Death

by tmb1112

Death is a Quirk that can only kill. A perfect Quirk for a villain, but what if the boy who manifested that power just wanted to be a hero? Enrolling in U.A. might not be enough when all your Quirk can do is kill people. Follow Zach Sazaki from his first day in Class A on a story that spans years, as he learns to be a hero, finds out more about his Quirk, and too much to summarize!

235. Chapter 235

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 235:

A Year Ago…

Whiteout's body fell out of the air and slammed hard on the roof of a building. The hit would have been worse but the building was too damaged and so the roof cushioned into her fall and cracked behind her. She did not fall through the hole that opened in the roof though, as she was on too much of an angle on her fall. Blood splashed out of her stomach as she bounced on the roof and then fell off the side of it. Back farther behind her, Zilla's massive body was falling forward and still the size it was when the Second Capo's Quin Arrows had ripped back and forth through her.

The Second Capo snapped his head straight up then brought his arrows back faster that he was trying to finish off Whiteout with. Three falling drones that had just been knocked out by that flash of white light got intercepted by his glowing red arrows before they could fall on him, but others in the army of villains behind the Capos were not so lucky. The drones spun out in the air and crashed all over the street, but despite the flash and explosion, nothing had changed. Villains still ran forward and the Army of Death sprinting the other way continued to meet them. Communications networks were down though. The city was enflamed around them and everyone screamed over each other and the sounds of gunfire filled the air.

"AhhHH! Stay behind me!" Gentle yelled at the short woman at his side who he just saw several bullets fly right past. His barrier was too small and he held both of his bloodied hands up with his whole body shaking and his lower torso screaming out at him in pain from his injuries. The short woman next to him was out of ammo anyway and the shaking of the ground as well as an explosion to her right knocked her off her feet. "La Brava!"

"RAAAA- RAAAhh ack- kah aghh-ugh-" Death's voice cracked and he gagged with bloody spit splashing out of his mouth that had filled up too much with it.

His head rose back up as a huge mass of lava went flying by on his left side. A huge wave of it shot down the street towards the First Capo who stopped running forward after just killing an Army of Death soldier right before the EMP. More on the right side of the street from Death's angle, he could see both Darling and Sagitus down on the floor near where villains were sprinting down the street towards their line. Both of them had been shot up too much before the flash, but Sagitus leaned his human body up and grabbed one of the sprinting villains who thought this dark soldier was incapacitated after being shot too many times. He grabbed the man by his shirt while kicking out his back left leg, and the hoof of his centaur-body caved in the jaw and right temple of another villain running past him. The guy Sagitus grabbed by the shirt slashed a pair of blue blades out from his palms across Sagitus' arm so deep that his bones showed through as blood splashed out and Sagitus screamed in pain.

The wall of lava slammed into the First Capo. And it vanished. The Disintegrator stood behind it all with his hands raised. All of the lava that had hit him was turned to ash, but right behind that wave sprinted two dark soldiers who had followed Lavamander's attack. Jughead crossed Cluster's front and jumped up with his right hand pulling back far for a heavy punch, while Cluster ducked down to his right behind Jughead in a moment that he was out of the Disintegrator's view. His eyes glared in righteous rage at the leader of this City of Villains, and he dragged up the katana he was slicing from the ground on his right up towards the Disintegrator's left side while the villain's hands were still lifted.

He was attacked on both sides at once. Then his right hand snapped out and grabbed Jughead by his already thin head as he was all out of water to fill his Quirk. The Capo's other hand shot towards Cluster's sword as it sliced towards him, and the instant the sharp blade touched his palm it was turning to dust. Disintegrator clutched Cluster around his throat, but instead of just turning him to dust as well, he turned Cluster's head and made him look towards Jughead in that moment. Disintegrator squeezed the thin portion of the middle of Jughead's skull, before he turned the man to ash. And only then did he kill Cluster as he watched his friend die.

Zach's head snapped to that side from the pistol he just looked at as he heard the click of an empty magazine. He looked towards his comrades as they turned to dust, and he could see everything in front of him past the First Capo and across the villains' army. His already sparse forces were being cut down. Bodies piled up on both sides but the villains' numbers still exceeded their own by a factor of twenty. Zach could see Exodus behind enemy lines, but the Fifth Capo spun after Exodus last slammed into him, and he had Exodus grabbed by both arms as he smashed a knee into Zach's comrade's chest. Exodus got planted deep into a wall on the right side of the road, while the Second Capo shot all five of his arrows towards an ice wall that rose up behind him and protected another few dark soldiers trying to fight in the midst of overwhelming odds. Icefall screamed out as she created wall after wall in front of her to try and stop the arrows boring through after her, Michael, and Seraphim. Her comrades on her other side were pushed back too though by other villains' Quirks and could barely stand from their crushing injuries. They were in a triangle formation shrinking each moment and stood back to back to back with their shoulders just touching.

"Death, Death listen to me," a voice was speaking on Zach's side but his eyes were darting around too much in front of him as he searched for it. He needed to find the way through. The needle to thread their victory had to be there. There had to be a hole. Something! "Death!" Zach felt a hand grip him by the front of his armor, and he turned his head to the right.

Death's face turned and he stared next to him at the man he had lifted up by the back of his neck. Switch was out of ammo too, though Death had dropped his gun altogether. His left arm had just broken apart as he was no longer able to hold it together with the lack of any of his Quirk remaining. Gentle just dropped down to a knee on their right side and would not be able to hold his barrier any longer in a couple seconds. Switch just watched his friends Cluster and Jughead turn to nothing, and his teeth clenched but his voice came out steady as he told his commander, "I'm dying. I- I can feel it and-" Switch bit down even harder. His eyes shook in fear, but he said seriously at the boy next to him, "And I don't want to come back. I don't want you to bring me back," he seethed it through his teeth at Death, and Lavamander heard him on Death's other side. Lavamander looked straight towards the Disintegrator as he heard it, and that leader of the City of Villains smirked right back at the anti-hero who he recognized, and who recognized as well that the Capo knew of him.

Death turned his head back forward for an instant but then turned half to the side again and stared through the corner of his eyes at the man next to him. Switch gripped into the front of Death's armor on the thin piece of it that remained near his neck while most of the rest had been destroyed. Switch's helmet was mostly destroyed too and Zach could see into his eyes as Switch stared back at him. "I don't want to come back. So… Make it count."

Lavamander sprinted forward. He punched his right hand forward as Disintegrator yelled, "YES! I will be the one, who ends your time forever, Lavamander!" Lavamander leapt up into the air after a flying lava fist flew off from his arm towards the First Capo. He punched his right and left down twice more each as he descended on the arc towards the Disintegrator. Each huge lava fist that flew towards the First Capo got turned to ash one after the other.

Death's fingers slid out of his glove.

The Disintegrator snapped his right hand back down from the slightly higher flying fist of red molten rock flying at him, and he grabbed Lavamander by the wrist as Lavamander tried punching an actual blow towards the First Capo's chest. The Capo was too fast, and his other arm moved up between Lavamander's arms and grabbed him by the neck which stopped Lavamander's fall short. His descent jolted to an immediate stop as the First Capo did not even skid backwards from the force of the large man falling into him. Disintegrator was fast, and strong, and his Quirk was insanely powerful. And he smirked as he stared up into Lavamander's eyes while gripping the strongest anti-hero by the throat.

The Disintegrator's smirk faltered though. It shook, because of the way Lavamander smirked right back down at him. The smirk of victory, even as Lavamander's body was turning into dust, sent fear coursing through the Disintegrator's body. As Lavamander became less solid, he saw the flash of black behind the man who had gotten in his way with so much Lava and his own body. The pulse of darkness went against the fact that Death was all worn out and had nothing left of his Quirk to use. The Capo did not put any of it together. He did not see Switch's body collapsing to the ground in a limp pile that Gentle and La Brava stared to the side at in disbelief. His eyes were still looking up in confusion at Lavamander's when he saw that darkness explosion in the corner of his vision. But Death was already there.

Sprinting through Lavamander's ashes, was a dark form that still had its fingers out of his glove. And that right hand pushed forward through Lavamander as he ran through his own comrade. And he pressed that hand against the Disintegrator's chest…

---

Present

Inside the city of Musutafu, Zach Sazaki dropped out of the sky and landed at the front gates of the nation's most prestigious hero academy. He landed in front of a security guard who stared forward in silent shock for a few seconds at the boy whose huge black wings pulled back into his body. That teenager had on a white prison jumpsuit. Zach walked forward and said in a low voice as he reached the security guard, "I left my I.D. inside."

"Th-That's fine. Lifebringer," the security guard responded, and he just moved to the side instead of going through the process to get Sazaki his I.D. back in the normal way. The school was understaffed at the moment anyway with the majority of the teachers and their principal all still in Tokyo at the courthouse that Lifebringer had just flown away from. The security guard panicked and rose up his tablet that still had the volume up, and then he slowly lifted his head and looked back at Lifebringer who walked by him and then jumped up in the air.

Zach dropped down behind the main school building and then started down the road towards his dorm building. On his left side as he was walking, the front door of a different dorm opened up. Two students walking out of their building talking about the same thing froze when they saw who was walking quickly down the street in a prison getup. The door slammed back shut and the two pressed their backs up against it with their hearts beating a thousand beats a second. Their other classmates looked at them in confusion and then realization as one of them tried stammering out who they just saw walking past their building. Even though it had only been a minute. Even though the news was speculating where he went and questioning if they would ever see him again, he was just outside.

Zach walked into his building that he knew to be completely empty. My backpack was destroyed by Todoroki. Many of my things, I suppose. Some could have survived. I didn't care at the time. I don't. What's going on? Zach walked up the stairs for the fifth floor. I don't, understand. It doesn't make sense. It does though. Gentle gave them no choice. He blackmailed the judges in front of the world. Threatened to release all those prisoners? Or that, they would have to release them? It's not right. It's not what, what I would have- Zach's teeth clenched and his eyes shook as he stared down the hallway towards his own room.

He walked down that hallway with his feet stomping harder on every step. His eyes shook more in anger with both of his fists balling at his sides. Showing them everything? That's, that's the opposite of what we did- what we fought for- what they died- Zach's jaw clenched so much harder but his lips pulled apart this time unlike back at the courthouse. His expression shook angrily and his eyes filled with red. The hallway started to get darker as he marched through it. Everything tinted red, and he could hear a hum in his ears as he neared the door at the end of it. All of it! What was it for?! If I don't know that- if Gentle tarnished it even a little- Zach's right hand shook at his side as he rose it to his doorknob.

He pushed. His hand had not twisted the knob enough. The piece of the door sticking out of it, the latch bolt that was partially into the frame on the side, got caught as he pushed forward. He was not focused on the door at all as he pushed it inwards. The hinges tore through the frame and the wood splintered around the door as Zach ripped it from the wall. His red shaking eyes started to lose the bright red glow that filled his vision. Zach lowered his eyes down to the metal doorknob that was dented with his gloved fingers imbedded into it. His eyes shifted from that glove on his right hand to the sides of the door that had just ripped off its broken frame.

Zach's breathing grew more ragged. He slowly lowered the door down that he was holding straight up in front of him with no effort. He put the bottom of it on the floor then slid it to the side, and he rested it up against his wall right next to the empty frame. Zach leaned it so it would not fall then took a step back while staring at it. His fists re-curled but then unclenched again and his breathing just got even heavier. Was I about to smash this room to pieces? Again? He glanced around it. He looked around his own bedroom, at the wall with all the pictures connected by strings, many of which were just lies. The pictures of the Muindo Range he kept up there for show. Photos of disappeared assassins who the rest of the world had no idea the truth about. He blinked a few times while staring at it, and a part of him wanted to step towards that wall and rip it all down. Zach looked to his desk and then at the window he wanted to throw that desk through, but his fingers just trembled at his sides as he could not curl his hands into angered fists again.

Zach just stumbled back a couple of feet farther. He pressed his back up against the wall of his and Sato's room. His bed was to his left and the open door to his right, and he put his back against the wall and tilted his neck backwards to stare up at the ceiling. His knees felt weak, and he felt no reason to keep standing. Zach's legs bent and his back slid down the wall. His butt hit the floor with his feet still flat on the ground in front of him though they did slide out forward a bit. His knees were up in front of his chest though, and his arms that were limp down on his sides rose up to cross over the tops of his legs. His forearms rested on top of his knees, and his head bowed and came to a stop pointed down between his legs. His whole body slouched and he just gasped out a breath as his body heaved in exhaustion.

---

"Are we sure he's in there?"

"Sero's text said people saw him on campus," Kirishima replied to the pink-skinned girl speed-walking with him. Kirishima muttered under his breath, "I don't know where he is right now."

"I'm sure he's coming too," Ashido whispered. She said it but the two of them were already there. Ashido and Kirishima stood on the fifth floor of their dormitory. They stared down the empty hallway and then started walking down it together. Ashido gulped as she saw the opening where Zach's door should have been.

Kirishima's fists balled and his fingers rubbed some sweat on his palms that he felt. He's definitely in there, Kirishima confirmed at the sight of the gap in the doorway. As they got closer he could see through the entrance and saw the door looked placed gently against the wall just on the inside and to the right of the entryway. Kirishima's fists loosened a little at the sight of that. He expected the door to be in pieces and scattered across the room.

Ashido paused in the hall for a couple of seconds but she turned to her right and saw Kirishima just keep walking forward without hesitation. She sped back up to keep close, but she gulped again as they neared his door. What are we supposed to say to him? I still have no idea!

The spiky haired redhead walked into the doorway first and turned to look inside. The room was not torn apart. Only the door had come off. Kirishima looked down and to his left, and his fists opened up at his sides. His expression changed in an instant. All the questions and everything he had come up with on the way here got shoved down to the bottom of his mind. Mina walked up next to Kirishima when she saw the look on his face drop. She turned in and stared down at Zach where he sat with his arms on his knees, his head partially bowed so they could just barely see that his eyes were open.

He did not turn to them when they stepped into his doorway. His black bangs shadowed over his eyes a little but they could see that those half-closed eyes did not shift their direction at all. The two stepped into Zach's room. Kirishima eased around Ashido's back and she glanced at him confusedly as he went behind her. She had entered on his left though, which meant she was closer to Zach's right side and the corner of the room to the left of the door. Kirishima walked over there onto Zach's right, and Ashido walked past Zach's feet and then to his left side. She and Kirishima slid their backs down his wall and sat on either side of him. Then Zach lifted his head the smallest amount and acknowledged their presence there with the movement.

His acknowledgement made Ashido's breath come out easier as he had not reacted at all to their entering until that moment. She opened her mouth but stopped herself. He did not look towards either of them and instead just stared past his legs that were spread apart with his knees pointed up and out away from each other. "That stuff you said, at the end of the trial," Ashido found her voice and started speaking to the boy on her right side. "It's working, you know? Over a hundred people have already turned themselves in. All over the world… This- this official in Kuwait admitted, to taking a bunch of bribes. And these drug dealers handed in everything they had…"

"Letting me go will add to effectiveness of what I was trying to do there," Zach whispered. Both Kirishima and Ashido stared at him with wide eyes as he spoke to them. He did not turn to the girl on his left but he whispered that in a steady tone. His expression was always hard to read, but the two next to him felt their heart rates gradually slowing down at the tone of his voice. The vulnerable position he sat in could not so easily make them forget all they had just witnessed at the courthouse.

Zach spoke calmly and logically as he whispered, "They want to be handled by the police rather than the Army of Death, but maybe it worked too well." His voice turned into a mutter that was almost frustrated but like he could not find enough energy to care about what he was saying. "The Army of Death might have dealt with that corrupt official a different way. They could have handled it without me and maybe they could have used it." His forearms slid back on his knees and his hands curled over the front of them just above his shins. "I forgot where I was for a minute, and the only thing on my mind was how I could make the most good out of the court case. I just-" Zach brought his right hand up and he grabbed his head with it. "That was the Army of Death's mission. To do whatever they could to create the most good."

His whispers got sharper and more hoarse as he kept speaking despite running out of breath. He breathed back in but his breathing was scratchy and came out loud as he nearly wheezed it in. "Every choice I had I looked at the outcomes and did whatever would make the most good. What could be the best outcome, what could help the people of the world the most, and even right there I outed a bunch of villains who didn't even fight. They just turned themselves in." His right hand gripped into his head harder. So why? Why doesn't it feel, like I did anything? "They're so afraid of me," Zach whispered, his voice coming out as a hiss as he could barely manage to get it out. "Especially after seeing that video, and seeing me be released. It was like the legal system knows who I am but is letting me continue anyway, and it terrifies them, and it… It's not, how things were supposed to-"

Zach gripped his head harder and he bowed it down more with his teeth grinding back and forth. "Everyone saw," he gasped out. His head lifted and he lowered his shaking hand from his temple as he stared across the room in utter confusion. "They all saw it. I- I don't understand. When people saw, that was supposed to be- if they ever found out! If they found out, it was all over. That's why I had to- I had to make the lies. That's why it had to be a lie. Why I couldn't- but- but if I'm not in jail right now, then did it ever matter?" Zach wondered it mainly to himself, but his head shook back and forth anyway and he brought his right hand back and rubbed over his eyes then just pressed his forearm into them as he seethed out a rough breath he almost choked on.

Out in the hallway, Sero spotted the open door at the end of the hall and he started down it. He slowed though as he heard the voices on the other side of the opening.

"How?" Zach gasped out. His voice cracked and he shook his head again and looked down between his legs at the floor, "How am I free? It doesn't make sense. I don't- I don't understand. Everyone saw," he whispered in pain. "They all saw, they saw what I-" He bit down so hard that he could not breathe. His nose was clogged up and his chest tightened to the extremes of anything he had felt before.

"Zach," Ashido started. "They… We all know, we know that- that we don't know. All those people you killed, you were fighting war and-"

"That's not-" Zach cut her off with a gasped few words. He stopped her with a sharp cut-off that made both Ashido and Kirishima look in at him in more confusion as they thought they understood why he was saying the things he was.

Zach's head snapped partially to his left when he interrupted, but he did not make eye contact with the girl sitting there. His eyes were down at the floor in shame and agony. He stared down and his head shook back and forth, and water filled the bottoms of his eyes. They piled up on his eyelids and his lips trembled as he tried to speak. His mouth opened and his head started to raise, his eyes raising and looking into Ashido's as he gasped out. "H-" The tears fell from his eyes and poured down his face, and his head cocked to the side as he whispered, "Half?"

Both of his hands rose to his chest at that moment and he gripped through his jumpsuit over his heart. Ashido pulled her head back and tears spilled out of both of her eyes at the tone in his voice as he said that one word. One word he whispered at her in disbelief. A word that broke her heart to hear, and made Kirishima clench his eyes shut on Zach's other side as he heard it. The cracking tone of Zach's voice could no longer hold up any facade. He failed at hiding it for another single second. His eyes killed Ashido to look into, even for just that brief moment before he looked away in guilt that crashed down over him. "Half," he repeated in a cracked whisper. "In one day, I lost- I… I lost half of them. My brothers and sisters in arms. Who followed me, who- who trusted me to save them?" His head tilted back slightly even while his neck was still pushed forward from the wall, and he whispered, "I let them all die."

"You fought to protect them," Kirishima argued on Zach's other side.

"You did what you could," Ashido agreed, trying to hold herself together and wiping her eyes quickly.

Sero stopped outside of Zach's door and did not enter. He doesn't need people crowding him. He, doesn't need to hear all the questions I need to ask him. Or any of their questions either. Sero glanced back towards the stairwell at the other end of the hall. More will come. He turned and slowly sat down himself, avoiding making any noise as he popped a squat outside the door. He put his back slowly up against the wall so the ripped doorframe started just past his left arm.

Ashido sat next to one of her best friends in the world and she put her hands on his left sleeve. "It's not your fault," Ashido whispered.

"It is though," Zach gasped back, turning his head to the left again to look in her eyes. "They were my responsibility. I told them, that I would protect them. Every single one of them. I recruited them all. I, wouldn't let anyone follow me, if I didn't know who they were. I needed to know them so that they would be more than just a name in my head. That to me, they would be what they couldn't be to anyone else. I promised that I would remember them and yet- yet I! I didn't!" Zach snapped it with his head snapping back forward and his trembling eyes looking down. "I forgot them. Their names. Who they were, and what they died- I forgot. No, no I chose- I-" Zach brought his left hand up and shook Ashido's hands off his arm. He gripped his forehead with that hand, and he whispered in a stunned voice, "How did I forget? How could I, choose to forget them?"

"I- I couldn't take it though," Zach argued. He argued with his own horror at himself for what he was thinking. "I couldn't," he gasped with a look to his right at Kirishima this time. "I couldn't take it. Losing all of them I- I couldn't handle it. And so I! I didn't. I just replaced them all with, with nonsense! All my memories I just, replaced, with ridiculous- insane-" Zach's eyes shook and more tears fell from them. His breathing steadied a little as he took in deep breaths though his nose and forced them out of his mouth. He shook his head around again though and said frustratedly, "I swore to them that I would be the one person who remembered it. That I would, remember them. And I didn't," he gasped out.

"You would have-"

"I let them pile up," Zach whispered over Ashido's attempt to argue for his sake while Kirishima just stared at him in shock hearing this. "I pushed it so far down every time it happened. I buried every horrible thing as soon as I saw it. I needed to. I couldn't get hung up on it, not in front of them. I needed them to not doubt me so I needed to not doubt myself, and thinking about all the horrible things I let happen would have made me doubt myself, so I had to not think about it. I had to become less than human. A machine. A weapon. And I'm not," he whispered painfully. "I'm not that, anymore. And I can't just forget again. Not this time. I can't- I, I did it too many times. Broke my own mind. I've been doing it, intentionally-"

Zach brought his right hand to one temple and gripped into the other with his left. "You don't understand," he whispered at them. "Every time Norasaki asked me, and I needed to get past his lie-detecting Quirk, I would redo it. I would do to my own mind what Kaminari did to his. I know, that convincing myself of something, is the best way to convince other people. I know that if I believe it to be true, then I can better convince other people. So whenever I'd start opening up to you guys, or to Midoriya, and then I'd have to go stand in front of him again? I had to break my mind. I had to- over and over- and when I got kicked out of Shiketsu I did it again, even though I got expelled anyway, so it didn't even matter that I did! I did it for nothing. And it's exhausting."

"But, I thought, 'one more time.' When I was put on trial. I thought! I thought that I could do it, that I could handle doing it again even though so much had already come out. Even though so many people had already figured me out…" Ashido glanced past Zach to Kirishima, and the two of them each had knowing looks on their faces and were not even that surprised to see that the other person had known about Zach being Death before the trial. They looked back to their dark-haired friend between them who whispered in a voice so tired, "And so I broke it again. And I believed in the stories of Terra. I knew they were lies and yet I- I don't know how I can do it, but I believed in them. It was the truth, and- and I know, I knew they weren't even during the trial but it was-"

Zach rubbed his temples in confusion even as he tried explaining it to his friends. In his head he saw the way that Yaoyorozu looked at him the last time he referred to Wampajawa as 'Razmatan' to her. Something he thought about later on that day and realized only hours later had been weird of him, especially that he did not even understand her reaction to it. "I tried to believe it, because I knew that I had to convince everyone that Terra was real. I had to- but I didn't? I didn't have to do any of that? If it never mattered, if I never once had to shatter my mind like that?!" Zach's teeth ground back and forth and he gripped his temples much harder, only for his eyes to squint and his voice to come out in sadness rather than anger, "Then what did I forget them for?"

"It wasn't some wholesome reason. It wasn't for some plan and- and I just couldn't, I couldn't think of them. I couldn't picture their faces without-" Zach lowered his right hand to his neck and gripped it in pain as he was choking on his own words and air and spit all at once. "I coul-dn't, ugh- I, and yet I, I spent that whole trial- I watched them all die and…" Zach buried his head down between his legs he closed in front of him to give him somewhere to slam his head. "I'd never watched that video before," Zach whispered. "I knew Gentle had taken it but, I never knew how much was recorded. How much of the battle he missed," Zach added softer, shaking his head more into his legs while his friends stared at him not knowing what to say.

How much it missed? I know there were huge chunks of time out of that but, but we saw a lot Zach! Kirishima thought with his heart pounding faster at the idea that Zach thought a lot had been left out of that video.

"You know, Zach, I didn't get it." Ashido grabbed him by his left knee closer to her, and she shook his head up off his legs so he could look at her face again. She gave him a small smile though and whispered with tears in the corners of her eyes, "Those lies you told? All that time, you were trying so hard to tell us the truth. You were," she assured him. "You told me about the anonymous tips and how you sent them. Remember, when we went shopping that day?" When he agreed with me, when I said how the whole time it was him that was making 'anonymous tips' into a big deal, he wasn't joking as much as he made it out to be. It was his way of telling me the truth. "You tried so many times. You were telling the truth as best you could, because to tell it any more truthfully you would have just," Ashido did not want to finish as she could see what happened when the truth behind what happened was really shown in detail. She could see him at this moment as a man too beaten down by the world to even hold this conversation without losing it.

"That battle did come," Zach whispered as she told him how she understood. He looked from her and then to his other side at Kirishima who got a confused look on his face at what Zach was saying. "The battle, where they regrouped and attacked us. At the end of the world loop. The final battle of the peak of the war. The, Battle of the 6 Armies."

"Then I'll go with the Battle of the 6 Armies. Out of the two of those stories, the Siege was an attack I planned out, while in the Battle, I was ambushed. So it'll stay along a scary theme anyway… A bit of background for where I was at the time: it was after the Siege of Razmatan during the peak of the war. The Siege saw heavy losses for both sides, but we also proved in Razmatan that the Arcasians did not have a complete hold on that world like most people still believed they did before it…"

Ashido and Kirishima could imagine him talking in the joint training. "That was real too," Zach whispered. "And it was exactly what I knew was coming but," he shook his head in frustration. "I knew it was going to come. I told them that they were going to hit us hard. That, we had to be ready for it… But the Siege of Raz- Wampajawa! Wampajawa, was not the only day, I lost half- ah-" he sucked in another sharp breath but then bowed his head back into his chest at the admission. "We weren't back up at strength yet. I'd been recruiting through the world loop, but we were losing people throughout it too. Too many. There weren't ten thousand of us," Zach said, cocking his head to the side and joking about it as that was a number he had told them in the joint training. "And there weren't a hundred thousand of them. But, but there were tens of thousands of them, and there weren't a hundred of us- and- and even if every one of my forces were worth ten or twenty, or… or a hundred of them. They all would have died anyway." He cried it and brought both hands to his face, shoving his palms into his eyes as he thought of it.

"I knew it was coming," Zach gasped. "I knew, and yet the ambush still got us off guard. The returning helicopter exploded before we even knew it was happening. They surrounded our airship and I had to have Whiteout take it down. As we fell from the sky without any comms, I made the plan for them going underground and slipping into the enemies' ranks. Appearing in the various armies and breaking them up because all the villain groups had problems with each other. I knew they would turn on each other with the drop of a hat, so I rushed out as the diversion, and I-" Zach bit down furiously as he tried to tell them it for real this time. "And I, told the Chinese heroes, that it was a Villain Summit. I had to manipulate it all," he clenched his eyes shut and a tear slid down the right side of his face out from under his right hand. "But it was, it was terrifying. There were tens of thousands of them, and they were all coming for me, and I- I wasn't afraid but I can imagine it now, and I am scared now, because losing my comrades is something that I care about. And I know that I failed. I know, that."

