Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia
Chapter 209:
"I applied at Isamu, THT, Ketsubutsu, Seijin High…" Zach held up his right hand as he was running out of room on his left after lifting a finger with each place he told Hagakure he had applied to. He had to put his coffee cup down before lifting it and finishing his list which shocked Hagakure even more as it had only been a day but Zach was way more on top of things than she thought he would be when she asked in a worried way what he was going to do now. "In the meantime my hero costume's still at Shiektsu High though. Only problem I'm really having is getting them to release that to me, since I had to tell them about where I got my laptop which-"
"Ah! You told them about that package you got?" Hagakure asked in surprise and with her look getting more worried again.
Zach shrugged and scratched the back of his head with one hand while lifting his coffee in the other. "It's not too bad. It's better telling the truth than pretending and making something up about where I got it. Ultimately they'd be able to track it back since I never bought it in the country, nowhere in the country sells those kind of laptops, and so I would have had to have bought it in some foreign country after getting out of Tartaros. They probably would have assumed something worse than the truth, to be honest."
"Everyone always does with you," Hagakure said with an annoyed sigh, leaning back on her chair at the cafe where a few people were recording them from a distance. "Well I'm done," Hagakure mentioned, shaking around her coffee cup after Zach just tilted his pretty far back on his last sip. "What do you want to do now?"
"You have all afternoon, right?" Zach wondered to his friend who had texted him that day while she was at school wondering how he was doing, and who he invited out here to hang with after school.
Hagakure nodded back at him fast, smiling as he could tell with the cheerful humming noise she made during her invisible nod that he noticed from movements in her clothing. "Mashirao's interviewing at some other hero agencies around where Incognito's headquarters is, for after graduation," Hagakure added in a softer whisper with a hand cupped to her mouth indicating to Zach that it was a secret. "And everyone's super busy today, but not me! I've got the whole day- afternoon," she corrected herself, wondering if that was somehow offensive considering Zach really did have the whole day without a school to go to.
"That's cool," Zach said, and he got up from the table which made Hagakure jump up too. "Alright, let's go find something to do then. Maybe shake some of these paparazzi," he lowered his voice as Hagakure giggled at the mention of the people she also noticed watching them, and he added, "And you could tell me about your plans with Incognito for after graduation." Hagakure's face got red as he said that, and she shushed him for saying it even though she was the one who brought it up in the first place.
After shushing him though, she added in a quiet voice right back, "Sounds like a plan!"
"Sir! Raijin-san!"
Kaminari Denki turned his head and looked across the underground tram he was on connecting two sides of the largest base the League of Villains had underground. The tunnel was dim to dark outside of the tram, but the small train-like vehicle itself was illuminated on the inside so he could see who just shoved open the end door to his car and rushed in. "What?" Raijin snapped towards Rabbit who slowed down and stumbled as the tram jolted on something on their shaky tracks.
Rabbit snapped his head up with his small light-red fuzzy ears flopping over the spikes of his darker red hair. The young villain had a flustered look on his face and he looked up at his boss while another eight villains also in the tram car looked towards him confusedly at why he looked like that. "Ah-ha, I was just-" he gulped and took another breath to calm himself down. "We were just watching the big reveal. And- have you seen it?" Rabbit wondered.
"Why would I watch it?" Raijin asked back at the villain before him who he rose his eyebrows at. "I was there." Like you were too. What are you doing wasting your time on that instead of moving towards the next goal? Raijin was annoyed but he decided not to say it aloud. There were other more important pawns in the car who he would be belittling by insulting Rabbit's desire to rewatch that tape he knew some of them had probably looked back on fondly.
"Get back to the front," Meta snapped at the boy who was annoying him with this interruption as the group of stronger villains were actually talking about something important before Rabbit interrupted them. "You're signaling to them when we're getting close to the end of the line."
"What is it, Rabbit-chan?" A woman with long white hair questioned, looking more interested than the others around her. Raijin darted his gaze to her quickly then back to Rabbit in slightly more interest as the woman taller than he was stood up and motioned for him to come back and talk to her.
Rabbit glanced to her and then at the seat next to the one the woman rose from where an intimidating man with a very dark gaze was glaring at him. He continued forward into this car full of villains he felt were likely all stronger than him, and he started, "I was watching the tape, like I have like a hundred times." He admitted it and gulped, but others were starting to get more interested instead of judging him for getting caught up on that fight they were in. "And you have to look back on it. Right now," Rabbit said, nodding his head quickly and lifting up the tablet he had been watching it on himself.
"Why?" Sonic snapped, annoyed at the roundabout way Rabbit was telling them this.
"Because," Rabbit said, an unnerved look on his face that made Sonic get far more interested and lose all annoyance at the sight of. The younger man continued while playing the video and turning it for the group in front of him to watch, "There was someone else there. A third party not with us or the heroes-"
Raijin reached forward and took the tablet out of Rabbit's hands, sitting back down and looking at it closely without needing the floppy-eared villain to show him where to look. What the hell is he talking about? Raijin's hands sparked as his eyes shot open wide, and he paused the video playing on the tablet. Wait a minute…
On the top floor of a skyscraper in Tokyo, three dozen pro heroes were gathered in a room with Endeavor who was having a very ominous and serious meeting with them all. They had been at the top floor for hours considering all the information they had to pour through and all the videos they had to watch on their many, many enemies. They were some of the sharpest and most elite heroes in the country, and as they rewatched the footage from the live feeds Raijin had set up before Operation Atem, Endeavor's eyes suddenly shot open huge from the side of the room where he was standing.
"Wait!" Endeavor yelled out.
Burnin paused the video, getting a confused look on her face like Olympia had behind her where the slightly younger woman was leaning against the wall. Burnin lifted her head after pausing from the laptop she was controlling everything from, "Boss?"
Hawks was frozen where he stood, having noticed it that time as well in a moment that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end and his eyes open huge. Endeavor spotted Hawks' reaction telling him it was not a trick of the eyes, and he snapped over to Burnin while all the other heroes in the room were looking at Endeavor or Hawks in confusion as none of them had seen anything new or shocking there as they rewatched their comrades' deaths in the Koimou Massacre. "Rewind the tape. Just a few seconds, then start playing it frame by frame," Endeavor ordered his sidekick.
Burnin was still confused but she was interested too and nodded affirmatively back at her boss who looked to the screen again with a look full of dread. The dread on Endeavor's face unnerved a few of even the most elite heroes around who had no idea what Endeavor could have seen in a moment that was just an unimportant scene in the middle of the fight. Burnin rewound a few seconds back though then paused again as the video of the living room was showing, with the back deck in view and most of the dining room as well. The cameras had been switching throughout the video but mainly stayed at this angle where the majority of the action went on.
As the scene started moving forward though, the clip switched camera shots to show one from the kitchen aimed down the hallway with a partial angle into certain rooms. Most everyone's focuses locked on the fight going on in the hallway that did not seem that important in the long run, as it was not between any of the most important villains they were worried about and did not even show off any weaknesses or great strengths about opponents they would be going up against. Burnin stopped tapping on the right arrow key on her keyboard as she was progressing the film forward though, as she was watching the footage away from the main fight that everyone else was focused on. "What the fuck?" she muttered under her breath.
