered with the notes that I had left. This in turn helped me to improve that draft while at the same time cut a lot of parts out that felt unnecessary, so here… now nearing the end of September I have finished the first part of the two with edits and is currently working on finishing the last one.

Thank you for sticking around, I appreciate all the people who reads this still because everything is so stressful in real life today that this is one of the few things that gives me inspiration to be happy with.

Oh and last thing, majority of you were quite negative with the Izuku issue in the last post. I get it, and you all make a lot of valid points, but I'm asking you all to trust me for now. I have a direction for this, and even if you disagree, I just want this to flow as best as I can make it, and hopefully the final conclusion for Izuku will spell into something satisfying. I will assure you all that he is not a prominent character because to bring Ainz into this world, he will have to go.

Hope you all like this new installment, as I will return to finishing the last part of this case while also relaying my thoughts on the new Volume 15 and 16 of Overlord (P.S. I'm very much mixed and disappointed for the most part)

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Case 5 of 10

Room 315.

The sound of a steady stream of water can be heard as it pours down on a small, singular plant by the window's edge. The small sprinkler held in the hand of a woman who just stares into the flower being showered without any form of emotion on her face took up most of the shadow that made up the room. The steady, pale sunlight that bordered on a sick-like yellow posed as the main light source in room 315, for the clouds outside hindered most of the sunlight.

The television which was turned on in the background had the weatherman saying about an incoming typhoon or a storm that would hit the city soon, and as the gathering of clouds indicated, it would be at any given time that the rain would drop from the heavens.

She continued to pour the remains of the sprinkler into the small flower even as the contents were rapidly exhausted. The droplets of water now twinkling slowly to the pale sunlight from outside. With a small sigh, she placed the sprinkler beside the potted plant and stared at it for a few more seconds before walking away once again in silence.

She sat on the chair overlooking her modestly sized television and looked at the news coverage of various other things that she had no business or interest to keep looking at. Mostly it was in the form of exposed "crimes", "abuses", or general bad things that some heroes apparently kept locked in their closet, and for some reason, it was all presented and now made an issue by reporters so blatantly and instantly as if someone had just paid them to make even the most mundane of actions seem a lot more terrible than they originally were.

While a good amount of evidence was posted on many sites online, it did beg the question of why it was all happening today, and why was it all revealed at all when the current conditions of the country were in turmoil over the recent attacks.

She sighed again. She never cared about these, it was all background noise to her.

A sound to fill the void as she flipped on the channels constantly. With each click of her remote, she continued to stare to the point that she could see her reflection on the screen until she finally turned the appliance off, leaving only herself to stare at.

It was quiet again. The clock within her room ticked to the next minute as Rei Todoroki looked at herself, the slight bags on her eyes, her more lean and weak build, and finally her mostly unkempt hair that was now splitting at the ends and was messy when looked at closely.

She may have looked normal to some people in a considerable sense, but to see herself on the reflecting surface of the television, she only found herself lost.

And if anything, a bit more at loss than before.

She frowns at her reflection as she fidgets by rubbing her thumb and index finger together.

A fixation that was left with her, the last time she talked to her…

To her….

"I'm scared, mom." She hears in her head. A voice that she was familiar with.

A voice that she remembers too fondly, and too hurtfully.

She now finds herself looking at the phone that was at the desk near her moderately-sized single bed. Her fingers continued to rub each other as she tried to simulate the last skin contact she had with the last visitor that came to her for a visit.

Rei could recall it well, the conversation.

She could remember every word down to the very last detail, as she recall her crying, the tears on the person who visited her going down their cheeks. Their pain was as visible and as obvious as their resignation as their voice softly echoed in the quiet and small room she was housed in.

She could remember them holding onto her hand.

Tightly, softly, and almost begging to not be taken away.

But even then, she had to leave. She saw that person so distraught. So in pain that it even moved her emotionless visage to react even at the most minimal of levels.

Their eyes, their stark, almost visceral image remained in her head as she recalled them.

And for some reason, instead of saying anything, she moved her head and turned towards the small flower perched by her window, as she continued to hear the soft cries of the visitor.

A girl.

Her daughter.

Rei continued to stare at her reflection as her tired, uninterested eyes seemed to look back at her in pity, and in some way, sadness. Sadness not for herself, but sadness as the vivid memories of her daughter came into her head.

"I'm scared, mom." She heard her daughter say as she took hold of her hands. She was shaking and bawling all over the moment she arrived in her room.

"I don't know what's going to happen to me in the next few days. I… I've been having nightmares. T-The bad kind." She continued as Rei remembers her daughter trying to pull her hands toward her. Her gaze on her potted plant was now disrupted as she was forced to look at her daughter's eyes.

"I keep seeing you."

Rei did not know how to reply, her mind was simply not there, while the terror and fear wrought by those eyes of her child now seemed to seep into her own soul.

"I keep seeing… you… screaming."

Rei blinked the emphasis felt odd.

"I kept seeing you crying out in agony as blood trickled from your many scars… as if… a-as if you were tortured."

Rei once again blinked, her mind that was wholly not there, not even listening to her daughter was now peculiarly beginning to get her focus back.

And she did not know why.

"You were howling into an empty space and I keep hearing you cry so loud that it still echoes in my head." Her daughter said, letting go of her hands and now shaking in place as she put two hands to her ears as if wanting to drown out all the sound in the room due to hearing something that was not there.

"You were begging. BEGGING! You wanted to be free. You wanted to get out and be rid of all the pain and sadness. Y-You kept yelling out… my brother's name."

"Touya." Rei suddenly whispered, her daughter did not hear it but those eyes, those horrible, red, and wet eyes that were now bearing at her, their faces too close for comfort as she saw her daughter now starting to cry with a tinge of mania.

"You screamed all of our names… e-even dad's."

Rei's world suddenly halted. She heard that name. The name of some man she knew all too well.

A mention of her husband.

Now, her focus was now solely fixed on her Fuyumi.

The mention or even something close to the name now put her alarm at full.

"W-What?" she whispered again, afraid, slightly enraged, shocked, and many other emotions coalesced on her face.

"Y-You kept yelling his name. For so… many times. Even longer than my brothers and sisters. E-Even longer than your begging for release once it went on and on into the neverending echoes of my nightmares."

"W-Why?" Rei asks.

"I-I don't know."

She continued to stare, simply disturbed now as images of her own imagination on what her daughter was describing were now taking root. Any implication of his name was now starting to flounder in her head. It made her hands twitch.

"M-Mom… I'm scared. The monsters. The monsters I keep seeing in my nightmares. I don't know if it's just me turning m-mad… But I can see them everywhere…" Her daughter repeated, her eyes now more manic than before as she hurriedly looked around the small room they were in.

The calmness that her daughter, Fuyumi, was known for was no longer present.

What was there was like a scared animal, tense, and paranoid of any sort of action that would come its way. Instinct was now at full mast, and Fuyumi was rapidly degenerating into a fit of paranoia that reminded Rei far too much of her own experience…

When that happened.

"…I can feel them looking at me…" Fuyumi added in a low, desperate tone.

"W-Who's looking at you?" she asked her daughter, unsure and similarly scared at what reply would befall her.

Fuyumi once again looked around. The door of the small room which was slightly open, she quickly and manically walked to and shut it as fast as she could. The resonating sound of the door Fuyumi tried to lock filled the room. She fidgeted too much, her gait and her entire presence were so different from the daughter she remembered back when she was…

…when she was sane…

Her eyes then returned to her daughter, and she saw her sobbing in defeat, now sitting with her entire back blocking the door, and her entire body almost slump and deflated at the base of said door.

She cried like she once did.

It painted a painful, almost mirror-like image of herself.

This time, however, instead of her heart being overtaken by rage due to her losing it, her heart had now fallen into a grim picture of pain as she saw her daughter sob as she had never seen before.

"…The nightmares… they just grow more intense. I don't even know what's real anymore. I-I… I was released from my job." Fuyumi said as Rei saw her daughter look at her own hands…

As if blood was there.

She was shaking slightly, eyes opened wide as tears clogged her vision.

"… I-I… hit a child," Fuyumi whispered.

But it was enough for Rei to hear.

And enough for her to suddenly feel as if her entire world had suddenly grown silent within an instant, like candlelight being snuffed out of existence.

She felt her heart collapse.

Suddenly, her thoughts on this being all… like a mirror looking at her reflection, had born fruit.

"F-Fuyumi." She finally said, for the first time in years, she had finally mentioned a name from her family, from her children out of her lips.

But instead of being one of recollection in good faith…

It was instead this.

Her daughter did not seem to hear her, but she continued to look at her own hands. A weak small mist of frost now started to emanate from her shaking fingers. The temperature in the room slightly tipped towards that of cold as the younger woman looked at her own hands as if they were a weapon tainted in someone else's blood.

"…I-I was so scared that when one of my s-students came t-to me. I… I…."

Rei stood up. She then walked closer to her daughter. Then she knelt right in front of her. Unsure of what to do, she instead placed her hands on top of hers. Caressing them.

Squeezing them.

She remembered her daughter the day she was a babe, and the day when her quick manifested.

The gesture they now shared was when she comforted her when she misused her power.

Her Ice.

Now… seeing them both placed in the same action together again, only poised Fuyumi to cry more.

Rei felt her daughter grab on to her own hands. The frost between them steadily increased in its level lowering the temperature of the room.

"…I… panicked."

Rei's eyes then widened. Images of a small boy with red and white hair entered her mind.

"…I screamed."

Rei could hear her screams reverberating in her head as she stared at the crying Fuyumi.

Their hold on each other tightened.

"…I… only saw them, t-the monsters and I-I… I lashed out."

Rei shifted as the smell of burnt skin and the horrible scream of a young boy came into her ear. Her own hands trembled. The image of her seeing the agony-induced scream of that young boy now made her freeze.

A stray tear now dripping from her right cheek.

"I… nearly froze half of his entire arm," Fuyumi said in terror, it made Rei blink for a second as she looked at her daughter.

The soul-crushing look she had on her face proceeded to invoke old memories within her, as well as old feelings that churned her already scarred mental scape.

"I… I ran away mom." Her daughter defeatedly said.

The sobbing halted on her part. Now there was silence and a few sneezes and snorts as Fuyumi's head was now bowed in pure and utter shame.

"I… ran away from everything."

She continued to watch as the cold temperature caused by the slight aura made by her daughter's hands started to slowly fade away.

Fuyumi then looked at her. Face soaked with tears.

"I ran away from everyone." She stated with shame but also finality.

Fuyumi then slowly took hold of her mother's hands once more.

"B-But… I couldn't run away from y-you mom."

Rei blinked, what was with the strange tone when she said those words? It was like…

It was like there was something more.

Something was hidden with how she said the sentence as it escaped her mouth.

She was so sure of it. So…

Adamant.

Like-

"T-The nightmares… when it wasn't you being tortured or seething in pain." Fuyumi then opened both their palms. Then for some unknown reason, Rei's hands looked like they were bloodied.

The older woman jumped back, horrified at the split-second image of her own hands with an immense splatter of blood.

She fell on her backside and immediately scurried a bit away as she sat up and looked at Fuyumi.

Her daughter staring at her with hurt eyes.

"I saw you. I saw every single one of us."

To Rei's horror, it seemed like the image of Fuyumi sitting there, with blood covering her entire form, her entire being as well as bodies…

Bodies of…

Bodies and f-faces of h-her… family.

Rei quickly looked at herself. Bloody as well, but it was not compared to the marred, almost dead look of Fuyumi, her daughter who was shaking in place and had what seemed like a knife by her hand.

Rei blinked again and saw Fuyumi… unscathed and in the normal confines of the "real world".

Or was it?

She did not know, but what she did remember was the look on her daughter's face as she said:

"… and I realized, I-I was the monster in my nightmares."

…

Rei stared at her reflection on the television.

Her daughter.

She wondered what happened to her.

As her last memory with her daughter before they parted ways was her screaming indefinitely and almost desperately as the facility's staff took her away.

Rei could remember the "visions" of her seeing blood.

