Stormbreaker
"Don't blame me, they're just a soldier's orders."
Those words would forever permeate Mei's psyche, seeping into the cracks of her brain and sinking their deep roots into her memory for the rest of the time she had on this planet.
How could someone neglect blame like that whenever they were in the process of stabbing an innocent man through the back?! Why was it always the same goddamn thing she was always hearing all of the time? That it was "out of someone's hands" whenever they were perfectly capable of functioning on their own?!
Hell, she had done it for multiple years! Relying on nothing and no one to tell her what to do, at a much younger age than any of the people that claimed their fate wasn't up to them! It was all, to put it frankly, a total load of horseshit!
…
Wow…
Mei hadn't expected that would come out of her, much less after she had woken up with such a start because of that nightmare. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see how dishevelled her bedhair looked, which probably wasn't the best look when one started to consider the tirade she had just gone on mentally. She probably looked like one of those stereotypical crazy cat women, and that image alone made her grimace at the thought of turning out anything like that.
Taking a deep breath, making sure all the air filled her lungs until she breathed back out, she let the soothing calm wash over. At least her mental guard hadn't slipped to the point that any little speck of flames had escaped. There would be hell to pay if that happened, and she didn't want to know what the punishment would be like should she be found out.
With a sigh, she heaved her body out of the bed and trudged over to the mirror to fix up her hair. The absolute state of it would take a while, attempting to fix split ends and cajole the rest of it back into proper shape was more painful than it had any right to be.
It was an awfully laborious task, as dull and dreary as they came. Of course, the worst part of it all, sans the action, was having to constantly repeat the cycle over, and over, and over again. If Mei was being honest, she didn't know why she even bothered anymore. If it was just going to get all messy again, what was the point? Not like people paid enough attention to her, the same being true of her towards other people. It was nothing personal, she just wasn't interested.
Once Mei was satisfied with her handiwork, letting her hair fall back into the tidy, fluffy mess it usually was, it was just the case of figuring out what to do now. Without much thought, she already found herself lying back on top of the rock-hard bed. Getting changed at this minute would've been an awful lot of work for not a lot of benefit, and it wasn't as if there was some timer on her actions.
Well… Her powers of foresight weren't exactly world-class now that she thought about it.
"Wakey wakey, everyone! Rise and shine, there's a lot all of you have to do today~!" Came the grating voice of a one Subaru Fujinaga, resident sociopathic clown of the Foundation, and the co-ordinator of the poor unfortunate souls of the Foundation. Of course, it was only natural for him to be up at the ass-crack of dawn scheming away how to ruin their lives. He wouldn't be Subaru if he wasn't partial to those sorts of things.
The arrival of his voice caused Mei to jump from the bed with a start, the hairs on the back of her neck rocketing up as she pounced back into a position almost like what a cat would do when startled. It was only a lucky release of tension that stopped a very cat-like hiss from sounding as well. It would be rather embarrassing, now that she thought about it if she acted like more of a cat than the literal catboy not far from her dorm.
Taking a sneaky peek out the crack of the door, she saw that Subaru was down by the far end of the corridor. The fact it sounded like he was bearing down right on Mei's door, however, spoke a lot more to the pink-haired male's noise-making capabilities than it did on the general proximity of all of the dorms. Annoying and loud were too very good combinations if you wanted people to hate you, and it seemed like Subaru had it down to an art form with all the groans the thief could hear.
"I'm trusting that you're all finding your accommodation reasonable! Not like you can do anything, though, because you're stuck with us now! Unless you want to sleep outside Niijima-sama's door or something!" Wow, he was way too chipper this early in the morning. Unfortunately, that could only mean one thing. That something involving incredible violence and pain was coming their way. The only other time she had heard his voice, without a hollowness to the supposed happiness, was before they kicked the ever-living shit out of each other like it was some kind of Texas Deathmatch. "Anyway~! You're all required to meet in the same room you all came to us in! Niijima-sama wants to talk to all of you!"
With Subaru's imminent arrival, Mei had no choice but to get dressed quickly. It was a slapdash affair, in reality, her baggy clothes were anything but conducive or helpful in assisting her speedy attempt to look decent. Lucky for her, no one would bother to pay attention to her, and there was a less than zero chance the way her clothes hung off her frame would be laughed at. The shirt, an egregious example, with the sleeves just about reaching the top of her wrists, and the label on the outside more than indicative of her rush.
However, no matter the groans and jeers she heard coming from the others as they woke up, she had one more thing that needed to be done before anything else. Bending down, the flimsy bed cover pushed away, Mei pulled out a small, locked wooden box from underneath the bed.
Mei's breathing slowed to a snail's pace, fingers tracing the top of the box before a careful grasp removed the locked lid. She didn't know how many people hear carried stuff with them, she wasn't at that whole gathering fest after their induction on account of, y'know, being kicked into the dirt. However, she was stuck between glad and mortified that this object had travelled with her despite not being there to claim ownership.