Kirishima's jaw closed as he noticed it had fallen open. He was staring inwards at his friend who he did not dare doubt for a second. Out in the hallway, Aoyama turned his head from across the hall and stared into Sero's eyes with his own massive. The two of them glanced to the other side as they spotted something in their peripheral vision, and they each looked towards Midoriya who stopped as he saw them before more quietly walking down to the end of the hall himself.

"Those battles," Zach whispered. "Where I lost so many men? They weren't supposed to go like that. I should have, prevented it. But when the Battle of 6 Armies came I killed them. They were my friends, and I left them behind to die. Decoys to fire from the ship out at the enemies. Only a few of them, so the villains would know that there weren't many survivors."

"You didn't kill them-" Kirishima started.

"Whiteout, Raylei, Malestrom, they were on their first lives at least. But Shang?" Zach wondered. He asked it and then continued, "I knew he was going to die. Michael asked to take his place, but Shang couldn't infiltrate an enemy force. He was too angry, ever since Xia died for her second time. I knew he wouldn't be able to manage any infiltrations into the enemy armies, so I left him behind to guard them. to better convince myself I wasn't leaving them there to die," he whispered in a higher pitched voice of anger at himself.

"Your strategy worked though," Ashido whispered. He frowned deeper and shook his head, but she countered him, "They followed you because they believed in you. You didn't kill them. They made the choice to follow your orders-"

"And Switch?" Zach asked. He bowed his head farther and opened his eyes. He stared down at the floor and watched as drips of water fell with his arms going limp at his sides. "You didn't see how Wampajawa ended, so don't tell me I didn't. I-" Zach balled his fists and he slammed his eyes shut. "I killed him-"

"You didn't," Kirishima said, more firmly this time as he tried to get Zach to stop saying that.

"The final charge against the Capos," Zach whispered. "Switch had fallen out of the air next to me. I picked him up, and we each tried… We all tried," Zach bowed his head farther and shook it again. "But they were too much. There were too many of them. Too many… Darling was down, the Fifth Capo was beating on Exodus and, and everyone was dropping. They were all going to die. And there was nothing I could do-" Zach cut himself off and pulled his head back, his eyes clenching harder and tears pushing out of his shut eyelids. "Cluster and Jughead used one of their combos on The Disintegrator. They were great friends, strong soldiers, and they fought amazingly together. Cluster, had been with me from before we were even an Army, and Jughead was one of the strongest in brute strength… And The Disintegrator turned them both into dust in an instant."

Ashido winced and tried to keep her tears back this time though. She kept staring at the side of Zach's head and stayed quiet now as he told them what happened after the E.M.P had hit. Those who had come outside of Zach's room too were listening as well, because no one had any idea how Zach had managed to pull off a victory from the state they were in. Zach's voice got more hoarse though as he spoke on it, "We couldn't win. I, I couldn't even keep that gun up because I didn't have enough Death for my arm. It just broke apart, and- and we were all going to die. I had to- I… I heard him tell me, that he was dying. Switch he, he told me that he didn't want me to bring him back. It was his first time, you see? And so he… he grabs me." Zach turned and he grabbed Kirishima by the front of his shirt using his right hand.

Zach leaned his face forward and stared into Kirishima's eyes. His own were bloodshot and full of tears though they stayed in his eyes at the moment as he stared intensely into his friend's, but with his eyes also full of fear. "And he tells me," Zach hissed. He tilted his head, and his tone cracked higher, "'Make it count.'" Zach used the pitch he remembered Switch speak in that day. The last words Switch had ever spoken. Zach said it to Kirishima, and he held the gaze for another second before having to avert his eyes. He loosened his grip on Kirishima's shirt and then let go, and he whispered while turning his head forward a little to just look away from him, "So I, I slid my fingers out of my glove, and I killed my friend."

"I killed him and it gave me a boost in power. Something, I had never, never considered doing. Killing someone just to make myself stronger? Just for that boost?! I had never killed a villain for that reason, ah, but, but my friend?" Zach wondered it skeptically as if asking how such a thing could happen. Both Ashido and Kirishima just thought that he was being too hard on himself, and the two of them did not know what to say to him after hearing that. Zach's head dipped down farther and his voice remained hoarse as he went on, "Lavamander had heard Switch's resolve. The determination to sacrifice himself knowing that he would not be able to be brought back. I had never revived Lavamander either, but The Disintegrator would not leave a body for me to bring back. He didn't care though."

Ashido's eyes shook as she thought of this anti-hero who Zach had told her about before. She knew he had died and that Zach claimed it was because of him, and she held her breath as he went on, "Lavamander knew that The Disintegrator had recognized him. He knew that he could draw his attention better than anyone else, and we only had one shot at this. The power from killing just one person might not be enough to bridge the gap between a fresh Disintegrator and myself on the verge of death. But Lavamander took his attention up, and The Disintegrator grabbed him by the throat and turned him into ash. And I sprinted through Lavamander's disintegrating body, and I slammed my right hand into that villain."

"The Second Capo was not expecting the first to be killed, so I managed to slap my right hand into him in the very next instant. And then Exodus, in a fantastic move, knocked the Fifth Capo straight towards me. That villain so stunned to see the other Capos fall, was hit in the back by an enemy he thought to be incapacitated. Hit straight into my right hand. And in seconds," Zach said darkly, his eyes raising up and glaring across his room. "All three of the remaining Capos were dead. And I felt the surging power of four dead bodies pulsing through me. My aura recovered. The other villains already in fear, panicking from the loss of their leaders, lost any resolve to fight as waves of Death flew at them. They scattered in the wind, and I roared at my comrades to chase every last one of them down. Not to let a single one escape…"

I should have just let them run. At least then, Seraphim wouldn't have died again, Zach tried to keep his expression hardened through the end there but his face scrunched up and then his head bowed back down again. "So tell me again how I didn't kill him. Switch, had a power like All For One's. He could take Quirks and give them away. He, just wanted to help me though. Even though I had spent time thinking about how he was already dwelling outside of the light, and with such a dangerous power, and I killed him. I killed him for- for… I had to. If I didn't, we were all dead. I tell myself it over and over. And I know that there was no other option. I know! But, but I still feel him."

"I feel every person I have killed with Death. All of that power inside me. Power from the surges when I kill that never go away," Zach hissed. "I used to feel lucky that it didn't include those I killed without it. I thought, even though it would have made me stronger and better able to save my comrades, that getting to that point would have been the worst thing… But even just the people I've killed with Death are too many. And I can feel them. I know that I'm only as strong as I am, because I took my friend's life. Because I killed him, in order to win that day."

He killed that guy, Aoyama thought of the soldier who fell out of the air right before the clip of the battle ended. That man, dove in front of hundreds of villains even though he was about to die! He dragged himself over there as injured as he was, and he, he asked Zach to kill him? What were those people? How did you find so many who, were just like you? Aoyama stared towards Zach's open door in a stunned way as he imagined all those people he watched die today. We owe them so much.

"And in the Battle of the 6 Armies, I didn't just sacrifice those who I left behind on the ship," Zach whispered. "On that day I lost half of those who were left. Not a hundred of us and, and I- seventy of them died that day! I could only bring back, twenty-nine." Zach gripped his knees tightly, "Or, I brought back more, but only twenty-nine of those I revived were still alive at the end… Too many died twice in a single day, again." Zach seethed it through his teeth. Then, his head slowly turned to the right and he glanced next to him at Kirishima. He closed his eyes and shook his head once, but then he whispered, "And Rappa, was one of them. Dying twice that day. Ahh-"

Zach sucked in a sharp breath while Kirishima stared back at him in confusion as to the sentence Zach just said. Midoriya stood outside of Zach's room too, and his eyes shook and darted to that open doorway as Kirishima spoke up suddenly, "Wait wait- wait, you don't…" Kirishima knew that Zach did mean what he just said. His face twisted in confusion though he tried to keep any anger from covering it instantly. "He was, in the Eightfold Cleansers. Those bastards-"

"The Tartaros escapee?" Ashido whispered as she realized what Kirishima was talking about. "You let him join you?" She asked, her voice soft and free of judgement though she did sound confused too.

"I convinced him to," Zach whispered in reply, the right corner of his lip curling up a small amount as he looked away and just down between his knees again. "I, found him in a cage match. Fighting to the death as others bet on it…" Zach bit down hard, and Kirishima and Ashido both eased their expressions instantly. Zach shook his head though and cracked his grin back up even though his eyes were watery at the way he described the place. "But he was there by choice. He wanted, to fight like that. He wasn't a slave like…" Zach closed his eyes and bowed his head. But then he rose it and spoke back up with his eyes barely parted, "I remembered what you told me about him."

Zach turned to Kirishima and said, "He was a villain. But, all he wanted was a good fight. It's all he cared about. So I convinced him, to fight for good for a change. Fight for me. All he wanted in exchange, was a chance to fight me." Zach smiled in a small way and let out a nostalgic laugh too sad to change the expressions of the two next to him who could already see the tears that fell from both of his eyes. "He joined me in the world loop. And when the Battle of 6 Armies came, only weeks after he'd joined, the first thing that happened was the helicopter he was on got shot down. But he, he fell tens of thousands of feet and was still alive! He was alright," Zach shook his head in amazement of what he was saying.

Even though he just said that Rappa was alright though, the two remembered the first thing Zach said when he brought his comrade up and neither changed their looks as he started losing that smile of awe at his comrade's strength. "He was strong, so strong. And I- I couldn't have won that battle without him. I needed his help, when Zombie-" Zach's voice cut off and he gasped. He sucked in a breath that turned into a double-breath staggered as he kept pulling in without releasing the air. "I- I didn't just, sacrifice my comrades. I left them behind. I abandoned them-"

"You, didn't-" Ashido felt like Zach was being too hard on himself. She was hesitant to immediately counter him this time though after what he said about Switch.

"I did though," Zach gasped, looking left and into her eyes. "I- You, you need to know Zombieman, for it to make any sense. He, he looked like a teenager. I was hesitant to let him join me. But he was in his nineties. He had stopped aging, and nothing could kill him. He had tried to die. He had tried in so many ways," Zach clenched his teeth and gasped out in pain through that locked jaw. "And he, he wanted to fight with me and help as much as he could, but if he died, he didn't want me to revive him. He didn't-" Zach bit down hard again. "And Switch was there, watching when Zombieman was finally, dying for real. The conversation we had, Switch knew that each of them had the right not to be brought back. Like Pastor chose- FUCK!"

Zach screamed it out of nowhere with his voice raising five times as loud. The two at his sides flinched, as did those in the hall who stared towards Zach's door in pained ways at all these names he was saying. Every single one of them sounding like they had died in some terrible way that stuck with him even now. "Zombieman was dying. He finally got hit by a Quirk that could kill him. Poison that… But I, I convinced him. This man who had wanted nothing more than to die, I convinced him to live. His friends were around him, sad and crying as he was dying, and I convinced him!" Zach yelled in in rage and self-loathing. The hatred on his face like he thought himself so despicable for this thing he was saying that sounded amazing to his friends instead of the worst thing in the world like Zach was treating it.

"I convinced him to let me bring him back, and a week later he goes missing. We're in the middle of a battle, and he just stops responding on comms." Zach bowed his head and closed his eyes. "It was before Wampajawa, but even in March I was already moving fast. I was already moving so, so fast. You don't understand. I- What I told them at the end of Wampajawa, was something I had already told them before. I flew to the top of the Eiffel Tower after they broke me out of the Pit," Zach whispered.

"I remember that," Ashido whispered. She recalled watching some clip of a dark form at the top of the Eiffel Tower that tourists had taken video of.

"That was the last moment I was willing to take a break. I stopped myself for a little while. To prepare myself for what I was about to do. The speed at which, I was going to have to move from then on," Zach started breathing heavier as he thought back on it. "I knew that I was moving too slowly, but I wasn't willing to change our strategies. I wasn't willing to change our methods. I wasn't willing, to let any of my soldiers fight if I wasn't there." Zach said that and his teeth bared and ground back and forth over each other. "I had broken off from my forces soon after Mongoloid. I needed a break, and I traveled around the U.S. with Darling alone for a week because I needed to just…"

The other two and those outside who had always questioned the timing of Zach being caught on a convenience store security camera suddenly understood how the timetable worked out. "All that pressure and responsibility, I was struggling with it. And then Gentle calls me, and tells me how Eziano's men under Phinx as their leader, they had killed seven of my forces while I was across the ocean. I couldn't save them. I wasn't there to save them. And I swore, I swore, that I wouldn't let them fight without me again."

"That's-" Ashido started. She wanted to say it was impossible, and yet she imagined the map that La Brava and Gentle had been working on. They thought about the separate line from everyone else's which bounced back and forth along every single mission, as well as to dozens of others that no one else in their army was going to. The pink girl stared to her side in disbelief at what Zach was suggesting he had done, and she brought her left hand up and covered her mouth with it at the look on his face as he stared forward with a glaze over his eyes.

"And so I fought," Zach whispered. "I fought, and I never let them fight without me. And as fast as we had to move, as much faster as we had to go- I fought. I just kept fighting. Nonstop. For… for so long. And so when Zombieman suddenly wasn't responding, and we couldn't find him after the battle was over… I- I made a choice. Maybe some villain had escaped after using a Quirk that left nothing of Zombieman's body, but I needed my men to focus and to not get depressed especially when we had no proof that he was dead. So I suggested that maybe Zombieman had a second outlook on life after his revival. That he really wanted to live this time, and so he just slipped away. He was strong. Zombieman was a strong fighter, and so I convinced them that he was okay. Many might have doubted it, but it was what I needed to say to get us to keep moving forward… And I just left."

"And! And they were probably right there. Right next to me, hiding, invisible maybe, with a hand over Zombieman's mouth to keep him from shouting out towards- oh God-" Zach's eyes clenched shut and tears poured from them as he gasped out spit and clenched at his chest with his left hand. "I just left him there. I abandoned him, to those people who had grabbed him. The ones who would…" Zach bowed his chin into his chest. "Fillian was across the world. I just, I had to believe that he was alright. Or that he was dead. But when I saw that monster!" Zach called it out then choked and coughed a few times. "It didn't take me a second to recognize him. No matter what they had done to him. The modifications to his body. The, bioengineered weapon. The Champion of the Asian Army, and the most powerful of any villain I had ever fought through the entire war. As I rushed out as a decoy for the Battle of the 6 Armies, they released him in front of me. Exodus, Gentle, and Jetflame were fighting as hard as they could. They Triggered. La Brava used her Love on Gentle. And our forces were tunneling underground and appearing in the villains' ranks, turning them against each other so to the rest of the world it looked like talks between those villains had just broken down, and not that they were united in the first place."

"Amsalja? Haha, Eziano, and his nightcrawlers, tried to stay out of the battle," Zach taunted, hiding his despair with the rage and details of the battle in its real form instead of the story he had told them at the joint training. The most powerful of the Queen's generals he had told them about and his army of "ninjas" called nighcrawlers, ones who Ashido had already pretty much pieced together were the assassins Zach fought. Kirishima still stared in disbelief to hear the transformation from the story directly into the real world, and how close it was to the kind of nonsensical fairy tales he had told them all this time. "And I dragged them into it, and I fought thousands… but if I could have done that from the start, then maybe I wouldn't have lost everything that day. If I hadn't left Zombieman behind, just so I could keep up the speed. But speed was important to me. Doing things now! Rather than the right way. My recklessness, my haste, created that thing they turned Zombieman into…"

"And me and Midoriya argue about haste and speed all the time, but I had to go that fast. And I can't even regret it, because by wasting the time to try and save Zombieman we might have let innocents die. And we weren't innocent. But, 'waste?' A 'waste' of time?" Zach wondered at the way he just worded that himself. He questioned himself over it and gagged, and he snapped to his right side at Kirishima, "Zombieman couldn't die! Not by, any conventional means. So when they captured him? When they tortured him? They knew that I had already revived him, so this was a man who couldn't die and who Death couldn't kill anymore… and they experimented on him, in ways-" Zach rose his voice and tilted his head back. He slammed the back of his head into the wall, "I can't even- The ways they must have tortured him! Ways that would have killed anyone else! Tortures that no one has ever used before because it would have killed the person being tortured! He had to have experienced, the worst pain, that anyone…"

Zach's friends cried as they imagined the man Zach was talking about who had let himself be brought back just to face this kind of torture. "And he knew that I had abandoned him. Even when I took out the villain with the Obey Quirk who sent Zombieman after me, he was gone. I thought it must have been damage to his mind, but that damage would have repaired itself anyway. And so the rage, and the hatred… He was insane. They'd turned him into a monster! And he hit me so hard that I flew miles away! I smashed through hills, and I opened my eyes to find that I was in the middle of a skyscraper- I WASN'T EVEN IN A CITY!"

Zach screamed it and he brought both hands to the sides of his head that he ducked down hard in front of his chest. "But I could feel it as those bodies around me flooded me with strength. I had surrounded in too much Death, and so I couldn't even revive those citizens in Huangdoo, because I killed them. He had sent me flying so hard into that building that I killed all those people," Zach's voice came out scratchier and drool slid down the right corner of his lip and fell from his chin. The shock and horror on his face as he spoke these words aloud for the first time, made it so the two at his sides could not feel any other way but the most intense pity and fear for him as they watched him break down like that.

In that moment, panic started to fill Ashido as she stared at Zach's horrified expression. He's never considered it. Never thinks about it- because he changed the memories?! I didn't think it went that deep… He killed more innocent people? That's what he thinks. I can't, find the words.

"And even if I want to say that it wasn't my fault that my Death hit them?" Zach whispered. "I created Zombieman. I could have let him die. I didn't want to see him die though, even though I knew that sometimes it was for the best. Even though, Richard Hawkins… The guy, Kirishima, who got experimented on for- just because I revived him." Kirishima remembered Zach screaming something like that at him while they fought that day not long ago. "I… I was in Scotland, and Red Team showed up," Zach went on a new tangent again as he jumped back and forth across his time with the Army of Death. The other two had so much they wanted to ask about everything he mentioned, but Kirishima held off on bringing back up Rappa as he felt like Zach was getting there, albeit in a roundabout manner.

"People think Sandlot went crazy. And they think he 'committed suicide' when he was trying to tell everyone what had really happened to the others. Titan and Dryout, ahh," Zach breathed out hard and shook his head around. Midoriya's eyes bulged out in the hall as he vividly remembered this story only in a different way. "Titan, got dragged up into a ceiling tile," Zach continued. "It looked like he was pulled into a woodchipper. His blood and guts spraying down in front of me. And Dryout, he came back down there with me for nothing. We didn't save any of them. None of the test subjects, none of the researchers-"

"Zach, what are you talking about?" Ashido asked, not following any of this. She vaguely remembered hearing about the deaths of Red Team, but a lot of heroes had died over the past year all around the world and she did not keep close track on all of them. The way Zach was describing it though, she was getting very unnerved by the fact that she did not remember much about their deaths at all.

"A lab, in Scotland," Zach whispered to her. He shook his head and whispered softer, "Fergus still had far too much power at the time. Sandlot was never going to be able to convince people of what happened. The clean-up crews made it all disappear. They killed him because he knew the truth."

"This building we found in the middle of some field, we knew what we thought might be in there, but Gentle and the others they, they didn't really believe it. They wanted to get back into the search for the Syndicate. When we got close though and looked towards it, a scientist inside was running from something that cut him apart and splashed blood all over the window- We! Got there, at the absolute worst time," Zach's lips curled up in disbelief at the thought of the insanity of it all. "While one of the test subjects was taking control of the lab. How it had drugged the other subjects, ones that were already turned into monsters by the researchers. That creature upstairs smeared the word 'God' on the window in the scientist's blood. And, and the six of us and the three of Red Team went in there, and we went into this elevator, and I removed the panel covering the bottom of it that looked like just a fuse box- and… and there… there were sixteen basements below that building. Sixteen basements," Zach repeated, his head bowing and his eyes just staring at the floor below him as he remembered staring down like that on a day so long ago now.

"It was insane," Zach whispered. "How something like that could exist. I'd never seen something so powerful. The fact that nobody knew about it. That the researchers calling for help from inside contacted Red Team directly, because they knew that calling the cops wouldn't bring heroes. They knew that Fergus' clean-up crew would come… though it came anyway. Dressed in the dark armor of the Army of Death." Zach rose his right hand up to his hair and ran it through. "We went down there. We had to find out what was- haha, why did I? Why did I think that was a good idea? I knew! I knew that what we saw down there was going to change things. That there would be no coming back from it. And yet I went down anyway, and I brought all of them with me- ha- haha, I brought them all to die."

"What-"

"And this villain down there," Zach continued. He spoke over Kirishima and just went on with a shake of his head, "Death didn't work on him. I didn't understand, or more like, I didn't want to understand. Because I knew why it wouldn't work. And I knew why he targeted me over anyone else. I knew that he blamed me for bringing him back in the first place." Zach whispered that in pain and then spoke in a ridiculously soft voice that made those in the hall strain to be able to hear him, while the two at his sides wished they could stop listening.

"They'd faked Hawkins' death. No one knew he was down there. And they wanted to see how Death affected the human body after revival. Learn everything about him, to see what made him, like you." Zach turned his head to the right and looked into Kirishima's eyes. Kirishima felt all the hair on his body stand on end at the look in Zach's cold eyes as he seethed that out full of the hatred towards those who had done this. In that one seethed word Kirishima imagined the amount of rage and hate that Zach could feel towards humanity for all the things he had seen and gone through. The disgust at the ones he was talking about like they were sub-human. "And they tortured his body and mind to a point that he went mad. Yet even in his madness, he was able to target me. As I went after the test subject that called itself God, that demanded sacrifices from the others-"

"'Sacrifice! Sacrifice! Sacrifice!'" Zach yelled it out with his teeth baring afterwards, and he snarled, "I can hear those yells from the drugged and the mad. As they tortured each other, ripped one another apart. As they skinned each other alive and strung up their bodies by the roof. Crucifying them to the walls. So much blood pouring out, down at the bottom of B-16. A cave system below the lab's deepest basement. And Mysti was there," Zach's hatred dropped another notch and his blood boiled as he imagined the woman he had fought recently.

Both Ojiro and Bakugo had made it to the fifth floor of Class A's dorm and were down near the end of the hall where the other three boys already were. Ojiro had heard from Toru some of what had happened between Zach and Mysti, but what he was hearing now had his eyes huge as he wondered if these were the things that Toru always cut herself off from saying completely. When she could not hold it together and could not finish telling him the story of that night. Bakugo had thought about Faith before when hearing what happened to Mysti after Zach had faced her. Yet he felt no pity for the woman now and just listened closely into the next room as Zach continued growling but in a hoarse and seemingly fragile voice that was at the same time so full of rage.

"Mysti set the place to self-destruct while we were sixteen basements down. While I was fighting Hawkins, a mile below the surface in a river of blood- a man I had revived at the Sports Festival who had spent months being tortured for that reason alone- ahh haahh AHhhh! And I- I had to kill him, as his body was glitching out and ripping in half over and over. Dozens of furry terrifying monsters chasing me around- he killed Wreck'd. Wreck'd pushed me out of the way, and Hawkins hit him so hard that Wreck'd's head blew apart on the wall. Damn it, damn it I- I should have told him to put his helmet back on, but he had thrown up. What we saw there was just too… As I fought God. I fought that parasite that called itself a God, as it possessed powerful people and- and the walls were exploding, and all the people we had gone down there to save were freaking out and killing each other. A massacre as no one trusted anyone and the walls and ceiling were coming down! AHHHHH! RAaa raaaaAAAA! It was MADNESS!"

"And that was just the first lab I found," Zach suddenly whispered. His hoarse voice cut off his screams as his dark eyes trembled and broke from the anger in them to just look beyond full of despair.

He's already gone, Ashido's heart broke at the look on his face as he looked shattered to a point she could barely recognize him. He looked like no version of Zach she had seen since he got out of Tartaros. Just that alone would have broken me. But that's just one thing.

Zach's breathing came out slower and his face was less responsive than it had been for a few minutes. He just sat there looking broken and unable to continue, then he flinched as he noticed the faces on either side of him looking inwards. He rose his right arm to his eyes and started rubbing fast, but then he stopped and lowered his arm back down slowly. Why? For them? Can't I just- for once? Zach closed his eyes and whispered in pain, "Zombieman was like that. He knew that it was my fault. My fault that they had turned him into that. All the pain of those tortures had completely broken his mind, but I just kept shouting at him! I didn't want to fight him. I couldn't. Not when it was my fault. Not when I instantly understood all they had done to him, and that I wasn't even surprised that he was still alive- I wasn't surprised, by what the Triakuza did to him."

"It was always a possibility in the back of my mind. A danger, that I suddenly had to face while my comrades were all in the middle of fighting a battle I had to protect them in. And so I wasn't there to save them. They had to fight tens of thousands without me. I used to be able to convince myself there were only thirteen, or fifteen thousand, because of the 8k captured. But far more than half of the villains were killed in that battle. They had to have been. It was absolute chaos. No communications. Black holes everywhere. Oceans of magma washing over thousands of people. Everyone on Trigger. And all of the different sides turned on each other, because that was my strategy. I turned tens of thousands of powerful Quirk-users against each other and the world shattered around us, dimensions broke and time slowed, and I stood on mountains of bodies- literal mountains of bodies, that I clawed my way through. In that final battle of the World Loop, I never would have been able to fight with my comrades and save those who remained. I never would have been able to take down thousands of enemies and force them to flee on another day of 2 Triggers, the only other day I had done it besides Wampajawa. But I still wouldn't have ever been able to save any of them. We all would have died, if not for Rappa."

Kirishima's eyes bulged and he stared at Zach in shock for giving Rappa the credit for the kind of victory Zach was saying they won that day. The battle to end the world loop and effectively the Age of Villains, which was not a foreign concept as the media often pointed at the Villain Summit as something that could mark the end of the Age of Villains. Bakugo looked down darkly outside of the door then back at the room, and he imagined watching Fu and Sheshou talk about the Villain Summit that he had thought sounded too close to Zach's description of the Battle of 6 Armies.

"Rappa had fought for Overhaul only because he wanted to fight Overhaul. If I could get him to fight for me, I knew that I could use his strength to save a lot of innocent people. And that would be a better use of his power than just sending him back to prison." Zach got softer and continued, "But I wanted Rappa to want to be there. So I got into our fight. I made sure that he could see that I was doing more than humoring him. That I also wanted to fight him. Something to show him we weren't that different. To make him feel like part of something- I wanted, to help him. And I wanted him to help me. And while I was screaming at Zombieman to stop, Rappa ran in and decked him to the side when he was about to slam into me again. He screamed at me that whoever I thought Zombieman was, that wasn't him anymore. And Rappa died," Zach said it sharply and glaring at Kirishima who opened his mouth right there to say something. "He died fighting Zombieman, and I brought him right back to life to keep helping me fight. And me and Rappa, we ripped Zombieman apart. I turned my hands into claws and ripped his flesh off his body faster than he could repair himself. We dug through him and ripped Zombieman to pieces. My own friend."