It was now ingrained in her head.

Yet at the same time, she did not have nightmares.

She thought she would have nightmares, but for some reason did not.

She lamented on the fact of those last words her daughter said to her. Those words stuck to her like a horrible case of earworm that continued to cycle in her head in intervals that now started to rattle her.

She was already damaged enough by the many, many disturbing parallels that her daughter and she now shared, but it was made even more prominent when the word "monster" now latched to her and created a new meaning in her head.

Rei's eyes now focused on the steady steam coming out of a heated beverage she had prepared for herself that was placed on the small coffee table before her.

Sounds of a child seething and screaming in pain came to her ear.

She fidgets.

The word monster affected her more prevalently than it did what her daughter said to herself.

And the "visions" of blood that seemed to occur whenever she blinked during that exchange.

She could not help but think that it was her.

The steam from the beverage within the cup continued to escape. It was a mundane object of course, but for some odd reason, Rei could not help but think that the object was making fun of her.

As if it was reminding her again and again of what…

"…"

Of what she had done in the past.

She looked at her reflection on the television again.

Her face had not changed and the steam of the cup before her was still visible as it gently looked to be caressing the side of her face like an ethereal hand through her reflection.

Strange.

She then opened her hand, remembering her screams as well as the shock at how it paralleled her daughter's screams as she was dragged away.

Morbidly enough, deep inside her head a string of words now developed.

Like mother, like daughter.

It hit her like a train, the moment those dark thoughts of hers surfaced. She immediately shook in place as she covered her face in guilt and shame.

The last time she had heard those words.

The very last time was when she visited her mother as she took Fuyumi with her.

Now…

Like many other things currently in these past few years of her life.

It took a whole new meaning.

She sniffed as a few tears were wiped away.

Contrary to what the staff in her new "home" had said, she was not getting better. She only drifted through the days by being less active, or in some cases just in pure, unsure, and utter boredom.

And in most cases, she would cry.

Even if she did not have a reason to.

Sometimes she wondered if this was her penance, for being a monster.

Or penance…

That she accepted Enji in the first place.

"…" she whistled lowly to herself, trying to release some of the pressure in her heart that was building up from all this thinking. The anxiety attacks have been happening a bit too frequently as of late.

As she continued to stir under all these thoughts, there was a knock on her door.

Rei moved her head slightly as a voice came through.

It was one of the nurses taking care of the wards on this floor. Her floor.

The pleasant man by the name Otomo opened the door with a kind smile. He was an average-looking man with a decent kind character as far as Rei experienced. He had a Praying Mantis head but even without the natural human features of his strange insectoid-like humanoid body, he still conveyed an air of cheerfulness and kindness that resonated.

He was quite the conversationalist too at times.

Yet even with the man's cheerfulness, her current mood did not seem to follow suit.

"Good morning Mrs. Todoroki, I hope I'm not intruding?" the man said, his voice making up for the fact that he cannot humanly smile. Rei moved her head in the direction of the voice and saw the man wave at her.

"I'll accept that as a yes," Otomo said with what amounted to be a snort as he opened the door and looked at the state of the room. Clean, pristine, and admittedly boring as Rei would coin it if she was so inclined, but to Otomo, it was a thankful reprieve when compared to the other patients that were admittedly more "troubled". Even then Rei could see the man did not judge and instead continued to positively beam at her.

"I'd say good morning, but with the weather report for today and the rest of the week, it seems like we're gonna get a gloomy set of days ahead of us."

Rei hummed in response. The mantis man perked at it and proceeded to write another line into the clipboard he was holding. The man then saw Rei staring at her flower again and he sighed.

With the sound of two steps coming towards her, Rei returned her gaze to the man.

"May I?" he asked towards the chair by her left next to the sofa she was sitting on.

She nodded as the man thanked her and sat.

"I suppose you still feel quite down, given that you're much more subdued compared to our 'regular meetings'." Otomo surmised as Rei stared at him.

"But given that you're reacting at all, and even responding towards me, I think that's better than you normally either staring at a distance or staring into nothing at all."

"Hm," Rei responded as she moved a strand of hair that was near the right side of her face.

Otomo inwardly smiled. "Do you at least feel relaxed? Comfortable?"

Rei looked into the mantis man's yellow eyes.

"Barely." She intoned.

"I see. Mind if I ask why?" he says.

Rei responds with a shrug.

"Care to talk about it instead? It might take off some of that weight in your chest?" the man kindly asked as he even stopped writing on his clipboard and placed it on the coffee table.

Rei thought about the offer, but instead of accepting, she instead frowned further and turned her gaze downwards upon her fidgeting hands.

"I see. I don't generally want to pry further, but seeing you responsive is good enough for me."

A small twitch of a smile appeared on her lips for a few seconds that of which Otomo had caught.

"That's better." He whispered to himself.

As the man reached to get his clipboard again to write down his thoughts on the inspection, it was then that another voice came into the room.

A knock on the already opened door revealed one of the hospital staff, as well as a man dressed in one of those delivery courier services. Before them, both was a rather large box pushed by a trolley. The package it seemed, was addressed to her.

Rei at first did not pay attention.

Until she heard her name when Otomo and the two other men at her door engaged in a conversation.

"- and I told you man it's cleared. Don't we always receive packages from Endeavor anyway that's for her?" one of the men said.

"You sure? I was told we need a little bit more clearance, especially for Mrs. Todoroki's part." Otomo said. Rei stares at the box as the man Otomo was talking to shrugs.

"I'm just doing my job man, and the delivery guy here is waiting you know."

Rei narrows her eyes at the box as the delivery man wheels it in and moves it closer to her.

"Fine, we're a bit lucky today, fortunately, Mrs. Todoroki's been very responsive." The two hospital staff nod to each other in acceptance of that fact as the delivery man finishes taking out the necessary paperwork for the delivery and as the men discussed how the paperwork would be accomplished, Rei reaches her hand out and touches the top of the box.

She immediately felt like an odd, very strange sensation was pulling her towards the box.

She continues to stroke her hand atop the rather large enough object until she was told by Otomo if she was willing to sign.

"Y-Yes." She immediately responded and after signing her signature on the paper, it seemed like the men inside her room were discussing whom the package came from as Rei was left with her muse on the box.

With practiced ease born from her youth, she traced her finger between where the numerous tape was placed that completely sealed the entire box shut. A small amount of frost quickly froze the areas her fingers traced and after seeing that it was enough, she pried her hands on the very brittle and fragile tape as it cracked and crinkled under her fingers.

The box was now completely opened at the top as the three men near her continued to talk.

The moment she did so, she quickly noticed that inside there was an oddly wrapped contained shroud that was significant enough in size that it almost touched the lid of the box.

She then reached her arms towards it and using the same process that broke the tape, she then weakened, ripped, and broke the plastic around the shroud and opened it as best as she can.

Then…

Her mouth opened slowly as she raised her hands away from the plastic her entire body almost froze and locked up entirely.

Her eyes widened. Pupils dilated.

Her hands were now shivering.

Fear now grabbed her entire body and soul for laced between her fingers, was hair.

And within the plastic…

Was something else.

Rei wanted to scream, but the mental toll and terror now gripping her entire body and mind prevented her from completely venting out her horror as she stumbled and felt the backrest of her couch hit her body with a loud thud.

She opened her mouth which was shaking, unable to release the burst of emotion that was churning deep within her as a weak, shaky moan laced with despair and fear started to come out of her mouth.

Rei's eyes now started to water as she stared at the strands of peculiarly familiar white hair, and the now permeating stench of something foul completely increased the volume of her sobs as her line of sight drifted towards another pair of eyes that were now as pale and lifeless as those described by her own daughter.

"Uaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…" Rei despaired as the entire room went silent, with her outburst being the only thing heard for a few seconds…

As the buzzing of a small group of flies oddly started to lap and walk all over the revealed, actual contents of the box.

Rei continued to moan in despair as she firmly placed her vision on the one face that haunted her every thought these last few weeks.

"N-Nuaaahhhhhh…" Rei despaired as tears continued to leak from her eyes.

Why… why did it have to be her?

Just why?

"Dear God… Oh Dear God!" she heard Otomo say in a panic.

"What the fuck is that?!" his colleague screamed.

"I didn't… h-how… Oh, God." The delivery man said in a low tone in terror and shock.

Flies continued to buzz as those milky, dead eyes stared into Rei's defeated and in despair form.

She was now screaming, her hands once again trying to reach out as the familiar white strands of hair on her hands continued to whisp in slightly by the cool breeze from the window of her room. Even the hair strands themselves did not sport the vibrant, kind energy that Fuyumi had.

Rei continued to reach her hands out towards the box as an argument with the men in the room started, with Otomo calling something in with his radio.

Rei's hands finally reached their destination. Her fingers…

They lightly stroked the now pale skin.

Why?

Why was she here?

"F-Fuyumi….." she said with a low tone of despair as her only daughter's face stared right back at her, devoid of life. Devoid of the warmth and positivity she exuded whenever she saw her at her best.

Rei's hands continued to shake, as her world like many times before, had now crashed into pieces.

"What the hell is THAT fucking package asshole?!" Otomo's colleague screamed as he slammed the courier into the nearest wall. Screams were heard from outside the broken door as the stench and amount of flies buzzing in the air was now attracting the ire and notice of those outside of the room.

"I-I don't know… I-I swear I was just-

Panic was now increasing as Otomo shakingly held his radio and began calling for security and backup as he stared with fear at the pale human body within the box.

"F-Fuyumi…" Rei intoned, everything around her seemingly silent as she stroked the cold, unmoving face of her daughter. Tears streamed down her eyes as a rope of snot and drool emanated from her intense sobbing.

She tried reaching out to possibly embrace her daughter's head into her bosom, but the moment she inched in, several nurses came inside and forced her away from the box.

Rei did not fight back, as much as she wanted to while she continued to cry when the nurses placed her into her bed and tried to console her.

With her world crashing down around her, everything was muted and her hand, outstretched towards the box as the hospital staff tried to fix the situation remained.

Those dead, pale eyes of Fuyumi stared back at her.

And as Rei continued to sob, she seemed to hear a voice within her simulated silence.

"Monster."

…

Otomo watched in guilt as she saw the Todoroki woman scream in despair at the other end of the room. The hospital staff was still shocked, the realization of what was inside the box still reeling in within them as the security personnel came and gently tried to rip and pry the box open gently as they waited for the police to arrive…

While doing so, he returned his gaze to the corpse.

The woman was familiar to him as one of the few in the Todoroki family that avidly visited their troubled matriarch. As one of the security personnel leaned in, they began inspecting the corpse without touching it as the police were coming.

"Dear God. Which idiot cleared this package to even get so far into her room?" one of the security guards asked. Otomo shrugged.

"I-I'm not sure, Ushio said it was cleared."

The security guard raised his eyebrow as his colleague who was slowly cutting out the last corner of the box suddenly stopped as he coughed out due to the smell even with a facemask on.

"Regardless, this is all messy, and even the courier service that man came from had no idea about this at all."

"I understand," Otomo said as they suddenly heard Rei scream in despair loudly as the nurses surrounding her were now trying to lift her so they can get her into another room.

"Poor woman. Can't believe that's Endeavor's wife." The security guard said.

Otomo silently agreed as the guard returned to examining the dead woman's face.

Now littered with many flies buzzing around her, the security guard suddenly blinked.

He narrowed his eyes and focused on the dead woman's lips. Partially opened…

It was there he discovered, that the onset of flies was coming out of her mouth.

"What the…"

Otomo and the other guard saw it, and the guard who discovered the peculiar thing motioned for the other guard's pen and to pry open the dead woman's lips slightly.

The guard reached in and as the woman's lips parted…

Nobody had noticed that the corpse's eyes turned from milky white, into a bloodlust, veiny red.

And as the guard retracted the pen he had on the dead woman's lips, it was only then that he saw those bloodlust-filled eyes peering into him.

SCRISCHH!

The dead woman's arms ripped through the plastic and cardboard and grabbed the guard's head in an unbreakable, iron grip.