Endeavor stepped forward, and Hawks looked his way and said in a low and deadly serious voice, "You recognize that, don't you?"
"Yes," Endeavor said, the dark tone in his voice showing Hawks that he very clearly knew what he was looking at.
"Can one of you explain what we're looking at here?" Presto Change-o asked the heroes at the front of the room so focused on something he was not seeing.
"Top right corner, through that door," Underguard said in a low voice, making Presto Change-o look his way and then back to the screen where many of the other heroes focused on the piece of the footage Underguard just pointed out.
Ms. Clue felt dread stir inside her unlike anything she had felt since she watched this video the first time when it was happening live. She felt that deepest pit in her chest because Suneater grit his teeth and gripped the tops of his thighs with his eyes opening huge on her right side. That twenty year old stared with recognition and a terrified look on his face at what he saw through an unbroken window in that guest room. They had to look over a body resting halfway in the room and halfway out as the person was collapsed in the doorway, and they had to look past the fight that would come to block that door from sight in a second so the image was not even able to be viewed for the full couple of seconds that this camera angle was actually televised for.
In that brief moment though, inside of the brief instant that this angle was exposed, there was something just visible in the corner of that window looking through the glass. Only a few people in the room knew what they were looking at, and even Suneater just had a vague idea as he was mainly getting this feeling from the confirmation he received from Endeavor and Hawks' expressions. "Suneater?" Tamaki Amajiki turned to his left and looked at the older woman giving him a questioning gaze.
Endeavor looked back, and he saw Suneater turn back forward and look right at him with an anxious look on his face. "I've, heard something about that," Suneater started, giving Endeavor a questioning look though he already felt he had it confirmed to him.
Endeavor hummed in a deep tone that came from the bottom of his throat. He turned back to his side where Hawks was staring darkly at the screen, his eyes focused on that face sticking out in the corner where it would only appear this once throughout the whole video. It was so brief it almost felt like a trick of the eyes when Hawks just saw it, and if not for Endeavor calling it out he might have just ignored it. But Endeavor's shout to stop the video told him he was wrong to dismiss what he thought he saw. "This is bad," Hawks muttered, lifting a hand up and pushing it back through his ash blond hair. Why here? Why now?!
"What it that? Endeavor, Hawks?" Gran Torino said, getting serious with the heroes ahead of him who seemed to know about this. He had been staying quiet during the meeting, but the veteran hero could tell something bad was happening here due to the appearance of this figure. "Who is that?"
The footage was frozen and everyone in the room stared out the corner of the window at the head sticking out there, though it was impossible to determine what that person looked like behind the white mask they were wearing…
"I don't get it," Meta snapped, confused as he looked at Raijin and then up at the white-haired woman who looked seriously dark all of a sudden. "Isn't this a good thing? It's not like we haven't been dealing with Eziano doing the same thing, messing around in our country where he doesn't belong."
"Eziano wouldn't do something like this though," Sonic muttered, catching on to why Raijin looked so hesitant and indecisive as to whether this was a good or bad thing for them. "None of us even noticed they were there."
"It's not a 'they,'" Raijin muttered under his breath. "It's just one fucking person. Someone, who didn't come in and talk to us even though she could have. She doesn't care about what we're doing though. Not about what Eziano's up to, even if their goals intersect… I do not know how to deal with this person."
"'She?' It's a woman?" the white-haired villain questioned, in a bit of surprise but also with a smirk growing on her face. The bulky muscular man wearing a crimson cape with a black 'X' on it grinned in the same way as the woman who had just been sitting at his side did.
"Yeah, Hypnos," Raijin muttered, lifting his right hand and running it up through a spike of his blond hair over his head. He turned and looked up into the eyes of the woman behind him who was leaning over his shoulder to watch the video. He handed the tablet up so she could get a closer look for herself, then he looked ahead of him into the back of the next seat with his thoughts racing as he weighed the pros and cons.
"Is it that serious?" Meta wondered even more confusedly as this had suddenly taken their full attention off the previous discussion about their master plans.
"Might be," Raijin replied, though he let out a deep breath and then leaned back on his seat with a grin spreading across his face. "But it's going to help us out more than hurt us, even if I didn't predict this bitch showing up out of nowhere."
"I've heard a thing or two about her," Hypnos began, a dark chuckle escaping her lips as she looked closer at the pointed ears at the top of the mask. The indents where the eyes of the mask would be even though there were no holes, and the three slits on either cheek like whiskers going across her face. "This, cat mask bitch. That's what they call her. What everyone calls her."
"Hmph, yeah, she's a crazy bitch alright," Raijin said. If anything I've heard about her is true, this is about to get real fucking ugly real fast. How did we make it this long without noticing her presence? I wonder, if Zach knows she's here?
"Huh? What are you talking about?" Hagakure wondered in confusion as she and Zach walked down a sidewalk of Musutafu in the dark.
The sun had set while they were in the theater, and Hagakure lowered the soda she had just been sipping out of after refilling on their way out of the movie. It was a cute movie made more for children than young adults, but when Zach suggested going to see a movie, it was the second movie he listed off as ones that were currently playing. Hagakure had not wanted to ask Ojiro to take her as it was not a romantic movie nor one that she knew he would like in the least, but the fact that Zach listed it second was enough for her to excitedly jump on the idea and drag him to it. She found herself confused by the direction their conversation had just turned in though, as the two had started talking about something serious in a mood shift from the movie.
Zach had not called it the Koimou Massacre but the 'failed Operation Atem' to keep the mood from dropping too quickly. He sighed though as Hagakure got confused by what he just mentioned off-handedly like she would know what he was talking about, even though all he had said was how he had received the "warnings" from his "enemies" very clearly.
"You're talking about what Kaminari was saying to you?" Hagakure wondered to him.
"Yeah, Kaminari for one. But there was someone else there in the video who I spotted on my first watch-through as it was happening. I wasn't focused on her very much because of the emergency, but she knew I would see her there in the window staring straight at one of the cameras. As if she was looking right into my eyes through that cat mask of hers," Zach said, tsking and shrugging his shoulders out before lifting his own soda and taking a sip out of it.
"In the window?" Hagakure repeated in confusion. "Wait! Someone outside of the League? Not even part-"
"No, she's someone else from my past," Zach replied in a slightly reluctant tone. "But I'll deal with her when she comes. Right now we have to focus on one problem at a time, and the League's definitely the most important thing we have to deal with right now. Agreed?" He asked with a lift of the corners of his mouth at her, showing he knew Intanzo was not the worst villain in the country as even the new villain leaderboards still showed.
"Oh yeah. We're going to beat Kaminari up though- or Raijin, whatever he wants to call himself! I still haven't forgiven him for trying to frame me," Hagakure pouted and crossed her arms in annoyance.
Zach sweatdropped though and added with an odd look at her, "And for killing Iida and Tsuyu, right?"
Hagakure's eyes bulged and she spun to Zach with her arms uncrossing in defiance to instead cross over and over in front of her desperately. "I didn't mean that! Of course for them too… and, well, for you," Hagakure added with her arms lowering down and the mood shifting a little more serious again as she said that softly to him.