"And right after we were finished, that's when the Asian Army hit us. In the moment we let our guards down the smallest amount during the finishing blows, they killed Rappa again! And I couldn't do anything to stop it. He died, fighting by my side. I told him he could fight in as many fights as he wanted, and that as long as he held back and didn't kill as much as he wanted to, I wouldn't knock him out and send him to Tartaros. He died fighting, and it was exactly how he wanted to die. But I didn't want him to," Zach added at the end. "I needed his help. He showed me that when he started fighting Zombieman who he had never met, having joined after Zombieman was already taken. He could tell Zombieman was an enemy, even if I couldn't at the time. Even if my hesitation to fight my friend, is what killed those innocent people in Huangdoo, and what slowed me down enough that I let so many of our comrades die that day."

"Those who I promised at the end of Wampajawa that I would protect. Those I swore to that I wouldn't let them die- they all did."

"Not all of them," Ashido countered softly. "They're not all-"

"You-" Zach shouted. He stopped himself though, as he knew why she was saying it. He knew that she knew of comrades of his who were not dead, and yet he started shaking his head back and forth. "You want to know… There were, forty of us. When I invaded Saudi Arabia," Zach whispered. Outside of his door, Aoyama stared with huge eyes into Zach's open doorway as he said that aloud and just kept going. His eyes darted the other way, and he locked them with Ojiro for a moment who stared in disbelief but then just slouched his shoulders as he realized there was no reason for Zach to even try to hide it anymore. "Forty people, who rushed into that country. People who followed me, into war. At the end of the world loop? When the Battle of the 6 Armies was over… six of us, were still alive. Only five of those people who followed me that day were still-" Zach's breath sucked in through clenched teeth as the other two stared at him with trembling eyes.

"And now Mark's dead too," Zach added. "Killed by Eziano while I was in prison. And who knows if those others are still… I lost them all. Everyone! I, I sacrificed them. And I brought them into battles we couldn't win without taking casualties. I risked their lives and threw their lives away."

"You never threw any of their lives away," Kirishima stated. Zach frowned deeply into his cheeks but Kirishima said confidently next to him, "None of them felt that way. No one can accuse you of that."

"Zombieman-"

"You made a choice, but maybe they weren't just invisible. Maybe they grabbed him and teleported away," Kirishima said. "I'm even smart enough to know that's an option-"

"But the other option exists," Zach countered. "I didn't do, everything I could have done to save him. Because I was more concerned about speed-"

"But Zombieman followed you knowing that was the way you guys fought," Ashido argued, nodding in agreement with Kirishima here. "He knew that there were risks like any of your people did. And if by keeping up that speed you really managed to go stop other villains in that time you would have, spent, looking for him." She made sure not to say 'wasted' after the way Zach reacted to using that phrasing himself before. "Then innocent people might have died, and Zombieman knew that you guys cared more about that than your own lives. Right? He knew-"

"I'll never know, what the right answer is," Zach countered. He was not telling her or Kirishima off for just being wrong, but he added quietly to them, "What I know is that Zombieman suffered for my choices. He was my friend, and whether or not it was the right decision to make as Death, I'm not- I'm not Death. I was never Death, but Zombieman was my friend. I know that doesn't make sense, but I would tell people when they abandoned my army, that they were never members of the Army of Death. That once they left, they were no longer the same people they were when they were there. I already made that declaration long before I left, and so it became easy for me to believe that I never was. It made it not a lie, to say that I was never Death." Zach cracked a half-smile as he said it, like the loophole he had created was so good that it had helped him get past lie-detectors. The smile was fake though as the explanation was just how he convinced himself of it and not how his mind actually managed something like that.

His smile lowered back flat though and he whispered, "Even if it was right, and even if we saved countless people… I'm not that guy right now. I can't sacrifice my friends, for my goals. I wouldn't have stayed here if I could do…" Zach looked slowly to his left and at Ashido whose lips pursed at the way he started that. Kirishima stared at the back of Zach's head with much wider and shakier eyes as he thought of all Ashido had shouted at them about this. "I'm not the person who could leave you all that night. I'm not the soldier who could send his friends to, die- ah- ah haha- ahh, I'm not-"

"I'm not strong enough. I can't break my mind again to believe the lies. If I do, I'll never…"

"That makes you stronger now," Ashido whispered to the boy's face in front of her. "Not needing to cover it up-"

"I covered it up to stay strong," Zach countered. "Because this is just… I can't do this. I fought for so long. I fought, every day. Every minute and second just like I said I would. I fought," he bared his teeth and darted his gaze towards the wall across the room from him. He glared at those pictures and the lines connecting them, "I fought endlessly. No sleep. No dreams. Just fighting. Every day. Every single day. I couldn't sleep the night before Wampajawa. I knew I needed the rest, but I needed to come up with every contingency. I needed to be ready for if my plans fell through, and what to do if they fell through a hundred more times- and still! I still didn't have enough, to be ready for what came that day."

Midoriya bowed his head out in the hall as he imagined Zach telling him something remarkably similar to that before. As prepared as he was, as amazing as their organization seemed, it all broke down by the end. The chaos that filled that city was insane.

"I didn't sleep the night after Wampajawa. There was far too much to do, and I couldn't sleep the night after either. Or the nights after that… So I just kept fighting instead. No end to the stream of consciousness. Just an endless string of battles. And the more terrifying I became, the quicker my enemies were to surrender without a fight. Which meant the more of my comrades I could save. And the quicker it was to get information from them, meant the faster I could get to innocent people who were too often only seconds away from being killed when I would arrive. I had shown up, too many times, just outside of my time limit. Or right after irreversible things had happened to innocent children. Things they'll live with forever, because I was too slow. So I sped up more. And I sped up more again. Always fighting," he whispered in a voice of disbelief like it was crazy to him to imagine now. "I flew to dozens of different countries in a day. Fighting thousands- tens of thousands, on my own sometimes. Surrounded. Outnumbered. There were so many of them. Villains. They were everywhere."

"I went longer than anyone else could. I killed so many people, and I watched more people die than I can count, and I lost more of my comrades than…"

"That's not true," Zach whispered. The other two looked at him in confusion as he suddenly cut himself off with a look of clarity flashing over his face. "187. One hundred and eighty seven people. The number of soldiers actually part of the Army of Death who died under my command."

"And I recruited every last one of them," Zach added. "I needed to know who they were. I needed it to hurt more if they died, and yet it's only now, in this moment, that I'm finally letting myself care about them again. I had to instantly stop caring after they died. I pushed it off. Pushed off all the mourning to now. A pile. That I built up in my head. Dead bodies stacked through my brain. And 187 people who I thought of as my brothers and sisters."

"We would go out every single day and fight. They would fight back to back with each other, and they trusted one another to guard their backs. And when you trust someone to get your back and then fight freely without worrying about what's behind you, it builds a bond. Brotherhood in our army that was stronger than anything." Zach pursed his lips and then added in a higher-pitched voice than usual, "Then we return to our base. Our flying headquarters which was a home for us. Where they would train together, and eat meals together, group showers and large barracks. The sleeping quarters were much closer than this building. No private rooms, except for my own. They made a separate room for me as the commander, and although I wanted to be just another one of them, I was separated. You'd think that would make it hurt less. That, I wasn't as much a part of the brotherhood as the rest of them…"

"But it wasn't- that's the opposite-" Zach's squinted eyes trembled as he tried to say it aloud. "Because, not all of them were super close with each other. They all knew and trusted each other, but they had closer friends and- I mean I did too, but each one of them. Every one of them. They were like, they were- children. My-" Zach's squinted eyes squeezed closed and he wheezed out in agony. "I trained them. I, brought them in and gave them purpose. And I promised to protect them. And they looked to me for guidance," he cried. "They looked to me like I always knew what to do, because I never let them see me waver. And they trusted me. They believed in me! I was their commanding officer, and they had faith in me like no one ever has. Believed in me so strongly, that even surrounded by tens of thousands of enemies, while our airship fell out of the sky, I could lie to them and tell them that everything was going to be alright and THEY BELIEVED ME!"

"They believed I always knew what to do. That I knew what I was doing- and I was winging it. You think I wanted to create an Army?" Zach asked. "You think I wanted it to be me? Mongoloid took over a country and, and I wanted to believe he was a revolutionary. I wanted to believe those videos too! But I saw real photos come out from inside the nation. I saw what the palace really looked like, with the Saudi heroes strung up and heads on spikes. Getting those pictures to the UN would have made the bureaucrats waste more time deliberating over whether the images were real or not. And they would have argued in an assembly full of corrupt members who were actively working to destabilize the region- but I didn't even know that yet. I just knew it would take too much time. It was a 'delicate' situation, everyone kept saying. And so they all just sat back and watched as a villain and his forces took over a country. And it would have only become delicate once that month was over and Mongoloid had already consolidated control over the military. Once he had completely adjusted the media to promote statements he made and convince people across the nation how he was legitimate… I could see it coming. And no one was stopping it. No one, was going to do a damn thing about it."

"…So I did," Zach whispered.

Kirishima and Ashido both just stared quietly in at their friend who admitted his reasons to them again much more detailed this time. And they each froze up more as Zach looked to his right for a moment and past Kirishima at his open doorway, but an uncaring look covered his face and he just shook his head and looked back down in front of his feet. He did not care about those he heard approach the door, and he just went on in a low voice as if only speaking to the two at his sides, "And when the battle was over and I had defeated Mongoloid, three of my comrades had died. I'd never lost anyone so far. But two were dead in one direction, and one was dead in the other. I could have made it to all three, possibly. I couldn't fly myself yet, but in a helicopter I might have been able to reach before my time limit. I couldn't do that though. I couldn't leave Saudi Arabia worse than I found it. I couldn't leave it in a state to easily get taken over by new villains, so I needed to get up on that wall and make a statement to them. I needed them to understand what they needed to do. Before anyone else could come in and try to manipulate their restoration. I just… I wanted to do what was right by them. An entire country needed that guidance, and I gave it at the cost of Muhammed's life. I chose them over him. He had only joined me because I swore I would help him take down SISIS. And he died in a foreign land, and no one will ever remember him. The Gorrani Boxer, a former vigilante in Gorran who vanished one day as I stopped there before moving into Saudi Arabia."

"He was the first one. The day I created my Army, I lost my first soldier. I had to move forward anyway. Gentle pushed me not to break down. I needed him. I needed all of them, to help me stay focused on my goals," Zach continued. "And I fought so hard, but they all fought with me too. They fought with me, and 187 of them died. And the reinforcements who helped us died. Heroes fought by my side in too many missions that they died twice too. But 187 of my actual soldiers, died under my command. Died for a second time or a first that I could not revive. 187… And as they fell, as they dropped every day, I just continued to fight. I never mourned them. I just fought. Looking for that final battle that would kill me too, while at the same time doing everything I could to prevent that from happening."

"And although so many of them died, and I swore to them that I would never stop fighting, I gave up," he admitted. He looked up and whispered to the ceiling, "I gave up. I promised them I would fight to the end. Until my last breath, I swore to those people who would all die fighting for me- and I broke that promise."

Ashido shook her head back and forth. She had heard Death yell that in the video too, but she countered, "You also told them, 'For as long as I can.'" Zach's eyes slammed shut as she countered him, and she said softly at the left side of his head, "And you did just that. You would have kept fighting if you could have."

Zach sniffled and his head bowed back quickly down. His chin slammed into his chest and he wheezed out a breath as he imagined Fillian's voice. He heard that man who he never thought would break down losing it after his first death. He knew what this felt like. This is it. The regret of needing to leave, when you thought you could go on forever. "I know," he replied under his breath. "I know you're right. Because in the Void," Zach's right hand out on his knee started tapping its index and middle fingers down each second. "Trapped for years in that dimension of nothingness, I couldn't take it anymore. I thought about it. About this. All of this. And when it hit me all at once, in the moment of solitude I stopped tapping, that was it."

What is he talking… Kirishima looked past Zach at Ashido who cried quietly and reached both of her hands out, putting them around Zach's side and hugging him tightly. The look on Zach's face as he talked about this 'Void' he had apparently spent years in, made Kirishima suddenly remember how Zach would not use the name 'Terra' and yet had continued to tell him over and over how he had been to other dimensions even during their fight.

"Wh-when I got out of there, my first action was to remove all of Amaterasu's means of communicating, as a form of mercy to her. I had to either kill her or remove her vocal cords and fingers… I was out of it. My mind was, gone." Zach's eyes opened a little more as he thought of shoving his hand down this unconscious woman's throat while Darling watched from right next to him. "Thinking about how she was Shogun Raxlaski, and how the galactic senate- I was, I was fucking… Mad."

"And I knew I had way too much power, to be as insane as I had become. And those stories that I believed, I told myself I believed them because I was going to prison and when I got out I would need to have them to tell you guys. But I had those stories first. Years first. It wasn't… What came first? Was it the need to come up with a story, or was it the story itself, or did both just occur at once when I knew that I wasn't going to be able to keep going? I think, the moment I started thinking about all that I had pushed off, I knew that I could never be Death again. But I also knew that when I got out of there, I had to leave Darling behind. And I couldn't die. And I needed to go back to Japan so there could be a chance that I could fix everything else I regretted too, not just Darling. But all of you guys. This country… Jirou."

Zach whispered the last word quietest and his heart ripped in the failure his tone brought through. "I did so many terrible things before I even left this place," Zach continued. "I packaged drugs for Shigaraki. Fought villains for him. He sat me down and we watched the Chemist's test trials together. And when I called the Chemist an idiot, said that Apocalypse wouldn't sell and we couldn't use it because no one was going to risk losing their Quirk or dying, Shigaraki agreed with me. Said it was a waste of energy and resources to continue the production but to hold onto the doses of the drug they already had. I, hated the Chemist, so much. And I felt good when I got to cut off his research, but I forgot that I was just there to be a spy. I wasn't supposed to be, a villain. In control? An executive?" Zach wondered it to himself in a soft whisper though the two at his sides continued staring at him in disbelief at every word out of his mouth.

They each remembered though. They thought of how Lifebringer stopped being on the news as much back in their first year of high school. And they imagined Zach walking out of Kurogiri's portal in front of them at VTS. The way the other two villains held back when he told them to. "I was there when the League didn't have 10 members in total. If I had never joined them, if I had never let them use me… maybe they never would have gotten this powerful. The final ones. The only real villains left worth their salt."

"That's a stretch," Ashido whispered at him.

"Yeah… probably," Zach agreed in a weak voice. "But I did horrible things for them. And when I, lost. After my torture and escape- my escape," Zach whispered again. He repeated it and he closed his eyes shut tight, "When they put a gun in my hand, and told me to shoot this chained up woman in the face. And instead I shot off the box on my hand and dove out the window. I left her the gun, but I left her to die." Zach's right hand reached to his head and he rubbed his forehead while his eyes were still closed. "I left her there in the hands of those villains, and I just ran away. I ran as fast as I could. I stole a man's wallet on Christmas and started train hopping, leaving a trail of my blood behind because of the glass of the shattered window…"

Zach's friends and classmates listened to him silently and with their hearts racing as he discussed how he escaped from the League of Villains. Things he had never told any of them, pouring out of him like never before. The switch was flipped and it all just came out, and the two on his sides actually in his room felt their hearts skip a beat as he continued, "And I, I had to get to Musutafu because I knew those streets. And I saw you, watching you guys, as you went shopping for party favors. But I was too scared to come out and get you targeted, and too scared to go back because there was a spy at school, or could even be in that group-" Zach's voice shook more and his eyes trembled as he whispered, "…As Kaminari was."

Ashido's mouth was dry and she just opened her mouth but could not say anything to him. She could only think of all the fun they had at that New Year's party that made her sick to her stomach now. "And right after seeing that group, a man I had seen not long before, and I knew I had seen him because I had noticed it earlier as well thinking I had seen him before that! I was being followed. And I knew who could find me. I had seen the man's work before. I knew that Shigaraki would hire him to come after me… The Hunter."

"And I lost. I couldn't beat him. He reopened my wounds. And I was, I was just trying to survive. Hiding in alleys under garbage lids. In the snow. Cold. Afraid. Paranoid. But the paranoia was for good reason. All I could imagine was that they were all around me, and he was! And he, he took me down, and he put a bag on my hand- and I was going to die! I needed to," he gasped out. "Or he was going to bring me back to Shigaraki. And so, in order to convince him not to, in order to save myself from more torture I- I offered him wishes- haha- I, I tried to offer, a deal with the devil." Zach's lips curled up so much even as he laughed in agony at the thought of that moment. "I thought if I could freak him out enough… ha, haha, ahhh- he wasn't supposed to believe-" Zach bared his teeth and then whispered in a weaker voice that cracked as he asked, "Why was it so easy for him to believe?"

Kirishima felt sick. Every assumption he made about the Hunter for years was wrong. He looked away, I never asked him specifics of how he got out of there. How he escaped… almost like I didn't want to know. I was just afraid, that you were going to tell me you killed the villains or something. But, but this? You didn't kill anyone, and it was still this bad?

"I left all of you here. I betrayed you," Zach went on in regret without being able to look to either of his friends. "I thought I had to. In order to make up for my wrongs, I had to do worse things than I ever had. I had to, lie to all of you. Sneak around behind your backs, buying drugs and working with villains to set my trap. And then I killed those six right in front of you…"

"El Blanco- he, he was just running away. He wasn't someone I hated. He was there in the League when I still was. One who was there when they dragged me back through that portal at VTS. And just like the others he looked at me so angrily, but also in betrayal," Zach said in a soft voice to the two who had not heard about this before. "And he was there the night of the Lifebringer Incident. Running away, so afraid. I wasn't thinking though. I- I can see him, sprinting right by all of you when I threw that Death down into him. Killing him, right in front of you. I didn't mean to…"

Kirishima closed his eyes as he pictured that very moment. All of Class A vividly remembered the man who died like that as Zach went on his rampage, but Zach knew his name. He knew the guy, Kirishima thought even sadder now as he imagined the incident.

"I'm sorry. It was wrong, what I did that night. It was all wrong. I lost it-" Kirishima's eyes opened back up and shifted to his side thoughtfully. Zach cut himself off instead of saying something that seemed important. I was distracted that night, but what does he mean? He didn't mean to?

"That's not true," Zach whispered. He shook his head and gained a harsh expression, but his fingers trembled on his knees and he curled them in tighter to try and get his hands to stop shaking. "I injected with Trigger. It was intentional. I murdered them. I- I meant to. It was- I can't say I didn't, but-" Zach's whole body shook as he pushed his back harder into the wall. He thought of that night in the Enudora Forest that got blurrier in his memory as he pictured certain moments.

"I always told people that there's no such thing as an evil Quirk." Zach started. He spoke in a low voice full of darkness that sent chills down his classmates' spines as they listened to him. "I told them everywhere I went that their Quirks weren't cursed. It's how we use them that determines what kinds of Quirks they are, but," his eyes narrowed and his voice got even darker still. "There is something evil about Death. Truly, evil. Inside of me. To feel good when I kill people. For killing people to make me that much stronger. But even without those things," Zach's narrowed eyes squinted more. "You can't- imagine, what it feels like. I- I didn't mean to- I did! I knew, that when I went out there, I was going to have to kill Kurogiri! I knew that when I got him in my hand I was going to have to, to make a decision- and I knew what I would choose… And I did! I killed- I, I…" Zach's voice got hoarser and he tilted his head back.

"I- I couldn't do it," he whispered in agony.

"I couldn't kill him," Zach gasped. "As many reasons as I screamed at myself. As much as I told myself that he could just escape, and if he escaped it would all be for nothing! But, but therein lies the problem. My own feelings meant nothing anymore. They couldn't, for me to be able to abandon you all. Abandon my home, my name, my fa- friends. I had to be cold towards myself. Not feel any feelings about myself. So then how could that matter? How could I base any part of my decision on the fact that if Kurogiri escaped, all of my sacrifice would mean nothing? I couldn't! And yet I knew that part of the reason I might want to kill him in that moment was for myself, to ensure that it meant something! And so I couldn't do it. I couldn't, convince myself- And it's not like Potaru has escaped from jail. Wormhole is still trapped. I knew that there were ways to keep portal-users in prison. Even without that proof at the time, I knew that there was probably a way to keep him imprisoned…"

"And I couldn't do it," Zach whispered again. "It was all going to be for nothing if I didn't, and I would have just lost everything for- for no-" Zach clenched his eyes shut. "But I couldn't just kill a man. As much as I hated him, as many people as he killed… I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill someone I had captured. I couldn't kill a man who couldn't fight back. I couldn't do it… And then those two men rushed at me with Kaminari. I swept out the Death, to push them back. To get them to get away, like Kaminari jumped back, but they weren't fast enough."

"And I only used enough to knock them out!" Zach yelled, his chin dipping down as tears poured out of his shut eyes. "But it was more potent on Trigger. I didn't- I knew! I knew that Trigger would make my Quirk unpredictable, so I murdered them! I chose to inject and I chose to use it, but, but I didn't-" Zach rose his left hand to his mouth and covered it up. He never felt that he had the right to say it. But he finally whispered, "I never meant to kill anyone. I'm a murderer. I sent myself to prison for what I did that night. It was all my fault! But, but I just thought the Trigger gave me more Death, I didn't realize how much stronger the wisps were… I didn't know, and I killed… and then Death took over," Zach whispered at the end with his left hand moving from his mouth that muffled his words, down to his chest that he gripped so tightly with a hand shaking in fear.

Midoriya balled his fists out in the hall and he shook his head back and forth. He's right. He's right that it's still his fault. But- No buts! "It was all a blur…" Midoriya could picture Zach's face as he told him about a certain incident that he anxiously stared towards Zach's door while thinking about. You knew it happened before, Zach?

"Death," Zach continued in a low voice. "Does more than just make me feel good. The euphoria of killing isn't what's so terrifying. Momo knew. I could see it in the way she looked at me after I killed Spinner. As I got ready to fight Inhuman in Nightmare, I know a few others could see as well. She called out to me though, and I realized what I was thinking about. The euphoria itself isn't what's so horrifying about this power. But I never understood, because I had never killed more than one person at a time before. It wasn't until I killed those two, or maybe when the pulse of Death shot through me and killed Kurogiri too, that I really felt it for the first time. Killing two human beings at once, distracted me enough while I was filled with such a surge of strength that there was no way I was going to be able to stop Death from killing Kurogiri as well."

"But when Kurogiri died, I didn't feel guilt," Zach admitted. "Seconds before I was coming to the realization that no matter what I screamed, no matter what reasons I gave myself, I wasn't going to be able to do it. Maybe I would have taken down Backfire. Tried to hold them off long enough while keeping Kurogiri in my possession, until the rest of you could have joined me. Maybe… we could have stopped Kaminari that day too. Instead, I killed those three and every restraint I knew I needed to hold onto was gone."

Ashido stared at the side of Zach's face with her eyes bulging huge. "Everything I ever thought about the value of human life. Being a hero. How much killing had haunted me for years… It was gone. I felt good. And I felt validated. Kurogiri would never hurt anyone else, but Kaminari still would. Dabi still would. And they were right in front of me. And I had all this power! My mind, was no longer my own. Hatred. Rage. Pure fucking wrath took hold. I- I lost control. You want to know what I was thinking when it was all over? When I had killed six people in front of my closest friends? The people I had considered my family- who were all heroes and, and who I knew I made feel like they failed by forcing them to watch that- you know what I was thinking?" Zach asked, turning his head and looking to his left into Mina's massive eyes.

"'Don't laugh,'" Zach quoted his thoughts from years ago. "'Don't laugh.' 'Don't smile.' 'This isn't the time.' Ha, ha- I was, I was so far fucking gone. That I could think stuff like that in a moment that I knew would be the worst moment of my life. The worst thing I had ever done? That I could barely stop myself from smiling?!" Zach yelled, his self-hatred filling his voice.

"It- It was terrifying to think about afterwards." His tone got shakier. "That's one of the main reasons, I tried not to kill anyone with Death after that. Even though Death was more humane. Instant death. I… I so rarely… if I had the choice, I would kill without using it. I can see the Painter looking at me." Zach's eyes got hazier and he stared diagonally across his room towards his desk, "A top assassin, best sniper in the world. So good that he was the only one able to ignore Eziano's rules. And I can see the Death on my hand pulling towards him without me ordering it to. I had to force it back, and only then did he start to look at me in the fear I'm sure my comrades around me also felt as they saw what happened."

"I grabbed his sniper instead that he had killed hundreds with, and I blew his brains out." The cold statement made each of his friends listening flinch.

"But Death terrified me," Zach hissed. "It still," he continued, his voice shakier as he hesitated like that while admitting these things aloud that he was always far too afraid to tell people in fear of how they would react. "I knew, that I couldn't kill with it anymore. I knew how dangerous it was to use it like that. After the Lifebringer Incident, I knew I had to be ten times- a hundred times more careful with my Quirk. Knowing how many secrets there were deep within it. Things I still didn't understand about Death, that I never wanted to understand! Six people! Six and I was, on the verge of something… Something I never wanted to know about. Something, that I swore not to let come out again. It was far too dangerous. And yet," Zach continued, and the start of that sentence made the two on his sides feel very uneasy, and Midoriya to just gulp out in the hall which his childhood friend next to him noticed in an uneasy way.

"I found myself, one day, surrounded. I wasn't at full strength, only two days after Wampajawa. Fighting nonstop since the battle ended. And the day before that I had seen the worst thing I had ever witnessed- the worst thing, that had ever existed in this world!" Zach's face scrunched up as he yelled that. "I saw humanity at its worst. And then, while most others couldn't keep fighting. They needed to take breaks. They needed therapy! Grabble and Tama, they were soldiers. They were- they were ex-Special Forces! Warriors who had been with me before we invaded Saudi Arabia! With me all the way through Wampajawa! And- and it was just supposed to be recon. The three of us…"

"But both villain groups at the meet-up brought all their members. And suddenly, Tama noticed that they knew we were there, but before she could finish saying it aloud, a bullet ripped through her skull." Zach winced as he imagined the woman laying prone next to him. "Her head was broken open, and Grabble told me to revive her. I had to! It was still her first time, miraculously," Zach laughed in pain as he called it that. "But I should have just grabbed her body and Grabble and flew away. He was covering me, while I tried to hold her skull together and bring her back, but I stopped to help him because he got hit- and I was- I wasn't thinking straight- I should have had more support ready. I should have been better prepared!"

"Grabble he, had already died during the invasion of Saudi Arabia. He went down, and he begged me with his last breaths, to just save Tama," Zach gasped out in agony as he remembered that. "He just wanted me to save her. But the villains were all around me already. They surrounded us and- and they took Tama's body, seeing that I had started reviving her." Zach's breathing got more ragged and both hands lifted to the sides of his forehead. "And they ripped her apart," he spat out in horror as he imagined his friend's body torn into pieces. "Ahhh- AHHhhhhh… I couldn't save her. I couldn't save either of them."

"They taunted me," Zach whispered. "They had me surrounded. Too many. Hundreds," he whispered in his softest voice. His teary eyes opened up and his friends with similarly tear-filled eyes suddenly became much more concerned by the steady look that formed on his face for a moment.