The others, too shocked at what had just occurred then watched as the dead woman's thumbs pressed themselves into the guard's eye sockets. Within seconds a very harrowing and morbid set of sounds echoed into the room as the guard screamed.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

SQUELCHSHHCCKKK!

Blood burst from the man's face as the dead woman's thumbs continued to press in and before anyone could react to stop it…

The corpse of Fuyumi opened its mouth.

And a plague-like number of flies rushed out of it, like a burst of water from a highly pressurized duct.

A loud buzzing of the numerous flies that entered the room and even exited the room itself filled all the sound and noise. It drowned almost everything in terms of sight and sound as those exposed to it could merely either hold their ears or be drowned in the chaos.

Rei, who was watching the horror head-on after her daughter's body literally rose from the dead, closed her eyes as screams now began to spread across the deluge of insects and terror.

She could hear the guard Fuyumi had latched on to with her fingers continuing to scream, until the violent and audible sound of something wet graphically popped into the swathe of sounds happening in the background.

She could hear the nurses that were around her panicking and scrambling to do something as Rei continued to go into a sensory overload over the chaos surrounding her.

BANG! BANG!

Someone's gun shot amidst the deluge of flies as Rei could hear whoever fired it choking as the nurse to her right screamed.

"NO! PLEASE- I DON't WANT TO AAAUUGH-

A wet ripping noise was heard.

What was happening, why was this all occurring around her?

Rei felt a splash of blood hit her face as the iron taste of the bodily fluids flung at her entered her lips. Shaking in place, she opened her eyes as she saw just shy of several inches away from her one of the nurses was trying to subdue Fuyumi who was now bloodied from head to most of her upper body. Her dead daughter grabbed onto the man's jaws on each polar side and the nurse screamed as he tried to pry Fuyumi's hands from his mouth.

Only to fail as the screams turned into gurgling…

Until the jaw and upper skull were parted in the most graphic way possible.

Another splatter hit her face as Rei's prominent white hair was now dirtied in the fly-infested air and clotting blood. The female nurse towards Rei's left screamed and for a moment amongst the limited visibility caused by the deluge of flies, Rei swore she saw Fuyumi tilt her head a bit as if in curiosity.

"GET HER!" a voice screamed as a squad of three nurses and two guards entered the room and grabbed her daughter on her arms, legs, and neck as another guard stood a bit back with a gun trained.

Rei watched in horror as Fuyumi thrashed as the men tried to hold her down.

"Yomi get the patient out of here!" one of the nurses trying to subdue Fuyumi said as the female nurse that was near her nodded albeit in fear as she guided Rei while they tried to exit the room.

The swarms of flies remained a large nuisance but what settled the already gruesome horror of the sequence of events prior was the numerous dead bodies within many areas in her once drab but simple home.

It did not help that flies and the incessant screaming and buzzing filled the already muddied chaos to its most extreme extent.

But as they hurried to leave with the thrashing Fuyumi whom the guards were holding down…

It was then where Rei's most mundane and to her mind, only companion in the loneliness that was this room, her beautiful potted flower, was now drenched in an ugly mass of blood and prevalent flies.

Her only soft spot, the one she clung to when there was nothing else in her lonely existence, was now as dirty as her. Both in mind and spirit.

"HOLD HER THE FUCK DOWN!"

Rei continued to stare at the ruined flower as the nurse guided her closer towards the exit when another scream broke into the air as the body of one of the nurses hit the wall directly in front of them in a loud splat.

Rei's eyes then drifted towards the chaotic thrashing near them and saw that Fuyumi had overpowered the man that she had just thrown and as the remaining four tried in vain to subdue her, the dead woman clenched her right fist and rammed it into the face of the one by the left of her shoulder.

The entire fist was embedded into the now dead security guard as Fuyumi's inhumanly overwhelming strength managed to get herself to stand up as the remaining three tried to stop her and with a wind up with her entire right arm where she had the body…

She threw it with enough force that the body rag dolled and crashed towards Rei's window.

It knocked over the plant as the dead man fell outside a few stories down.

"SHOOT HER!" one of the men said.

The guard that was in the back with the gun trained towards Fuyumi raised his weapon but before he could fire, the dead woman grabbed the leg of the other nurse holding her by her right with her left hand, and as her fingers dug into the man's flesh.

The nurse howled in pain as she dragged his entire body, with him losing his balance, and slammed the man towards where the aiming security guard was.

BANG!

The bullet, instead of hitting Fuyumi only hit the screaming nurse as the entire body was slammed into the security guard. The remaining two that were trying to hold Fuyumi down in vain disengaged, but not before Fuyumi grabbed the leg of the man she just threw at the armed guard and grabbed the throat of the closest one alive near her.

With a crush of her fingers on the still living man's throat, the man gurgled in his blood while Fuyumi raised his entire body with one arm and slammed him to the floor.

His ribs, backbone, and other injuries were felt instantly due to the immense force that pummeled his body, and before he could react further to what was happening, the other man that Fuyumi had grabbed by the leg with her other arm was now raised above him…

And was slammed into him like a sledgehammer.

BRAKSHH!

Bone, flesh, and other bodily fluids were ejected and broken in a large loud splat amidst the horrible noise of the flies, as the man below Fuyumi groaned, and she raised the dead man she had grabbed by the leg once more.

And pummeled the man below her again and again until there was only a mass of flesh and red now left on the floor in the span of just a few seconds. Even the ground before her cracked in the immense force distributed.

Rei and the female nurse guiding her looked in shock and horror as well as the remaining two nurses and guards that were alive with the exchange.

The remains of what was once a human body held by Fuyumi in her hand were now reduced to a bloodied mess and pulp to which it appeared indiscernible.

The pale dead woman that stood over in the middle of the chaos then turned towards Rei.

The bloodthirsty eyes were still there, and it was now a lot more amplified to the amount of blood and grey matter on her entire self.

There was a quick pause due to the severity of what happened as it dawned on everyone present until the pause was broken when the dead man that was slammed into the wall close to Rei and the nurse suddenly moved and grabbed the female nurse's leg.

There was a scream.

The female nurse was pulled as she lost balance.

She panicked and screamed at Rei to help her, but the previously thought dead man, which his bloodied face now sporting pale skin and bloodshot eyes pulled the female nurse as she screamed towards him.

Rei took a step back and watched it all happen as the female nurse desperately cried out and reached for her to help but was instead pulled into her doom as the dead man bit into her nurse and she screamed in pain and agony.

BANG!

A bullet hit the back of Fuyumi's head. Her head lopped to the side, and Rei saw her dead daughter turn towards the shaking guard with his firearm once more raised against her.

He was afraid, terror was on his face as his gun was trembling in his hands.

The other nurse backed away as the female nurse's screams in the background continued against the buzz of the flies still soaring around them like rain.

BANG!

The guard fired again and it hit Fuyumi's eye, and once again the dead woman was unperturbed and was now walking towards the armed guard and lunged.

BANG! SKRUSH!

Two simultaneous noises happened at once. A shot hit Fuyumi's head in the middle and her fist was now embedded into the man's chest. The guard screamed and the nurse that was left remaining that backed away earlier now began to run out of the room…

But Fuyumi quickly embedded another fist into the man's chest and tore the man in half graphically. As the guard quickly passed out and was at the fringes of death due to all the pain, Fuyumi tore into the chest, pulled out one of the broken ribcage bones, and threw it with enough speed toward the running nurse.

The back of the nurse's neck was pierced and he fell into the floor just shy outside of the hallway.

Rei took another step back and felt the cold surface of the wall behind her.

"H-Help m-me…" the female nurse suddenly pleaded towards her with a weak arm outstretched as the previously dead man tore into her abdomen…

Rei could only watch as she instinctively froze the wall she was backed into…

And the temperature continued to drop as Fuyumi's remaining bloodshot eye looked at her.

Her daughter now stood in the middle of the room as Rei's own breath started to visibly chill as her hold on the wall behind her was now dangerously spreading the cold around the room and towards the whole area around her.

The temperature dropped significantly second by second unconsciously as Fuyumi stared at her.

Gripped with fear, doubt, and anxiety to an alarming level that she felt like her own chest would cave in due to how fast it was beating, Rei watched as the chaotic scene around her, with the addition of the reanimating dead men and the screaming voices outside with the buzz of the flies…

It painted such a nightmarish scenario that she was now screaming directly in her head to wake up. Yet in this instance, there was no such blessing that would bring about that outcome.

"F-Fuyumi…" Rei slowly said in despair, the frost continuing to propagate as the entire room now started to frost over, the blood stains started to freeze over into a darker color and the visible breaths of Rei's own were now a lot clearer than before.

With the frost, it had spread down to the very floor where Fuyumi had bashed a man into another man into an undistinguishable bloody pulp with a horrifying amount of brute strength. The said floor that cracked underneath the weight out of all the force applied to it was beginning to chill rapidly.

The very floor of the entire room was now covered in frost, and if Fuyumi was still somewhat alive, in a conventional sense, her bare feet would have dangerously been exposed to the rapidly chilling temperature it was standing on.

"F-Fuyumi… I-I want to wake up." Rei pleaded as she unconsciously increased the surge of cold through her hands. The cracked floor beneath Fuyumi was now completely frozen over.

CRCK.

Her dead daughter took a step toward her.

"T-This is just a nightmare… I-I want to wake up." Rei despaired as her breathing was now becoming hard, frost was now appearing on her hair and bloodied clothes.

A large majority of the flies buzzing around were now falling from the air due to the chill.

CRCK.

"F-Fuyumi."

CRCK. CRCK. CRCK…

As the dead, emaciated Fuyumi neared her shy of less than a foot away from her, Rei's chill reached the point that the cracked floor from earlier, grew weaker and weaker in its constitution. Unbeknownst to both, a large number of cracks forming a web under them were starting to continuously propagate.

"Fuyumi… p-please."

Her dead daughter, unfeeling, and without a semblance of a breath stood near her and raised her fist like an unfeeling machine, ready to kill without remorse nor care in the world.

CRCK. CRCK…

Then Fuyumi stepped forward to telegraph her punch. Rei clenched her fingers towards the wall by her back as she unconsciously yet again raised the temperature of her frost as she closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable.

CRAAACKCK!

Only for the entire floor to crack and collapse violently down onto itself to the floor under it.

A loud crash of debris and an untold number of destruction from the collapsed floor they were once in thundered over the floor before them as they all dropped.

Rei's ears were once again drowned in the loud noises of the crash.

She shut her eyes as she felt her body descend in a free fall, before painfully crashing into what felt like a wooden chair that gave way, and before she could react further, the loud thundering sound of the weight and power of frozen rock and debris landing around her and even on her drowned out every sense that she currently had as she felt her consciousness blackout.

The chaos of everything around her turned silent.

Even for just a moment.

Then…

Rei found herself being conscious again, but everything was dark. Like an abyss that stretched everywhere. She felt herself, "seeing" or having some sort of visionary sense even if she was not technically awake.

She could not feel her body.

Or anything for that matter…

But from the unsavory, almost serene darkness came a voice.

"Why. Why did you do it to me?"

Rei did an approximation of a blink at that very moment. She then "saw" something emerging from the dark.

And with the familiar voice from earlier, she saw her.

She saw Fuyumi.

Not the dead woman that she saw murdering numerous people in a blood frenzy, but Fuyumi when she was… alive.

Yet, her daughter sported a frown…

And bloodied hands.

As well as a stab wound that was still trickling blood from her chest.

"Why did you do this to me m-mom?"

Do what? Rei asked herself. What did she do? Why did Fuyumi say such things?

"Why mom?"

Rei then saw Fuyumi raise both her hands, the blood trickling from her palms.

"Why?"

Then before she knew it, Rei saw herself holding something.

To her horror as she saw herself plunging something into Fuyumi's chest and as she raised her head, she saw the horror, betrayal, and shock laced on her daughter's fingers.

"Why?" Fuyumi said softly.

Rei found herself screaming when the darkness of the void subsided, and she woke up.