With Hagakure, her tone says everything, Zach thought as he turned and looked closer at the girl he was pretty sure was already looking sideways at him. Everything you have to see most people's faces to read, mixed with their tones and body language. She knows that people don't understand her as much though without having those simple facial cues we're so used to with everyone else, and so her voice has so much more emotion in it. Or at least, it's easier for those of us who know her to really hear how she's feeling when she talks. Zach gave Hagakure a soft smile after what she said to him.
Zach then looked back forward and continued walking, and he turned at the corner instead of waiting for the walk signal to go across the crosswalk. It seemed to Hagakure like just Zach wanting to keep walking without stopping to wait for a moment, and yet the pause they had on the sidewalk was at a perfect length to allow them to reach the corner when it was red so their easier route was to the left around the bend and off of the more main road. "I'm, really grateful you came out with me tonight," Zach started to the girl at his side as they continued walking away from the movie theaters with no real destination in mind as they had not talked about where they were going yet. The two were just enjoying the company of each other, and Hagakure hummed in happy agreement with that statement he just made. Zach paused, then he continued in a softer voice, "The thing is, Toru-"
Zach paused and his eyes widened for a moment, but after his feet stopped like that, he kept walking and the girl who spun to him in surprise on his left rushed to hurry to his side. "Sorry," Zach said before Hagakure could say anything. He apologized to the girl he had never called by her first name before, and he explained, "I got used to calling Mina and Momo by their names, but I shouldn't have just out of the blue-"
"You can!" Hagakure said quickly. She interrupted him and Zach glanced to his side at her in surprise, then an expression wondering if that was really fine with her. Hagakure felt a warm feeling stir inside her at that look on his face though. Hagakure felt giddy at the idea of what he just said, thinking to herself, Mina and Momo always seem so close to him. I guess, I felt a little isolated even though we spent the day together just the two of us, since you wouldn't call me by my name. But the fact that we got so familiar that it just happened on its own must mean we really are that close too! All her fears and worries about the status of their friendship were wiped away, and it made the girl really happy which Zach could see from her body language and the little giddy noise she made right there of half-embarrassment and half-excitement.
He looked back forward with a small, more relaxed smile of his own as they continued walking together. That's good- fuck. I'm sorry, Hagakure. His thoughts were almost able to match his expression that showed nothing was wrong, and that in fact things were going great for once. The guilt he felt dissipated though as his expression lowered from its happy one into a semi-serious but also anxious look. His eyes shifted sideways, then looked back ahead. His irises pulled to the corners again though and to the girl next to him who hummed wondering what was up as he gave her a look like that without seeming to notice that she had been staring at his face.
The streetlights illuminated Zach's face enough, and despite it being chilly out neither had their hoods up so Zach's face was too visible to the girl next to him. His hair had not been spiked that day, leaving it wavy so when he stopped, it blew in a sudden gust of wind that had Hagakure holding her light jacket at the top of her zipper on either side where the zipper was down a bit. She zipped it up the rest of the way, then wondered to her friend giving her that strangely uneasy look, "What is it?"
"Hagakure," Zach began, using her last name again which seemed less like he was going back on what they just talked about and more like he was just trying to get serious with her here. She turned to face him seriously, stepping past him and turning fully around in his way and nodding for him to go on.
"What is it, Zach?" She asked him. It was a rare moment, where she felt like she saw the more vulnerably side of him that he never let anyone else see. Where he was going to tell her something serious that he usually just took on himself to deal with all alone. "You can tell me."
"It's, that person I was telling you about earlier," Zach started. Hagakure nodded at him and he continued softly and with a hesitant look on his face, "When I saw her…" his voice came out just above a mutter, his words seeming to slur as his lips moved in strange ways for the words coming out of his mouth. Pressing together between sounds like he was making different ones than the noises he was actually saying, though Hagakure barely noticed the strange movements of his mouth considering what he was telling her in an odd voice and hesitant tone. "I knew that she meant for me to see her. She had appeared inside the League's big reveal video. While heroes were being killed and Kaminari was making his big moves, and she did it solely to tell me something."
"She was warning me," Zach said. Hagakure felt her heart rate start speeding up, as much for what Zach said as for some different reason she was too confused to place. She gulped as his tone had started to shift there too, getting less nervous and more assured of what he was telling her in this serious voice. "Declaring war," he continued in a low tone, his eyes getting more focused too on the girl right in front of him.
"War?" Hagakure whispered, not sure what he was talking about or how she should feel right now about it. If that's what he thinks of it though, I shouldn't say it's…
"She's here for me. Mysti," Zach said that name with his lips becoming more noticeable to Hagakure this time as they moved in a way that would have been impossible to read as 'Mysti.' Her heart started racing much, much faster as Zach looked at her with his serious look getting darker and guiltier. "I know she'll drag in everyone I care about," Zach told the girl in front of him. "That's what the warning was for. She wants me to know that it's her. She won't settle for anything else, because she wants revenge. As, I was the one who destroyed everything she had."
"Zach, I don't understand," Hagakure whispered to him. The way he was talking was getting scary to her, and her desire to hear something serious from him was getting replaced with a lot of other feelings here. This seemed like something she would want to hear too, which made her all the more nervous as to why she was feeling a surge of panic rising within her. The tone of his voice, sounded far too serious for this to just be something he was deciding to mention to her now. He could have told her any serious thing, but he chose this one. Could have picked anywhere to do it, but he picked here and now. "What are you saying?" Hagakure asked him quietly.
"I know because she was right there when I took everything from her," Zach said, his tone darker and making Hagakure's chest fill with pain at the menacing way in which he said that. He's just putting himself down! She yelled it at herself in defense of the boy who was scaring her but who she did not want to doubt after all the time they had been spending together today.
Zach grit his teeth while looking at the defensive way in which she was standing there. He shook his head to the left and down in a slow motion and continued, "She won't accept anything, other than taking everything I care about from right in front of me. It's why we had to spend that time in public getting filmed for a while first. Why we went to your favorite things, a movie you wanted to see, while at the same time staying in the same place for a long period of time definitely enough for her."
Zach pursed his lips and his eyes shook, but the confused girl in front of him suddenly noticed something about that reaction he was having compared to what he was telling her. It's not a reaction to what he just said! The panic inside Hagakure rose even more, as Zach's lips moved in a strange way at first only for words to start coming out after him fake-mouthing a few words first.
"You specifically was not ideal, but it was more predictable for me than bringing anyone else. Because your facial expressions wouldn't give me away early. She'd have to gauge your body language like I do… Hagakure," Zach continued stronger, looking at her more intensely with his breathing speeding up like what he was telling her was even more intense and secretive. "She wants to get revenge on me," he said in a desperate tone, one that did not match the situation the invisible girl felt was spiraling out of her comprehension and control. "And she wants to make it as horrible for me as possible. So I know a moment that will come, where I've let my guard down enough to tell a close friend a secret. Where I'm vulnerable, and we're both off guard at that moment," Zach's voice started to speed up while Hagakure's eyes trembled and her body shook with anxiety taking over.