"If I died there, Darling would have killed herself. It's what I told myself in the Pit. How I managed to fight innocents to the death, in order to save myself. The only way to escape slavery was the only way to survive that day. Me or them. Survive." He hissed the word and his eyes narrowed violently. "'Survive,' I told myself. I repeated that word in my head. I'd lost my comrades. I'd killed so many people. And the day before I had seen-" Zach's steady expression broke instantly. He brought it back and continued strongly, "I saw as-" it broke again. His eyes trembled and his teeth bared as he could not get out the words. "But I can't fight, just thinking about my own survival. I can't do that. Death is far too strong. I'm much too strong. I always think about a hundred different things when I'm fighting. And I need to do that, or I'll just go all-out. And when I fight all-out, like I did that day, without caring if I killed those I fought against who were all trying to kill me… Chaos."

Zach spoke the word then he leaned his back on the wall behind him so his body was straight up. He breathed steadier and calmed himself down a little, then he spoke to the two next to him in a voice that broke on the first word and remained cracked as he continued, "I targeted the weaker ones first. The strongest held back, because they wanted to see my fighting style. They wanted to watch and find an opening. They realized too late that killing made me stronger. It's something they didn't know, because I so rarely did it. It caught them off guard. As I started killing, and it made me stronger, and it took away the last vestiges of restraint inside me that could have stopped me. After the, first two," Zach continued shakily, his head no longer able to stay pointed straight forward. His eyes dipped down first then his head turned to the right and he had to avert his gaze down away from Kirishima's face. "I started to smile. I, forgot about Grabble and Tama by the third and fourth. By the fifth, the sixth, I was laughing. Laughing…"

"'Survive.' It became all that echoed through my mind. The only thought I had, despite what I was yelling. I took a backseat," Zach whispered, his right hand raising to his chest and curling into his white jumpsuit over his heart. "It's all a blur… Except, I can remember. All of the villains started attacking at once by the eighth and ninth. They realized what was happening. It was too late though," Zach whispered, and the other two gulped while those in the hall stared at his room in much more fear at what he was describing now. Zach's head snapped down more and he forced out in a strained way, "I saw the sandstorm, rising with the wind nearby. It, it wasn't any of their Quirks, I don't think. Just a naturally-occurring sandstorm. Blown up by the wind. Surrounding us as I laughed, as I forgot about my dead comrades, as I stopped holding back for once in that desert. The Tusukan Desert."

It's no story, Ashido heard the name of a desert she actually knew of. Her heart was doing backflips and she tried as hard as she could to keep her mouth shut, which made the panting breaths coming out of her nose even louder.

"And it was a massacre," Zach whispered. "And then I opened my eyes, and I stared out into that desert of red. Bodies strewn in every direction. Limbs sticking out of the sand. Corpses… Everywhere. I'd given in for a single moment. And Death took over. And I can still hear them screaming as we fought to the death. A battle with hundreds of people all trying to kill me. And in the end, all of my allies were dead, and all of my enemies… and I stood alone."

Midoriya grabbed at his chest and clenched his own shirt through as he imagined Ares and Zach screaming at each other. I can't imagine. That kind of power is absurd.

Todoroki tilted his head back and darted his eyes down as he realized his right foot had slid backwards on the floor of the hallway. He had come up to this floor with Sato not that long ago and both just stared towards Zach's room in shock at what he was saying. We thought we could fight him, Todoroki felt a chill down his spine as he considered the night before they attacked Zach again. I thought, I could beat him? He's the strongest there is. There's no question anymore.

Aoyama pulled his knees up closer to his chest but did not move from his spot across the hall from Sero. He closed his eyes tightly shut though and his mind instantly flashed back to a couple of hours ago. He saw the assassin under Eziano inside of Wampajawa who Zach fought against one-on-one. The sheer rage that Zach had screamed out in while searching for Eziano, only matched by the physical brutality of Death against Uranus. And he flinched as he thought about Zach pointing a pistol down and putting a bullet through the assassin's head with not even a look back at him as he did it.

"And I knew it could happen," Zach admitted. "I had known since the Lifebringer Incident, that I couldn't let myself do that. I knew I couldn't just fight unabated. But it was that, or death. They weren't going to try and capture me again. What was worse? Dying, and letting all those I could save die? Or surviving… no matter the cost? I knew that I couldn't hold back or I'd die, but I also knew that not holding back would drag it out of me. I knew that once it started, I would struggle to stop. And I couldn't. I couldn't stop myself. It was a rampage. One I predicted. One I still couldn't stop, even having predicted it. I killed them all. And I knew I was a fucking monster."

"It was… you were, protecting yourself," Ashido whispered meekly to the side of his head. "That's-"

"Stop defending me," Zach rasped out. "You don't know, how many people- The day before! So I killed in Wampajawa, and I killed in Vi- in Virg-" Zach clenched his teeth shut hard. "And the Tusukan Desert the second day after Wampajawa, and after that! After that Sci-Psi labs got hit, our R&D team slaughtered. Their families hunted down across Norway, by Fergus. And he was on my ship. He had possessed my comrades, and he could have been inside anyone!" Zach yelled, his face scrunching up and anger filling his tone again. Kirishima and Ashido thought of the villain they had seen in Wampajawa who Zach had asked about his real body. The two just listened to him quietly as he told them about this villain whose power he had claimed before to be on a scale like nothing they could comprehend.

"I had us scatter. If we aren't close to each other, we can't hurt each other," Zach growled. "Put everything out on the open comms. Figure out the limits to Fergus' Possessions, and figure out a way to hurt him. And the route was changed. The path we needed to take for the world loop, cut off. We had to convene on Fergus. In the middle of the deadliest part of the war, we started the final battles with the Fergus Conglomerate. Assaulted the Fourth Eye in every one of his companies and took out the executives who would twist those industries for his evil purposes," Zach sneered. His teeth ground back and forth, and he snarled in a deeper voice, "And then I found him…"

Those in the hallway staring towards Zach's room stood or sat in disbelief as they imagined the kind of wars he was describing. When he mentioned finding Fergus himself though, they each felt as uneasy as earlier that day they had heard the murderous intent in Death's voice regarding that man he apparently found not long after the battle. "That old man sitting in his chair. Decrepit. Dying. I reached out and I killed him."

"Why?" Kirishima asked. He asked it and Zach turned to see Kirishima's fists balled and an angry look flashing over his face. He tried to push it away, but he asked frustratedly, "He did so many things- he needed to face justice! I thought, you were- I thought you cared about that even out there, didn't you? Not just killing-"

"I did," Zach whispered in counter. "That's exactly, right. But Fergus, the things he did-"

"If they were that bad, then it matters even more-"

"I HATED him," Zach snapped. "You, you don't understand the kind of thing Fergus was. Scotland wasn't, it wasn't the worst-" Zach chomped down and his eyes squinted so hard as more tears squeezed out. "The day after Wampajawa-" Zach started, but he cut himself off and shook his head. He stopped those thoughts telling himself to shut up and slowed down the shaking of his head though. "I used to think," Zach began. "That the worst thing I could ever do to you guys, to anyone, would be to tell them what I saw that day. I believed that I could never do anything worse to you than tell you what was in that, place- ah- ahhh," water flowed freely from his eyes again as he started in this way to friends who felt so unnerved by the way he looked just saying this to them. "But you're heroes. And I need to tell you- tell more people. I can't just hold this all…"

"You gotta understand, I had just seen Wampajawa. I had been in the Pit. I had seen horrible things. I had been tortured. And I had seen underground experimental labs, ones that, that I never thought could be possible! I saw things that were beyond my wildest imagination in Scotland. And yet… I still, ahh, I couldn't imagine- I couldn't imagine, what I was going to see down there."

"It was the first thing I had to do after Wampajawa," Zach continued. "There were locations we hit along the way, but I made a bee-line straight to this lab when I heard just some horrible things about it from only two villains in Wampajawa. Not even enough to confirm it completely, but just the chance that it existed eliminated any question about taking my time. I went there immediately." Zach's voice lowered and got more hoarse as he looked to his right and into Kirishima's eyes that lost any frustration completely from them at the sight of the terror in Zach's gaze. "I never wanted to tell you- I never wanted to tell anyone. It was the worst thing I could do, for so long… telling you what I saw down there, in that lab, in Virginia…"

Midoriya had to look away from Zach's door. He turned and Bakugo glanced to the side with a strange look, only to gulp in an uneasy way himself at the tears that filled Midoriya's eyes already. Bakugo looked back slowly while others in the hallway contemplated whether or not they wanted to hear it.

"The screams!" Midoriya had heard about the place before. He had heard many horrible things about it, but that one scream Zach yelled in his face was the moment of the most pain he had ever seen on his friend's face before. As Zach talked about all the horrible things he had seen, it was "the screams" that had made Midoriya feel like his friend had completely broken and was only hiding it with his facade of being alright. Him now, sounds like what I thought he must really feel like, when he told me…

"I had to go there. Into a lab, that heroes hadn't been able to locate in over seventy years," Zach's voice of sheer pain filled them with dread as soon as he started. "Decades, of experiments. Endless torture- Generations of people, born, raised, and killed all in darkness. Clones, all over- it was… ah ah, it was insane. And those doctors who thought they were doing the right thing? They thought, they were doing it for science? I fucking butchered them. Because they weren't human anymore! NOT TO ME! Not when, when I saw those videos- decades' worth, of videos of, of tortures beyond anything I had ever…" Zach's eyes closed and tears dripped off his eyelashes as he paused from the rant. "It-ah wass- so horrible! I couldn't, no one could handle- uuhhaaah, I- I just wanted to stop villains. I didn't know what I was doing," his eyes squinted shut so much harder and tears poured down his face over his scars and down his chin. Snot came out of his nose and he gasped out in pure agony with a moan coming out of his mouth as he did.

"I was stupid," Zach whispered. His friends at his sides did not know how to respond, and both just cried as they listened to Zach sob over this. "So many were part of an experiment to see if their Quirks would adapt to darkness. So they had spent their entire lives in darkness. They were all practically blind, but we adjusted them to light first. I knew at least that much. I knew, I had to do that… but I was, an idiot. I fucked up. I- they all thought I knew what I was doing. We found this place full of hundreds of test subjects. Ones who were born and raised in that lab and, and they had never been treated like people! They didn't know what they were. They, I didn't- I- what was- AHhh AHH! AYYAAAAHHH!" Zach screamed and grabbed at his head with both hands that he tugged through his hair in panicked exasperation.

"They all looked at me like I knew what we were supposed to do in that situation?" Zach whispered in disbelief. "Like, I knew where to put these people- who weren't even, people. They didn't know what it was, to be human. The only humans they had ever met had- had been monsters," Zach cried, his head bowing and his legs pulling back so he could shove his face into his knees. "And where was I supposed to send them? They had nowhere to go back to… ah, and- and I just told them, my forces, to get those people to the ship. That we'd figure out what to do from there. I just, didn't want them spending any more time in that horrible place. Where things beyond my worst nightmares all came true," Zach's chest tightened to the point he could barely breathe. His pitch raised because of it and he started gasping for breath that he could not find, to the point he reached up and grabbed at his throat with his left hand as he was choking on his own panic.

"But I didn't know," Zach continued, curling his left hand into his neck and clenching. He lifted his head and slammed it back down on his knees over and over, "I didn't know! I was stupid. I didn't know what I was doing! I thought I was doing the right thing, ahh- and I brought them down to the water, and Carpenter was quickly building a dock so we could get the trucks down. The Cloak was coming in so we could get them down the dock and on-board and out of there. But while we were waiting, while, the trucks were there on the beach- we let them out. We let them, ahhh! AHH, ahh, we let them out of the vehicles."

"I tried talking to this man. One who, knew a little more vocabulary than the rest of them. Someone who could speak in full sentences," Zach said in a raspy voice. "But he stopped talking to me. He, looked around… oh man, what was I thinking?" Kirishima and Ashido had been confused up until this point, but the two started breathing much heavier at what Zach was actually talking about. "All of them, they all just started walking towards the water. They walked onto the beach, at sunset-" Zach's head pulled back and his mouth opened wide while streaks of tears covered his expression. "And this man, he reached down and, and he picked up a handful of sand. He turned to me and- and he, he held it up like…"

"Was he asking me, 'what is this?' Was it confusion? Or, or was he just overjoyed and didn't know how- or was he angry, as he realized… what his whole life-" Zach kept cutting himself off, but he was out of breath and gasping for air as he tried to get it all out this time. Last time he got remotely close, he had just stopped himself and gotten serious again. He had returned to an intense conversation with Midoriya about morality and one which could have led to being arrested, something he thought would be the end of it all. This time though, there was nothing left to stop him. "Every one of them. They all stepped onto that beach, and- and I should have realized it."

"These people who had never seen light before. I brought them to a beach, and they could feel the sun on their skin. See the vibrant colors of a beautiful sunset over the water. They could taste and smell the salt in the air. Hear the crashing of the waves. And felt the feeling of sand beneath their feet, a texture they had never felt before so it was too confusing to them. So, so confusing. This was the world? Why was this the world?" Zach clenched his teeth but gasped out in agony again and opened his mouth as wide as possible. His head shook back and forth, "I can't describe their expressions. The emotions on their faces, were like none- no human being could understand, what they were feeling in that moment. Confusion, joy, sadness, fear, anger- all of them combined?! I don't know! I don't, ah, know," he sobbed.

"But then they," Zach's eyes closed and his face hit a new level of being shattered. His whole body slouched and his butt slid out away from the wall. "They screamed."

Midoriya's eyes shot open huge outside the door and he pulled his head back while the tears continued to flow down his face. What-

"They didn't have the words to describe, what they felt. Suddenly faced with an entire world? Something they never knew even existed? They screamed! They screamed and screamed- All of them! They just started screaming! That man who looked back at me, he made a noise like- 'eeahhhh- aaeeaAaah-'" Zach's voice cracked as he mimicked a noise no one had ever imagined they would hear in their lives, and yet they still expected it did not come close to what Zach was actually trying to make a noise of. His voice was weak and full of confusion, and he lifted up his hands as if letting sand fall between his fingers, and he sobbed at the top of his lungs after he imagined it again. "God, I couldn't let any of my soldiers see me cry, but I was glad I was wearing my helmet. Because there wasn't a dry eye on the beach that day. Most of the others had their helmets off, to make the people feel safer but, but that didn't matter because they had never seen in the first place to know what was scary and what wasn't… And they just screamed. And my men cried, like babies-"

"The hardest men I ever knew, lost it that day. There was no coming back from that! Not, not after hearing those screams. Of people who didn't know the words to articulate what they were feeling. Who didn't know the emotions to feel- AHhh RaaahhAAAAHH- They were so broken! And my men, who had just lived through the worst battle of the war? Ones who had just watched half of their closest friends die? They could do that without losing it, without being brought to tears- but not this. Not, what we saw that day. Not what I heard on that beach. Those screams… The screams! I hear them screaming right now! Always, always…"

"When I close my eyes, I don't see the people I've killed. I don't see the friends I've lost." Zach slid down more and wheezed out, "I see them standing on that beach. And I hear the screams. I always hear them. In the back of my mind, but they're louder now than ever…"

Ashido grabbed Zach around his neck and she pulled her head into his left shoulder. Whether it was for him right now or because she needed to cover her own face, she did not know for sure. Kirishima's head tilted back though and smacked against the wall with a thud. Zach could feel right in the connection between the steel of his arm and his actual left collarbone, tears were soaking through and getting him wet. He was too exhausted to lift his left arm and put it around Mina in response to her crying though.

"Exodus broke down," Zach whispered. "About Virginia." His eyes were shaky and staring straight ahead of him across his bedroom. "Seeing those people broke something in him. Exodus, was always the strongest. The one I never thought would ever need that, but I should have seen it coming. When Exodus asked me so coldly 'Should I destroy this body like the rest?' And it was Access, slouched against a wall with his face…" Zach closed his eyes and let another two tears drip out as he imagined their dead friend, who he did just have Exodus dispose of like the rest. "Access was just a year older than me. Just a little older than Cee. Spiral was nineteen when he joined too. They were kids. Just kids."

"So were you," Ashido whispered into Zach's shoulder.

Zach flinched, and then his eyebrows curled up and his head tilted back. Tears poured out and he ducked his head hard and cried at what she just told him. "I was," he gasped at the thing she told him that no one else had heard. "But I had to be the strongest. Exodus was a product of human experimentation himself. But even he couldn't take that. Gentle and La Brava needed their breaks. Darling was still injured- which I am so thankful for, because I'm glad she never had to hear that. See that. But Exodus? When he joined me, he knelt down before me. He treated me like I was infallible. He swore to follow me every step, and he was close behind me in every fight- He was the strongest man I knew!" Zach screamed in rage and pain that he felt this way. "But he had to take a break, and I couldn't. I had to stay strong. I had to be able to see something like that, and just move forward?! Move on to the next fight like everything was okay, and it wasn't okay- it wasn't. Nothing was okay. I had to talk down friends who wanted nothing more than to kill themselves after that day. My comrades were disillusioned and believed mankind didn't believe to be saved. Or they thought there was no way we could stop it all when something like that had existed so long before the so-called 'Age' of villains. What a fucking joke."

"But they expected me to be able to handle it. And if I couldn't, they might doubt me. They might start to doubt my orders, and their hesitation could cost their lives. So to- to protect them! I, forced myself, to never break down. To never slow down. To never show doubt in my decisions, even when I was unsure about them. And that day came, and they all looked at me on that beach. All of crying soldiers stared towards me as those people screamed at the top of their lungs, in voices we couldn't imagine, in ways we didn't know how to handle! And they looked at me like I knew what we were supposed to do about that?! Like I knew what I was supposed to do with those people who knew nothing of what the world was. Whose very existence made me cry. But I handled it. I pushed aside how it made me feel and just handled it. I saved them, and continue to protect them to this day, and I- I just wanted, to fight villains."

"I wasn't the hardest man I knew. I wasn't the strongest. I can't handle most of the things that many people can. I- I can't- losing a comrade? That's, to me- It kills me to imagine that. It's the worst thing-" Zach brought his right hand to his head and gripped his temple in agony. "I left Japan, and I wanted to make up for getting Webb and all the anti-heroes killed. But I didn't want what I turned into. It came to be because of a need. And I became what I became because my forces needed someone to look to. A moral guidance, more than just a leader. That's why they looked to me that day. Because when we fought the Syndicate in Arkistan, I had to go after them without including the Arkistani heroes. They were too corrupt. I didn't know which of them though, so it had to just be us."

"And we weren't ready!" Zach yelled. "We weren't ready to go in there, but I knew that they had a nuke. I knew, that they were going to hit Paris on Christmas. We had days, before millions were going to be killed. And Cee was tortured, and she got that information while she was being tortured. They killed her, but I brought her back. The idiots telling her all their plans didn't expect me to show up suddenly before her time limit. I brought her back, and she warned us, and we went in! We had to. Just like with Mongoloid. It was dangerous. I couldn't ensure the lives of my comrades, but we had to go in anyway! And that kid they were going to use as a nuclear bomb. That kid, who jumped in front of Phinx's attack and took a spike through the chest- ahh, ahhhhAHH!"

Kirishima thought of Zach tearing his sleeve off and showing him the burns on his right arm where that kid had melted through while dying. Ashido thought of him telling them about it back on Inazuma Island. They each still stared in awe at Zach though as he described it, "And when we reached that bottom level, we were faced with far more villains than there were us. All over the walls. Up on giant stone pillars. The core of the Dragon's Den. At the bottom of their hollowed-out mountain in Arkistan. We fought our battle. And Cee was killed again. Fergus possessed Mysti who was there, and she, Phinx, and Lee escaped, killing Juno and Akhmed as they did. Georgia died twice that day, but Cee was… An anti-hero like me. She knew Lavamander. She was part of that organization, and I saved her from the villains who Kaminari sent to finish her off. And she died in my arms, crying…"

"And we had them prisoner," Zach growled. His tone shifted, but his friends' increasingly nervous looks broke and turned to ones of sheer amazement as he went on, "I stood over the fallen Dragons. I rose up a dark sword of Death. My men wanted me to kill them. No one was going to say a word. The villains were at my mercy- but I slammed my sword into the ground! That was not, how I was going to do things. That was not justice. The Syndicate had hurt far more than just us. They needed to be tried in front of the world that knew what they had done. People needed to see them face trial and real justice. And, when the faith in Arkistani heroes was shattered, they needed to believe in the ones who remained. I thought at the time, that just giving the good ones the credit would have been enough to save Arkistan. I had to do it though. No one else was ready to fight the Syndicate. Just like no one else was ready to stop Mongoloid."

"The UN deliberated and argued about him," Zach said frustratedly. "They could have moved up the inspection team's date, but nothing would have happened. Because there was no large international force of heroes at the ready. No group prepared to suddenly rush off and take on villains at the drop of a hat. And the world needed something like that, as I could clearly see when I witnessed how quickly Mongoloid's forces were organizing throughout Saudi Arabia."

Todoroki's jaw dropped out in the hall at what Zach might be suggesting he did. "The world needed me to be an international terrorist group that was out in the open, in order for a unified response to form. The other international villain groups were so secretive and quiet as they knew that was the only way they could continue to function. But my very existence created the force powerful enough to counter the League of Shadows. The League of Shadows had Xander Carmen push to create the ADTF to get me out of their way, and those idiots gave me the very tool I needed to eliminate them."

Sero's lips pursed and he kept himself from laughing out loud. So fucking badass.

"Was it really, all you?" Kirishima asked softly. I knew he did so much but, Kirishima turned his head to the left and looked in a sad way of his own at the right side of Zach's face. "Everything-"

"No," Zach whispered back. "I created the idea of 'anonymous tips' as a global phenomenon only because the speed at which I was moving was certain to draw attention to the tips anyway. I needed those real/fake tippers to show on the news as examples, which was necessary when the surge of tips became a massive surge at the end of March and into April, when heroes couldn't keep up with me or my forces anymore. And yet, I couldn't have done anything I did without heroes. Thousands of tips sent to heroes to go fight villains who I couldn't. There were too many for them to handle, which was why I was out there in the first place. But there were way too many for just me to handle, and that's why they were there. It was a partnership. One that they did not consent to, but a partnership that I utilized all over the world. Assisting the heroes and using them to assist me. Every single country… except for Japan."

"I knew Japan was in good hands," Zach whispered, the corners of his lips lifting back into the smallest smile for the first time in a while now. The pure belief he displayed in that sentiment made those listening to him feel unworthy and inadequate as they imagined the strongest villain groups in the nation that Zach had to come back to fight for them. They still felt comforted though in that same moment, and they felt warm at the kind of faith he described, as well as shocked that even as Death he had felt that way to the point that he actually had not come there. Those who had traveled outside of the country in the past years understood why it was that the people out there felt so differently about Death than the ones in Japan with little experience with him.

Zach's smile that just formed wiped quickly though as Zach saw Mina in the corner of his vision which made him suddenly snap his head that way. "But that doesn't mean I wouldn't have come back." The girl there who just started to smile in a soft way froze up and held her breath.

"I would have been back in a heartbeat, if I heard you were dying," Ashido heard Zach's voice echo in her mind and found it too hard to breathe as he stared into her eyes. What he had told her right after he came back and before the semester even started filled her head and made her palms cover in sweat.

"When Grater nearly killed you I wouldn't leave China," Zach said. "Or at least the surrounding area where I was within flight distance inside my time limit. It wouldn't have mattered if I was in the middle of a battle," Zach said to the girl whose eyes refilled with tears that matched her quivering lips. Kirishima stared past Zach's head with his eyes shaking too as he wrapped his head around exactly what Zach was saying right now. "I knew some of my comrades could tell that I had changed our course, and I knew some were going to be upset with me and… and I just kept them focused, while keeping my ears open for your status. And Mina, if you died I would have dropped everything and went straight to the hospital you were in. I mean it."

Ashido sat there in disbelief. He had told her this before and she did not understand. It didn't make sense with his story's timeline, but that didn't matter to me! I believed him. When I learned the truth I felt like he was saying it to reassure me, now that I knew that he had been on Earth all that time, but learning that truth I actually felt it was less likely he would have come back… but he did. He was telling me the truth. She was amazed, and she opened her mouth to thank him and tell him how much that meant to her-

"And at the same time that I was there so worried about you, the one responsible showed his face. The one who almost had my city bombed. All my friends killed… Stain." Zach seethed the name out and made Ashido's voice catch in her throat. Kirishima looked at Zach uneasily, and Sero grimaced while lifting his head and looking across the hall into Aoyama's wide eyes. "Looking to join the AoD," Zach continued darkly. "I laid a trap for him and we fought to the death. And I shoved my sword through Stain's heart." Most of those listening dropped their jaws at that admission.

"It wasn't about you," Zach continued. "I knew, that giving Stain an outlet to spread his message again would have been irresponsible. He had already been tried and found guilty. The last time he got arrested, the video of his arrest had spurred on a movement that inspired villains all over the world. I had just watched as people inspired by him nearly destroyed a city. I couldn't let him do it again. I couldn't let Stain twist the world when it was finally going to forget about him. Even after defeating him though, it wasn't enough. Because when I saw Faith in Tartaros," Zach's lips twisted and his face distorted in a flash of anger. His teeth started to grind with his lips pulling apart, "I don't know if it was Faith killing all the prison guards who had become my friends, my only human interactions for months, that set me off to destroy Faith's mind. And now Faith sits in a padded cell, his mind more destroyed than the people he spent his life fucking with."

Kirishima and Ashido both remembered in a moment of clarity, that as much as they had Zach at his most vulnerable, the person between them was the most terrifying person in the world. He can be the scariest and most violent person imaginable, Ashido thought while looking back at his face in a moment that her expression had been shaken. Her look softened back up though and she glanced over to Kirishima whose expression hardened itself and just got back to a calm non-judging look back towards their friend. Then she looked back at Zach too, It doesn't change how we feel about him though. No matter how dark things get through the rest of this, I'll always support him and comfort him through it.

You were really going to come back and save Ashido. Even as Death, you never stopped caring about us. Whatever you did, there's too much of it for anyone to judge. Those judges knew it. We all know it. No one can judge you. You saved the world. Far more than anyone else knows. I know though. And I'll stand by you from here on out. Kirishima thought, I promise.

Zach could feel the energy radiating off the other two at his sides. These were people who accepted him for everything, for all of it. "Death was an ideal," Zach started and he looked to his right at Kirishima. Then he looked back to his left at Ashido, and he continued softly, "That we stood for. Death was no man. It had to be an ideal. And, showing that video ruined that. It took away so much of what they died for." Zach admitted these fears quietly to his close friends who looked back at him and nodded as they tried to understand what he meant by it.

"Now, other people will feel they can fight like I did as long as they feel they were right. Especially when I've been vindicated by the law," Zach frowned deeply and angrily about what had happened. "It's crushing me," he growled. His eyes shook and although he tried to keep his expression straight, it looked like it did when he was on his way out of the courtroom: holding so much back and being so frustrated at the same time. "Our reason for fighting was to prevent others from becoming like us. We fought in the shadows so no one would ever become the warriors that we were. That's, why I had to fight the other day, to escape from here rather than just let myself get taken in. Then I accepted Midoriya though, and I allowed it… And I don't know what was right."