…

She heaved a heavy breath as air once again entered her lungs.

It was uncomfortable, there was pain with each inhalation and exhalation, prompting her to realize that something must have been hit or damaged within her. The pain seemed to radiate all across her body as she coughed.

The dust particles, debris, and the dirty amalgamations of artificial snow and blood made from the carnage earlier dropped down to where they currently were like a demented picture of a dirty, abandoned frozen wasteland in the tundra.

Particles of frozen material rained from above and due to the destruction caused, the lights, if there were any flickered, what illumination there was what little could be seen from the windows covered by the rubble within the room.

There was still the buzz of errant flies, along with the stench of dried blood and dead bodies carried by the cold chill created by her quirk.

There were screams still outside of the room they were in.

Guttural moans and sparse gunfire are heard in the halls.

Rei then looked at herself. Rubble covered her left foot, her back had a weird sensation and was wet, indicating bleeding, and a steel bar was impaled into the side of her gut.

She inhaled again, the pain worsening as her vision wobbled.

She moved her foot that was covered by rubble, and while painful to move, she could still feel her toes. Indicating a good sign. She struggled with labored breaths to push away the rock that was covering it with her strength, but it was insufficient.

Trying to sit up, despite the pain of the rod still impaled within her, she reached out towards the rubble that was trapping her foot and pried it off with as much strength as she can.

Her ragged breaths started to take a toll on her, but she managed to pry the thing off, she saw that near the end of her foot there seemed to be a large bleeding gash.

She hissed in pain as she saw it as she tried to move back.

Each movement however continued to propel the pain found in the metal rod sticking out of her.

She tried reaching for it with one hand.

Touching the cold steel itself, she felt a flare of pain. She quickly withdrew it, but seeing that it was bleeding and she was literally a stuck pig, she inhaled with a hiss again and tried to pull it out of her.

She placed her left hand on the bar and with it her right hand.

Her breath steadily increased, her heart rate rising as she steeled herself to pull it out of her.

Until the sound of rubble moving just a meter away made her freeze.

The largest mound of rubble covering the center of the room shook and moved in place.

Then, a second later…

BROOSH!

A bloodied hand rose from the middle of it. Each finger moving and the arm behaving like an awakened snake with how it articulated made Rei's eyes widen.

Then the entire mound moved and buckled, revealing more of the arm and eventually, a body as debris and rock parted around it like an aquatic mammal breaching the surface of the ocean for air.

Rei visibly panicked, but with all the pain, strain, and exhaustion involved, she could only inch away as Fuyumi's body rose. Multiple gashes on her body were seen, and black, clearly deoxygenated blood was dripping from it. Fuyumi's entire form had not changed nor was there any additional visible damage seen, but it was clear that based on how it emerged from the rubble, her movement was not as graceful as before.

The chill in the air kept increasing and despite Rei feeling the major drawback of her own quirk being indirectly turned on across the surface of everything around her, her entire focus was solely on her dead, moving daughter, that now loomed over her, shadow, and all.

A small detail that she did not notice herself at that moment, was that Fuyumi's shadow was formless and distorted as if she was physically not there, and something else was standing before her.

Whether that was the truth or not, it only proceeded to make Rei terrified, as the one bloodlust-filled eye that Fuyumi had remained open was now peering at her.

Then without further hesitation, Fuyumi stepped forward, rubble before her feet parted, revealing more wounds below as well as opened crevices where a brave litter of flies tried to get out in vain of the dangerously low temperature around them.

It did not take long even as Rei tried to inch away in terror as Fuyumi grabbed her far quicker than she realized despite the loss of some grace with her movements. She was turning less human, and now robotic with her actions as she grabbed Rei by the throat and raised her up with one hand.

Rei panicked despite the pain as she felt herself choking before she felt her back being slammed against a wall. The wall behind her cracked from the weight of the force behind the slam as Rei felt some of the ribs in her chest break.

Pain flared all across her body as both her hands tried to pry Fuyumi's chokehold on her.

Rei watched as she clawed her hands over Fuyumi's hold as the inexpressive dead daughter of hers stared like an unfeeling machine. Rei screamed, kicked, and tried to free herself but all of it was worthless as Fuyumi then grabbed the metal rod sticking out of her gut and moved it slightly…

Like a child unknowingly curious as to what reaction it would bring.

Rei's cries and screams echoed across the destroyed and freezing room.

The amount of pain just from the movement caused her to scream out all remaining strength from her chest as the unmoving Fuyumi watched while holding her.

Eventually, the screams lessened and what was replaced were tears and a heartfelt sob.

Grief overtook Rei as she lost her voice…

But within that moment, she was able to whisper, over and over:

"I'm sorry… I'm sorry I became your mother."

Rei was ready to die. She wanted it all to end. It was simply painful. Everything was just set ablaze around her, her whole life leading to this point, her family, her daughter, her sons…

Her husband.

She wanted it all to end. For it all to disappear and finally sleep.

She begged for it.

"…" tears streaked down her face, cold and nearly freezing. She waited for death

To finally feel the sweet embrace of oblivion, but she realized that as soon as a significant of manner of seconds had passed, she knew in her head that nothing was coming.

She slowly opened her eyes and saw Fuyumi, unmoving still but curiously looking at the arm that was choking her mother.

Rei looked down, the hand and arm were still there, but there no longer was force in it, or any pressure of any kind. It was static. Her eyes moved towards her own hands that were clawing at it for release.

Then she noticed the frost that enveloped her dead daughter's hand.

"W-What?" she rasped out, until the whole frozen arm, which seemed insufficient in handling the weight of a whole grown woman started to crack.

Then the entire appendage exploded into a mist of blood and frost, and it clattered down the floor, leaving a stump in place.

Rei released a large exhalation of breath as she felt her chest lose some of its tension.

She was then dropped to the floor as she cried out in pain when her broken ribs once more flared.

She looked up and noticed that her daughter's other arm had also been frozen stiff, the hand that was holding the rod was now static and Rei looked in horror as she saw Fuyumi, now sort of confused as those bloodshot eyes looked at her in shock.

The stump that was left from her action earlier perplexed the dead woman.

Rei then watched in horror as Fuyumi's eyes focused back on her.

Then she started to connect the dots. Her hands. They were now bordering the limit of her own body when trying to fire her quirk and as she saw how less graceful Fuyumi started to move after the crash from earlier, it was because everything around her, literally everything was still dropping in temperature…

All because of her high emotional state and fear, she was now unconsciously displaying a deluge of extreme temperatures that it made an already dead body like Fuyumi's freeze faster than a living human being was.

However, she was still moving, and with that remaining bloodshot eye focusing on her, she saw her daughter open her mouth before she lunged like a shark about to attempt a breaching towards their prey.

Rei screamed and raised both her hands up. She felt the entire weight of her dead daughter slam into her, further injuring more bones within her and her already weakening composition and strength as Fuyumi tried to bite and maul at Rei with what remained of her ability to do so like a rabid dog trying to bite an intruder.

Rei screamed as she barely stopped her daughter with both arms as the loud chomping and snarling noises so close to her face made her heartbeat rise and her despair climb to unknown levels of trauma as she tried in vain to hold her daughter back.

Or what was left of her daughter.

She cried once more in her feeble attempt to stave the inevitable as Fuyumi continued to thrash and tried to end her life. She asked herself why she was resisting when earlier she would have accepted to let this end, to finally end the nightmare.

As she continued to stave off Fuyumi, she was unaware that she had one hand on Fuyum's left eye, and the other on her daughter's right chest. As the two struggled Rei continued to despair…

Then images from the small moment she had when she blacked out earlier resurfaced in her thoughts. Her holding a knife to Fuyumi's heart.

Her daughter cried and asked why she did this to her.

Why she killed her.

And as minutes pass, the struggle lessened and lessened.

Then Rei once more focused her attention on the present and felt herself collapse in pure sadness and debilitating pain as she saw what she had done.

Fuyumi was frozen still. Unmoving.

A dark mark on the side of her face by her left eye was seen due to her hand being placed there

The patch of darkened frostbite once more rekindled memories of a screaming boy after she had burned his face.

Fuyumi's wails and screams as she talked about what she did to a child with her own hands.

Rei's hands shook, not just to the cold, but towards the realization that she did it again.

She did it again.

Her other hand that was at Fuyumi's chest made her remember the knife sticking out of it.

Then she sobbed without control.

"Why did you do this to me m-mom?" Fuyumi's voice said.

"Why mom?"

Those questions repeated in her head as the ethereal atmosphere of the silence and the artificial snow brought forth by her quirk now permeated the place.

She continued to cry and hear those questions again and again even as help had arrived…

And she would continue to relay those harrowing wails of grief and despair for the rest of the day.

With Fuyumi's voice at the back of her head saying…

"I'm scared, mom."

---

EYEWITNESS: ENJI TODOROKI, THE FLAME HERO

EARLIER…

It was a humiliating thought, seeing himself in the mirror.

Most of his pride and his confidence were gone after recovering from the events of Kamino. His beard was no longer trimmed as good as it was, and his entire posture, even down to most of the shape of his body was not as good as it once was.

Enji stared at himself.

Or at least what was left of himself.

He grumbled in his deep voice towards what he was seeing. It was a disgrace, an utter failure. A realization that he was too weak to do what needed to be done.

No longer did he see himself to be the utmost of what he can be.

No longer did he look at himself and see the monumental road that he would need to traverse to arrive at his goal.

No, what he could only see right now with what was left of himself was a wounded man who recovered from a grave injury.

He sighed as he stared at the mirror.

Multiple scars now riddled his body, especially upwards on his torso. The largest being the one where he was stabbed in the heart by the enemy, he had faced that night in Kamino. The stab wound still looked quite fresh from healing, even the feeling around it, the texture, and the phantom pains surrounding it still had not vanished.

His frown took a deeper turn as he looked further at himself.

Memories of his enemy's actions against him.

How they screamed his name.

Their hate, their affixation, and the terrible lust for vengeance seemed to overturn even their most rational of thoughts. Such fury was a rare sight.

Even now, he was quite surprised seeing it. Most of the villains that had grudges toward him were easily thwarted by how high and mighty he was. How he could easily dismantle their evil deeds by simply defeating them and overpowering them on the spot was what made the cowards and dullards pacified and silent.

It made them relent the moment he stepped into the fray.

Most of them, but not all.

Some tried their best to thwart him, fight him, or even embark on an elaborate scheme to see his demise or fall. But none had succeeded. No one could. He was Endeavor.

The Flame Hero himself in his burning beacon of strength.

That enemy, however, that stranger.

They defied and displayed such a rage so powerful that it made him flinch. It made him hesitate and for a few moments, his focus wavered at how horribly enraged they were, yet they kept their strict combat discipline intact.

Like a warrior born from birth.

Or a fanatic that reached allowed themselves to reach the very pinnacle of their limits and tried to push further, harder, than ever before.

Ironically, they embodied the very idea of going beyond.

Or as that rat and All Might would say, "Plus Ultra".

And Enji commended them for being such.

That man or woman, whoever they were. They achieved something that Enji never thought possible in his career as a Pro Hero.

To be humiliated this badly, despite doing the absolute best that he could in that situation, he was ultimately defeated.

And as his eyes cast themselves on his entire form…

This was the aftermath of that defeat. The mark of that failure.

He hissed. Baring his teeth as he turned his eyes towards his left.

Being scarred and stabbed was already a large blow to himself. It certainly was a large blow to his whole career at large, but what utterly sold the myriad of negative feelings deep within Enji at that very moment, was the stump where his arm once was.

The infamous phantom limb sensation now existed as he tried to move, feel, and rationalize something that was no longer there.

Simply put, it was humiliation on a scale he would never recover from.

All the scars, all the wounds on his body would have been brave mementos to learn and overcome as the greatest of challenges to push forward in his quest in life.

This? This was just a failure altogether.

Nothing was changing it. No rewinding it. No way for the wound or scar to heal over and allow it to be a relic of the past.

It was just nothing.

Just a permanent loss that would mar his entire image, his entire form.