He pursed his lips though, and then his shoulders slacked as a decisive but sad look covered his face in a moment where he was determined to finish and let his guard down enough to finally tell her… "And in that moment of vulnerability, she's going to strike at my heart. As she sees me tell something horrible and get rejected for it, she's going to kill the person I care about the moment they take the step back from me in horror."
In that very moment Hagakure had just felt like she was punched in the gut. The confusion she had been feeling finally pushed away with the realization that slammed into her with as much force as Kaminari zapping them all in that basement. The biggest bombshell she was not ready for, was that the entire day they had spent together was fake. He had been playing her the entire time, as she realized that she was the friend in this scenario he was telling 'a secret.' As she realized that the odd movements of his mouth were so that anyone who could be watching them would not be able to catch on to him already knowing what was about to happen. And with her realization of the betrayal of her trust and the thought that he had lulled her into this sense of security in order to get her reaction to be like this, the complete shock of what was currently happening and that she was the bait smashed into her like the force of a train, because she could never imagine that Zach would use her like this.
Her foot was already in the air as he was saying 'step back from me in horror.' The fear she already felt amplified a hundred times in under a second, her heart nearly flatlining at how fast it raced in the sheer terror of being inside the moment Zach was describing that he had predicted and planned for hours, if not days in advance. Her eyes started darting to the right side, her head turning but far too slow as her foot was touching down on the ground. And that look of genuine despair that was replacing all the hope on Zach's face that the girl in front of him would be understanding of this secret, vanished instantly. His entire body shrouded in darkness in a millisecond, and the left side of his body bulged with darkness that exploded out and in front of him right at Hagakure.
The huge mass of darkness that ripped out of Zach's left side curved around Hagakure's back and then condensed as strong as Zach could make it. Hagakure continued turning in shock as that darkness swept by her right side faster than she was able to follow. BANG The sound came next of something firing not too far in the distance, and then as Hagakure finished turning around the same way Zach had been facing, she stared at an indent in the huge black hand larger than she was tall. Slowly, a long steel bullet fell through the indent as the darkness left it and let it drop to the floor at the invisible girl's feet. She was frozen without looking down at the bullet though, as when she had turned that indent in the darkness had been directly behind her skull so it was right between her eyes.
The shot was on an angle to go through her and hit Zach on her other side, though Zach had seen the approaching bullet's angle would likely not have killed him after blowing Hagakure's head apart too much for even Death to fix. The human-shaped mass of Death now standing behind Hagakure pulled into the thick arm and faded away, while out of the other side of the thick hand curled around Hagakure in a protective fist, a new dark figure stepped out of the Death knuckles with his glowing red eyes locked on the position the shot was fired from.
All the darkness pulled back into Zach's body at once. Only his fists stayed surrounded in raging flames of Death, while his red eyes stayed honed-in on the white mask of the woman staring at him as she got up from prone position on a rooftop several blocks away. You were going to kill her for real. Take me down for now so I couldn't give chase, while I attempted to bring her back. She would have been the first of your revenge, Mysti! Zach's teeth bared, his jaw grinding and becoming more visible as darkness spread like veins out from his eyes and the corners of his lips that vanished in the Death to show his full jaw behind them. His black fists of rage flared and he stomped forward-
Something grabbed him by the right sleeve. Zach's head snapped to the side and he glared back behind him as Mysti had just started running, and he had to move before she could escape. He stared back though and into wet eyes of the girl behind him who had stepped up to his back and grabbed him firmly by the sleeve. "I have to get her," Zach snarled, his voice coming out deep and in a scratchy tone.
"You can't-"
"I'm going," Zach said, shrugging his arm out of her grip and grinding his teeth harder as he turned away from the expression on her face he couldn't look at for one more second. "I have to finish-"
"Not by yourself!" Hagakure yelled, her voice carrying around the street that had more people on it that were not running as they were too confused as to what was going on. Some started to run though as fear rose inside them, seeing Lifebringer looking like he was with Invisible Girl who yelled at him from right behind him. As people started to run, Hagakure stepped up on Zach's right side and made him pull his right hand away from her in a quick movement so as not to touch her with any Death. She glared into his eyes as she got to his side, shocking Zach to see the strong movements in her steps that covered up the betrayal and the sadness. No tears fell from her eyes as she had held them back, and Hagakure said in a low voice to the taller boy next to her, "I'm afraid, you're going to kill that woman. You have to bring me with you. That's final."
There's no time to argue. Zach's hands lost their darkness, while at the same time two huge black wings ripped out of either of his shoulder blades. They snapped up into the sky, with sharp angles on them as they pierced up and then back down over and over to make the shape of long flat bat wings. "Grab hold," Zach said, as he stepped towards her and wrapped his arms around her back. She did not argue and did not get flustered, just grabbing on tightly right before those huge scary wings of his snapped down behind him. Only once they were up in the air, did Zach think, She couldn't have stopped me. I can't kill Mysti now though. That's the real point of not arguing. That one vestige telling me to accept and bring her, before I…
Zach dropped down into an alleyway two buildings down and across the street from where Mysti fired from. The woman who just dropped down from a fire escape ladder to ground level stopped running to the door in front of her on her right side, as darkness filled the end of the alley and swept down both walls on either side of her in a single flash before fading. The darkness had swept right over the escape route she was going for, showing that in a second he could hit her on her way to that door and knock her out if she was not careful.
The woman had a black ponytail visible behind the white mask that covered the front of her head. There was no way to see her expression behind the mask, no way to see her face and read how she felt, and yet Hagakure suddenly realized how her friends must have felt around her as she could understand that woman's emotions in a second after she snarled one word. "Death."
"Mysti," Zach growled back her way, stomping in front of Hagakure and glaring at the woman who rose up her right hand rapidly and fired something at him out the tip of her middle finger. He swung his left arm in the way of it and slammed the tiny needle-shaped projectile aimed at his throat into the ground to his side, his arm moving like a blur to stop the projectile that fired faster than normal bullets would. It was a projectile thinner than a bullet too so Hagakure still did not see it even after Zach hit it into the ground, especially as it was so sharp that his redirection sent it almost fully into the cement so barely any of the needle was sticking out. The only reason Hagakure knew something actually was fired at him was because of the small clink she heard as his arm swung across the front of his body.
Then Zach opened his left hand he rose at her and the middle of his palm glowed blue. His action caused the woman in the mask to pull her head back and then yank away as he fired something at her she was not as fast enough to dodge as he was.
"AHH-" she yelled out in pain, pulling away as her right arm blew apart at the forearm.
"That's impressive tech," Zach growled while taking another step forward towards the woman who rose her head back up after grabbing at her pained fake arm with her left hand.
Hagakure felt a wave of despair crash over her as she heard Zach speak in such a tone. She looked at his back and repeated the name that villain called him in her head, "Death." Then, he really is. And all those stories- everything he told us! The nightcrawlers, the Doorway Queen- Terra was never real, so portals to other dimensions… It's all a lie. Everything! Hagakure stepped forward and tried to speak, but as strongly as she was able to force him to bring her here with him, she could not find the strength to even make a sound at this point.
"I…" Mysti started, her mask shaking as she rose her head higher seemingly to glare down at him from the indents of the eyes of the mask. There were no actual holes there for her to see out of, but Zach figured the mask had to be made out of some special material that allowed her to speak and see and breathe fine through it. Mysti's voice shook, trembling with rage as she snapped her head forward and screamed, "I HATE YOU!"