"It wasn't right of me to fight my friends and the heroes, but letting everyone see Wampajawa?" He asked it incredulously and shook his head. "It's so wrong. Both options were so, so wrong. I didn't know people would find out about Wampajawa but I knew they would find out more about the good the AoD had done, and that alone was something I wanted to hide."

"But your fight," Kirishima started. "You saved so many people. It was necessary-"

"But it was a temporary fix," Zach countered. "And it can't be seen as precedent. It was an unprecedented time, and the world needed a response that could match. I was that response. I believed I could be, and I became the solution, but I needed to not look like it or others would follow suit. And the precedent exists for a reason. Rules, exist for a reason. When people break the rules they hurt others. Villains commit crimes of passion believing that they're right, and fanatics are just ideologists who try to 'fix' the world in violent ways, and when they see that the Army of Death did the same to the support of the world, they'll feel they're good and right and they'll be wrong. I've created an example. A horrible example. And that's why I should have been judged guilty. Because you can't decide it on a case by case determination. Justice, can't be determined in such a way. No matter how much good I did, I never pretended to believe that my actions were justified. We had to be terrorists. The rest of the world wouldn't have called us it if they knew, but then more problems would arise. And that would be counterproductive to my goals. To my victory."

He's amazing, Aoyama smiled in a moment of awe-inspired happiness. Whether or not he made it harder for himself, he didn't care as long as it was the right thing to do. Even if he doesn't see it that way, that's what I hear you saying, Zach.

When we burned the God Book, Midoriya thought as he heard what Zach was saying in his room. I warned Zach that he had too many lies. Too many secrets that he must have known some of them would come out, someday. And he denied me, but I was right. I knew it all couldn't be kept secret forever. Not with as big as Zach's lies are. As many of them as there are. "That's why it's a secret. That's why it always has to be a secret." "No one can know how much good came out of doing so much wrong." We talked so much about the morality of your actions, and in one day everything you felt was justified got undone by Gentle putting out that video.

I was hesitant to even join in on arresting you, Midoriya thought to himself. He stepped to the side of the hall and sat down next to Aoyama who scooted an inch aside to make room, as Sato had already sat down farther along the wall and Midoriya was just filling the gap. I had completely agreed with Zach back then… but not anymore. I understood his point of view that no one could know how much good he had done, because he had done it in a bad way not meant for this world, but the world was at that point where it became necessary. A point that I failed to accept we were at, and I didn't understand until I saw it in Wampajawa. Nobody knew, but it really had been a war. And it really was necessary.

Zach had an army fighting and dying for us, and he made it possible that I could think for so long that no one could know all the good Death had done. You, made it possible for me to feel that way. I couldn't turn on you for that, because I believed the world was still that good- or, the world really was. It's not just my belief, Midoriya countered himself. Zach really kept it that way. Zach, saved the world. Midoriya thought it while seated in the fifth floor hallway. He tilted his head back and listened into the room with a broken doorway where his friend was speaking freely for the first time in longer than Midoriya could remember. More than I ever realized, Zach saved the nature of our world, at a cost unbeknownst to anyone.

Midoriya felt awed by his friend who had faced so much darkness that finally, fully, caught up to him. What he was most afraid of was everyone around the world seeing how he did things. He didn't want them to decide that he was right to do it, because he thought the world would become too bloody if they all treated it like he had in the shadows. He did everything he could to keep it from turning into that. And now Zach, we have to fight to make it out like that video was a lie and none of it really happened. We have to make everyone forget. It's not over. I need you not to give up on that ideal. Now that you're out, and now that you won't be sent to prison for this, it's time for you to convince people. You might not think anyone will believe you this time, and a lot of people are going to look at you with looks of doubt. They may call you a liar, but you're used to that. You can't break your mind this time though. I won't let you do it again. Midoriya thought the last part with his expression getting much more determined, I have to be able to tell when you're doing it next time. I will not let you hurt yourself like that anymore. Because you're a ticking time bomb, but more importantly, you're my friend.

"The moral of this story is, you can do things right and get away with it even if it was against the law. But! You had to make sure that no one knew. If you broke the law, and something good happened because of it, no one could know about it or they would feel that the ends justified those extra-judiciary means." Todoroki imagined the conversation he, Zach, Iida, and Midoriya had had under a gazebo when he almost arrested his classmate back then. He had sat down along the wall next to Sero and listened in quietly as Zach continued speaking with Kirishima and Ashido in the next room. Gentle showed everyone that video, which completely contradicts how Zach justified everything he did that day. Everyone in the world just found out. They just saw those extra-judiciary means, and yet so many people are going to think the ends justified them, which isn't what Zach wanted. It was the opposite of what he was fighting for.

Todoroki felt a lot of pain as he imagined that. He was confused for a second as to why it hurt him so much, then he narrowed his eyes softly in the realization, It's pain for my friend. Who we put on trial, which got all of that revealed and ruined so much of what he was fought to protect. So much of what those people he loved died for. We're partly responsible for arresting him, not that I was able to do much… Even though the judges claimed it wasn't evidence, so many people will believe it now. That's why it's crushing him. "…if they've seen people do things, bad things, in order to make better outcomes like those people believe what they'd fight for would create, then they'd be more willing to say that the ends have justified the means before. That's why the law has to be upheld every time. That's why at no point can someone be given a pass, once they are caught. Because if they're caught and released because people think what they did was right even though it was against the law, it leads all kinds of idealists to feel they can do whatever they want as long as they believe it will make a positive end result. As long as they think people will thank them in the long run."

"People twist things to mean what they want them to. And I'm afraid that should anyone know what I had really been doing for that year… The world would fall apart, because everyone would want to do things the way I did them…" Todoroki bowed his head. I don't think you have to worry about that, Zach. After what everyone saw today, I don't think anyone would "want" to do things like you did them. Everyone watched you give it your all. And they can see what it cost. We all know, that you care about people. There was no other reason for you to fight so hard for us. So if you care that much about strangers, then they all know how much you cared for your comrades even if you didn't make that clear. Everyone knows, Zach. They all know what it cost you, beyond just your body. And as afraid of you as many of them probably are- most of them, I'm sure, considering even I'm afraid of you. Todoroki pictured Zach ripping a man's spine out and it made him flinch. As afraid as you make us, we all feel for you too.

"Letting the world find out about Wampajawa, means that so much of what I did now is wrong," Zach continued to the two in his room with him. "But that's not- that's not my problem, because I'm not Death. Things Death did are wrong, and the world knows them, and so Death will do something to fix that. But that's not my job anymore. I'm just, Zach Sazaki. And I have enough things I need to fix already. I can't, add that on top," Zach confessed. "I just can't do it. I'm running out of time," he whispered.

"We have one week left of school," Zach said. "This weekend. A week of classes and finals. And then it's over. I haven't fixed all I needed to though," Zach continued. "All the reasons I decided to come back here," his head tilted back on the wall as he spoke. His tears had tried and the two at his sides also leaned back next to him to just listen for a while longer and let him continue talking about anything he needed to. "When I was in the Void, spending years in my own thoughts-"

"Wha-"

"Shh," Ashido shushed Kirishima who had heard Zach bring this up a few times. It was something he understood nothing about. Something too crazy for him to put together with context clues alone.

"In the emptiness that Amaterasu threw me into, to waste away and lose my mind," Zach continued, speaking in a slightly more detailed way that just made Kirishima scrunch up his face more at the thought of what Zach was describing. "In the moment I stopped tapping the seconds. After months of nothingness. In the instant I had to think of all that had piled up, and my mind shattered, I thought of so much. The instant could have lasted years, and I'd have no idea because I wasn't counting anymore. But in that instant of eternity, I thought of all my regrets. All the things that made me choose to return here. Thoughts of All For One, saving Darling, making sure all of you never thought yourselves anything but great heroes, which I feared my departure may have caused, all of those. I still, I think that- right now, all I really want to do is fix things with Jirou."

Ashido smiled at Zach but he shook his head at the way she looked at him like he was being a good friend by saying that. "You don't get how bad what I did to her was," Zach whispered, his voice getting hoarser again though he sniffled and held back any tears. This was something he did not feel the right to just start crying about. He shook his head back and forth once darkly, and he said, "What I did to all of you? It was nothing compared to her. What I did to her was the worst thing I did that night. Bar killing those six people, maybe," Zach added the 'maybe' on at the end which showed just how badly he thought of this.

"There were times when I was out there that I wished I could go back and not do it if for nothing else but to not betray her," Zach admitted. "Kaminari, crushed her," Zach whispered. He looked to Kirishima as he said it, and the redhead frowned as he actually started getting upset at what Zach was saying. "And she struggled so much from it. There was no one she could trust. And she needed my help. Mine, specifically," Zach said, looking back at Ashido who looked away as she did not want Zach to see her look at him in any way that could make him sad, though even she could not keep the frustration from her face as she thought about Jirou now.

"It wasn't an indirect action, or like my family members being killed 'because' of me but really killed by villains. I did it to her. She came to me for help and I abandoned her." Zach made his confession of guilt and grit his teeth a moment after. "And I know it could have been different. I could have stayed and worked things out. I could have helped her through it, and we could have worked through our problems together, to be happier again but… but I haven't seen her smile once since I came back." Zach admitted that statement in as much pain as anything he had said so far aside from the screams. Even without breaking down this time, the others heard that guilt in his voice that made it so he could not just sit there and cry about it.

And yet the fact that he was talking about it in that way, made Ashido lift her head back and then turn to him again. When he talked about it with the crushing guilt in his voice and the desperation to fix it, as he could see how angry Jirou still was, from what he did to her, they understood him. They understood why he felt like it and just hoped that Zach could succeed at this like he does at everything else.

"I've been trying since I got out," Zach continued. "But, but the me who got out of Tartaros isn't one who could have fixed things. That was me out of the Void. A lie- a shattered visage. She could see right through me from day one. She could tell it was all a lie, even when I couldn't?" Zach's face twitched as he said it like that, and the others grimaced at the confused way he just worded his sentence. "I was insane to the point of absolute madness. My thoughts were a mess. Fake memories mixed in with a reality that I never fully accepted or thought about when it was happening. And after coming back I always questioned myself. Just as you all did, I questioned my every move."

"Wondering why I said what I did? Why I acted a certain way?" Zach continued, asking questions that they could have asked themselves but that he definitely asked himself. "I wondered 'would Zach Sazaki have acted like that?' Constantly thinking of myself as just acting, like I wasn't even Zach…" Outside the door, Todoroki, Bakugo, and Midoriya all felt their chests tighten up at what he was saying. "It was hard, to just step back into the shoes of someone I'd left so far behind. It was hard trying to be a normal person again. After existing as nothing but a shadow… After accepting my own death."

"And the Void was the worst place for me to lose my mind," Zach added. "Because I had lost my mind while already insane. Usually, if you go mad, the goal is to get back to the sane person you were before it. That's why I've struggled so much to get away from the person who believes in the nonsense of Terra. Because when I relapse from that insanity, and I always 'knew' the truth, but that truth was the truth I had known when I was in the Void and suddenly stopped counting the seconds and the years. That was a version of me who hadn't thought of himself as human in years. Who hadn't felt certain human emotions that wouldn't make him the perfect warrior anymore. Where was I to find myself? How could I track down a solid base to grip onto when I realized that I had no core? It was maddening trying to keep up. I just couldn't… I couldn't do it…"

Bakugo was the only one still standing of all the boys who had come to the fifth floor and were in the hallway outside of Zach's room. Ojiro, Todoroki, and Sero sat on his left, and Aoyama, Midoriya, and Sato were on his right. He did not care about the others sitting around him right now though. Bakugo looked down in regret as he heard what Zach was saying. He brought his right hand up and covered the top of his face with a few fingers spread apart on his furling brow while he grimaced with his teeth baring. I didn't think it was really him. When he first came back, I wasn't convinced. It wasn't until Half-and-Half and Deku and I confronted him that I accepted it. And that pissed me off so fucking much, but I still, Bakugo grimaced deeper as he thought about his own feelings on the matter that he had always just ignored. He had figured they would get to fight one day to settle it physically rather than like this. I still didn't get as angry at Zach as I was just angry myself, because I knew something had to have happened.

I was still pissed that Zach would lose his resolve and that conviction that, I had really admired. What he yelled at Kurogiri in the forest that night, was awesome, and I knew something had to have happened. I was wrong though. Again, I was wrong. Bakugo gripped his forehead harder at the amount of missteps he had made in his thinking on this. It wasn't that "something" happened. It wasn't one single thing. Zach left with no intention to return, but it whittled him down. I thought it was "something" because it had only been a year, but in that year he had experienced several lifetimes of battles and death and… and more pressure on him than anyone in the world. Sending his friends to die and, killing people… Something I understand very well is something that doesn't match Zach's personality. It isn't who he is. Yet Zach kills people, and he dies, he died out there. He was a slave, and he killed innocents. Saw things, that the most hardened men Zach ever met he said were crying and needed breaks for, but he didn't? Zach isn't that "hardened" guy. He pretends to be, but I know. I know because of the hospital right when he got out of Tartaros.

He must have been so messed up then. Hearing this now, I know that the him right out of Tartaros was fucked up. And no matter how far gone he was, no matter how messed up in the head… he didn't tell people about All For One because he thought it would be too sad if people turned on each other for having stronger Quirks… Bakugo shook his head back and forth then finally lifted his chin back up and dropped his hand from his forehead. His fists curled in frustration at his sides. That shit pissed me off so much back then, he remembered. Because that was the first time I questioned if the person who returned really was, the same person I knew. At everything Bakugo was hearing Zach say in his room now, he remembered that tired face from the national park when he realized for sure that it actually was Zach who came back. That exhausted look, so frustrated at them for calling him out on his plans that Bakugo only now, months later, finally accepted really didn't exist.

And that conviction I thought had broke too easily held on longer than it would have for anyone else, Bakugo thought with his fists curling much harder. Zach's resolve didn't break even as his friends and comrades dropped like flies, as his face was ripped off and he was killed and enslaved. It didn't break when he saw things, and heard those screams that- that nearly broke every one of his friends. As he broke his own mind just because his resolve was so strong that he wouldn't let anyone come in the way of that goal. He wouldn't let his humanity, or his mind, his soul from stopping them. I know why it is he went mad. I get it, because I know that the conviction I believed in forced him to keep going. It really was that strong. And I also know, that Zach will never blame us for how we all spent the last three months with him.

Bakugo lowered his gaze. He felt angry at himself over what he just thought, but he was also angry at Zach for it as he wished the boy in the open room would criticize them or something. How we treated him. I never thought I'd ever accept the person who came back, even when Ashido convinced me to back down with that plea to save him. I was still pissed we let him back, but that guy I fought the other day? That's the same guy who was on my team in Capture the Flag. Who got kidnapped by villains with me… no. Bakugo lifted his head back up and stared towards the open doorway. He curled his fists tighter and gripped onto the waistband of his pants because it would be less likely to cut his palms with his fingernails that way. The maturity of hindsight allowed him to adjust how he thought of Camino Ward in his own head at that exact moment. Zach didn't get kidnapped with me.

Zach walked through that portal to save me. He wasn't qualified. We weren't friends. And Zach acted like a villain through it all… but that was just him trying to be smart. I know now, that Zach just wanted to save me, Bakugo admitted to himself. For no other reason than I was captured by villains. That fucking cocky-

It really pisses me off. How good a fucking person he is, Bakugo thought that and bit down harder too as he still felt that way as he heard Zach breaking down for all these horrible things he spent so long trying never to think about. These are things that would have broken anyone else. They would have stopped everyone long before it stopped him, and I never thought Zach was strong enough to handle all that but he was. I didn't think I could be more amazed than I was in the Enudora Forest that night. The 'peace in our world' shtick that Zach shouted stuck with me for a long time. I remembered it while fighting villains. I remembered it, while listening to Indago say something just as heroic! Something that reminded me of you in that moment. Bakugo had gotten annoyed by thinking about that specific fact over the past nine months. Back when he thought he would never see Zach again, it had not bothered him to remember Zach when he heard Indago saying something that had inspired him like that (even if he refused to show that awe to her at the time). He no longer felt bothered by it again though, because he remembered how the person he was thinking about might have been the one to inspire Indago too, back when Zach had brought her back some time they were fighting together.

How I felt those two times doesn't come close to now though, Bakugo thought. To what I just saw in the courthouse. Zach decided to leave to do things his way that everyone else thought was impossible. And he made it a reality. He made the better world we live in now. You'd have to be an idiot not to see it. And you'd have to be just as stupid, not to see what Zach had to do to make that happen. He's a shattered man, who volunteered to live forever like this, just for the sake of the rest of us. Bakugo shook his head back and forth. I hate it, because I know he had to be crazy to make that decision. No one in their right mind could have made that choice. He really was, even all the way back then, completely out of his mind!

"…the period of time I was gone was awkward for everyone," Zach said. "I knew it was so weird when I came back because it wasn't enough time to forget or forgive, or even get over it… for some people, and for others they could do those things, or they were in the middle of it." Zach shrugged his left shoulder up, "And then you didn't know how to feel, because I was gone for five months in jail, and then even longer afterwards with most of you barely seeing me." Zach's head turned right and he looked at Kirishima rather than Ashido who had at least come out to see him several times on her own while he was in Yutapu. Kirishima nodded once in shame but also agreement with what Zach was saying about it.

"But the most awkward timing was how long I spent in the Void. It was too long. But not as long as Amaterasu normally sent people in, to the point that they would kill themselves. The time dilation from the two real days I spent in there to the years it felt like, really fucked me up, but most people it would have completely made them gone. I found a way to hold on. In that moment when everything shattered, and I couldn't handle all of the rush of horrible memories at once, I started creating new memories. To replace all the old painful ones with the fantasy. I- I wish I could have finished though," Zach admitted. He had brought this up before, but he said it again with the awkward timing and just furled his lip in frustrated confusion as he spoke these thoughts aloud that his old self could never process in a coherent manner.

"I had created so many stories, but I hadn't finished them. I was still in the process of creating them. I had created entire fake languages, and I knew every detail about certain events, ones that were hard to think about even in the fantastical way I had transformed them into. I developed ways that kept me from thinking about the Siege of Razmatan much even after I had erased Wampajawa from my mind… as best as I could. Even Razmatan was so dark that it was the kind of thing that I would avoid in conversation, and that I wouldn't want to think about, and that made it even more like Wampajawa! Razmatan felt real, because I treated it like it was. And yet I got out of the Void before I could really believe those things, because I hadn't finished the story. And so going to Tartaros also gave me the opportunity to finish the stories and fill in the gaps I had left over another 6 years, as well as test them on other people to see if I could convince them of what would become the truth if I believed it and they believed it and I had no one else in my life who could counter it with reality."

"That's why I couldn't see you," Zach added. "Why I couldn't see any of you while I was down there," Zach said to the two who he knew had come to visit at least once each. Both of them had been frustrated at the time that he apparently refused to see them or talk to them, and they no longer felt that way and instantly forgave him for the reasons he was explaining now. "I knew that if I started talking about what 'happened' to me, you'd look at me in more than just the regular disbelief of the guards, and I might start to lose my grip on that world's truth. And it had become truth to me. And yet it wasn't either, because I hadn't finished, and in those 5 months I wasn't able to finish either with so much I still had left and no solid grasp on what had really happened that I was ignoring… by believing in my own fake memories. Mina, if not for you, I would have had no chance of ever coming back. No chance of ever regaining any semblance of sanity. As much as that mad version of myself was frustrated that I didn't have the 6 years to perfect my story, I'm so happy you freed me from that cell before I could descend any further into madness."

Ashido reached over and put her right hand over Zach's left that was curled over his left knee. She put her fingers between his and squeezed his hand with a bright smile forming across her face as he told her that. I just wanted you out so I could see you again. I had no idea, that I was helping you this much. Ashido's bright smile made Zach lift up the left corner of his lip a tiny amount though it fell flat again in a second.

"I knew those memories weren't true, and yet I was able to lie to Norasaki because I did believe in them." Zach shook his head once then whispered, "It's why I really needed to get back to U.A. even if I didn't know it. I needed to be around people who would call me out on it, because I was too good of a liar and convinced the Shiketsu's that my lies were the truth. Only two of them ever caught on."

"You see, when the Subspace Devils attacked? The instant I got an early warning that I knew was only going to be seconds before everyone else's, I shattered my own mind." The way Zach said it made both Kirishima and Ashido turn their heads in towards him quickly. Neither understood what he meant by that and this had happened so recently that they each gained worried looks about what he was saying. "I intentionally remembered things that I had forced myself to change in my own memories. Things that I couldn't fully think about when that instant of no time came in the Void. I remembered things I would forget again afterwards, just so that my expression would be horrified, to an extent that it was beyond believable but actually true. I knew it would make me lose it."

"I thought of these horrible things and needed to fly up in the sky out of sight of everyone where no one could hear me scream, and then I got the notification about the Subspace Devils. I had put my phone away and shattered my mind in the next second. But I didn't get the notification until I was that high in the sky… That was the truth I forged. The excuse I used to stay at Shiketsu after just leaving class to fly to Desusuta. I got Hazano sensei to let me leave when he noticed the PTSD attack I was having, in a way that would make it so I could return to Shiketsu and not be expelled because the reason I left had nothing to do with the Subspace Devils." Those at his sides stared at him with dropped jaws at the kind of mental loops he was suggesting he jumped through in order to make this real. "And the excuse that I came up with became the truth in my mind. I believed what I would come to tell the administrators so that it would be the most believable thing in the world, as unlikely a coincidence as it would appear to be…"

"It was the truth that I created, and which I believed, until Kotsumura asked me if I was being serious when I described my reasoning." Zach grit his teeth but cracked the right corner of his lip up the smallest amount. "When I explained myself, Kotsumura looked confused and he told me it was because he had seen me look at my phone before freaking out like I had. Kotsumura knew a truth that I had forgotten. If no one else knew except for me, then I could change my own reality and alter my memory, and that would become the new truth. It was what I did to the world as Death every day. How I changed history so that the lost year showed nothing but lies to the rest of the world. A veil of deceit I covered the globe in, to the point I could convince even myself of the lies I spun. But Kotsumura seeing what really happened shook me. I had broken my mind so easily. So naturally, because of the necessity, that I didn't realize how insane it was until I saw Kotsumura's expressions. The fact that he could not comprehend the severity of what was really going on for me to have believed it myself, to have forced myself into a PTSD state because I saw that notification and looked 100 steps ahead and knew what needed to be done… I knew the end goals. All of the victories. How to make it only a win and nothing bad to come from it, and I created the pathway for that to work."

"But that? That is beyond fucked. I could save all the people of Desusuta, and the heroes who would have lost their lives fighting Overlord, and all the people who the Subspace Devils would have hurt and killed after that day if Potaru had enabled any of them to escape. I could save everybody, and do so in a way that kept me from getting kicked out of hero school, and it still had negatives. Ones that I didn't accept until Kotsumura called me out. It was a perfect win," Zach said, but he shook his head at the idea of it. "But you don't get to have that kind of perfect win, without sacrificing something. And every time I fucked with my own head like that, I made it a more common and easier thing to do. And each time, it weakened the actual walls. Every time I got caught, a crack formed and I remembered that the person I was and all I was thinking about was limited. That I was in the middle of hampering my own thoughts. Something I hardly thought about but would remember in times like that. I had forgotten my past. I was forcefully forgetting it every moment in order to live a normal life again. In order to accomplish the various goals I had after returning that I knew I had no chance of accomplishing if my mind was plagued with the darkness of the past. I had to forget. And so I hurt myself even more. Which put everyone in much more danger than I wanted to accept."

"The kind of instability I felt led me to lose it in the middle of class one day. Midoriya had opened the floodgates, and I spent the entire day after that just reviving everyone. I had to fill my mind with pain to get it off Virginia and off the Tusukan Desert. I needed to forget, so I revived constantly to kill myself as many times as I could and force out the thoughts…"

Midoriya lowered his head and put his face in his hands. I'm sorry.

"And sitting in class the day after, I couldn't stop it from flowing through. I had spent every second since my conversation with Midoriya just reviving everyone I could. And then suddenly I was in school? I went from dying a couple hundred times, to sitting in a fucking classroom? That wasn't the environment to be able to push away those thoughts anymore. I couldn't focus on school. All I could focus on, were the things that had opened up and the memories I had long forgotten and never thought about. And while I'm sitting there thinking about the Army of Death's battles, my friends dying, killing so many people… How did I forget, that Himazuri was sitting right there?"

Zach sighed and he shook his head again at the foolishness of it. Kirishima looked interestedly at Zach as he had wondered how Zach was getting away with it for months when he had a mind-reader in his class. He lost interest just as fast though without needing Zach to explain it. After all he's been saying and what we saw in court, of course she kept quiet about it.

"Himazuri's, someone very close to me," Zach whispered. "Having her in my head has made it harder to revert. Knowing that she might notice the craziness if I completely broke it again, I had to remain Zach Sazaki…"

Zach's never been this open with us, but it's not like he wasn't trying to be the whole time he's been back, Ashido thought to herself while listening to Zach go on and on. The person he was this time was so much more open with all of us, despite hiding stuff from his past. He really wasn't hiding what he came back here to do. It's how I know he never had those big goals and aspirations we all thought he was hiding. No secret plan in the works like before the Lifebringer Incident. I knew for a long time, and I showed him I knew. I'm glad he feels he can tell me all of this, because I know that even though he's breaking down right here, he'll never let people see this side of him.

Because that's why he's back. Ashido smiled in a half-hearted way when he glanced her way again. You told me you came back to show that no matter how bad things get, someone can always come back from that. And it's even more amazing now that I know exactly what you're coming back from. I know you can't let yourself break down out there, and that's why you rushed home. To the one place where you can lose it and not have to worry about damaging the world. You know you need to keep it together for them, because everyone now knows just how much you had been through that they did not know about. Horrible things. Things that you needed to get away from the media before they could stop you and question you about it. Things, you needed to cry about in your room, even if just for one time.

"You know, the day I came back to U.A. I was about to leave," Zach started in a low and sad voice. He had to avert his gaze from Ashido who had come to see him that day and who he had lied to their entire talk. His eyes shifted towards Kirishima instead, "I almost left Japan. I was going to."

Midoriya lowered his gaze out in the hall as he imagined that night. He tried to focus only on the first part of the night before any of the other insanity had occurred, but Bakugo and Todoroki both looked his way and tried to imagine what it was that was going through Deku's mind. Zach continued though and everyone refocused on his voice, "Because a little while before that, I decided that Class A wasn't that important to me anymore. You always matter most, and Kotsumura shoved that in my face when I saved Sato. All the Shiketsu Class 1's reminded me that everyone else's lives mattered equally. They should have mattered even more than a hero's life."

Sato brought his right hand up to his forehead and ran it through his brown spiky hair. He grimaced deeply and had to look away from Zach's room as he heard his neighbor's shaky voice, "It, shattered my goals to hear that. I forced myself to care more about the big picture again than my own selfishness, and to ignore the feelings of my friends I didn't want to hurt because they were my friends. But I hadn't realized it yet," Zach whispered. His tone was frustrated but also full of understanding in this hindsight he looked back in. He had lowered his gaze when mentioning Sato, but he brought it back up and looked into Kirishima's eyes, "You were the only reason I'm here."