He knew what this meant. What this would transpire to. He could already hear the rumors and words of his own employees within his agency. The stares of normal servicemen, interns, and sidekicks alike. Even his most prominent sidekick, Burnin seemed to have a different gaze once she saw him.

What amounted to tantamount respect and professionalism in the past with the gaze they gave him, was now pity, concern, an abject amount of added fear, and worst of all, that nagging feeling behind his head where he would picture and imagine the words of these people talking to him as if he was a disabled person.

He sighed. It was an objectively correct assumption.

Most Pros who had their careers cut short due to a grave injury were quite numerous.

Most of those that were injured, such as something like his condition at the moment pushed on, yet they were reduced to a shadow of themselves. Some even quit outright due to the inability of doing their jobs.

Angry as Enji could be to some of his staff thinking about him having the same fate, he could not help but feel as if it was warranted.

It was a valid concern.

And looking at himself now, he knew that there was a possibility of him doing the same.

Of him falling into this road. No longer able to traverse the former road that he planned for in life.

Clenching his fists, Enji gritted his teeth and tried to hold it in.

The mix of various emotions in his head started to drawl on him, until he managed to stop himself, prompting him to dress up as quickly as he can.

Still, he never felt like himself anymore. While he kept reminding himself that he was still Endeavor, there existed many moments now in his life, in this condition, that the shame from his defeat ate at him.

And unlike the man that he was before, that defeat started to get to him.

The many setbacks even with his symbolic conflict with All Might were never as bad as this.

"Hrm." He growled as he finished putting on his suit jacket.

He then walked towards his desk within his office and as he sat down on his chair, there was a knock on his door.

He looked at the time on the electronic clock on his desk and allowed his professionalism side to re-emerge. With a grunt, he told whoever was behind the door to open it.

"Mornin' Boss." his most loyal sidekick, Burnin' said. The woman peeking by the doorway.

Her gaze was still respectful and had that similar look that he was getting these past few days.

"What is it Burnin?" he said with a low tone.

The woman flinched at his voice but knowing who he was, she continued despite that small reaction. "Uh, your kid's in the lobby, asking to talk to you."

"Hrm." He grunted.

"S-Should I let him in? Or tell him to buzz off?"

Enji sighed. It was probably Shoto. The insolent boy after the whole incident with him being maimed this bad was suddenly a lot more interested in talking, or hell, even interacting with him. If this was him before the incident, he would have relished the thought of his wayward boy who did not care to foster his limitless potential to talk to him, but now with the state he was currently in, he found the experience less of a boon and more of an annoyance.

Sometimes, even the silent stare of his son would drive his already broken ego to collapse further under its own weight. He would seethe and in one instance, while he decided to rage at the boy for his conduct, Shoto would just give that horrible ironic smile.

It was despicable.

Yet at the same time, like earlier, he was now starting to realize that it was warranted.

"…Tell him to come in." he relented.

"Sure…" the woman said without any further words as she walked away.

There was a stack of papers on his desk as Enji rubbed the tips of his index finger and thumb as he waited for his son to arrive. The paperwork that he would usually be busy with, even in moments when he needed to get home after work was something he was already starting to neglect more often than not.

He would do it still in a few intervals, but admittedly it was starting to show that his interest…

Was simply not there.

As he contemplated that his door finally opened and his son came to visit him.

"Morning, father," Shoto said, with a wave.

And that… ironic, subtle, and small smile conveyed enough what the boy was feeling towards him. It was not a blatant, mocking smile, no… it was a smile born out of pity. A smile that pushed his buttons and the boy did not care or even think of dismissing it.

He was actively doing this for his own amusement.

It sickened Enji, but what was he to do?

"Hrm." He grunted.

He looked away and took his pen to stare and possibly read the first page of the stack of papers on his desk. It was a vain attempt at trying to not give in to the boy, but he knew it was futile.

Hearing the little bastard's steps as he sat on one of the two chairs facing his own desk, he could still feel the small smile on his son's face.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"To visit you."

His lips twitched to that obvious, almost mocking drab tone to his voice, but he could only offer a glare as he met his son's eyes.

"You could have wasted your time on better things. Productive things." He responded.

"I didn't feel like it."

Enji once again offered a glare but eventually sighed. Shoto continued to give that off-putting, annoying smile as a semblance of silence permeated between the two of them until Enji had enough.

He audibly placed his pen at the side of his desk and looked at his son.

"What do you want Shoto?" he questioned. His face was firm this time, but not so much like his common, atypical serious glare.

"I told you, I felt like it."

"That's all there is? Only that? Or were you hoping to actually achieve something today?" he stressed. The boy merely shrugged at his words.

"Not everything has to have a deeper meaning or ulterior motive father. Weren't you always the one pushing for the both of us to interact more?"

Enji clenched his fists. "You know damn well what the hell I'm talking about boy. I know for a fact that you are not doing this for altruistic reasons alone, and we both know that despite my goal of trying to hone your potential throughout these years, you were never one to enjoy nor even tolerate my presence."

The boy's smile merely widened.

"True, but I tolerate your presence now…" Shoto then leaned forward. "… doesn't that make you happy at least?" he said with a smirk.

Enji felt his nails dig deeper into his fist, but ultimately the anger subsided a second later.

This was a pointless conversation. No matter what he did, he knew he would never get the boy to acquiesce much less stop. He sighed deeply before looking at Shoto again, who this time was the one to speak.

"I've heard rumors father," Shoto said, leaning back to his chair as he did so. "There's this talk that you're thinking of retiring soon. Is there, truth to those statements?"

"None." He quickly answered.

"Well it seems most of your staff here and even some of your sidekicks seemed to think so."

"My condition, despite what it is, will not be a reason nor a detriment to my work." He then narrowed his eyes at his son. "…regardless of what my employees think of me, I will be returning to peek performance as soon as I recover fully."

"Is that what you're trying to say realistically to satisfy your own self-importance, or is it simply you trying to cope with what is clearly not possible for your case anymore?" Shoto asked, but before Enji could reply he saw that his son was no longer smiling.

"There is nothing to cope with, nor anything false with what I just said."

"You can never beat All Might any more father. It's as simple as that."

BAM!

Enji's fist hitting his own desk was loudly heard in the entire room. There were even some cracks left in its wake. His anger had reached its peak.

"Are you afraid father, are you afraid of what is clearly the truth of your condition?"

Enji did not reply. Despite his son no longer smiling, he knew what he was trying to goad out of him. His boy knew it. He knew it too well.

He knew what he was suffering at that very moment.

And it pained him to admit that his boy was possibly correct.

Shoto then sighed.

"How does it feel?"

"I don't want to speak any more about this. Especially with the likes of you."

"Why not?" Shoto asked, with Enji feeling that the boy already knew the answer. He just wanted to hear it from his own lips. He wanted to snarl, but what was he to do in this situation? Ignoring the boy would only result in him pushing further and he did not want that.

He had… too much to think and far too much to disseminate on his own and this boy's mad attempts at trying to goad him into anger were not part of it.

"Boy. I understand your pathetic attempts at enacting revenge via this form, but as your father, if there is even an ounce of respect you have left for me, then I request that you drop this matter entirely."

Shoto blinked at his words.

For the first time in Enji's life, he seemed to have retroactively made his son feel shocked at him.

He did not know what to think of it and as the two stared at each other, Enji tried to look away as the boy's earlier, mischievous almost vindictive eyes were now turned into something serious.

Something far serious that he expected of Shoto in a usual sense.

Back then he let it slide without consequence.

Now? He did not know how to feel about it.

"You act as if you were ever a father to me. To my brothers, to my sister…" Shoto said slowly, each word filled with raw emotion as Enji's eyes refocused on his son. He felt tense from the boy's gaze.

"Or even to mother." He said, nearly spitting it out.

Enji could see his son's hands turning into tight fists as he stood up.

"As far as I'm concerned you were never a father to any of us. You're a failure of one. Simple as that." He iterated with a firm voice.

Enji had no words. His lips were slightly opened in shock and surprise from the statement but at the same time…

A part of himself deep inside was admittedly hit by those words.

He could not even say anything back for his defense as Shoto looked him in the eye.

This reprieve was then stopped when Shoto finally returned to his seat. Enji then looked upon his desk, deep in thought with a frown that was not as intense as he usually had.

But a frown that conveyed the weight of expressions and emotions that was born from his son's words.

He tensed as he slowly took up his pen again.

Shoto on other hand had also lost his smile, his edge in the conversation.

It felt great finally saying those words aloud, but at the same time, the aftermath only left him with a dry sense of nothingness. Not even an inkling of satisfaction or vindication.

There was a stiff silence between them once more. The uncertain peak of their relationship now opened new doors due to Enji's condition, and the boldness that the youngest Todoroki had.

Despite what either felt at that moment, this would be a turning point.

As the silence permeated, Enji began starting to do a little paperwork to move on from the silence but the door to his office once again received a knock.

He bid whoever it was to enter and to his surprise, it was Burnin again.

And the woman was sweating and visibly panicking.

"Boss!" but before she could say her sentence in full, she saw that Shoto was in the room and recalibrated what she needed to relay to him.

"What is it Burnin?" he asked, concerned.

"Y-You gotta see this." She said with enough of a hint on her face that he needed to come over.

Enij quickly stood up and as he passed by his son he told him, "We'll discuss further about this later" and quickly came over to his sidekick.

As soon as the door was closed, Enji looked at Burnin and saw the bewildered look on her face.

"What happened?" he said sternly.

"It's bad boss. T-The hospital where your wife's in…"

Enji quickly felt his heartbeat rise as he looked at her.

The day just kept on getting worse.

---

Shoto tapped his foot on the floor as he sat.

He was puzzled.

Extremely puzzled. For the longest time in his life, he always envisioned and even fantasized about this moment. To see his father humbled.

To see his father as a shell of his former self. He already gave up hope on his father being brought down this way due to him being admittedly stronger than most of the heroes out there, but to see him now? Especially for the first time when he found out what happened to him, made him ecstatic even…

But now? He felt hollow.

He wanted this. He craved this.

He wanted justice for all the wrong that he felt his father placed on him not only for himself or his family but for literally everything in his life.

This moment was supposed to be something triumphant for him.

A moment that he would find something to laugh at his father at.

To make him feel what failure felt like.

Even those words he told him he envisioned it with such grandeur that he constantly dreamed and wondered what it would feel like once it finally happened, improbable as it was.

Saying it, after being enraged with his broken father's words.

Saying it in the tone of a broken person himself…

The outcome just was not what he thought it was.

The look his father gave him, his own emotions during that exchange. It just left a sour taste in his mouth. He closed his eyes in a heavy sigh as his frustrations increased.

It was so good at first.

He kept smiling. He loved seeing his father be left this way, but after that current exchange, he just loathed the empty feeling that now blossomed heavily within him. He felt his own hands clench as he once again opened his eyes and looked at the empty room.

He wondered what to do next.

His satisfaction was already taken from him and whether or not these new changes to their lives would actually do anything to his family's own dynamic.

It was bad enough that his sister, his beloved and caring sister Fuyumi was still missing…

Natsuo was already being distant from everyone, and now, his father who to him was the crippling tumor that infected his family was now acting different and was a different person after everything that took place in Kamino.

The reaction to his injury alone already told Shoto what his father was going through.

And for him to finally look at him as more than his glorified experiment to surpass All Might, his father now seemed deeply hurt with his words about how he felt about him in full.

"…" he sighed heavily.

Until the door to the office opened again and out came his father. Seemingly in a hurry.

He stared as his father rummaged to get something from his desk before pocketing it, and his body language alone made him understand that there were pressing matters that he needed attending to.

For some off-putting reason, he felt obligated to ask him about it.

"Something wrong?"

He saw his dad ignore him at first, but he suddenly stopped and looked at him. With a frown, he shook his head and spoke with a lower tone.

"It would be better for you to go home Shoto. Safer, even."

"Why?" he asked. His father was intense for some reason.

"Boss! We gotta go." He heard Burnin say by the door as his father walked by him, stopping for a moment before placing his remaining hand on his shoulder.