"Yeah, I hate you too," Zach replied, then he kicked off the ground with his right foot and shot to the wall on his left in between where he was standing and the woman facing him down the alley.
Two knives slid out of his sleeves and into his hands, and he threw them behind the woman and to her left side. He bounced off the wall while blocking her escapes, and she whipped a device up from her belt after she quickly moved her left hand away from her broken right arm. Zach sped up though as she moved like that at "the last second" thinking to catch him on his approach when he was too close to stop his momentum. She only had the weapon halfway up as he suddenly reached her, punching his right hand down into the device and smashing it apart while breaking some of her fingers too. The machine flew out of her hand already broken but shattered more upon hitting the wall on her other side, and as this was happening, Zach's left knee came swinging over and hit Mysti in the left side of her chest on a downward push that slammed her into the ground and bounced her into garbage cans that dented from the force she smashed into them.
Zach stuck his left hand out and a black arm extended out of his actual one, looking like his sleeve suddenly turned to darkness around his forearm to cover up his hand and then stretch out towards a garbage can rolling away. A black hand opened up at the end of the arm with claws instead of fingers that dug into the steel of the can, making crunching noises as he rose it up and then slammed back towards where Mysti spun around and started yelling, "You bas-" The garbage can slammed into her side mostly below her waist and knocked her back to the ground and rolling across the alley.
"Z-Zach," Hagakure weakly called down to the boy who was once her classmate. In her mind flashed the kid her own height who was too nervous to tell her his Quirk when she asked. And she saw the tears that spilled from his eyes one day because he couldn't save some little girl who had been killed by a drunk driver, a girl he didn't even know and wasn't even around to save. Then she saw the person in front of her, marching towards that woman whose fingertips bled as she curled them in the cement below her to get back to her hand and knees.
"You really thought you could come here," Zach began in a low, deep voice though not full of Death as he held that back. "And kill the people I care about? Target them specifically?" Zach snarled it with his tone raising and his head tilting back, his eyes narrowing in a furious glare down at the woman who turned her bruised and bloody body to glare even harsher back at him.
As angry as he looked, Hagakure felt a rage unlike anything she could imagine radiating from that woman's posture. The way she spun around, the heaviness of her breathing and the way she clawed her nails into the ground to get up and left trails of blood behind. She had heard this rage in the very first word this woman said to him, and she looked back up over Mysti and at Zach's face that was shadowed over in this alley that had a light at the other end from the next street down making his front a darker and more terrifying sight to look at.
"You took, everything from me," Mysti growled, her hateful tone mixing with some of the worst pain Hagakure had ever heard before. It sounded like that woman who was so furious might have been crying behind her mask as she said it. She curled her left hand down into a fist below her and dragged her right knee forward in an attempt to get it to raise, but she winced instead and let out a gasp of pain as Zach had broken her leg. The knowledge that he had chosen to break her leg when he could have more easily just killed her, made Mysti's curled fist shake even more in the most frustration and agony and hatred she had ever felt before. "I hate you with every fiber of my being. And if you don't kill me now," she seemed to even start laughing here through the pain and rage. "I'll slaughter them all in front of you. Kill everyone you care about! BEFORE I RIP OUT YOUR HEART AND EAT IT!"
"You psycho bitch," Zach snarled down at her. He took in heavy breaths and let them out loudly as he was panting while standing there in front of her, his fists flaring and then losing the Death as he thought about her threat. His eyes darted back up above her though to his old classmate for a moment and then down where they narrowed as his teeth bared in rage that Hagakure suddenly saw was close to matching this woman's. "I know you hate me, but I hate you too. Just as I took things from you, you took things from me-"
"You destroyed EVERYTHING!" Mysti screamed up at him, before gasping from the pain in her chest from his single hit there that was so heavy she found herself unable to breathe all of a sudden. "Ack, gah- ka, ah, ah, you ruined, everything. Mr. Fergus!" She yelled it with her head snapping back up after bowing there from the pain for a moment as she wheezed. "You killed him!" She called it out at him a few feet away from where he stood and the teenage boy did not flinch at her shout. "My comrades on every corner of the world! The Shadow Bosses and Dragons, Capos and Amaterasu," she sobbed, her voice cracking and her head shaking again. "You destroyed it all. Ruined it-" her voice rose in pitch and cracked again as tears filled her eyes, and in that cracked voice Zach could hear it. As if all those people she just mentioned had been her allies, the armies she knew and the friends and comrades within them. And the thought of that made his blood boil and his teeth grind in a new kind of fury as his panting breaths got more ragged and closer together.
"You killed Steamer!" Zach yelled at her. He panted again and then stomped forward but held himself back from kicking her in the face as he saw Hagakure in the top of his peripheral vision rush forward to stop him. Him stopping made her stop moving forward too though, and Zach shook his head but seethed as he glared down into the indents of Mysti's mask, "And you looked into the cameras so I would know it was you-"
"I hope that hurts," she hissed up at him. Her voice was taunting and like a menacing smirk just spread over it, and Hagakure's pain she felt for this woman faltered, though she finding both of the people in front of her to be worse than she had realized at first as the two of them went at it like this. Mysti's smirk vanished from her tone though, as the white mask pushed forward and her voice broke again as she yelled, "You killed Mr. Fergus! The only one…" her voice trembled and Zach's rage grew so much more with disgust in his eyes too that made Mysti snap her head up in a more defensive fury now at that look admonishing that she should feel like this for such a clear monster.
"He came for me," she said, talking down to the man towering over her for knowing nothing about it and judging her anyway. "When I was just a little girl, abandoned in the world when no heroes had come to save me." She sniffled in and bowed her head that she shook back and forth before snapping it up and calling out, "But Mr. Fergus did! And he raised me, put me in charge of operations- Saving the world through medical research no one else dared to attempt! Through methods that the word didn't understand but were worth it-"
"You-" Zach's seething start had to stop as he had no more breath to continue that interruption he made it so fully out of reactive anger. His head twisted back and then he leaned in in as he yelled, "You oversaw experiments on human subjects! The worst things that existed in this world-"
"They're not!" Mysti yelled right back at him, before coughing a few more times and then bowing her head and repeating it again in a lower voice. "They're not. Those subjects," she rose her head slowly and spoke in a determined and convicted tone, "were necessary sacrifices to save thousands, millions from diseases. Tens of millions considering all their families." Her voice got more indignant at the anger on Zach's face and the way he was panting faster each second, even while Hagakure behind her was just staring with a shaking and confused expression too shocked to even try to interrupt this. Mysti took heavy breaths and then growled at the small, naive boy above her, "All the advancements the world ever made were because of Mr. Fergus and the Fourth Eye. And those assassins you are still trying to hunt, are the only reason the world made it this far-"
"All of you, are the reason the world only got as far as it did," Zach countered back at her in a darker voice. "If you want to take credit for the world being in the state it was in, that's fine with me. But that's over now. The world is a better place without Fergus. Without all the monsters who followed him," Zach spat out. Then he finished in a deep voice showing no remorse, "You were one of the last."