"I had a ton of reasons," Zach continued with a look back at Ashido. "But I could have looked for All For One, fought the League, fought Eziano, hid from Darling and all that, without coming back here. The main reason I came back to Japan really was for you. Because the biggest regrets in my life were Darling and what I did to Class A. To each one of you. Different, unique ways that I fucked you over for the rest of your lives, and I wanted to help you and repair the damage I had done… but it's more than that," Zach continued and Kirishima and Ashido both froze with their mouths open as they got ready to tell him how he did not need to worry about them.

"As much as that's my reason for coming," Zach's voice was softer and his eyes just looked down in front of his feet. "I also knew I had gone insane. Somewhere deep inside my mind, I knew I was mad, and I needed Class A to save me. My heroes… I had lost my mind, doing so many horrible things, and so maybe I wanted to be judged by you. Or to be forgiven. Or for you to just help me find my way back, because I was here but I wasn't. I was in Japan, but in a strange city in a strange school surrounded by strange people who didn't bat an eye to my actions that everyone in Class A would have been able to tell were strange from day 1 and call me out on. Instead, I just stayed insane. In a state of perpetual insanity where I truly believed in my lies enough to fool lie detectors like Norasaki. Living like that for so long while the people I wanted to help me were right there, but not doing anything?" Zach whispered that in a guilty way for saying it aloud knowing how it might make the two next to him feel. But he shook his head and finished anyway, "It just drove me even madder without me knowing."

"And as I got worse, people treated me worse, which made me even worse after that. Every single action I made on its own was good," Zach went on. "But put together saving that little girl on a tv show, and saving Sato, saving 206 people in one day, defeating the Subspace Devils, and nearly getting blown up by assassins, the world started to hate me." Zach paused and cracked a smile while sliding back up the wall and leaning his back onto it. "All those single actions that were not on their own bad, except maybe living in a regular apartment…" Zach's smile vanished and his face dropped into depression in an instant as he imagined Norita-san's face. "They added up," Zach continued in a dark voice.

"I stopped a missile from hitting the city of Yutapu, and people hated me for it. 'There wouldn't have needed to be anyone to stop the missile if Lifebringer wasn't targeted in the first place.' They would put each of my victories on me as if they were failures and that I was solely at fault. Then they added every villain incident I couldn't make it to, and every life I didn't revive, and every expression they saw that wasn't a cheerful smile which was hard to keep up as they blamed me for everything. Was I supposed to smile even as others called me a monster for smiling while their loved ones died? I didn't know. I don't know. I'm just… human. I can't handle that kind of negativity while every day dying for the people treating me like…"

Zach stopped himself. He stopped himself and looked to his left as he noticed the nervous look that covered Ashido's face at the way he was speaking. The exhaustion in his tone was even worse than on the roof of an apartment building where he had talked about feeling this way to her before. "It's my worst fear, Mina. That I'll get fed up with it. With their attitudes while all I do is feel pain. Nonstop. It's exhausting, and agonizing, and depressing, and I know they all see the person they think I'll turn into, but not one of them realizes they have to stop treating me like that already. Treating me like that, is what pushes me closer and closer to it. You can only handle someone telling you you're the bad guy so many times before you start to believe it yourself, and, I do believe it," Zach admitted. "So often I believed it, and I still acted the same way to keep helping people and make up for being the bad guy, but even those times they still just… And how long after you accept you're the villain can you keep helping people who hate you? I've become selfish, and the more selfish I was the more fear I felt of becoming a villain, but sometimes it's good to be selfish because without it you don't feel human."

"I started to act selfishly when I started caring about myself again, I think. And the worse I felt about everything, the closer I got to running away. I gave up on the Class A reasons I was here, because those were selfish reasons. Fixing our relationships? Helping each of you? How could that matter more than the lives of innocents I could be reviving right now?" Zach wondered. He wondered it in pain and then hissed, "And I could be reviving them. Innocent people who are dying right now. I could be saving their lives, and if I do… I don't know how long I'll last. Just living for pain, it's not human. You need to be selfish, you need to live your own life- I do."

"Because you need to care about yourself, at least a little, and I did not one bit for so long. While Death, I cared so little about myself that my own mind was just a weapon and a tool to be used for completing my goals for the sake of humanity. I barely felt alive." Zach spoke out in a breath that he gasped out with wide eyes as he thought about his mentality at the time. "And yet every time I got closer to getting back to who I once was, all those criticisms and all that hate started affecting me like it would any person, and so I tried to revert back to Death to get away from that pain but it's hard. The balance is impossible for me to find. The line of living my own life while still being a hero. The line where I need to do much more good to ever come close to making up for the horrible things I've done. How can I live a happy life, when I haven't made up for all of it yet? And in China, I couldn't figure it out. I tried. And I don't know if I was right or not for doing what I did. I'll never know…"

"And that's always one of the hardest things," Zach added, his eyes squinting as he mentioned it. "You never know, how many people you saved. That's no big deal to heroes who are just doing their jobs and rescuing people, saving them, smiling- but I needed to know." He seethed it and glared ahead in a darker way, "Not knowing if it was worth it, made everything I did so hard. Not knowing if killing someone really made a difference or saved lives… I don't know if killing Stain really saved anyone. I'll never know. I believed it would cause more damage to imprison him, and that harm would equate to villains being created and innocents being hurt and killed, but I didn't know. I never knew. It made every decision hurt that much more, because even though I believed so strongly in what I was doing, and I had so much evidence pointing to one outcome, I was doing bad things which were too hard to justify without actually seeing how things would have played out had I not done a thing."

"So when I was in China, I struggled every second I was there with the decisions I needed to make." Ashido and Kirishima had not heard much about what happened in China, but they had heard what Ectoplasm sensei thought about it. They knew that Zach's actions in China were used as evidence to point to him being Death. Zach continued on, "I could have done things my own way from the start. But I held off. I did things the right way. Then when I made a promise to save a woman I had already revived, I had to come up with a plan. A way to save her and still stay at U.A. afterwards, but I almost just decided 'fuck it.' If I had left though and did things on my own without going through proper channels, Nezu would have expelled me. Right away when Ectoplasm reported that I was gone…"

Midoriya's breathing picked up and he stared towards the doorway with wider eyes that Zach had thought this deeply into it. His eyes grew much wider as did his classmates' as they continued listening though. "…And the Chinese would have declared me a citizen. I would have received citizenship to any other country in the world if I wanted it, I'm sure of that. And 99% of countries would give me a pro license right away. Japan's the odd-one-out. Because they saw me at my worst. This country knew me at my worst, and at my best, and so they expect more from me."

"The Chinese love me though," Zach said. "They would have made me a Chinese hero in the instant that Nezu expelled me."

"That, doesn't make it alright," Kirishima started. Zach looked to him, and Kirishima shook his head and continued, "Doing things the wrong way, just because you know some people would accept it? It's like how you went to Korea on your own for that plane crash," Kirishima frowned at him. "And then Egypt. Just because you didn't get in trouble for that doesn't mean what you did was fine."

"I ignored the rules, but no one bothered to come after me for it because I succeeded," Zach countered. "I went above and beyond success to stop the incident, future incidents, and revive any of those already killed during it that I could. But just because no one made a big deal of it doesn't mean what I did was strictly legal, but you're wrong because it was fine if no one stopped me. So in China, if my actions were illegal then I would have made a big deal of it myself. I would have made it clear why I committed that illegal action, and that's what would have made them offer me the position as a Chinese hero. That action that got me kicked out of U.A. would get me citizenship and a pro license. The nation was in crisis and I was offering aid, but I couldn't act any longer if they didn't give me that status? Yeah, they would have done it in an instant. Without a Premier? With the person I had to ask being incapacitated from the virus already, so to deny me would be a death sentence for Yue Fei himself?"

Kirishima and Ashido gawked at him in shock at what he was suggesting. "If I couldn't act, they were dooming their nation. So of course they would have given it to me. It wouldn't have been hard for me to just stay there either. Help the country not only with the Sleepless virus but with the recovery efforts that are still ongoing today. And fighting crime as a hero instead of going to class, bringing more people back to life in a country where they appreciate… but I don't. I didn't do that, because getting expelled was the worst thing I could imagine." He lifted the right corner of his lip back up the smallest bit and flashed the two that partial smile, "Not being able to come back here, even just for a few weeks, hurt me as much as the thought of losing those people to the virus."

"Then again, I wasn't alright while I was in China," Zach added. He closed his eyes and his lips flattened back out, then twitched. His eyelids flickered while closed over his eyes. "Equating lives to my own happiness? That I even cared that the ADTF were watching me, looking for proof? That I cared about getting back to U.A. instead of just focusing on saving as many people as possible? It was selfish. People needed to see Lifebringer though. They needed Lifebringer to save them. That was how I could argue it to myself in a non-selfish way. And yet, I wasn't doing, fine. I… I needed to get out of the FLICC. I was searching for that reason. The woman I swore to save, who got me to make my move and leave to search for the Fabu, I was looking for her, wasn't I?" Zach whispered the question to himself as he pondered something that only happened a week ago.

"It just hurt, so much," Zach said in a shaking voice. His lips quivered at he brought it up. "Sleepless," he specified. "When I heard how it, melted people's insides. How the skin deteriorated. How, the body was in too much pain that it cut off the mind's consciousness so that the victims wouldn't feel the final days of shutdown- I knew. I knew how badly it was going to hurt. Pain, so much worse than any of those people felt. As I felt all that damage their bodies knocked them out for. As I felt every organ melt, and my entire body-" Zach's teeth chattered and he pulled his knees towards his chest and hugged both legs with his arms. "And I knew I had to do it. I had to die like that. I knew, I deserved it-"

"You didn't," Ashido gasped at him as she only now considered what had actually happened that week he was gone for. This just happened! It's not even all so far back!

"I did," Zach gasped back. "Because, because when Zeke died-" Zach bit down and then gasped in pain at the thought of it. "In the Mad Doctor's lab. He trapped us, and Zeke- his helmet was cracked. So when the Mad Doctor released his Avon gas into the room, I- I couldn't do anything for him," Zach's voice rose louder but was coming out as a shouted-whisper with his throat too dry and his eyes wide and filling with tears. "He reached at me, screaming and floundering about because the gas was getting in- oh, fuck- his eyes were boiling. He was drowning in his own lungs as they blistered and opened and filled with blood, as his eyes seared and popped, and blood came out of his ears and nose and skin melted- while he grabbed at me and pleaded for me to kill him. Just kill him," Zach's head was shaking back and forth and he brought his left arm up and pressed it against the top of his face. "And I was relieved," Zach gasped.

"I knew, I was the worst person who ever lived," Zach whispered in a higher-pitched voice. His tone cracked and he admitted while covering his eyes, "When I was glad that I couldn't bring him back again. I thought that, while I watched my comrade die unable to do a thing. I couldn't even kill him quicker with Death, because I had already revived him." Zach bowed his head more and slowly lowered his wet left sleeve from his eyes. "I should have shot him when it was clear we couldn't get him out. I should have… I should have…" Zeke ripped his helmet off in Zach's mind and he watched it again. He could see Zeke's face as he choked and died, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him, screaming at him to save him so that blood splashed out of his mouth and on Zach's visor mixed with all colors of puke and death.

"I was relieved that I couldn't bring him back again," Zach gasped out. "And I hate it but it's true, because I'm so afraid to die. Every time I get close to a body my heart lurches. I know the pain I'm about to feel. I know I'm about to feel myself die, and I voluntarily do it again, and again, and… It never, gets, any, easier." He was panting as he revealed that with spit coming out the corners of his mouth as his eyes filled with a haze and just shook in horror. Then his teeth suddenly clenched though, even while his eyes remained unfocused and staring forward in that glazed-over way. "And I felt like I deserved everything I went through in Gangwe because of how I felt when Zeke died. I knew, when I heard how they died, that it was my punishment." His lips pursed and shook as tears filled the corners of his eyes and then a line of water came down the right side of his face going right over the scar cutting below his eye.

"I knew I deserved everything that happened in China. All those deaths. And I died, thousands of times last week," Zach whispered. "And it still hurts. It hasn't stopped hurting, since Fundong… I remember it. The pain is there. Because I didn't want to bring back Zeke. My friend- And China hurt more than it had in… Sleepless? Dying from that, hurt more, than bringing someone back ever had- just one of them!" Zach's voice was getting shakier and his entire expression was breaking. "I couldn't focus on anything- I had to break my mind over and over to force myself to keep reviving because no one could do that to themselves. It hurt so much, so much that I was shitting myself, and crying- and I couldn't- I couldn't take it. And I flew away. I flew into space. And I thought to myself, that I could just go get lost."

The two who were feeling crushed hearing what Zach had gone through last week alone found themselves staring at him in much more shock at what he just said. "Wha-" Ashido breathed out.

"I removed my lungs, and I flew out of the atmosphere. And I thought about getting lost. How I wouldn't be able to find my way back. I tried to just go. Argued with myself not to think about it. I knew what thinking would do though, and I knew why I was telling myself to stop thinking and just fly. Fly far away. And it never would have worked anyway. Planets are much too bright, I should have realized. But I flew up into space and almost just shot away as fast I could because it was too much." Zach shook his head in a guilty way while admitting that shameful act aloud. "That's how much it hurt," he finally just said, explaining how far he had almost gone just to explain as best he could how much pain it had caused him. "Yet I flew back down there, because I knew they needed me. And I saved another thousand people even after that. Dying a thousand times, all of them as bad…"

"Sleepless hurt as much as it ever had before. No other way of dying had ever… Except-" Zach pursed his lips and lowered his head a little. "The only time that ever hurt more… I deserved it! Dying a thousand times in the most painful way I had died since, since Tsuyu... it was my fault."

"Since Tsuyu?" Kirishima whispered in an uneasy way.

"Was Tsu-chan really, that…"

Zach's eyes slammed shut and his teeth bared. "The pain I felt then was beyond anything I had ever felt before," Zach whispered in a voice like he suddenly recalled that pain and could imagine it now.

Midoriya glanced behind him and looked down the hallway. A few others outside his door also looked back anxiously as they saw Midoriya check, but they were glad Tsuyu was not there with them to hear this.

"…Something, snapped while I healed Tsuyu. Sorry about that." Those who had been in class with Zach the day after Kaminari's betrayal remembered the way he apologized to them after coming in. They could picture him during the betrayal too while he was over her body. It was a moment most of them had thought about many times during the year Zach was gone. It was what they thought about when they blamed themselves for not noticing Zach had lost it, since he had straight-up told them the day after. But he had looked and sounded fine. So no one had done a thing to stop him.

"What happened that day," Zach continued to his friends. "The pain was so real. It was too much," he admitted it quietly and as if revealing some huge secret that confused the two at his sides who looked at him oddly for saying it like that.

"For the first time, I was going to fail," Zach said. "Monoma had failed before and I had to step in. I knew there might be a time when I couldn't take it, and that was it. And my hand had lifted, and I was passing out from the pain and exhaustion, and I knew I couldn't save her. It was too painful. Too much that I couldn't voluntarily continue to do it. Not as I felt more pain than I ever had." Ashido and Kirishima's breathing got heavier next to him, but Zach was not stopping now. They were staring in much more fear as he said, "All the betrayal I felt, amplified by her own feelings that I felt. I could feel how people felt at the moment of death, and not even Airi had felt this pained when she killed herself. Tsuyu died worse than anyone I had ever seen before," he whispered in a voice that cracked with his eyes so full of tears. "And all that betrayal both of us felt, and the knowledge that Maye and Tsuyu, Ganji and Webb, they were all dead!"

"They weren't dead yet, but there was absolutely nothing I could do and they were all going to die," Zach gasped. The fact that he had known it in that moment made those listening to him feel all the more horrified as they tried to imagine how he had felt. "And every single cell in Tsuyu's body had been fried," Zach breathed. His head twitched and he added, "And her fear when he asked about fried frog, mixed with my fear of not being able to save her, or any of the others who I had just doomed- my failure for not finding the spy who had been right next to me! Even my mistakes as Kaminari took the ANTs, and he slipped up while fighting Shatterer and I never noticed, and I- ah- I couldn't- it was too- too much."

"And so," Zach whispered. His voice shifted for a moment and rose higher as he dipped his head down, "I lost my mind."

"Ahh," Ashido gasped out and then bit down on her bottom lip as she did not want him to stop now. Her hands balled in agony at her sides for not noticing it back then though.

Zach did not stop at the sound of her gasp of agony, "And all that pain I felt no longer mattered at all."

"I had found reason to live when Monoma brought me back. The desire to have a good life and live it, and in a moment I had to shatter that. You know what I was thinking while I brought her back?"

"All the horrible things Kaminari had done, and the terrible things I had done, I pushed them away as I started to laugh. As my mind broke and I continued to revive her through the moment where it hurt too much to keep going, something impossible that I did anyway- I needed to break my head in order to save her. It happened subconsciously. Because I didn't deserve anything anymore. I knew all those people I cared about were going to die because of me," Zach growled it but his lips were cracked up still despite his tone. His face looked maddened and his friends felt destroyed to look at that expression that they recognized, "All I could think about was how I was going to make the world a better place, and save more people, do as much good as possible to not let the darkness take over- and that was insane! I was in more pain than ever, and I needed to think like that, to just turn into… I don't know. I knew I was mad though. Even as I thought about doing all that good, I knew I was in the middle of losing it. The fact that I was thinking stuff like that, about how I would be good? While Kaminari was going out and killing the people I loved and who I had betrayed to the League of Villains?"

"I knew I was a monster who had killed all my friends, my mentor, his family, and a part of me also knew in that moment that I wasn't going to be able to stay at U.A., and that meant I was going to have to give up the last of my friends. I was going to lose Momo, and everything, all just to fix this. And I would never be able to fix it, and that madness that took over in the understanding that nothing could ever make up for it… and the pain. The pain was like nothing I had ever felt before or would feel again, until bringing multiple Sleepless patients back at the same time. Because it wasn't the pain those people felt. It was the pain their bodies would have felt if they were conscious. And even more because of the rapid degeneration post-mortem. It was every cell in their bodies, just like Tsu's. A disease that made me feel like I was melting, and I died a thousand deaths… thousands of deaths too many, but I accepted them because of that relief I felt when Zeke died, knowing that it was Zeke's second death and I didn't have to feel that pain again."

"But I still think Tsuyu was probably worse. In a moment of insanity and yet clarity. Calm thoughts as I burst out with laughter in more pain than I had ever felt before. All the betrayal we felt, my own blood loss and physical wounds from fighting Toga, mixed with my heart being pierced and then every cell of my body burning as I was electrocuted- fried, and slowly. Not an instant death like Tsuyu got. But cooking. My entire being was on fire as I repaired every cell inside her. And it was worse than burning to death because it was every cell, inside and out, and my mind-"

Zach sighed and breathed in and out deep breaths for a few seconds. He calmed himself down and then said in a softer voice, "And that same night when I kicked Momo out of my room, I started preparing. I knew Kaminari was too powerful and that I either needed to kill many creatures before facing him or take Trigger to ensure my victory. Against a large group I knew there'd be a chance I could screw up though, because everyone needs help. I had people who could help me though. Even though I knew Ganji was already dead that very night, and that Webb was likely going to die as well… I knew Aunt Maye and Tsura were dead from that first night, but I didn't do anything to protect them because I felt the way to make them safest was to leave them completely out of my life and show that I didn't even care enough to try and save them. I never told Kaminari anything other than how I was done involving them with my life, how I'd cut off ties and was through… but Kaminari killed them. All the anti-heroes. My remaining family…"

Kirishima hesitated for a moment but Zach took too long of a pause. "What about those three who you did have help you?" Zach looked next to him at the spiky-haired redhead who was hurting from hearing all this but also needed to know the answer to this question. It had bothered him for so long.

"Gentle and La Brava I met solely by chance one day. I didn't want to fight them, even though the two were planning on recording a battle with me when I chased them down. They had robbed a bank, you see?" Zach mentioned as if explaining why he had to chase them down, though the other two were in shock as to what he was even talking about. "I didn't care enough to stop them though. They hadn't hurt anyone. The money was insured. They did it to expose negligence and abuse by the bankers on their patrons. It just, wasn't very villainous in my eyes."

He still should have done something about it, Todoroki thought frustratedly in the hallway in disagreement for what Zach was saying.

Bakugo was still just clenching his fists in anger at himself for what he was thinking about only a couple minutes ago. I was right. No one in their right mind could have done it. How didn't I notice?! He was still focused on what Zach said of how badly Tsuyu's death had messed with his mind, but he tried to focus up on the current conversation to get his mind off it.

"Instead of fighting them," Zach continued. "I told them how they could be more popular. It wasn't through more chivalrous crimes but by stopping villains."

"And then those videos played during the Sports Festival," Zach said with a small smile. "And Principal Nezu reported running into the Gentle Criminal and La Brava fleeing from the room where a defeated Hackerman was. I knew that they had put the scene of me defying Shigaraki up on the screens when everyone needed to hear it… when I needed to, most of all." Zach added that and the others thought of how Zach on that stage had yelled out the same line he had in defiance on the videos. "I. AM. LIFEBRINGER!"

"Sounds like you really made an impression on them," Ashido whispered in a soft way back at Zach who started to turn to her with a small smile of his own.

"And Darling?" Kirishima asked.

Zach froze and he lowered his gaze down. Then he turned back towards the redhead who questioned him about the girl he did not doubt Zach cared about. He still needed to know though, "Who was she?"

"A girl who, I had brought back to life while I was with the villains. Airi, had killed herself," Zach admitted.

Those in the hall who had never heard Zach talk much about this girl listened closely to him. They had always wondered what he had done which many of them had considered might be the worst thing, though they were too confused by it to feel strongly about it any which way. "I brought her with me because I had been immature," Zach continued. "Life was finally going well for me, and she confused me, scared me. She was a problem I could not just defeat using the offensive capabilities of Death. Once I figured out that I could use my Quirk to knock people out and not kill them, I really believed that I could do anything. Stop any villain. Fix any problem the world faced. I was ready to do it all, but this wasn't something I could push with a report. It wasn't anything I had experience dealing with before, and it terrified me to imagine that reviving someone had possibly caused this insanity."

"I didn't want to betray her trust by turning her in to the police for stalking me. Not when she believed that I cared so much about her- and I did," Zach added. He said that firmly while looking at Kirishima, though he looked away after a moment as he did not need to explain himself to Kirishima as much as he just needed to say these things aloud. He looked in front of him and whispered, "As much as I was put off by her when she approached me, the first time I met her I recognized who she was. And when she told me how much she loved me… from that point forward I think there was nothing that could have stopped me from protecting her."

"I took her with me not because I needed her help, but because she still needed mine and I wouldn't leave her alone here. And I knew that once I sprung a trap on Kaminari and Kurogiri that I would never be allowed to stay in Japan." Zach frowned, and then he admitted, "My computer exploding, was my excuse to explain injuries I got fighting drug dealers with Darling so I could get Trigger." Zach's friends frowned as they all imagined how their electronics were replaced and they all became paranoid about Kaminari being in their computers. "I fought them because they tried to sell me bad shit, and I couldn't arrest them but was still mad about their criminal dealings and what they attempted which could have killed me. So I had to make sure they kept their mouths shut. It was the most terrifying I'd been up until that point, with the exception of what I did to the Hunter."

"I contacted the Hunter while I was out at that deal, and I told him that if word of that incident were to get out to the public and I was to get caught for it, to kill all three of the dealers. I knew they were going to keep quiet when they heard me say that." Ashido shivered as she thought about Zach from back then doing the things he was describing. Kirishima just imagined Zach sneaking out of some dark alley and making up a story about hallucinating Kaminari in his paranoia that none of them had doubted at the time. "Once I had forced them to give me a good vial of Trigger from their private stash, the rest of which I smashed, I finished beating them and then left with Darling."

"She wrapped my wounds with bandages, and we bounced ideas off each other for how to explain away my injuries. She was smart. Amazing," Zach said nostalgically as he thought of them in those first days they really spent together. "She had no one," Zach whispered. "And it was while she wrapped my arms that I felt for the first time since Kaminari's betrayal that I could trust completely. Class A were still the people I cared about more than anything, but this was instinct. I knew it was impossible for me to trust anyone completely ever again, and I did not tell Darling for a long time and even continued to doubt her on occasion, but in that moment a part of me knew that I never needed to doubt her intentions."

"Even though I was going to leave U.A. and abandon the last people who cared about me, I would not be truly alone. Even on the run I knew that if she was there I really would have someone who loved me, unconditionally… And it was horrible, because I felt she was doing it out of obligation or because my Quirk had made her feel this need to please me due to the revival, or something. But I also knew that until I could figure that out and fix it, she would be by my side, as long as I could protect her." He paused for a moment and his look got darker and also more afraid. "The terror when that Nomu grabbed her in Enudora was so powerful," he said quietly. "Right in the middle of that chaos I felt such terror, and the two of us still weren't that close yet. Nowhere near as close as we would become. She was, my partner in crime." His lips lifted up into a smile as he joked about it like that, because it was a great way to describe her.

"She survived with me through the worst days," Zach said. His smile was gone now. "The two of us fought on every corner of the world. She followed me to more battles than anyone else. Saw more action than any of our other comrades. And somehow, both of us on our second lives, managed to survive that war where 187 others died. Darling stood at my side in King's Russian stronghold. We faced down the leader of the League of Shadows together. Fought side by side and defeated the most powerful man in the world, together. Nearly raped by pirates in Somalia. Nearly killed during the final charge against the Capos. She was fearless. And when we were dragged into the internet through the screen, our minds merged together and we felt what each other felt at the deepest levels. Inside the web dodging meme tornadoes and surfing a stream of electronic letters, our bodies turned to data and our minds pulled together from Docy's- Cody's Quirk. No leprechaun, he was just a kid trapped inside the machine. His Quirk locking him away in the web from which he could never escape…"

Zach brought his right hand up to his forehead and pressed his palm into his skull forcefully. "I told him that I would do whatever I could to get him out. But I left, and he was still stuck in the computer. I failed to save him, even though he had fought with me and put his life on the line like any other comrade. He was younger than me. The only younger soldier I let fight… And I couldn't save him. He may not have died, but-" Zach clenched his teeth and snapped at himself, "But I never saved him either."

Everything he says hurts me, Ashido thought. I know he never told us before though because he didn't want to burden us with his sorrows. So I have to sit here and make sure he knows I can take it all. I need to help him for once.

"I could barely save any of them," Zach whispered. "I tried, but- but I failed. And, and it's been hard, being back here and…"

Zach closed his eyes then squeezed them tighter shut as he said, "Hyper was a great soldier. He was the kind of guy you needed in an army. Someone, to lighten the mood at all times. He was annoying, but I loved him like the rest. He was my friend. And he was an idiot," Zach said with a laugh even though his face was covered in despair and his eyes remained closed. "Always having to bail him out of trouble like that," Zach added. "The only one to ever get captured by a hero, but I couldn't blame Hyper for it. I told him not to worry about it. He was up against Midoriya after all, it wasn't his fault." Zach laughed again at the idea of it, though his head just bowed farther and his eyes opened back up partially only for tears to fall from them.