"If there's one thing you can trust me with. It's me protecting our family." He said cryptically before leaving him speechless.

As soon as the two adults left the room, he felt his phone vibrate…

And as he was wondering what that was about, he saw that his brother texted him.

The moment he read what was sent, panic already settled in.

---

The skies were seemingly a lot darker than when he was in his agency.

The car ride was rather dull too. Burnin was much too quiet, and try as he might to open any sort of conversation, he was still quite affected by his conversation with his son.

Opening the door of the car, the very first thing that he noticed which put his focus back to the real world was the abundance of police cars, even SWAT elements, and numerous first responders present. The number alone made him flinch and alert.

No one would send this much firepower and support for something small.

A small part of him already felt the tension rise as he stared at the hospital where Rei was. He expected it to be on fire or broken down from a fight with a villain, but what surprised him more was the fact that a large sheen of ice was covering a large portion of the building.

That one other detail made him grimace.

"Holy shit." Burnin exclaimed. The woman then looked at Enji. "I thought you told me your wife couldn't produce this much out of her quirk boss. Isn't your kid the one that's stronger?"

"He should be, or maybe that isn't the case anymore. Rei was never one who trained with her quirk, nor even use it to this extent." He then squinted his eyes as he looked further at the hospital at a distance while he closed the door to the car they used.

"But even then… anyone making her do this to lash out with her quirk with this much strength and potency is already making me worry."

Burnin wordlessly agreed to that notion as they began walking towards the police barricade to which a burgeoning number of reporters and onlookers were trying to take pictures or watch what was happening.

For a moment all of this ruckus reminded him far too much of the chaos in Kamino, even if it wasn't at full force this time. He hoped whatever kind of enemy attacked Kamino was not related to what this new situation was.

Especially when it involved Rei.

As they neared the barricade the ambiance started to escalate as numerous voices and pushy civilians and reporters kept asking various questions towards the many officers keeping them at bay.

A few of the men present were people that Enji personally knew in his career.

"Settle down please! We have the situation under control as we speak!"

"Can you please divulge what sort of villain or threat had caused this incident?"

"Is this another attack of those monsters?"

"Why are the heroes not responding again? They were late the last time!"

"Is everyone inside alright?"

"Sir is this incident in any way connected to the-

It was a mishmash of voices left and right, and Enji despite being more subdued than his normal self, was starting to feel annoyed. However, the moment he was seen by one of the reporters…

It was then that his frustration doubled.

One fool shouted out his name and suddenly everyone was flocking to him.

"Hey! Get the hell away, all of you!" Burnin said as she tried to push some of them away but more kept on coming and within seconds Enji felt the intrusion of various people in his personal space. Microphones were nearly shoved into his face and subdued as he was compared to his own self back then, it still warranted a growl as the flames concealing his face brightened and became more intense somewhat.

It did not perturb the journalists and reporters however as he could hear Burnin's voice amidst the flurry of the men and women present.

"Can you comment on the attack on Kamino?"

"Are the heroes doing their best with the onset of the rise of crime?"

"What are your thoughts on the recently revealed scandals involving Captain Celebrity?"

"All Might hasn't been seen in the past week, does this make you the new Number One?"

"Does your injury allow you to continue as Endeavor or will you retire soon?"

There were dozens upon dozens of questions and as the reporters pushed, Enji did not answer any of them as he and Burnin tried to wade through the increasing crowd, and thankfully the police officers by the front of the hospital had finally noticed them and were coming to their aid to dispel the ruckus.

But as they were nearing the end of the crowd, one voice from a reporter stood out.

The question in itself provoking his attention.

"Are the allegations recently released to the public of your familial abuse accurate sir?"

It stopped him from walking for a single moment as that same reporter who said that was once again drowned out by the voices of the crowd.

Enji turned towards the said reporter, a woman who was waiting for an answer to her query…

As his flames dimmed somewhat as he got affected heavily by the question.

The bubble of emotions churning deep inside him was now fully haywire as he fixed his gaze at the reporter, but before he could do anything rash or even anything that would rile these people up in any sort of manner, good or bad, he felt Burnin touch his shoulder.

"Boss! You gotta focus! These leeches are getting at you."

Enji stared at her for a second before slowly nodding.

As they waded through the last of the growing crowd, the police finally got to them and they were finally free of the swarm of bodies and voices as they were escorted to whoever was in charge of the police presence in the area.

As the voices began to drown in the back while they walked Enji continued to think about that reporter's question in the back of his head. His lamentation however was broken when his sidekick's voice called out to him.

"You okay boss? You haven't been very present much recently."

Enji bit his lip at first but he sighed slightly and responded back to her.

"It's nothing of note Burnin. we should focus on the task at hand first. I could possibly talk to you about it later should I be in the mood."

"S-Sure… you got it." She said with concern as out of the police car ahead who was talking to the SWAT team present, was the highest ranking officer Captain Kururugi, who was coming closer to them with a hand outstretched.

"Endeavor. I appreciate you came."

Enji quickly reciprocated the gesture as the two shook their hands.

"Likewise." He said as their hands finally let go of each other.

"I'll be blunt, as much as I appreciate you arriving, are you up for the task?" Captain Kururugi asked. The tone of his voice made Enji's eye twitch subtly to the implication again.

"Despite my condition, I have been cleared for duty," Enji said simply and the police captain nodded, being convinced enough.

"Alright, but first thing's first given what the staff has told us, you should be informed that your wife is alright. We were able to get her out. She suffers a number of injuries, but she should be alright as we speak."

"Thank you." He stated some of the gratitude in his words was true on his part.

"However, she hasn't woken up and according to one of the eyewitnesses that were at the very start of the incident, she'll be in a terrible, nearly manic and traumatized mental state… it's been advised that you'd be there by her side when she wakes up."

"I… understand." He said, conflicted at what was said. Especially since it seemed that Rei was at the very brunt of the attack and that alone soured his already bad day.

"What can you tell me about the situation? I'm seeing that there are biohazard containment units being deployed. Was this a villain attack… or something else altogether?" Enji inquired, hoping to stir the conversation away from that first and focus on the mission.

"A call was made at 8:56 AM about a dead body being shipped to your wife's room. Everything after that just escalated into this mess that we're in." the police captain then gestured for an officer that was holding documents as he shared them with Burnin and Enji.

"At first, the assailant, or in this case the Jane Doe that was the corpse sent to your wife's room, was supposedly resurrected and went on a rampage. She in turn then started killing multiple people in the process as your wife and the rest of the staff that was in the room tried to fend for themselves. Your wife had activated her quirk to such a level that it froze nearly half of the entire hospital's main building."

Enji looked at the frost that was still visible from the outside as he looked at the pictures of the dead bodies and the like taken from the scene.

"The Jane Doe was able to massacre a significant number of the staff and the guards present in a graphic and horribly psychotic fashion as she tore them limb from limb or killed them in more creative ways than I can name Ingenium's entire sidekick roster."

The joke was of poor taste according to Enji, but he brushed it off as he and Burnin continued to look at the photos.

"Here's the kicker, however, the very reason the Biohazard Containment Unit was called in was that some of the more 'intact' murdered victims suddenly rose from the dead despite their grievous injuries and started to attack anyone that was close to their proximity."

"And any victim killed or maimed in any way of form after that… is what… infected? Like those old zombie movies back in the day?" Burnin said sarcastically, disbelieving the notion…

Until he noticed that the Police Captain was not smiling, nor was he even partaking in her sarcasm.

"You're shitting me. Real zombies?"

The Police Captain sighed. "Look, this is ridiculous and half of everything that's found in there is making the experts on site scratch their heads in confusion. But that's not the point. Zombie or not, there's enough evidence to support that this is connected to something worse."

Enji's eyes widened. "You're not implying what I think you're going to say, right?"

The Police Captain frowned and nodded at Endeavor.

"We have conclusive evidence, based on the substance in Jane Doe's leftover bodily fluids… that yes, this is indeed similar to the various substances left… by the attackers in Kamino."

The mood of the conversation died as Burnin who was usually the most vocal and sarcastic of Enji's sidekicks was more or less disturbed.

"Shit." She whispered to herself.

"Has this been confirmed with absolute certainty?" Enji inquired as he looked at the state of one of the bodies in the photo. Mangled, but they looked like those undead that he had seen in some movies back when he was younger.

"The guys on-site all agree that even with just this… they are certain that it's the case."

Enji continued to frown. Memories of the attack surfaced once more.

That is until the Police Captain placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I haven't even told you what we discovered in terms of who the Jane Doe is."

Enji was too afraid to even ask, but with how the Captain placed a hand on his shoulder, part of him knew who this Jane Doe was.

"I'm sorry Todoroki. I know how much you worked hard on trying to find where your daughter is."

Enji clenched his fists…

What was this day? Why…

Why was this all happening simultaneously?

---

Burnin stared at his boss.

It had been a rough few weeks since he woke up from his coma. It was already bad when Moe herself was able to see what her mentor and boss' state was during the Kamino incident.

Had she was not in the mindset of getting him to safety so that he could live, she would have just stared in utter shock and horror at what his insurmountable leader had suffered in terms of the damage he accumulated.

It was heartbreaking.

Moe knew deep inside herself that her boss was not the most likable person around.

Nor was he the type of person who would trust or be open to people.

To be real, she wasn't even sure if her boss actually opened up or trusted any person at all to the extent that he would be more… 'free' if that was the correct term.

He was terribly subdued to himself, and would usually prefer to be alone in his office when he had any free time at all. Hell, he would even train to push himself harder if he didn't have anything to do.

He was a no-nonsense type of person. The kind that prioritized efficiency and professionalism above all else. Due to that, she understood why many did not particularly like the man. Even some of his own fans. Poor kids that even typically dared to take autographs of him were left with a sour experience and while his PR was still fairly high and extensive in terms of how his agency preferred to portray him…

It was a known fact that the man was almost inhuman in his stature and reputation that it reaches a point where people respect him, but at the same time, they won't particularly like him the way that some people liked other heroes. In that instance, it would be All Might.

His boss' reputation of being this unflinching symbol of professionalism, efficiency, and stone-cold determination at tackling cases and having a track record of the untold number of successes was not on the level that All Might's was…

Sure, he would dispute that with her should she voice it out, but part of her knew that her boss already knew that. Still, the man was still someone she admired.

Wholeheartedly in fact, not just on a level of respect.

But on a level of absolute trust.

People may not like his boss for his attitude or for his cold exterior that most people who meet him feel, but if there was one thing that people admired him to be on and on again across the years…

It was that he did a damn good job at what he does best.

And his best is something that only a few Pro Heroes both in her lifespan and at least to her, in history that could reach the level that Endeavor attained.

She was inspired by that. She loved that feeling, despite admittedly when she and her boss had their on and off moments where sometimes he could be an asshole, and in another he becomes a commander that she would willingly die for.

She was practically the only person with an in-built unabashed loyalty to her boss.

So much so that the other sidekicks under his roster and the people in his agency think of her as someone close to a definite teacher's pet.

She would not judge them if they thought so…

But even she knew despite her reverence and sheer loyalty to her boss, she would never be part of the people that he would open up to.

Or the people that he would feel comfortable with and unwind with amidst all the professionalism and rough exterior that he superfluously flaunted almost every portion of his life.

She knew that very well. Too damn well in fact.

At the same time, she wondered if his boss had any of those people he trusted deeply at all in hindsight. Every interaction, with people she would suspect to be the people that he would be open to, he gave them the same no-bullshit attitude and coldness.

Not even to his family. Nor friends if he had any to speak of outside of professional relationships.

She never saw him be anything but Endeavor.

But now?

After the Kamino Incident, he acted and behaved entirely like a new person.

A new person that she was still getting used to.

Was this really who her boss was? Underneath all of that strength and reputation? Was this the person he really was despite the large shadow that he had cast over his work, his life, and ambition?

It was just jarring seeing him this way.

It was also pitiful and painful, especially to her who idolized the man for most of her life.