What was the object? It was a simple, six-chamber, revolver from the decades before Quirks. A veritable relic in its own right, older than anyone in this Foundation except for perhaps Kyte, on account of Mei not being entirely sure, just how old the Vampire Lord could have been. Quirks like that were tricky after all…
But that didn't matter, and it shouldn't have mattered at all. The revolver was still in a pristine condition, the shine on it a sign of an almost ritualistic devotion to its cleanliness. Not a single speck of dust or dirt dared to contaminate it, the silver coating not even close to being decayed. The grip was still as firm as ever, and if she ever dared to load it, it would probably still fire just like it did all those years ago.
After she had stared at it for a few seconds, Mei closed her eyes and brought it closer to her chest. There were… There were many things she could have elected to have brought with her, and there were many things that probably served as better reminders to her of why she was here in the first place. Just a shame that a lot of them happened to go up in flames, which left her with this odious weapon that had caused so much damage in her life.
Without her even realising it, a few hot tears dropped from her face onto the revolver. Why… Why did it need to be him? Why couldn't it be someone else? Why did he have to come at that time?! Was he out for her specifically still? No… That couldn't have been the case. She would've scarcely been allowed to get this far if he was hunting her down. There was a scary commitment to those words spoken all those years ago.
"Just you and I left now, Little Lamb… And I have one bullet left… What do you want to do with it?"
There was not a single part of Mei that pretended like it was a genuine offer. Even the younger version of herself would've scoffed had she not been rooted to the spot in sheer terror, the blank void of a face that stared back at her forever etched into her memory.
"You know, Little Lamb, if you don't make the decision then I'll have to make it for you. I haven't got all day to laze about… Unless you want me to make the decision?"
Even now, all these years later, the words would try to form and answer that question. Every time, though, they would die in her throat before they could be heard. Mei was powerless in the purest form of the word, and the sheer overwhelming helplessness was something she couldn't overcome.
Puffy red eyes opened once more; their attention locked back down at the muzzle of the gun. The bullet that had once infested its chambers had been removed, of course. Looking down the barrel of a loaded gun was just asking for God to spit back in your face for your arrogance.
Mei shook her head, the stray tears now landing on the dorm room floor. It had been a mistake to bring this out again, it had dredged up painful memories she thought she would've been, should've been, over by now. Yet, she was trapped by them all the same…
But that was why she was here, was it not? To try and mend those fractures the memories caused? Finding what she wanted… It wouldn't happen here, and, frankly, knowing where that elusive purpose was located was going to take more time than this. Although, while she was still here, using the services available didn't seem like a bad move.
With the revolver now placed with care back into its box, Mei's hands moved up to her eyes and went to work wiping away the last remnants of her tears. Amid her unwanted reverie, she had almost forgotten that Subaru was marshalling them all out to listen to Kyte's speech. No one would notice her, but there was something to be said about not leaving an obvious trail of tears behind, ones that could be traced back to her no less.
"Oh, good. You're finally awake." If anyone was going to speak, Mei had expected to hear Subaru's voice out of all possible candidates. What was not on her list was the dreary, monotonous voice of Joseph being what she heard. "The clown told me to get you if you didn't leave soon. In case you forgot, we were told to leave, Niijima-san is waiting."
As Mei turned her head around, still thinking for a brief second that she was hearing things, she came across the energy demon standing in a robotic, lockstep fashion in the doorway. A part of her wanted to explain everything that had happened just moments before, to ask how much of it he had seen. However, all that came out of her absent-minded nature was a simple "Oh…"
Joseph's face remained as blank as ever, the only other expression Mei had seen it being the one of pure anger before everything went blank after the ruthless beatdown he had delivered to her. "Did I interrupt something?" He said as he moved his head, trying to look around the ebony-haired girl to see if he could find where her mind was wandering off to.
"…No, nothing really." Not knowing how long he had been there for, considering she hadn't picked up on the sound of his footsteps, Mei's only resort was to deny that anything had happened in the first place. Her leg had already discreetly kicked the box back into its hiding place, there was no chance that Joseph was going to find it.
"Good." The energy demon nodded, not going to press the issue any further. Just standing here was wasting time, and Joseph was not going to be the last person in the room to follow an order to the letter. They were the easiest things in the world to follow, and here was someone deliberately trying to screw that up. "Come with me."
Not knowing what to say, not as if there was something she could say in this situation, Mei followed Joseph down the winding corridors of the Foundation. It was lucky that she had committed every turn to memory at this point because this place would be the absolute worst to plan a heist for. It seemed as if there were doors everywhere, cameras where you least expected them, and hallways that just ended in dead ends for no discernible reasons. At this point, the errant thought that it was rather to keep them in than keep others out entered Mei's mind, but she dismissed it almost as quickly as it had surfaced.
The rest of the way to their anointed meeting place was filled with silence. Joseph wasn't the type to initiate conversation, as shocking as that might have been to the uninitiated, and Mei wasn't used to it in the first place. So, awkward tension was the only thing that could come out of their continued association in any realistic fashion.
Upon entering the room, Mei released the breath she didn't she had been holding. Her eyes scanned the white void that had first welcomed her only a few days ago, just trying to take her mind off of the events of moments prior.