Midoriya brought his right hand to his chest and squeezed while others glanced towards him then quickly looked away. Zach laughed but it was in pain, as he said in his open room, "Hyper was like a child. It was his Quirk's fault, Adrenaline. He bounced off the walls and no one could ever deal with him before, but that was the kind of person I was looking for. Quirks that really messed with people- cursed, Quirks. He was annoying and out of control, but he was strong. He was a fighter who had escaped the people who went after him for his blood. He cared about his friends. He was- he was an idiot. Running into that goddamned explosion and, and doing the same thing again…" Zach gripped at his head with his left hand.

Ashido's face scrunched up as she imagined what he meant by saying that. She flinched though as Zach quickly snapped that left arm down while looking at her, "And Hyper saved all your lives. Not, not just by fighting with me. He saved all of you. You specifically," Zach said, looking back and forth from Ashido to Kirishima who gained a much more uneasy expression at the way Zach said that. "No one will ever know, but you would be dead if it weren't for him. The day he died, was getting information that directly saved your lives. And, and I had to sit there and listen as Midoriya called him crazy-" Zach's lips trembled and he had to close his mouth for a moment to instead suck a deep breath in through his nose, only to start coughing as it was too hard. "The 'insane' Army of Death he kept insulting in front of me-" Zach's teeth ground so much harder while the boy out in the hallway brought his other hand to his chest now and squeezed too.

"You shouldn't speak ill of the dead." Midoriya gagged as he imagined how he heard that line and instantly just thought about arresting Zach over his admission of guilt. After hiding it for so long, he just couldn't take it anymore when I kept calling- ahhh- AHHH! I shouldn't have, talked so carelessly.

Zach was grinding his teeth so hard, but his eyes shifted to the right and he froze for a moment at the look of the guilt and pain already on Kirishima's face. He couldn't keep himself from saying it though. "And waking up in that hospital room," Zach hissed. "And the first thing I had to listen to was you calling them all, pathetic, terrorists-" Zach was so mad as he said it, seething the words through his teeth in agony while Kirishima bowed his head and then curled his right hand over his eyes that shadowed over as he thought about it. He felt like the worst person in the whole world as Zach whispered at him, "All those people who died in my arms like Hyper. My friends, the people I loved more than anything- as much as anyone in Class A. I loved them as much as Class A," Zach repeated. He said it as if trying to get through to him just how important those people had been, which made a second vice start gripping on Kirishima's heart to hear.

Zach's using us as the comparison because that comes without question. Just a fact that he doesn't feel like he needs to explain, Kirishima thought in realization to how Zach worded what he just said without going any deeper into it.

Sero lifted his head back up outside the doorway and tilted it back on the wall closest to the door than anyone else. Just like Ashido on Zach's left side, what Zach said was something Sero had not doubted in a long time. Aoyama stared towards Zach's open door in shock though. And then that shock turned to regret as he imagined all the times his classmates had left to visit Zach over the past months where he had come up with excuses not to go with them. Midoriya lifted one of his hands from his chest to cover his face instead next to Aoyama, while Sato felt similarly to Aoyama and just gawked towards Zach's door at the way his friend described how much he cared for his fallen comrades.

"And Hyper, he never- he never made it to the Battle of 6 Armies. The world loop wasn't over, and we were fighting together in Vietnam, and he got shot in such a stupid-" Zach bit down and he clenched his eyes shut again. "I was right there. And I couldn't save him. He died so scared. In panic, knowing it was coming again. He was begging me to kill him, to make it mean something at least but, but my Quirk doesn't work like that. Not on the second…" Zach shook his head then squinted his eyes back open. "I didn't blame Midoriya for it, and I didn't blame you either, even though it hurt when you said those things about them in the hospital that day," Zach whispered to Kirishima. "Of course that's how people felt, when I had spent all my time trying to make them feel that way."

Kirishima could hear himself saying the words in his own head. "Pathetic… Terrorists." He didn't feel he had the right to cry even as he wanted to for what he said that he felt so guilty about now. Zach reacted so strongly then even while out of his mind, even while pretending… That's how broken he was from losing them all, and I called them cowards right to his face. I just watched as those men and women- the very opposite of cowards! They faced off against thousands of enemies and won. "I was wrong," Kirishima whispered in response to all Zach was saying.

"Yeah," Zach just agreed. He looked towards the windows of his room and then said in a low voice, "Terrorism was the farthest thing from what I was doing. The state of the world was truly on the verge of chaos for months. So many times I came between villains and their attempts to collapse the hero society we live in. But it wasn't until February that it got out of control. The takedown of Zolo and Turbo, consolidated more power directly under King. The reveal of the existence of the League of Shadows meant that King could act in the light. It meant he had to, because so many of his corrupted government contacts were revealed. There was no longer any reason to hide. Destroying their headquarters did not cripple him though. King, was far too powerful."

"And in February, King had put out hits on heroes all over the world. The killing of heroes became something sponsored by the most influential villain there was. And when I took down Bolivar, the Pueblos fell in line directly behind King because they were already prepared for it. Bolivar told me when I hunted him down through the Amazon as he ran from safehouse to safehouse until I finally caught him. He knew that his people were ready to get behind King. King was already the most powerful, but he now had control over the entire villain world. Hunting down heroes in broad daylight. Setting traps for them in different countries. Making smaller villain incidents just to come out and massacre the responding heroes, using the tactics of the fallen Stain Cult but with the experience of the League of Shadows and the hindsight to see what had gotten Faith caught. The CHAF formed as a huge international force of heroes like the ADTF, and they could get in King's way, so he had them massacred. He had Impundulu bomb the CHAF, and he descended Africa into chaos like I had been trying to prevent that whole time."

"I was too slow, and dozens of countries lost their best heroes. Lower level villains took power. They took cities. Ransacked them, raped, kidnapped children, murdered hundreds- thousands of people!" Zach's teeth slid back and forth together as he hissed his anger at a time in the war that it sounded like he was losing the fight. "The battles in Africa were the hardest that month. I had always had the hero support before. I knew that we could call them in if needed, and the villains I was fighting were quicker to run when the threat of heroes also being on their way lingered over their heads. But with all the heroes dead, I was on my own. We were on our own."

Zach's look got so far away as he started talking in a more intense tone than his friends had been listening to for most of this. The emotional outbursts dimmed and his expression got harder, more focused, and it made the two next to him stare at that look on his face that did not look like the friend they knew before he left or who he had been acting like since he got out of Tartaros. The intensity in his eyes reminded them of something beyond the fear or pity they felt, beyond the awe or sadness. The two who could see his face watched as Zach's expression turned into Death's, and it did not even look like he noticed it happened as he just continued speaking without stop.

"…No one else was fast enough to get there. The immediate response that these nations needed. King had attacked every country at once, other than Japan. Endeavor needed to deal with the Radians after Nara though. That international force of heroes had been created but they weren't there to help me. International responses would arrive too late, every time. So I got there faster. I needed to. Too many people were dying!" Zach grit his teeth then glared across his room at the pictures of destruction on his wall that reminded him of blood-soaked deserts and burning cities. "I was moving so much faster already. Even before the Pit-" Zach cut himself off and sucked in a sharp breath through anger-clenched teeth.

"I didn't have the strength I have now," Zach continued, "but I was fighting that hard anyway. Fighting as if I could go on forever. And so when I found myself in Rakat, between the foreign heroes who had come to stop the international incident at Kwunkai, and the villains who were still bombing the city even hours after my forces had arrived and started fighting and helping with the evacuations…"

"You were in Kwunkai?" Kirishima asked in shock.

"I was always there," Zach replied. His response was curt and made Kirishima stare at him with even wider eyes. Zach responded to the question as if it was a dumb question to be asked and one that Kirishima should not have been in shock about in the first place. "I was the first response in that city. A violent showdown between the attacking villains and us. And villain groups inside the city took advantage of the bombings to make their own moves. Attacking the remaining hero agencies. Killing cops in the street who were trying to help with evacs. I went in there, after a string of victories. After just winning a battle in neighboring Ahngorga. And I was tired. I fought though. We fought to minimize the damage and save everyone we could."

"I had no Death left," Zach went on. "International heroes were arriving. I couldn't revive anymore. We were getting caught between enemies both heroes and villains. It was time to escape to the rendezvous. I, hid my armor, and I stole some clothes off a drying line to slip away in…" Zach was slowing down in his story. His eyes were still focused but they lowered down to the floor in front of his feet for a moment. "I tried to blend in with an evacuating crowd, but a massive explosion pushed us back. I had to find a new route. I had to stay hidden, because the heroes could get me… Why was I fucking focused on the heroes?" Zach muttered darkly.

Regret flashed over his face but he shook it off and then continued in a furiously dark tone, "I should have noticed that the guy I saw in the alleys of Kwunkai had recognized me. He stared, but he called out like he knew a better path than where I was running… The way that guy smirked at me," Zach growled, but his voice was shaken a bit as he mentioned it. Ashido gulped and looked more nervously at Zach while Kirishima got a much more confused expression at what Zach was saying. "…Right before I felt the thud on the back of my head, and I was knocked out."

Zach closed his eyes, his head bowed, and a low growl came out of the back of his throat. He breathed heavily where he sat on his floor. "You fucking fool," Zach snarled, seemingly at himself. He winced though after saying it, his eyes clenching shut harder before opening slowly with a slow rise of his head. "I had been moving faster and faster. I put myself in that position, and I wasn't being careful, and- and when I woke up there, in a cage…" the top of Zach's head pushed forward and his nostrils flared at how he was continuing.

Sweat covered Kirishima and Ashido's faces though. They stared at their friend who spoke in the darkest voice, "Waking up in chains, my hands bound behind my back to a wooden post. Naked. Surrounded by others in chains, in cages. And seconds after my eyes opened, Umbuju gave me a taste. A man kneeling outside of my cell, had his head blown apart by the collar. The same one I could feel around my own neck," Zach rolled his head and pushed his chin down, then he brought his left hand up and scratched at the reddened skin on the left side of his throat. "Rrrrrrrrrr… Fucking savages," Zach's seething voice was rough for those outside the door listening to this. Some who had never heard anything about the Pit were staring towards his room in utter disbelief at what Zach was getting at now, while Midoriya and Bakugo, and Sero bowing his head right next to Zach's door, gave it away to the others that they had known about this place and this was something real.

Floors down below Zach, Jirou leaned back at the head of her bed and stared up at her ceiling with her eyes wider as she questioned pulling the earphone jacks from the wall. Her teeth clenched in anger for a second and then parted as she started taking much deeper breaths with an anxious look over her face at what she was hearing.

"Time after time I was thrown in that arena. Forced to murder the other slaves. And I was never given a weapon like they were. Forced to use my bare hands, or to disarm them and use their weapons against them. I- I knew I just had to hold out until my forces arrived. I knew they would be there soon… But it wasn't fast enough." Zach's lips pulled farther apart showing more of his bared teeth, but Ashido and Kirishima each looked up from his twisting lips to his eyes instead. His irises bled full of red and it spilled into the whites of his eyes. Blackness surrounded those whites while the top half of his face shadowed over in an unnatural way more than just from his bangs. "And then those two put themselves in my path. Those fucking assassins, butchered the other two competitors of the five in that round, that Royale. And for the first time ever, I wanted to kill. I never wanted to kill anyone more than those two who put themselves in the Pit solely to kill me. Who chose to be slaves. Who came to a place that was torture and terror for the rest of us, to play a fucking game?!"

Zach's teeth ground back and forth, his jaw making grinding sounds as his teeth got caught on each other from how hard his jaw was clenching. His head cocked to the right while his fists clenched furiously at his sides. "Ahhhggghhh rrrgghhh- The first underestimated me far too much. Plunging his sword deep through me," Zach moved his right hand to just below his left shoulder and grazed over the spot he was impaled. "And as he buried it to the hilt, I leaned forward and I ripped his fucking throat out with my teeth."

Ashido pulled her head back. The visceral reaction was something she could not hold back even if she tried.

"I tore a man's throat out with my bare teeth, CHA- RA!" Kirishima thought of Zach screaming it at him in their fight, but his eyes still shook as he thought of the setting in which Zach had done that. He had doubted it was even real, questioning if maybe Zach was making some kind of metaphor, or something.

"But the other of Eziano's sons," Zach snarled. The way he continued made the two sitting there stare with much wider eyes while most of those in the hall dropped their jaws too. Only Midoriya gulped as he thought of the way Zach had taunted the leader of the assassins. "He took me more seriously. The other of the Twin Assassinos who had tried to kill All Might on the day of the SFI. Eziano's son who had come to the Pit to kill me. With his war hammer that he was a master with, just as the other had been with his rapier. I can remember the crowds cheering out as that rapier pierced my body. And I remember their cheers cutting off. For the first time, I killed and the cheers stopped."

"I think," he seemed to ponder. "Umbuju, and the rest of them, they all thought that that was the Royale that would take me. That I would die that day. They wanted to get rid of me, and they thought they had it, and the cheers that always rang out whenever I killed fell silent instead as they watched me fight with the intent to kill. I always held back. I always tried to let the others live. I screamed at the other gladiators not to fight me. But not that day. That day, I turned on the other one. And we fought to the death, brutally. They wanted to see bloodshed but there were no cheers as I took him apart. Ripping him to pieces- limb from limb- gutting him!"

"Zach!" Ashido yelled.

Zach froze. The red in his eyes faded and white came back to them instead. His breathing was deep for a few seconds but steadied out and his eyes clenched shut as he realized how he was just talking. That was dumb. Why do I do this? They'll never forget that. Twenty years from now, they'll still remember that moment. I'm an idiot. Zach sighed and he brought his right hand up to his forehead to rub back and forth for a few seconds more.

Jirou removed her earphone jacks from the wall. What the hell was that? She shivered at the voice she had just heard upstairs. They're all just sitting there as he tells them everything? Not everything! Just what he wants to… why would he "want" to say that? She grimaced at the question that had no answer. If he didn't want to say it though, why did, he? He got tried as Death and now can't get tried for it again. That's, just part of his plan, isn't it? No one else is even thinking about it anymore. I thought I was wrong because he would be going back to Tartaros, but he got everyone! He, tricked us… Didn't he? Jirou shook her head and she got up from her bed. Listening to Zach has never gotten me any relief. I need to think clearly, Jirou walked towards her drum set and picked up her sticks.

She wanted to just start playing right away and get her mind off it, and yet as she reached for her sheet music she saw her right hand shaking in front of her. "…Yet before long, Sazaki would stage a revolt with the other gladiators in the Pit. Most of the villains refused to speak on him or claimed he was not there at all, though some who initially claimed that cracked under pressure and fear to reveal that Lifebringer had been the Champion of the Pit. That he had won fight after fight against other gladiators he was forced to kill, until he finally rose up and killed those who had put him there." Jirou could hear Lemillion talking about the place that Zach was describing when she started listening in upstairs. She heard Lemillion talking about someplace that she had never imagined could exist in their world, and yet she could also see the pictures of the place in its destroyed state and all the corpses that littered the area when Zach was finished with it. And she could imagine the pictures of the underground cells too, where there were discarded collars inside of the empty cages…

"That's what the red marks on his neck are from… He butchered the fucks who put it on him…" Bakugo knew. He's up there right now. Listening out in the hall with the others whose heart rates are all through the roof. He fought Zach so hard the other day! So why is he- "Are you just here so you can arrest Zach?" Jirou lifted up her drumsticks and started slamming them down on her drums, drowning out the confused and gut-wrenching thoughts filling her head.

After Ashido snapped Zach out of the enraged state he had been in, his eyes lowered sadly and he kept from looking at the two at his sides who he could still partially see in his peripheral vision. "Sorry," Zach apologized after thinking about how they would never forget that. "I know, I get angry sometimes, but that's because it doesn't feel as bad as thinking about it without the anger." Zach whispered this softer to them and tried to keep from getting angry at all now, which left only room for waves of crushing guilt and sadness. "Because in that case, I'd remember… just how terrifying it was watching that man's head explode."

"Knowing that my head could blow at any time. At the whims of my captors," Zach continued in a low voice. "I knew that I had a higher bounty on my head for capturing me alive. I had known that villains were offering so much to capture me alive, but I thought it was so they could just torture me to death or make some big deal of it. I was going to die fighting anyway so it didn't bother me. And when I woke up I still thought I was dead. But when I saw that guy's head explode, I was scared," he admitted. "I didn't want to die," he whispered out quickly and like it was a secret. "And I didn't want the choice of dying or not in my own hands. Because I had to do whatever I could to stop it, but not anything, but… or maybe, anything? I don't know."

"I didn't think I would," Zach gasped in a hoarser tone. "I didn't think I could do what they wanted me to, but I didn't know. I didn't know until I was in that arena and getting rushed at by a man about to kill me just so he could survive. I wanted to live too," Zach said as if confessing. He said it regretfully and then lowered his eyes more, "I still, want to live… Despite everything, I think I really want to, live. Really live."

"Too many of my friends died to save me. Friends who wanted to live long lives. They wanted to get out of the war, one day, and raise families. Live in the new, safer world we had made. And I know that they would want me to live too." Zach's expression lifted a small amount. His lips flattened back out and he nodded while closing his eyes shut for a moment. It's not just Webb and Ganji, and Ms. Calico and the others who I had to forgive myself for. Cee, you were right. If I don't forgive myself, Kaminari wins. There's so much I would need to forgive myself for, and I can't just make it all better instantly. But you all followed me knowing it might cost your lives. It can hurt me, without it keeping me from living. I can believe that.

"187 of them," Zach whispered. His voice sounded stronger even in such a low volume though. "Fighting for what was right. Fighting in a war, rather than as heroes. Many of them couldn't make it as heroes. Hero-school dropouts. Either they couldn't live up to the quality demanded of them, or maybe they couldn't handle the rules, or they couldn't afford it sometimes. They still wanted to do good though. Some were in jobs that helped people outside of hero work. Others were vigilantes acting outside of the law. A few were villains, in their past life. But most- within those groups as well as just the victims who would join me too- though they all were victims, because most of them had 'cursed' Quirks. Whether it was their mutations, or Quirks that made it too hard for them to fit in, Quirks that were too dangerous or ones that were envied too much. So many of my forces, had grown up in a world that punished them for nothing more than the Quirk they were born with. A world that was not prepared to handle them. A world still unprepared to handle too many of the Quirks that we find already exist."

"And you pushed your report, to make sure that that didn't happen anymore," Ashido started to him with more of a smile on her face now as he talked about this.

"No," Zach countered her. "I mean, I wanted to- in some ways I did." He looked somewhat frustrated by the way she worded it, though he became more unsure himself while responding. "I couldn't influence elections. I believed that my way was right, but democracy is also right. I couldn't force those views on people. All I could do, was ensure that if the change came that it would not be manipulated and twisted by negative powers in order to make those positive changes into something that could discourage others from following in kind. The change would have been much slower if I didn't keep back the vultures trying to use my policies for their own political or monetary gain." His voice started to get angrier, and Ashido instantly squeezed on his left knee this time just from the tone and diction of what he was saying.

Zach quelled the anger from thinking about those early instances where he watched changes resembling his report used to hurt innocent people. By quelling those feelings though, he found himself leaning backwards and thinking even more on the policies themselves than the practical implementation that he was just getting to. "My friends all had those kinds of Quirks. Jenny, used to get made fun of when we were younger. She was shy, and easy to embarrass, and when she got embarrassed her face would turn pink. When attention would be brought to it then it would get even pinker, but there were other colors too. If she got picked on and felt bad about it, they could tell, and they'd make fun of her for getting upset and she could not even deny it. They'd tell her not to be so emotional. It was just mean. Not being able to hide how you're feeling makes it hard to have the same kind of relationships other people had. At least, that's what she told me when we were younger."

"But I told her she was just hanging with the wrong people then. If them knowing how she was feeling made them uncomfortable, then they were just bad friends. It had nothing to do with her Quirk," Zach's lips were curled down as he said all this. "Mark," Zach continued on and shifted his mind from the girl he was imagining too much that he started to hear her screaming in his head. "Had accidentally killed one of his classmates back in hero school, when he realized that his Water Control was really Liquid Control and could also affect blood too. And Darling, was made fun of far worse than Jenny ever was for her Quirk. Dar- Airi, never had the kind of friend that I was to Jenny. No one to stand up for her, and she didn't have the amazing family that Jenny had, and I don't know if it was just because of her Quirk or if they would have made fun of her anyway. But they did make fun of her for her Quirk. And she thought of it as a curse. Like so many of them did. Cursed for how weak their Quirks were, or how strange, or how deadly, how dangerous."

Zach's face scrunched up and he stopped himself. Why can I talk about it to the Shiketsu's but find it so hard here? Am I worried they'll tell me I'm wrong? I know I'm not though. I should convince them, rather than try hiding it just for that. "And Kaminari," Zach whispered. His voice cracked as he brought it up. It was easier to talk to them about it, Zach realized. Because they didn't know him. They didn't care. Not like you do. Should I stop- I don't want to. "After it happened, I wouldn't accept the old Kaminari as ever being real," Zach whispered.

Why are you bringing him up now? Kirishima thought frustratedly. He said nothing though, as he wished he would have been there for Zach to talk to about this years ago anyway.

Bakugo's expression got much darker out in the hallway though. He thought of the last time he had seen Raijin, and it made his fists ball in fury at the thought of Indago's falling body. Even he gained a more confused look though and gazed back semi-interestedly towards Zach's room. "…but I've long since realized I was wrong about that."

"I'll never call Kaminari by 'Raijin.' I never have," Zach added. Kirishima froze and looked at Zach oddly as he wondered back on if that was true. A couple who were listening in had noticed that though. Ashido's eyes widened huge as she thought about Zach being confronted by reporters soon after Kaminari's betrayal. How even back then he had called "Kaminari" the one who was his nemesis and put him through everything. Zach continued, "I've realized, that Kaminari was just like me. In how cursed his Quirk was. As a kid he blocked off some of the good parts of his brain when he tested out controlling his mind, then the bad parts of his mind told him to block more, and those bad parts were never going to just accept his full mind again."

He rose his voice louder, "And when I shout about how I think the world is good, how all I want to do is make it more beautiful than it already is, how I believe humanity is good! Kaminari doesn't make me falter, because I know! Kaminari's just like me! He was just a kid," Zach snapped, panting after calling that out and relating himself to someone all of the others hated way too much to agree with. "He was a kid who didn't know how to use his Quirk, because no one was training him! Because no one thought it was necessary, and they made a supervillain with these stupid fucking rules." Zach lowered his head and he gripped his forehead with his left hand, his eyes shaking and his face devastated as he said it aloud to others in Class A who Kaminari had betrayed.

Kirishima kept frowning, but he bit down harder and harder with his sharp teeth. That doesn't mean- You can't excuse what he- Kirishima's fists balled in rage and then he slammed his eyes shut as he imagined his friend in the hero licensing exam fighting at his side.

It's not just Zach plagued by the rules that existed, even in the time of All Might, Ashido thought. Society was never perfect! Going back to before the Age of Villains, wouldn't mean everything is alright. Not if it could do this- Ashido closed her eyes and winced as Zach continued.

"I killed my own mother with my Quirk, the same time that Kaminari was destroying his own mind without realizing what he was doing. Ahhhh," Zach wheezed out a long breath after saying that aloud. "Kaminari was, never taught how to use his Quirk, because no one ever tried training him and explaining the ways his Quirk could be used. And they didn't, because admittedly we're still in the early days of Quirks, or at least the early days of scientific comprehension of them. If we continue to ignore Drac, and Eziano, those who lived before the dawn of Quirks. Those who had Quirks before the Luminescent Baby. No one understands Quirks, and it has caused so much pain that I have been trying to come to a deeper understanding. Only through knowledge and understanding can things progress and move forward."

What is he, talking about? Ojiro turned his head and fully stared at Zach's room in too much confusion to keep following this.

Bakugo frowned but he froze and glanced at Midoriya who had a more thoughtful look on his face and did not actually appear surprised by what Zach was saying, or in denial of it. Are you two serious? Or- Bakugo frowned deeper at his immediate urge to deny what they were considering. Is Zach right? Usually, he is.

"…And usually what's right is cut and dry to me. And I can base my philosophy off it. But sometimes I feel way too progressive with my way of thinking, and I know that it won't catch on because of it. Too many people are just afraid of change but don't realize that change is amazing! They're afraid of it because they like things the way they were, but things can get better. Kaminari was never taught to use his Quirk early enough to know not to use it on his brain like that. No one knew!" Zach yelled in frustration. "No teacher was trained to explain to children displaying electricity Quirks that might be too powerful, not to block their own synapses or they would risk mental damage. No one knew they needed to stop that to lower the risk of turning a kid into a supervillain."

"I know," Zach continued softer. "That the bad part of Kaminari just pushed aside the good, and then it allowed some of it to come back for his infiltration. I can't accept 'Raijin' because the myth about only using 10% of your brain is just that, a myth. We use so much that I don't believe Kaminari could actually split into multiple personalities just with some extra brain power. He might be smarter, but he really just released the good side of himself while making sure he had enough strength to take back power and make some important decisions. Keeping blocked the synapses where he knew his true strength and he knew what was going on in the backdrop of his own mind. But other than that, I believe the good Kaminari we knew had the most of him. It was the most real him because the bad allowed a lot of bad traits like stupidity and perviness, and sometimes being lazy and getting angry. It was the most full version of Kaminari there was!"

Ashido closed her eyes and a pair of tears slid down her face. Sato put his left hand over his forehead and pinched it while covering up his own eyes. Class A so rarely talked about what had happened in the June that they lost both Zach and Kaminari. It hurt them each too much and they all had too strong of feelings about it to bring it up casually or even in the worst of times, most of the time. As they listened to Zach talk about Kaminari's mental state though that allowed him to do what he did, they all knew that they had been hiding from it for two years now. Midoriya looked away and back towards Mineta who had come upstairs too and was standing in the hall behind Bakugo, and who already had tears in his eyes at what Zach was saying.

"…And that nearly complete Kaminari could have been the real one so easily," Zach continued. "If someone would have just trained him from early on- and I wouldn't have killed my mom, and maybe pushing things towards a world where Quirk usage is more acceptable was selfish! Maybe I didn't do it because of right and wrong this time; maybe it really was something I just did because of me! Because me and Kaminari deserved better than this!" Zach shouted with tears in his eyes. "That kid who was sold as a nuclear weapon and died in my arms, and Eri who made her father disappear! So many! Were treated as monsters and test subjects. They were experimented on because of the way they were born- it was like slavery. Slaves to their Quirks, to the existence of Quirks!"

"People were plagued for thousands of years by Quirks, being called witches and monsters and treated as no more than myths or unfortunate misunderstandings after they were long dead. And we just aren't at the point that's past that yet," Zach gasped out, even though the tears had stopped from the two on his sides who stared at him with dropped jaws as they wondered if he was being serious about that. The fact that he did not stop but just kept going made them realize he was, and they tried to keep up even as their minds were spinning with the implications of what he was suggesting. "I always thought the world would go on a witch hunt for me. My whole childhood I was terrified of being lynched, that a mob would come for me and kill me for the way I was born. Something I couldn't help but was convinced was my own fault!"