The clear fact that he was reduced to only one arm and humiliated in probably the most terrible way possible, Moe deeply knew that it made her boss ashamed. Ashamed in ways that even she could not terrifically understand or even pretend to know in the first place.

He did not even shout, rage, or do anything about his condition after days and days of awakening from his coma due to his injuries. She did not see the whole picture with the fight her boss and the enemy had, but seeing that pillar of light and flame that she hardly saw him emit or even attempt at all was already worrying at the onset.

It was of course one amongst other fucked up things and discoveries that Kamino had spawned out of its ass on that fateful night. She was already worried when that shadowy bastard stood above her mentor with a sword sticking out of his chest.

But to find that there was someone out there, villains, terrorists that went out of their way to create monsters either out of actual people or from scratch via their quirk was already frightening.

Add the fact that someone, SOMEONE out there, particularly a girl that the Symbol of Peace fought, gave him a run for his money.

She would not admit this, even to her boss, but she knew that All Might was simply bullshit. Both in power and status, and her boss as strong as he was would never reach the heights of just pure utter insanity that the man was able to do in the span of his entire career.

To have one of these villains, these monsters have someone that could go toe to toe with the Symbol of Peace and also injure said man was a frightening thought that she knew whoever was present during that night would never get out of their heads.

Now? To find out that whatever this attack was, is connected to said attackers gave chills down her spine. Especially when her boss was given the revelation that Jane Doe who started all of this was her daughter who had been missing for weeks.

By the look of Endeavor alone as he stared at the Police Captain earlier due to the revelation slapped to his face, she knew he was now on edge as ever. He was already on edge when he and his son argued within his office that she stood by and listened…

But with all the problems, issues, and frustrations that her boss had been suffering?

To add this as a demented cherry on top, she was unsure if she should let him continue with his action, this entire mission.

She could already feel how much this was bogging her boss down.

His current static face as they walked by each other closely in the frozen halls of the hospital already summed up what he was currently feeling. She did not even react that much to the gruesome, horror-like frozen wasteland that the hospital's affected halls had turned into.

As her entire concern was on her mentor's well-being…

And seeing him walk these halls with all of this baggage just crushed her heart in two.

Damn it.

She tried looking away as they walked by a frozen corpse that was reminiscent of some very gruesome horror movies that she saw as a kid. However, despite admittedly being disturbed by the environment her eyes trailed back to her boss whom as deep as they went into the crime scene, the deeper the look on his face turned.

She opened her mouth, closed it, and hesitated as she did not know what to say.

"Burnin." his boss suddenly said, making her nearly jump from the silence.

"Y-Yeah boss?" she blurted out.

"Call my sons. If the perpetrators are specifically targeting me, I need them safe."

"S-Sure. I'll be on it." She promised.

She then did not expect her boss to look at her with a solemn expression.

"You be careful too. We can't take chances." He said before turning his head back forwards again.

Moe blinked at his words, while his boss was not negligent at his roster of sidekicks, he never directly said something like that to her with his voice in that tone, and that expression.

It was strangely… heartfelt.

It made her feel odd.

Continuing as they walked deeper into the nightmarish, arctic cavern-like hallways of what was left in this part of the building, they got closer and closer to the very core where the incident first started.

It grew colder and colder with each step forward and the scenery molded into her mind like she was no longer in the city suburbia environment. The visual aspect of it all grabbed her intensely.

It did not help that as the temperature continued to drop, their breaths now began to condense. The wisps of smoke became all the more visible and their footwear was now trudging an inch and a half deep of what seemed like snow.

If this was less morbid than it looked like Moe would have considered this entire place as a hauntingly beautiful, bizarre winter-themed park during something like Halloween or any of the more superstitious holidays she knew.

They were not alone of course, but the deeper they went the fewer lights there were even though it was still quite sunny outside despite the gloomy clouds covering most of the sky.

All light was reduced to this pale, horror-like aesthetic as cops and medical professionals walked everywhere around in intervals. Their flashlights or gear emitting their glows gave an eerie presence to the place.

It gave her the chills in some way. Chills not just to the cold that seemed to seep into her form despite her quirk, but chills due to the silence and eerie nature of it all.

Disembarking on one of the more devastated hallways of the hospital, it was there where Moe's own senses and experience in the field took hold as more and more evidence of conflict and action took place just by staring at the aftermath of the broken objects, torn walls, cracked ceilings, with the frozen backdrop laced in all of it.

Accompanying the eerie atmosphere were the chilling sounds of what would one assume to be like those imprisoned in a max security nuthouse. She had no memory nor experience of being accompanied or even going to said nuthouses themselves, but she knew for a fact with a few colleagues outside of her agency had told her, that it was a sad, miserable, and uncomfortable experience for anyone involved.

This hospital was also a mental institution, but it was not at the level of some of the "horror stories" that she heard rumors about.

The sounds at present, however, seemed to invoke that feeling of unease as both she and her boss saw where its source was.

"HOLD HIM! HOLD HIM DOWN!"

"He's too strong!"

At the end of the said hallway, two officers were trying to wrangle a deranged and demented figure that was trying to claw and bite its way out of their grasp.

A few other personnel that were near and behind Moe and her boss seemed rattled as a scream erupted from the end of the hallway when the ghoul-like figure broke the arm of the office closest to it and slammed them into the wall.

A sharp crack was heard as the other officer, horrified of what just occurred started to run away from the ghoul towards them in a panicked fashion.

The ghoul-like figure that was wearing tattered and bloodied hospital robes then ran towards the fleeing officer and Moe's hard-earned instincts on her hero work kicked in and woke her up from her fear and unease

She stepped up to try and defend the man, but she then saw her mentor's remaining arm blocking her way to finally act.

She was about to protest until she heard her boss speak toward one of the medical personnel that was behind them.

"Are the infected individuals alive in a conventional sense?" he asked with his signature scowl that seemed to break the man's fear and anxiety instantly.

"N-No sir, they're clinically dead. W-We're not even sure if there's anything amounting as human underneath all of it."

She heard her boss hum to those words as his hand ignited and as the panicked screams and shrill of the action happening before they continued…

She saw her boss' fingertips glow brightly as he made a simple sweeping motion right in front of him and it was so fast that the thin trails of fire whisked across the room and were instantly gone after that very brief maneuver.

The officer in front of them ran the last few meters and stopped in front of them as everyone finally noticed that they no longer could hear the ghoul-like individual running toward them.

Moe blinked at what just occurred as they saw the "undead" individual now splayed on the floor, with its legs cut in half and its arms sheered in the same way as the latter.

It was trying to move but with only most of its torso left intact, it was only gaping and shrieking at them in a shrill manner that Moe was sure to leave her sleepless in the next few nights.

However, it was all trumped by the surprise that despite her boss' condition, he still had that massive, almost unparalleled mastery over his quirk that he did not even move extraneously to accomplish such a feat that to some would have been a bit too fast to comprehend.

His maneuver did not even hit or glance at the police officer that was running at them, he was that precise with that aspect of his quirk that Moe for the most part barely knew about.

She felt a little inadequate with herself at that moment seeing how awe-inspiring it was, but that feeling quickly vanished when she finally focused and saw what the ghoul-like man looked like, up close.

The skin of the writhing and shrieking remains of what was once a living person was in this pale, almost leather-like appearance that would be improbable given that the infected being itself was not older than a few hours. Yet it seemed as if it decayed over decades. The dried, frozen now blackened blood surrounding it and its emaciated form gave her goosebumps.

Open wounds revealing shiny, mildly frozen almost pinkish and dark flesh. Nerves, bones bordering on yellow, and various fluids ranging from pus and drool against blood only made her stomach churn as she watched in an uncomfortable, uneasy manner.

Then her boss spoke, his voice completely breaking the standstill.

"Get that man that he just attacked by the end of the hall medical attention! Now." He commanded as the people around them both officers and medical personnel alike were finally knocked out of their trance and did as he said.

She then saw her boss look at the still shrieking ghoul with a large frown. She saw him clench his only remaining hand as he sidestepped the living corpse out of his way and continued walking towards where they were both supposed to go.

Moe watched her mentor wordlessly walk as the personnel behind them began to contain the damn zombie to keep it away from doing any sort of harm to anyone.

As they continued the last vestiges of their journey, they both came across a room that was filled with various officers and investigative personnel documenting, preserving, and photographing what they could from what they both realized to be a prominent part of the entire crime scene.

It was then where when they arrived at the doorstep that her boss just stopped.

The emotion on the mostly stoic and gloomy face had contorted into shock…

And eventually, much to Moe's worry… was grief.

Even as the officers and professionals parted after seeing him stand there by the doorway, her boss just stood in place with that expression. He did not even look at the collapsed ceiling, the various splotches of frozen blood, body parts, broken concrete, appliances, and furniture that littered the entire setting and room that they were in.

Even the ethereal feeling of "snow" due to how frozen the entire place was that fell on everyone in the room did not deter her boss from seeing the one thing that was the main object of focus in the room.

His own daughter.

"C-Can we get him some privacy please?" she asked the closest officer who nodded to which the rest of the people in the room followed. Now as the two of them remained, her boss had finally moved from his position and walked towards the frozen corpse that was near the edge of the room.

A large swat of blood that was now black was at its feet and the entire frozen corpse was in a position where it could have lunged at something but was frozen in the process before it could reach or attack whoever it was that it targeted.

And based on what the police captain told them, Fuyumi, or whatever was left of her had targeted her own mother.

It explained the frost all around them and thinking about that very notion, that very act, gave Moe a disturbing chill running down her spine as she thought about it.

She stepped forward to get a better look as her boss continued to look at the frozen corpse with that concerning expression of his. That horrified look of pure grief and shock radiated in the already dreary room as what pale light coming from the sun outside shined on them from the collapsed ceiling above.

The whole image felt like a dream, or in this case, a nightmare as flakes of "snow" serenely fell on them.

As Moe began to look at the frozen corpse that seemingly lost both its arms and frozen as if in mid-lunge, she now began to remember memories of her boss' daughter.

What little frozen hair revealed that very pastel white color with red streaks of hair scattered on her head. Her face, the shape of her body, her clothes. That distinct pale jacket that she wore when she and her boss visited the school she taught at.

It all invoked the image of the kind-hearted, smiling daughter of her boss that she remembers seeing every now and then.

"Fuyumi." She heard her boss say. She saw him step slowly towards the side of the frozen corpse.

The face of the dead woman was now stuck to a rabid, almost animalistic growl that Moe only imagined would have sounded worse if the corpse itself was still active.

Moe could not believe it, she felt herself feeling the shock and pain too as she could not put aside the fact that this was the same smiling face that she knew her boss' daughter had.

It was painful. It gripped her heart.

But as she turned her head towards her boss, who acted the same cold, almost unemotional response towards her daughter during years of being with him, now was replaced by that of a disbelieving man that could not reconcile what he was seeing.

Moe widened her eyes at the scene. Her boss…

She had never seen him with this much emotion on his face before as his lips parted in a shiver and his eyes, were slowly becoming red.

"F-Fuyumi." He intoned again as she saw him kneel, a hand stretching towards the frozen figure's face. The moment it made contact. Endeavor's entire cold exterior had seemingly evaporated bit by bit.

There was only silence at that moment, but a silence that spoke deeply of the emotions being radiated and conveyed.

Her boss did not shed a tear nor do anything that someone would expect on his spot…

But the silence alone was telling of how he felt at that moment.

The silence was telling on how she saw him finally feel something amidst the loss of his child.

"…"

Moe simply could not fathom how things led up to this.

---

Enji stood at the closed door where the medical professionals on-site said where his wife was temporarily transferred to. His face, his emotion, his energy seemingly siphoned completely from his entire being. It was now apparent to him that most of anything he did today was stare at some place or some object as his mind wandered around with all the happenings that he was experiencing recently.

But he could not help it.

Everything was coming at him at this relentless pace that he was now beyond being simply overwhelmed. In truth, he just wanted to leave and sort this out in his own manner…

But his pride, whatever pride that was left at least was keeping him there, as well as concern for his family. Those two things kept him stuck to completing it.