"That's right," Mysti whispered. In her voice was sheer despair. "I tried… so hard. For so long." Her voice was defeated, sad, and broken to a point that nothing mattered to her anymore. "Even after Fergus died, I looked at that camera after killing your soldier, because I wanted you to know that it wasn't over. That, his legacy would live on through me. But you- you and yours they, they wouldn't let me… I couldn't do it like he could," her tone rose up and cracked again, and tears dripped off her chin under the mask facing Zach that kept this woman's face from being seen. "I couldn't hold anything together, and you destroyed all I had left. But, but even in the worst of days, I still took things from you."
She rose her voice as if that was the silver lining, and she rose her head a little more as she looked at Zach like that and made his face fill with pain. "I was there for everything, and I did my work dismantling your forces. From Norway to Tibet, Wampajawa to Arkistan, all the way back to Scotland." Zach's heart skipped a beat and his eyes shot open huge, shaking as he stared at the woman below him whose voice did not change at all as she continued to this teenager before her. "You may have destroyed what I loved but I have done everything I could to destroy you. And I am responsible for killing dozens of your comrades. And in Scotland, I want you to know that I was not just the representative from Corporate who took over the cleanup crew."
"You?" Zach's voice hissed, though his newfound fury could not cover up the different tone in his voice that Hagakure had not heard before. It filled her with fear as she lowered her eyes back to the woman on her knees before Zach but who suddenly sounded in control of this situation.
"That base was under my direct command," Mysti bragged to Death before her. "And when it was built, I put in the failsafes in case my experiments ran wild. Ha- Didn't you ever wonder why the whole lab started collapsing? Haha- Why it self-destructed all of a sudden?" She asked it with her tone getting higher and her voice pausing between sentences as crazed broken laughter came from behind her mask. "What was it like?" She asked in a breath-whisper, making Zach flinch and lean backwards, his right foot sliding back on the floor below him.
"While you were a mile below the surface. Sixteen basements down in that cave system I knew was down there when I first chose the location. With the walls collapsing around you, and everything exploding…" the description she was giving was becoming all too vivid in Zach's head. His eyes grew wider and filled with panic, as his teeth clenched harder in fury and to stop from shaking. "And all those people down there, ripping each other apart. Skinning each other alive. Eating each other. What was it like for you? Surrounded by those demons and all those flames, and the blood! Do you remember it? Are you seeing it right now? It must have been like Hell." Zach's breath hitched in and his eyes shook at the memory flash in front of him. "…In that chaos as everyone murdered each other. Like animals! It was like nothing I had ever imagined. So to think that it was my own creation that had done something like that," she paused and Zach completely froze up, his body tensing and his breath catching in his throat so he could no longer breathe.
"Wha-" Zach stared down at the woman in front of him in utter confusion as the breath remaining in his mouth almost made out a question.
"Did you really think it happened on accident?" Mysti wondered. "The creation of God was no mistake. It was my design," she leaned her head forward and taunted Zach with her hiss before laughing at the teenager unable to convince himself that she was lying. "Mr. Fergus was getting old," Mysti taunted, pain in her voice again but still a smug tone at the way Death looked before her now. "And I wanted to give him a present. A body to possess, but one that could then possess him back in return and make him immortal." She brought up her tone in an optimistic and intelligent tone, as she explained in simple terms, "His original body was all that held him back, but if I could create a soul. Create something that could take over bodies without needing one single host to latch onto as an original, then I could have made him immortal! A man truly worthy of that title of God! He, who made all the sacrifices this world was too afraid to make."
"You understand that, don't you?" She asked it in a desperate voice to the boy to finally see how all he had done was wrong and for nothing. His eyes just shook more as she said that to him as if actually trying to convince him, shocking him to the core as she felt he might actually understand. "Making the hard decisions for the greater good. You think that's what you were doing, but you didn't have what it takes! You weren't the chosen one to save this world… You killed him! The best man-"
Zach leaned forward, and he dug the fingers of his left hand underneath the right side of her mask. "H-Hey! Wait!" Mysti yelled it at him, her voice desperate and panicking with a fear unlike anything Hagakure had ever heard suddenly filling her voice.
"Zach stop!" Hagakure shouted and ran forward. She gave the woman a wide gap as she went around her, but she moved quickly for Zach's side as he smacked aside Mysti's flailing arms with his right hand and then gripped her by the neck with that hand still in its glove. He ripped backwards with his left while pushing forward with his right, and he stumbled away as a loud crack filled the air.
"Ahh- AHH! Why- WHY?!" Mysti fell forward onto her elbows, and she slammed her fists down and then her face into the floor only once before Zach grabbed her by her ponytail and yanked her up forcefully by his right hand. He lifted his left at the same time and made a glowing blue light shine on her face from the low glow coming out of his palm. There was blood trickling down from her nostrils, but that was not what Zach and Hagakure focused on as they saw her face. "Why?" Mysti whispered, the despair so clear on her scarred face like she felt Zach had just done the worst thing he ever could have to her. Her eyes were locked on his left hand that despite glowing in the center, still had a piece of her mask between two fingers. Her eyes lowered down to the rest of it broken apart on the ground, and then they rose back into his eyes in a desperate, sad way.
"No one's ever seen you with that mask off," Zach said to the woman whose ponytail he released now that he felt like she was not going to just bash her own brains out on the floor. Hagakure had rushed to his side to stop him, but she still had to back up as she looked at his shadowed-over face and the dim blue glow that partially illuminated his own horrifying red eyes. Those eyes were not even glowing, they had just gone from hazel to a deep red with a black swirl inside them moving around as if it were alive. And that dark figure glaring at this devastated woman sneered at her, "Fergus abused you from the time you were a child-"
"Don't say-" Mysti started, but she did not feel strong enough to make out a full sentence without her mask on. Her skin was peeled in certain areas of her face, but below those new marks were very old scars that Zach could see illuminated in the blue glow. He saw there were marks on her neck too besides the red ones he had made by gripping her by the throat. "You're wrong," she just whispered with her eyes lowering from his that were too scary for the woman who looked to be in her thirties or forties to keep staring at.
Her voice broke and got softer as if it were a child's, and Zach's face twisted in anger at the appearance of this grown woman before him. "You don't know," Zach said, his teeth baring for a second and then opening up as he panted a couple of times, his fists loosening then tightening fast as he recalled the way she had turned and looked at those cameras. The cocky appearance she seemed to have to look straight at them as if taunting him directly for killing his friends. "When we destroyed the Fourth Eye, and I killed your Mister Fergus, I found out the truth about you Mysti. You're not as mysterious as everyone thinks."
The woman with her head bowed in front of him flinched, and she started shaking her head around to push away the sound of his voice. Zach continued down to her though, "Even before he 'saved' you, Fergus had possessed the men who killed your family and raped you."
"That's not true," Mysti snapped, her head lifting up as she said it in a louder voice than she knew she could find.
"Fergus knew what was happening there. He had possessed them one at a time and pushed them to go after your family."
"You're lying-"
"He just wanted your Quirk. Wanted a nice tool-"
"Stop!" Mysti exclaimed in a cracked voice, her broken left hand lifting to an ear to cover up. Hagakure stared at Zach with a horrified expression at what he was doing, but she lost her voice and couldn't find it as she just gasped at him instead.