"I came up believing that because no one ever told me otherwise, because there was no system in place saying that stuff like that might happen and that it wasn't my fault! So I believed it was a bad thing I was born, and an 8 year old boy tried killing himself," Zach shook his head with tears falling from his eyes. "And I'll cry for that kid, because what if there are other kids who feel the same way because the world still doesn't accept it? Because it's still stuck and hasn't advanced far enough yet to accept them? Not all of them have All Might to save them. They needed someone else. Somewhere to go that would take them in from the places stuck in the past." A city I'm sure is doing great. It has to be! It is. Too many great people are there doing everything they can to make it work, for it to fail.

"Kaminari's was the most cursed Quirk of all though," Zach whispered. "Because he created a demon in himself that locked the good side away, and is just so evil. Everything he does. It's twisted and disgusting, horrible, and… and I know that Kaminari is still in there." Zach sucked in a sharp breath but gasped it out, "Still watching. I- I didn't want to imagine it. I tried so hard that first night when I was too crushed by everything else that I had done, and that he had done, and I just didn't want to imagine he was real. He is though. There's no denying that. Kaminari, everything he ever was, it was real. Even if he doesn't know it himself, or, if he keeps himself from realizing it…"

Zach shook his head several times to try and stop thinking about that right now. It's not the time- when is? What am I saying right now? It doesn't really matter, does it? Everything I would have left out. Everything I never would have told them when I went to Tartaros again. Where I would have spent the rest of their lives. Zach flinched at the way he phrased his own thought, and he started breathing heavier at the aspect of it.

Their lives. Not mine? Will I just, keep going… forever? I don't want to die but I can't do that. I just can't, Zach's face aged five years. Bags under his eyes sagged deeper and he let out a sigh that lasted several seconds. "I still need to face him. My own friend. He's not going to be the first friend I've killed, and he won't- I hope he's the last," Zach countered how he was just finishing, his voice getting softer but more pained as he wondered if that would truly be it. "I've killed too many friends. Watched too many of my friends die. Burn- Do you know, that it smells different?" Zach wondered, looking to his right and into Kirishima's eyes. "An adult burning and a child burning, they smell different. Did you know that? Do you know- ah- how many children you have to smell burning," Zach's eyes squinted and he seethed, "to be able to instantly recognize the difference?"

"And I know now, exactly what it smelled like when they burned Jenny. I can imagine it. It, finishes the picture, in my head," Zach snapped his head back and then shook it while grinding his teeth. "Bodies, piled up in stacks. On every continent on earth. Mounds of corpses- I, I can't do this anymore." Zach imagined the trucks driven up to the new morgue in the Fundong FLICC. Every bed in the morgue was filled with dead bodies. There were corpses on the floor. Far too many for him to revive in one go. And then the trucks arrived. Where they had brought all the other patients. Hundreds of them. He gagged as he pictured those trucks opened up by morticians with dead eyes, already crushed from all the dead they had been dealing with. Imagining all of them made him feel the pain of that day again, and he could not find his breath as he imagined the bodies spilling out of the trucks because there were so many of them…

Ashido imagined her ex who she did not know was sitting right outside of Zach's door. "…I think Zach might still be trying to make it up to you. Show you that he really came back and is being good despite your doubts, because he wants to prove that anyone can come back from the darkness and that anyone can survive even the worst things, and until everyone accepts that he won't give up… and he'll keep fighting." You were right again. You never doubted him, but you also knew before any of us that, not even he can do it forever.

"I don't want him to keep fighting. As amazing as Zach is… I want him to be done. I want him to stop." Sero continued to think about that even now as he focused on Zach's tone inside his room. He lowered his head though sadly as he felt like he had been right when he told Mina it."I don't know if Zach even can at this point though. He's gone too far. Put too much pressure on himself." His bangs shadowed over his eyes and Sero rubbed his right arm across his eyes. Ashido could hear him telling her it though as she looked at the most exhausted expression she could imagine on the face of the boy next to her, "Zach puts himself in more pain than anyone else, just to save people. He wants to save them. He loves to save them. But, he's tired."

"It's okay," Ashido started. She spoke up suddenly and made Kirishima turn towards her quicker than Zach who continued panting while just slouched in his same position. "It's okay, Zach." He turned towards her now and into her watery eyes, though his focus was more on her smile and the light expression she had. "You don't have to keep fighting." Sero's eyes widened outside the room and his arm lowered, a smile breaking out on his face as he turned his head to the side and looked at the doorway next to him, feeling glad Mina was in there right now. "It's okay if you just want to-"

"There are still things I need to do," Zach countered her. He shook his head once and made a steadier look form on his face to assure her that he was capable of it. "Saving Jirou," Zach whispered. He paused for a few seconds, then he added, "Stopping Shigaraki… his plans, at least. All For One, Dabi Toga…"

Just his plans? Midoriya wondered, his fists balling down at his sides and a more serious expression coming over him. You've told me you want it to be me. You think it has to be me. Even if you can't use Death on him though, Zach… No, it will be me. I can, feel it. Just like you can.

"And," Zach continued after mentioning Toga. "Kaminari, most of all."

Ashido lowered her gaze down for a moment but then brought it back to her friend who she continued to smile at in a soft way. If he can keep going, I'll just make sure to be there with him and make things not so horrible for him. It's the best I can do. "Eziano Mozcaccio too," Ashido added. Kirishima tilted his head to the side and nodded in reluctant agreement there, joining in with what he thought he saw Ashido doing as she started treating Zach like normal and just going along with what he was saying.

Kirishima got a confused look on his face though at the way Ashido's face suddenly got a paler shade of pink. Zach's head had bowed for a moment, then his eyes slowly shifted back to Ashido who looked in a very unnerved way back down into his eyes. "That's not an issue anymore."

Ojiro felt pressure in his bladder. What does that mean?!

Bakugo tilted his head back, Just straight up telling them? You might not be holding much back, but that's something a bit far. Deku was trying so hard to hide it too.

What are you doing, Zach?! Midoriya tried to keep the panic from his face and instead faked a surprised expression that made Mineta turn towards him and stare with wider eyes at his classmate's reaction.

Midoriya knew?! I'm stunned he didn't stop Zach, or arrest him when Zach- did Zach kill him? What the hell does Zach mean by that?!

Sato had his jaw dropped as he imagined one of those assassins who had used his death as a way to attempt to assassinate Zach. The powerful guy who could put assassins all over the place like that, and bomb Zach's apartment, send a missile at him… did Zach kill that guy? When could he have even done it?!

"It's isolated to Japan now," Zach muttered darkly. "And yet the battles are getting harder than ever. It's not so easy to fight when you care again. I don't know how to plan for Kaminari and Shigaraki. I just don't, because I can't take the kind of losses I took out there." Zach shook his head at the idea of it, "All my friends who died? Half in Wampajawa. Half in the Battle of 6 Armies. Battles against enemies who were powerful and crazy and… and I don't think any of them, were as smart as Kaminari is. I don't think any of them will come close to having the plan he has. How am I going to keep everyone here alive? I couldn't do it out there. Kirishima, if you had come with me you wouldn't have survived."

Zach looked to his right at the spiky-haired boy who looked back at him still uneasy about Zach's cryptic and ominous sentence about Eziano. He pulled his head back more though at the intense dread covering Zach's face. And Zach whispered at him, "I know you're strong, but you wouldn't have survived out there. None of you could have. It wasn't a place for heroes, no matter how strong. Not Midoriya, not Todoroki, not-" Zach paused and his mouth closed slowly. His eyes shifted to the floor for a moment then glanced towards his open doorway as he wondered something, before just shaking his head and glaring back at his feet. Maybe Bakugo, but Bakugo alone could have survived it. War would've suited him.

"You were a hero though," Ashido brought up again. Whatever he says! Just, move past it. He's not going to be okay otherwise. Zach never does something like this. He never lets it out. No matter how much it hurts. So for him to tell us everything, right now, that shows how much this is all finally crushing him! "We saw you making those charities, Zach. You did things, no other hero does. Things that looked so crazy- but I looked them up on my way back here. When I was seeing how villains globally were turning themselves in because of you, I also looked up those charities feeding the hungry, and helping the poor, and bringing clean water-"

"And you're keeping villains down all over the world too," Kirishima added in a lower voice. I don't know if I agree fully with it, but it's true. "Your presence, villains feel like it's everywhere. The Italian mafia? And that contact you had in China that everyone's talking about. The one who helped you stop Sleepless?"

"The fact that that has become public knowledge," Zach continued himself. He paused for a moment then elaborated, "Will keep the fear of becoming villains strong. People won't want to be villains when they know what's lurking in the shadows."

"And, I wasn't just funneling money to the poor," Zach continued. "It's the means of their providing for themselves that needed to be adjusted. Founding democratic principles, and protecting leaders who allowed mass Quirk usage, giving more people shots at making something of themselves using their Quirks. Revealing more Quirks like Jon Juan's which is what really stopped Sleepless. And a Russian who could replant over half of Siberia's lost forests. Or an African whose Quirk- actually called, Terraformer, had not been utilized since he was 6 years old. Now 43, he turned a chunk of the Sahara into an oasis…"

As Zach started talking more on the amazing things going on around the world that he had been a part of, it made those two sitting at his sides look at him in much more happiness and such looks of awe too. "You saved the world," Kirishima whispered. Zach stopped himself and he turned to his right to look in Kirishima's red eyes.

"You really did," Ashido added when she saw Zach start frowning upon what Kirishima said. "You really, saved the world."

"Stop-" Zach clenched his jaw shut after starting like that. His face looked so angered though by what they were saying. When he pushed the anger back down again though, he just looked strained with his whole body tightened up. Why? Why do they have to know? I hate this! Zach's fists balled but then unclenched as it was Ashido and Kirishima sitting at his sides and he could not get angry for more than a second at most at either one of them. "They all- It wasn't me. I didn't, even give my life-" Zach's eyes trembled and he bit down on his bottom lip. Guilt washed over him at the ways the two had just been looking at him. Admiring him. "I could have done more. I could have saved them. But they died, for that ideal. That no one needed to know who they are. That's what they died for, and yet! I- I!" Zach's voice got louder and his head snapped up. Then he started panting and just snapped his chin right back down, "I could have planned better, so no one had to die. No one was supposed to…"

Ashido and Kirishima imagined the way Zach looked on the plane before the drop. They remembered the confidence and hope that he looked to have that he could win without losing his friends. They could hear him say how none of his comrades were going to die in that battle, and then they heard it echo in their heads how over half of them got wiped out instead. Zach ground his teeth and seethed through them as he saw the way the other two looked at him now as they recalled all that, "I didn't want to see all that. And I'm mad at Gentle, and Cody, and Rebel. But, I'm also grateful, that they kept me out of jail. And I'm confused because I was let off even after people saw me, killing. They saw me murder people in those clips, at war. I don't understand," Zach wheezed. "And I can't breathe! I have scars on my lungs, and my liver isn't even real, had to be replaced. Like my arm… And it hurts."

I was wrong. I hate myself for it, but, Kirishima's eyes filled with shame. I don't wish I had gone with you. I don't wish I had been through any of that.

"Seeing the people in that clip. The ones who aren't with me anymore. People, I'll n-never see again," Zach's voice trembled and his right hand rose shakily back to his shirt. He clenched his chest while whispering, "I brought them to that city to die."

"I loved them…" Midoriya's head dipped more out in the hall and he did not raise an arm this time to cover up the tears that came from his eyes. "…But my own troops were more disposable that heroes." You didn't believe that. You just had to act that way, but to you! To you, they weren't disposable at all! I knew you were lying when you told me that! It might have been the truth as Death but, but not to Zach!

"…They were great people. The best people in the whole world. I brought them to a fight I should have prepared more for, and I told them not to kill so I wound up getting even more of them killed than necessary. When people pretended to surrender, just to kill my friends." Zach gasped, and his mouth stayed open wide as he held back from screaming out in rage and despair at what he just said. Ashido put both arms completely around his body, and Zach hissed, "I can't believe how much of a coward I must be now, but I can't imagine losing all those people. They'd think so little of me to see me now, if they didn't already hate-" Zach's eyes slammed shut. "I was responsible for keeping them alive. They trusted me! 6, of the first 40 in our army. 109 by the raid on the League's HQ, and only 10 of them remained when I turned myself in- Just, so many! And Mark died too so-"

"And how many others, that I don't even know of?" Zach bared his teeth. "Blackstar told me, that Drac disappeared. Just like Zombieman did. And I want to just believe that he decided to leave the Army. It's even more likely than Zombieman- it could be! But, but I thought that before. Where did he go? What's happening to him?! I don't know! I don't, know…" Zach buried his face in his hands. "They were all, every last one of them, the best heroes I knew. I believed in all of them, and not one will ever be known for what they did. They're the best heroes ever, and no one will ever know. No one will ever know who they are!"

"What if we did?"

Zach kept panting for a few seconds but he looked to his right and at Kirishima at the question asked of him. He looked at him confusedly and then furled his lips and shifted his gaze away. "That's not…" Zach whispered.

"Zach," Ashido whispered. "I truly believe- we, believe," Ashido continued, looking to Kirishima who nodded in agreement with her right as she said it. "That what you and your Army did saved the world. And no one else might ever know about those people," Ashido continued, her own voice straining for a second as she admitted that. She knew that he was hesitant because it was part of what they died for and he did not want to tarnish that, but, "You can tell us though."

Zach started shaking his head, and Kirishima added, "We'll consider those people the greatest heroes too. Not everyone needs to know, but tell us."

"We want to hear about them," Ashido whispered. She forced out a smile while looking encouragingly at Zach's face. "Tell us."

"There were so many," Zach whispered, starting to shake his head slowly. "187 who sacrificed themselves-"

"We have time," Ashido said.

"And we're not going anywhere," Kirishima added.

Zach looked to his left then back to his right and into Kirishima's eyes. The redhead nodded at him to get started, then Ashido asked from Zach's other side to help him out, "Could you tell us about Iblis?"

Zach's eyes widened a little more and he turned back to the pink girl on his left. He was surprised, but Ashido smiled at him and said in a sad but inspired way, "I saw that woman with the flaming wings fighting so hard. Every time we saw her-"

"Iblis was the fastest flyer in the whole army," Zach started over Mina. "She had been training with her Quirk since she was a kid in South Africa. Her parents were part of an anti-government group who knew that the government's leaders were corrupted long before the fall of All Might, but soon before his fall and the rise of villains, heroes made most of those vigilantes disappear and made claims to the rest of the population that the 'terrorists' went into hiding."

"Heroes did?" Ashido whispered.

"I didn't want the people of South Africa to feel the betrayal that I watched so many others get disheartened by. So those murderous heroes 'died in the line of duty' fighting villains." Ashido gulped at what Zach just confessed to, though she calmed herself a little bit as Zach added, "Some needed to take responsibility though, and we revealed the leaders at the highest levels. And a couple of the skeevy heroes who were not in that battle but got uncovered by legitimate heroes I turned evidence of their crimes over to. So much corruption was uncovered around the same time that I'm not surprised if you didn't hear about it all. I initially went there to hunt down Iblis, but I turned on the heroes I worked with after hearing her story and confirming it. I knew that they had betrayed their people. Working with villains. A chain of corruption connecting the villains and the heroes and every branch of the government, and I shattered it with my forces, and I had a new member when I left that country. Seeing how I had avenged her parents, and their crushed coalition fighting for justice, she believed she could help me do the same for other nations. And we did."

"Amazing," Ashido said in awe. How long did that take him? Most heroes would consider something like that the most amazing thing they ever did! Revealing something so huge, stopping that much corruption, it's just a blip on his map. A single stop on his trail… and another place he left bodies-

"Many of those I came to recruit during those thirteen months were in similar situations. They were amazing people who fought outside of the law for what they believed was right. Faye," Zach's eyes lowered for a moment but then shifted to either side of him at those waiting to hear about this person. "Faye's Quirk was misunderstood. When she was at a young age, she developed gills that terrified her parents. They thought that she would stop being able to breathe air, and so they threw her in the water so that she could keep breathing. Faye couldn't swim though, and her Quirk allowed her to breathe through her gills but also through her mouth. Her Quirk, Amphibious, made her only semi-aquatic."

"There were a lot of inherent dangers with her Quirk, but she came to realize that she could remove her own gills, or at least she could cover them up with normal skin to hide the fact that she had them at all. It was like there was a switch in her genetic makeup that she was able to flip, choosing when to reveal her gills and how to breathe." Zach paused for a second then added with a lift of the right corner of his lips slightly, "And she could also alter the genetic makeup of others as well. Touch their necks, and activate whatever gene it is that gives humans gills." Zach rubbed along the right side of his neck and imagined the feeling of the gills that had once been there.

His curved lip flattened back out and his hand curled more around his neck. "She told me how when she figured that out, all the people in her village wanted to test it out. She made them all able to swim and breathe underwater with her gills. They had a river next to their village, and the fishermen often had her help them so they could catch better hauls. The kids all wanted her to help them play. She went from the 'weird-fish-girl' to someone everyone liked, because she trained to use her Quirk in a remote area where heroes did not come by often to regulate or stop her, even if it was illegal…"

"People in that village did not have a very high life expectancy compared to the rest of the country she lived in," Zach continued darker. "And suddenly people started dying even earlier. They died quicker the more time they spent in the water, that they would come to realize had been poisoned. Upstream, at a line of factories all run by the same company dumping waste illegally up-river from their village, and from many others. The fishermen who had spent the most time submerged got cancer first. Men in their thirties, suddenly dying from the toxic waste they had been ingesting."

"And Faye figured it out. She was still a teenager, but she swam up river with her friends and figured out where the poison was coming from. And her and her friends, started their own vigilante movement. They sabotaged the factories. Planted bombs and destroyed the pipes. Trained their Quirks in secret and slipped away under the water where they could always escape thanks to Faye's Quirk."

"The illegal dumping should have been stopped by the nation's environmental agency, but that was the reason I came to her country in the first place. I tracked the money from an intermediary who had been clean and able to lobby at several governments where he bribed hundreds of officials in different countries for a variety of companies. We went after the officials being bribed, and the investigators who were supposed to be looking into it when the villagers downstream had brought up their concerns, and the companies themselves and all their executives who had cut corners or were paying off officials to be able to make extra profits. Cut down on the costs of proper waste treatment of their deadly chemicals, killing innocents, poisoning the water supply-" Zach's voice started getting faster but his anger faded as he thought about meeting the woman he was just talking about.

"Faye had to fight heroes who came after her. Ones who were not actually corrupt themselves, but were going after the terrorists who had bombed facilities. Radical tactics, however pure their reasons were. Some of Faye's friends were killed by contract killers the companies hired. Others were arrested by the heroes for their actions that had hurt other innocents who did not know anything about the dumping practices. Workers at factories living on low wages, pressing buttons and standing on assembly lines. People who didn't deserve the war that Faye brought to them, but others caught up in the actions of terrible people. Ones who could have seen what Amaterasu was doing but might have closed their eyes to the corruption she spread- I don't know. It was hard though, to judge her. This woman so young, and dying of cancer. Terminally ill but still so ready to fight for justice, only to see that I had just gotten that justice for her. She thought it would be her final effort. The good she could bring to the world, to make up for how she gave everyone gills- which is what, caused them to get sick quicker-" Zach's breath sucked in sharper as he thought of the tears that spilled down Faye's face as she cried this at him.

"But when she came back the first time, and I had cured her cancer," Zach stopped and he seethed out a breath through his teeth but still pulled up a smile despite the tears in his eyes. "She was as ready to keep fighting with me as ever. It didn't matter that she could now live a long, fruitful life. She just wanted to stay by my side. Keep fighting, until it killed her again-" Zach shook his head but tried to keep the forced smile up even as the tears fell from his eyes and ran past the risen corners of his lips.

"Faye, she gave us the power to fight under the oceans. Undersea bases that villains felt were so protected from most, because not every country has amazing heroes like Selkie and Froppy who can fight and investigate underwater. And we tracked an enemy sub this one time. We knew its path, and we dove out of a helicopter with Faye's gills on our necks. Swam down to the path of the sub, and Slipspace slipped us through the walls as it passed by… Slipspace," Zach repeated this new name and continued smiling as his eyes opened back up again. "One of the villains I recruited to join me. Slipspace had been a master thief in her past life," Zach continued, and Todoroki stared towards his open doorway interestedly and with a semi-intense look as he imagined who Zach was talking about.

"She always felt bad about stealing from good people, and she loved stealing from villains. Her Quirk was amazing and although some of my friends said it would be impossible to trust someone like her, I wanted to believe she was telling me the truth. I wanted her to help me. I went out of my way to recruit her. A chivalrous thief who only Gentle and La Brava were really on my side for taking in. She killed it though. Every time I asked her to help me, she was up to the task."

"We flew a stealth plane over a highly guarded bank in Switzerland, and Slipspace dropped on her own to rob the place," Zach continued. His tone was smug, and Ashido and Kirishima each gawked at him though they recalled the charges about bank robbery that Yuranama had listed off during the trial. They sweatdropped while watching him as Zach said, "The bank served villains. Lots of villains. So Slipspace went in with Rebel's help, and we left a trail of clues for Endeavor to follow afterwards when they would call him in as they naturally would when the Army of Death just robbed them. I did get a little nervous though when Endeavor brought Todoroki with him."

Zach laughed and shook his head after saying it, "I must have forgotten how strong Todoroki was to be worried at all, because he was awesome in South America. Really helped his dad take down a lot of our enemies…"

Todoroki frowned towards Zach's door and narrowed his gaze at the thought of just how much Zach had been in control of back then. Zach continued though in the room, "We had not robbed every account at The Omnibank, only the ones we knew belonged to criminals, and yet we left accounts there that I later found out also belonged to villains." He frowned and added, "The bank seemed to only serve villains yet was getting away with it for so long, so we set up the bankers on a hidden mic and caught them talking about their clients and how they had known all along what they were up to. We took them all down and the rest of the accounts with them too."

Todoroki could not hold his frown anymore and just grinned out in the hall. As frustrated as he had been about Zach so casually using him and his dad to fight battles for him, he felt a lot better hearing what had happened to Mr. Copper and the rest of The Omnibank that he had not kept tabs on. My father and I could not touch that bank no matter how sketchy it had appeared to me. It's good to hear that he managed to take it down, when we couldn't. That's what he said he was doing, and that's exactly what he did. Fighting where heroes could not. Zach, did a great job…

"We removed all the infrastructure villains needed to survive," Zach went on. He smiled and still had teary eyes but was speaking faster now and louder as he continued on and on about his passed comrades. He could see the similar smiles and very intrigued looks of those two on his sides who wanted to hear more about them, and he imagined that anyone sitting outside the door felt the same way. "Everywhere they could hide their money and all the means of communication and organization between their groups. It really helped having Cody in the internet. He and Rebel really were the MVP's in the later days as the battles died down, but throughout the war even those non-combatants were pivotal to our survival and continued successes. They were the two who tipped me off to Eziano's rocket coming towards Yutapu, calling me right in the middle of class. And when I flew out to it, the two of them hacked into it and redirected it in a safe path into space. Cody really took the lead on that one though- it really seems like he grew up a lot since I last saw him, before that."

"Cody had been trapped inside the internet since…" Ashido and Kirishima kept nodding with him. They smiled, and they looked on with wide eyes or amazed looks. They gasped at times and got watery eyes at others. And they listened, for once not doubting a single word out of Zach's mouth. No one could doubt him anymore. And none of them cared if what he was saying was against the law, or unheroic, or if they disagreed with it. They just listened to him. Allowing Zach to say the things he never did. Ashido held onto his left sleeve, while Kirishima had his left hand down on Zach's right knee, as they let him know that they were there for him. No hesitation. No judgement. Friends at his sides, accepting all he said, and all he was.

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A/N Wow! This chapter came out longer than I thought it would! Another 50k down! This was a hard one to write because it was tough to see my screen through the near constant flow of tears. ;) I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading. We see the end of Wampajawa this time. And we witnessed the deaths of many of Zach's other friends and comrades. I've hinted at the guilt he felt over Switch before at times but never explained what had happened there. And Zeke's been referenced before too. Zach lets it all out this time though, and he also goes all the way back to the Lifebringer Incident and times before it that he's never explained before. Some backstories to Zach's comrades here at the end that I had some fun with writing after such a sad chapter. Also! I just want to mention that I read the My Hero Academia Vigilantes manga which is like a prequel to BNHA, and the most recent chapter is pretty ridiculous! XD The newest chapter has Rappa appear in it, in an illegal fighting cagematch to the death... hmmm. Sounds familiar, right? I read it and pointed at my screen like "Hey! I did that first!" Haha it's def a coincidence but would be crazy if Hideyuki (the mangaka for the side manga) liked this story! Anyway, Zach finally unloads this chapter. No holds barred. Leave a review telling me what you think, and where you think the story is going to go from here. The term is ending. Only a week left... What's in store?

7hanatos chapter 234 . Oct 13

Man I feel for him at the end. I'M SO HAPPY!

I feel for him too. It's a tough time for him, but glad you're happy he's free at least! Thanks for reviewing!

Ossslot chapter 234 . Oct 13

Holy crap! How do you do it! I never expected the trial to go the way it did. Zach's free and no one tried to interrupt or mess up the trial. That being said, the road he has in front of him doesn't seem easy at all. This all being said, the fact that he isn't showing any real emotion towards the end is really worrying.
Feels like ages since we've seen a happy Zach.
You keep saying the end is near, so it'll be interesting to see how you play these last chapters out.
I'm hoping our boy Zach gets a happy ending, but I wouldn't put it past you to make it bittersweet.
Regardless of how many chapters are left and how this ends, thank you for the update. You have no idea how amazing it is the read a fan fiction with the world building and story arcs as great as...Hunter x Hunter or something like that.
Thanks so much! And good luck on the next chapter

I'm really glad I caught so many of you off guard with the result of the trial! The villains all really wanted to see Zach thrown in prison so the last thing they wanted was to interrupt that trial and give him a chance to help the heroes, but someone did try to interrupt the trial (Rebel and Gentle), and it kind of messed it up... from the villains' point of view at least! XD Zach had to hide his emotions near the end there as the only emotions he felt were ones that his friends think about this time are ones he's trying to hide from everyone to show them that people can still come back even from all they've now seen him go through. And thank you, that you feel like this fanfic is that great. I'm happy y'all are enjoying it, and I hope you enjoyed the newest chapter too!

Guessst chapter 234 . Oct 13

Oh I love that trial twist! Gotta surf Newport Beach! Your in my nec if the woods now!

Thanks! Glad you loved it! I read your review and headed down to Newport Beach. Went to Corona del Mar State Park though (couldn't tell which beach would be best), and the waves were pretty big but not great for surfing. I went boogieboarding though and then body surfed a bunch too! Was a fun time, so thanks for the recommendation! XD

Zach chapter 1 . Oct 16

Weird question since this new chapter was crazy but when is Zach's birthday

I've never explicitly stated. It's in the fall though, because it was when he was with the villains in his first year, and while he was in prison this most recent year. It's sometime after the start of October, because he was 16 during Mongoloid I believe. It's either in mid-late October, or sometime in November. That's as specific as I think I've gotten with it... Thanks for the review!