Yet he knew that he was at his wit's end.

Burnin', as much as she tried to help him and as much as he appreciated it, only pushed him closer to the edge even if she did not mean to.

It was… painful.

He was already in pain due to the state he was now in, as well as the conversation he had with his son. To learn what this entire crime scene was, and to see that it involved his wife.

… and Fuyumi.

It just tore him asunder.

Despite what many would think, even if he did not show it, he in some way still had concern and care for his family. Even if it was not direct, he still felt protective of his family and deep down he knew that he did enough for them in any way that he could.

However, after hearing what Shoto had said, it pushed him to reevaluate those thoughts.

Even weeks before the Kamino incident, while he focused primarily on the issue of Fuyumi's disappearance, he was focused on his work, as usual, never once did he truly home in or even make Fuyumi's disappearance his top priority, but as something that he knew would just pan out with how efficient he was with his field.

He then thought about Natsuo, and their strained relationship.

Rei, especially and their marriage…

As well as his first son, whom he had lost too long ago.

Now, it was Fuyumi, and unlike before nor even with his first son.

It was painful, seeing his one daughter, the one who stuck with him, who always smiled at him, who always cherished him, now reduced to something lower than a corpse, but as an instrument of the enemy.

It was made even more painful when he recalled Shoto's words.

"Damn it." He intoned to himself. His only remaining hand clenching tightly.

Now that he was at this door, towards where his wife was in, he was unsure if he wanted to continue. He did not know how to face her. How to talk to her.

In truth, he was not sure how to deal with her at all. Even at the very start, he was just now starting to realize that while they were both connected in some way through their children, the two of them, barely knew each other except when in the moments where they actually talked.

Where they actually interacted.

Where they actually felt… love?

He was now questioning those notions of course. Those things were in his head as he tried to look back at their "relationship". It was not uncommon of course for him back then to actually choose her. She had a powerful quirk, the type that was now given its full potential due to her negligence of actually honing it or actually using it to its very limit.

He wanted something else in that bond, in that "relationship".

And all of them were selfish things that he desired for his own gain.

None of it…

None of it were choices that she herself would have accepted if she was given the choice to freely agree or disagree.

Now, standing there, with a new view and recollection of his deeds towards her, he was unsure if meeting her was the right thing to do at that moment. He was unsure how to face the one woman that to the eyes of everyone else and his family, was his wife.

To him, a large part of him at that moment considered her for the most part, a stranger.

"Boss? We could just leave. You can visit her later… if that's what you want to do." He heard a voice say. Enji turned his head and saw Burnin' looking at him with her eyes and that face even concealed behind that mask, her emotion already spoke for itself.

He looked at her and gave a small smile of sorts despite knowing that it would not work he finally made up his mind and trudged towards finally opening the door.

Turning the knob and hearing the creak of the entire contraption he quickly felt that the room was in a different mood than he expected it to be. It was a modest-sized room, reminding him of the same hospital room that he was put in after Kamino, but the difference was, the windows were open this time, letting the light of the rather dim room a lot brighter than it was.

Or at least as much as the cloudy skies were able to give.

What caught his attention however was that near the window, there was a potted plant that made him stare for a moment. What was jarring about it was that the potted plant was frozen over, the "flower" that grew from it was also frozen, with about two or three of its petals left as the pale sunlight shined over it like a spotlight that extenuated a feeling of serenity, but also of gloom.

"I saved it." He heard a familiar voice say. He turned his head and saw her.

Rei herself.

Under the pale sunlight coming from the window, her entire form sort of blossomed in that moment, but not particularly in a good way as he looked at all the new scars, casts, and patches she had on her entire body as she laid there on the bed. She had an unreadable expression on her face as she looked at him.

A nurse was tending to her by the right before seeing him and quickly nodding to give them privacy. He did not notice too that Burnin' had followed suit. Leaving just the two of them in the room.

The silence was so palpable that the beeping of the heart monitor inside the room and his own breathing were the only things that propagated in the air.

It was only when he saw Rei turn her head towards the plant that she spoke and broke the silence.

"It wasn't even the plant that I took care of in my room, just a frozen piece that I just latched on to… after… after F-Fuyumi stopped." Her voice cracked a bit after saying that name.

Enji hummed. So, it was not the flower that he usually sent to her room every single month.

"I have nothing left to latch on to." She said with an unreadable tone before turning to him. "Why are you here then?"

Enji opened his mouth, closed it, as no words seemed to justify a response to her question.

"Ah. You don't know yourself." She said, her face cracking into a sarcastic-like smile, but how she moved and conveyed said emotion, it made him feel uncomfortable with where it was heading.

"The Enji I knew wouldn't give a rat's ass about me being hospitalized. What changed?" she changed, her expression this time now staring at him as if in a challenge. He did not know what that entailed.

He took a breath and replied to her in a neutral but much more encouraging tone.

"I'm your husband. Everything I do is for the safety of my family."

Rei stared at him as he stared back. The words he just blurted out did not even sound convincing to him, but he had to say it for he had nothing else to tell or reply to her.

Before he could say anything else to add or explain the words he just said, he suddenly heard Rei chuckle. She smiled for a second as she started to go into a full laugh but she suddenly coughed and heaved painfully as the injury to her ribs and chest was still there. Enji stepped closer to try and help her but she adamantly raised a hand to make him stop as she coughed the last of the pain in her chest.

It was uncomfortable seeing her like this, and again, it pained Enji when Rei refused his help.

It made it even more painful when he saw that there was a pale splotch of blood on the tissue she used to cover her mouth from coughing. She threw it almost without care, and it was there that Enji finally realized that this was the most animated Rei had ever interacted with him these last few years.

Or maybe she was the most animated she ever was in conveying her emotions in the whole breadth of their entire marriage.

"Curse y-you… for making me laugh like that." She intoned lowly, pain in her voice was as present as ever. "T-Then again, y-you would always say such things. E-Even before."

"Rei… I-

Enji dodged as the box of tissues that Rei had used to wipe off the saliva and blood from her lips was flung at him. It would not have hurt Enji at all, but he was startled at that sudden action.

"Don't start with me… Todoroki. I'm in already in pain as is, and the f-fact that I saved someone else's own plant shouldn't be an indicator that I'm happy with you right now nor was I ever happy in the span of years that you've p-placed me here."

"But it was for your own good." He stated.

Rei looked at him. "Y-Yes… yes it was. B-But who was the reason why I became like that in the first place?" she asked, accusingly at him as his eyes slowly widened.

"Y-You're understanding it now… don't you? I-I've only realized it now. H-How pathetic I was. B-But I never was a strong woman. N-Never tried to be a-and now... seeing w-where I'm at… what there is left of me…" she said as she raised her hands weakly as tears pooled in her eyes.

"…I've killed two of my own children with my bare hands… T-Todoroki. I burned a-another i-in a fit of rage." She said as tears started to drip down her cheeks. She crumbled in on herself as Enji felt the heavy feeling in his chest grow deeper.

"… all of it… all of it b-because we followed every d-damn word you told us to do." She said bitterly as her sadness turned into a sneer as she looked up to him, her eyes locking into his as he made a step back. "… Y-You were always the reason… a-and say as much as you like that you cared about us… y-you never once took a look at me, a-and tried to help me."

"Rei… I-

"I-Is'nt that funny, huh?" she bitterly said. "I-I saved that damn plant b-because I had nothing left t-that I latched on to. T-that I cared about knowing I wouldn't hurt them. But it's not mine after all isn't it? It's fake."

Her face twitched before she gave a glare at him that Enji would never forget.

"E-Everything was fake between us… wasn't it?" she bitterly said.

Enji felt his lips part, but nothing came out of his head, nor his mouth as his silence was already an answer.

Rei then looked away, on the verge of crying once more.

"G-Get out." She whispered in pain.

"…"

"P-Please… I want to be alone."

---

Nearing the end of the hallway and out towards the exit of the entire building, Enji was walking with an expression on his face that had him close to just letting it all out. The bubbling and churning emotions deep within him were about to spill and he just wanted to vent…

He just wanted to leave and be alone again himself.

Everything that held him by a thread from falling into the pit of pure utter despair was already lost the moment Rei said those final words.

He did not even remember how he got out of the room where Rei was at. He just kept walking as the sounds drowned out in his surroundings as he tried to blur everything from his memory. He heard the faint cries of Burnin' in the background, but he did not care.

He just wanted to walk away and leave everything behind. He just could not take it.

Everything since Kamino had just been thrown in a steep downhill motion for his life and with the many revelations, statements, and piling stress that was poured down on him relentlessly…

He was uncertain now. Uncertain of where his life was heading. The goal that he had cherished and sought for his entire life was no longer there. He was lost, and he had no direction to go.

"Boss."

Everything in his life had just collapsed on itself.

"Boss."

Enji saw the doors to the final exit of the building they were in and walked towards it without any care. He did not even notice the plethora of lights being shined from the foggy glass as Burnin's voice kept shouting at him to stop.

As he opened those doors with his last remaining arm, he was suddenly exposed to a cacophony of sounds and frantic noises as his eyes finally focused on the present. He then realized that all the blinding lights and sounds came from a literal mob of people frantically using their phones, microphones, cameras, and other devices shouting at him as he stood there in shock and confusion.

Policemen were holding everyone back as a large number of reporters, civilians, and the like were clamoring to have their questions answered.

And those questions rang at him even at the provided distance that the barricade had given.

"Endeavor can you please comment on the accusations fired at you about-

"Is it true that you hospitalized your own wif-

"Sir! Can you please tell us about the incident with your first son-

"Will your hero license be revoked after these substantial reports about-

"Boss!"

"Are the many, many exposed reports about the heroes under the Hero Association be addressed given that some of them have histories and crimes covered by-

"Was the report of the story of your wife going mad and burning your child tru-

"BOSS!"

"Will you be retiring due to the exposed scandals of-

"WIFE BEATER! YOU'RE NOT OUR HERO!"

"The reports circulating in the web are implicating you to be a-

"BOSS! HEY!"

"GO TO HELL! WE DON'T NEED YOU!"

Enji suddenly felt a hand grab his shoulder as he was forcibly turned towards Burnin' who had a look of horror and concern on her face. "We need to get you out of here." She said with a low tone as he looked at her and nodded slowly.

But as they were about to leave once Enji's face turned, a water bottle was thrown at his face as the cold liquid splashed and douses some of the weak flames that were burning on his head.

"Hey! The fuck was that for?!" Burnin' shouted as a hospital staff member who was a few feet away that was cursing and fuming over Enji was tackled by two officers to the ground.

It only increased the ire of the reporters and civilians from the barricade as Enji stood there in shock as Burnin' tried to pull him away from the scene.

The despair he was feeling had eroded his ability to think as Burnin' pulled him away from the scene, but as they did they suddenly stopped and Enji looked and realized that it was wary police officers that were blocking their way.

"What's the meaning of this?" Burnin' angrily said.

Nobody answered until he saw the police captain, Kururugi walking towards them. "I'm sorry, but we need to take him in for questioning." He said with a demotivated tone.

"On what grounds are you going to arrest him for?!" Burnin shouted in the Captain's face.

"We just need him to answer a few questions, I'm sure you understand Ms. Kamiji. There's a lot of allegations and reports been thrown around and unfortunately, they're not just smoke and filler."

"But he's done nothing wrong goddamn it!" she shrieked, the fires of her quirk roaring into life but the captain remained unfazed with that sad expression.

"Ms. Kamiji we need you to stand aside."

"Like hell you aren-

Enji placed a firm hand on Burnin's arm. She looked up at him in disbelief, but he nodded at her as best that he could. "Burnin' stand down." He said as he looked at the Police Officers and offered himself.

They did not cuff him but they led him away as he felt Burnin's eyes looking at him in defeat.

Enji was no stranger to emotion, but at that very moment, he wished he could not feel anything…

As the world just crumbled around him. No longer was there a scathing light of hope, just an abyss of tranquil despair that embraced him fully.