"That mask wasn't a 'gift' he gave you," Zach snapped, his voice disgusted as he said it to the woman so broken up over losing it. "It wasn't a present that your savior had you put on and helped you attach to your fucking face. It was his leash on you! His way of controlling you and making you forget that you were anything without him. Because if you could see your own face then you might see some of your parents in it who he had killed. Who he had had killed-"
"Mr. Fergus saved me from the ones who killed my parents!" She exclaimed desperately at him.
"You know your own organization best, is that what he does? Save random people like that?" Zach asked it skeptically and like Mysti was stupid for that belief. "He had to break you down to mold you into what he wanted, and you should have known because of all the horrible things you all did to others that didn't make sense with how he saved you. You weren't special, you were just a tool. Fergus manipulated everything to create that situation and make you believe it. To give himself a good pawn still young enough to completely mold in his own image. You really think he couldn't do it? You think he wouldn't?! In order to give himself a good pawn? A good slave?"
"Zach!" Hagakure exclaimed, her voice cracking and tears spilling out of her eyes as he yelled this down at the woman with his face twisted and the corners of his lips rising up.
Zach froze, his lips flattening out and his head lifting a bit too as he was leaning it farther and farther down there for a moment. Mysti had stopped rapidly shaking her head in disbelief though. "He wouldn't to me. He wouldn't- not to me." Her voice was disillusioned, and in the words she was saying was a disbelief that could not mask how what Zach said made too much sense. And Zach knew by her understanding of the truth, that she had witnessed this exact thing happen to other people. She had witnessed Fergus do it herself, and he knew that that meant she had probably done it to others herself as well.
"Even now," Zach muttered down at the woman whose mouth froze open and could not make any sound. "Even after he's long gone, you're still his slave. Fighting for the master who destroyed your life. Killed the only people who ever really cared about you. He turned you, into a tool to help take care of his huge organization. A tool to make him an immortal body, while thinking it was your own idea for a present." Zach's voice got even lower and he just finished to the woman who had spit slowly drooling out of her mouth as her head was bowed and unmoving, her shaking eyes freezing to just stare motionless at the ground below her as her world shattered into pieces. "You spent your whole life a slave to a monster, and you never even knew it."
Zach reached his right hand out with some darkness on the tips of his fingers, and he rested his hand on top of her head. She collapsed forward and hit hard onto her own face. Then the alley was silent. Silent other than the sound of a nearby siren a few blocks away from them.
Hagakure panted heavily as she stared down at the collapsed woman she saw slight movements from showing her that Mysti was still alive. She was too nervous to lift her eyes back up, but she gulped down her fear and forced her gaze up to Zach's face that was focused down on the unconscious villain at his feet. As horrible as everything she just heard was, Hagakure tried to remember some of the things Mysti had been telling him first before letting him see this way she was staring at him.
As hard as she tried though, Hagakure felt her heart breaking again as she rekindled hope in him only to think of how he had "mistakenly" called her 'Toru.' It wasn't out of familiarity. Or friendship, Hagakure's lips trembled but she held back tears with a more serious look forming and getting stern with the boy in front of her. He just wanted to make me react a certain way. Manipulated me, so that he could settle this grudge- it's more than a grudge. What I just heard her say. That place… "Zach," Hagakure began.
He turned his head and looked to the invisible girl still at his side in this alley. She's not running, Zach thought, more surprised just by the fact that she would stand this close to him after seeing all that. "I'm sorry, I did that to you-"
"To me?" Hagakure cut him off. "Zach," she shook her head and pursed her lips again. Then she rose her voice louder and scolded at him, "Whatever she did- and I don't know. I don't know what happened between you two. I don't know," Hagakure paused and she curled her fists at her sides. "I don't know, what she did to you, to make you so…" Hagakure clenched her eyes shut for a second but snapped them back open and continued in a sterner voice to the boy whose expression was not shaken in the least by what she was saying. "But to say all of that to her! You knew, that she had just been used by that villain. Abused, and tormented, and turned into what she was- and you still-"
"I made all that up," Zach said.
Hagakure froze with her mouth wide open. As horrified as she had been before, this put a new lump in her throat and made her right foot slide back from the man in front of her. "Wh-What?"
"She has to take personal responsibility for her actions," Zach said in a deep, menacing voice. His eyes shifted back down to the unconscious woman before him who had been a drooling mess before he finally knocked her out. With a look showing no remorse he growled, "After a certain point we all make our own choices, and you can only feel bad for your enemy for so long before you lose that feeling. She's a grown woman. I guessed her past and filled in the details around what I put together myself as I saw her face," his head slowly turned back to the side and he stared into Hagakure's eyes out from behind his bangs that cast even more shadows over his eyes.
"Why?" Hagakure asked, her voice squeaking as she could barely make the question out. "Why would you-"
"Because she doesn't deserve death," Zach replied in as angry a voice as he had been using when the woman was still awake. His teeth bared for a moment, and he had to part them with a seething breath before hissing, "And life in prison is nothing. For the things she's done, she deserves a punishment worse than any villain in this world. Something beyond what our systems of 'justice' can give her." Zach pulled his head back a bit as Hagakure stared at him like that, and he snapped it back forward with a growl, "You don't know what she did. What she was a party to. Mysti, committed every worst crime you can imagine, and dozens you can't. This woman," Zach spat the word out like it disgusted him to lump her in with other women as if they shared anything in common.
"The things she did were the worst atrocities that ever occurred on this world. On Earth. It wasn't even-" Zach bared his teeth and his face scrunched in a flinch that made him pull his chin down. "It wasn't even on, another world. No different dimension- she was just, human. The same choices all of us have to make, she made," Zach snarled it, his left hand raising up to his forehead and his fingers digging into his skull. "It goes against everything… How can humanity be good, if she existed?" Zach's whole world view, was based around certain assumptions he did his best to hold onto. Yet thinking of the things Mysti was just saying joyfully while taunting him had his teeth grinding in anger and a dark rage searing inside his heart. "Mysti killed my comrades, helped Fergus abuse the world and kill thousands, millions. She hired a team of mercenaries to try and stop me from preventing a nuclear blast in Paris. She was there in the worst research labs where human experiments faced the most monstrous treatments."
Zach was shaking his head as he listed these things off, as much of an excuse to Hagakure as a defense to himself as he repeated those images in his mind that were so much worse than what he just did to her. His head rose and those dark eyes stared into where he assumed Hagakure's scared ones were, "Yeah, Fergus abused her and turned her into it. And if he really planned out breaking her down in the first place then he was even more of a monster than I thought."
"And you, you told her so-" Hagakure's voice was shaking. "So that she would, suffer?"
"Yes," Zach replied. "That's what punishment is. It's supposed to be suffering. Suffering like the children she tortured and burned. Suffering like everyone who had to live in that Hell that-" Zach's face flinched again and his eyes shook, fear flooding into them in a moment that shocked Hagakure to see and made her heart pound in her ears at the sight of. Zach's mouth opened to continue, but he saw Titan's body pulling up into the ceiling and all the blood and organs spraying down at him. And he saw Wreck'd and Yuri's bodies, spilling brains and riddled with bullets. And he saw the fall into B16, and the river of blood, and the screams of 'Sacrifice' that echoed all around him… And then he saw their faces.
"They were so afraid," Zach whispered as those faces filled his mind. Faces he had pushed so far out of his head, even while he was in the moment itself but in every time he thought back on it before as well. "Everyone in there, as the place came down around us… Ah, ah ha, ah-" his panting breaths sucked in sharply and his wide eyes refocused on the girl standing in front of him too unnerved to say a word to the seriously panicking man in front of her. Her former classmate's expression had a moment of horror on it, but that was quickly shoved down as his eyes locked back on her invisible ones and steadied in a calm way that made it look like that brief panic was actually to show her the horror that he had lived through, so as to explain his actions to her.
Hagakure was unable to wrap her mind around what was happening. She was scared. Confused. The person in front of her was someone she no longer felt she recognized. And if this happened while he was gone, to turn him into this! Then, then every time since… Hagakure bit down on her bottom lip and stepped away from Zach, thinking about all the interactions and hang-outs they had had since he returned to Japan. It was all part of this plan? To get me here, now, so that he could destroy this villain's mind?! Hagakure had to force herself much harder to hold them back, but she still sucked in a deep breath that cracked on its way into her throat.
"You should get out of here, Hagakure," Zach started. "I'll call the cops on her and explain how she tried to attack me, like any of the other assassins. You don't want to get drawn into this," Zach said it in a knowing voice while looking back down at the woman below him who Hagakure was not actually afraid he would kill. He thinks that death isn't enough for her? He killed her friend- mentor- I don't know what Fergus… Shadow Bosses… And he's-
"By the way, Hagakure," Zach added while still looking down at the woman laying in front of him. "I'm not who she said I was. I don't know where she got that idea." Zach could not even turn to his former classmate as he said it. The words came out flat and emotionless, and Hagakure could not even respond to him.
Zach pulled out his phone to call the authorities. The teenage girl in the alley with him stared at him so depressed, lost at what was right, and she took another step back from him with a sniffle coming in her nose and her eyes dropping to stare back at the floor. "You didn't break any laws here, Zach," Hagakure began in a trembling and weak voice. "And you stopped the villain you were after," a tear slid down Hagakure's face and she closed her eyes while turning away from him. "But that doesn't mean you're right." I don't know- I can't- Hagakure started away, keeping her footsteps steady to mask how there were full streams of tears now pouring down her face.
In his peripheral vision, Zach could see through the back of her head anyway. Turning away from him meant nothing for the invisible girl whose tears were fully visible to the boy behind her whose gaze snapped back down to Mysti and stayed locked on her as he informed the police of his position. Even if she does escape one day, all she'll be doing is trying to find a way to kill me for revenge for just breaking her mind right there. Vengeance for saying what I did about Fergus, instead of any plans to recreate their organization. And because of what I said, a huge part of her will always believe it now, keeping her insane and questioning her own thoughts. Paranoid. Forever unsure if she's the one pushing for revenge or if it's just what Fergus programmed her to do, as his tool… I'm a fucking monster.
Zach's eyes shifted back towards where Hagakure had walked away. The hate he felt towards Mysti and Fergus could not compare the hatred he felt now, directed only at one person. Mysti would suspect the least from her. I knew she was good enough to be able to tell if my friend knew what was going on beforehand. But I was only able to get it past her easily, more than even Hagakure helped with, because up until the time was right I just let myself enjoy the day with her. Under the belief that I was doing it so convincingly so as to stop Mysti.
Zach frowned and glared down at the woman the cops were on the way to pick up. Then, did I not just do it this way, so that I would have the excuse to pretend even for a short time that everything was alright? Because when I pretend I actually do feel better, because I believe in my own lies with part of my mind? I don't know it until afterwards when my real thoughts take back over from below.
Just like him. But by my own choice.
I've ruined things with Hagakure forever right there. Zach thought it to the feeling of a knife in his heart, twisting around as he thought, Now I have truly lost her.
The horrible feeling Zach felt in his chest swirled around with different emotions and then pushed under. His expression flattened out as red and blue lights started flashing on his face. He rose up a hand and blocked his eyes to get a better view down the alley, then nodded towards a hero and some officers who had been nearby already and came to him. "Over here!" Raijin killed a ton of heroes the other day. This country's on the verge of a horrible disaster. I can feel it in the air. I can't have Mysti here throwing another powerful enemy into the midst of villains I already have to face. One more thing, is one thing too many. So I dealt with her accordingly.
What I did was not right. It was necessary. "This woman made an attempt on my life. She was wearing this mask and rambling insanities as she attacked me…" Just be a fake Zach Sazaki again. One who is willing to use his relationships to capture villains, no matter who it hurts… He imagined Hagakure walking away from him again, and his chest clenched for a moment but unclenched just as quickly. That isn't something I'm deciding to become, that's just who I am now. Who I've always been. She's crying but, her tears don't matter compared to this. Not caring about that is a new low I've hit, but I don't care about not caring either. Death, at least, got shit done.
A/N Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed the chapter... Leave a review below letting me know what you think, and predictions for what's about to come.
GuestP chapter 208 . Dec 16
What. The. Fuck!
CODY MY BOY, YOU'RE BACKKKKK
REBEL MY DUDE, YOU'RE BACCKKKKK
I don't have much time, so I'm going to make this review short and sweet.
I really like the whole shebang that occurred right now, it was kind of like drinking a banana smoothie, weirdly enough, and the fact that Rebel and L were like, "yeah lets just make an alarm thing for Zach just in case cuz Lord knows the guys gonna get involved with shit" is pretty funny. It's basically like putting a bell on a cats collar lol
I loved this chapter, and i'm SUPER DUPER excited for the next one!~~~~
Guest appearances by Rebel and Cody last chapter, and a reemergence of Mysti in this one. Hope it lived up to the excitement ya felt, though I'm guessing this chapter caught most of you off guard too. XD Thanks for reviewing!
D - D chapter 208 . Dec 17
Ayyy AoD! Rebel! Yay! Oh no zachs been expelled...
Shes fully right to expel Zach and he deserves it but still, Fuck you memuria let my baby live and be happy in school. Now we won't get anymore Kotsumura or precious Himazuri moments...
I think this is the first time I've ever seen you make a mistake but "kotsumurar"
On the bright side, you said the story would end around the time Zach graduates from Shiketsu, and now that he's not gonna graduate from Shiketsu, the story has been extended!
Let me dream ok.
Tough times for Zach being expelled there... but at least he was talking to Hagakure at the start about already applying at new places? Nice catch on Kotsumurar, I reread my chapters when I edit before posting, but there're always a few things that slip by me even on the second time through. As for the story being extended... well, who knows? Dreaming's nice. XD Thanks for the review!
QuestingforBitches chapter 208 . Dec 17
There should be a sad version of Alice Cooper's "School's Out Forever" for this chapter
School's out, but Zach's not done yet... Would love to hear that sad version tho!
Momozaki chapter 208 . Dec 16
Damn... Zach just can't get a break can he?
No. The answer to that question, is no. ;)