Nearly everyone else was already lined up by the looks of things, the hall nicely divined on each side in terms of numbers. The only people she didn't see present, as far as she was aware, was Ikariko. The walking ball of angst and anger, a particularly bad case of that mind you, being nowhere to be seen. Assumedly, he was still cooped up in his room. Which also meant that Subaru mustn't've placed much worth on him being here. For whatever the reason behind that was, anyway.
Nor did she manage to spy Haru, and she was hard-pressed at that to remember the last time she even saw him or heard his footsteps anywhere in the Foundation. It was weird…
To further compound that fact, it looked as if all of the staff were here as well. Everyone from Subaru, who was sitting pretty right in the middle of the room and looking like he was having the time of his life, to Sateriasis and the twins stuck off in their own little world and looking like they hadn't slept for days on end. Even ones she had only seen once like Oscar were present, with him talking to some woman with brown hair that she had never seen before.
There wasn't a single loud peep out of anyone, though. There might have been a few hushed whispers interspersed between the silence, but beyond that, silence ruled supreme.
At least, until the sound of footsteps started to break through that supreme silence, Kyte's purposeful strides and the clicking of shoes on the ground signalling his arrival. An arrival not unlike the first time they had all seen him in one place. The Vampire Lord retaking the same place as back then too, standing right beside his insane clown of a right-hand man. "Ah, it's so nice to see that everyone is here and present for once."
Either no one had the guts to say that Ikariko and Haru weren't present, which was understandable with the presence Kyte commanded, or they just didn't care that those two weren't present. Which, given the reaction of the staff on the other side, seemed to be the prevailing thought over there.
"Now, first things first, I would like to apologise to you all for not being present during the rest of your induction period, I simply had other matters to attend to during the day and night that prevented me from taking a more active role in your rehabilitation. However, with those matters now dealt with, I can officially begin your training here at the Foundation!" Of course, the implication that what they had experienced at the beginning was tame compared to what was coming next, didn't sit pretty with a lot of people. They had barely just managed to recover from that bloodbath, they didn't need, nor want, a second one. No matter how much Subaru had teased it to them from the second they were all in the infirmary.
"Does this mean we're going to have it serious for once? Or are we going to continue operating like a circus act?" Turns out, though, the one person who either didn't realise or care about the implication was Joseph. The energy demon's droning voice interrupted Kyte before the blue-haired adult could continue. With the way his eyes were angled, there was also little doubt who the continued circus references were directed towards.
"If you think your induction was hard, you're going to be in for a rude awakening when we really get down to business. I promised to fix your hearts, but I also told you, in no uncertain terms, that you're here for the sake of bettering yourself as Heroes. As such, if you can't take the punishment or rise to the occasion, you're not going to be welcome here anymore." It was a firm laying down of the Foundation's law on Kyte's behalf. His words were forceful, authoritative, and most importantly, demanding of the people he had accepted into his Foundation.
It had also seemed to do a good enough job at placating Joseph's concerns, the demon shutting his eyes and returning to his robotic posture on the wall. On the other hand, it might have freaked a certain catboy out, who was now wondering how he would spend the last precious moments of his life before he turned into a glorified throw rug.
Said freakout, however amusing it must have been to Arius, who was tickled pink by the whole outburst, was not wanted by Kyte. At this stage, he was just wondering if he was going to make it through the final part of his speech without being interrupted again. One more break and he might just have to put their feet to the fire. In more ways than one. "…As I was going to say before being interrupted, having spent the time since your induction, I have since changed my mind on how to organise you all. I had initially thought it would be pertinent to split you up into the required groups for the rest of your stay here, but with your rather underwhelming level of interaction with one another, I've elected to have you all remain as one large collective. As such, training will be handled by the staff on a rotational basis unless otherwise stated!"
Dropping that bombshell seemed to have had the desired effect. Whilst he might have gone off to kill another man had he been interrupted again, the hushed whispering between the students was exactly what he wanted to see. The thrumming of excitement in his body almost made him crack half a smile. Almost.
By his side, Subaru seemed to pick up on it as well. The pink-haired magician leaning over and whispering to his boss with a hand covering his mouth. "My, not seen you like this in a while, Kyte-sama. I have to admit I feel the same way too~." He said, pulling back with a dastardly smirk on his lips and a mischievous glint twinkling in his ruby eyes.
Suppressing his own smirk, Kyte wheeled around back to the full room, their own whispering having died down. "Of course, I had to make this decision on the fly judging from how you've conducted yourself so far, but I believe this is the most pertinent move at the time being. Although, know that this can easily change at my discretion. So, without further ado, I would like to ask Subaru to regale you with the rest of what you'll be doing today."
With Kyte stepping to the side and Subaru taking centre stage like he owned the place, everyone waited with bated breath to see what the Foundation's resident sociopath would say. His eerie, hyena-like laugh not doing the growing stress levels any favours, though. "Nishishishi, thank you for that, Niijima-sama. I'll be sure to treat all of them with the proper love and care they all deserve!" It was a new scenario for him to play about in, the usual system dead in the water. How could Subaru not love it? Variety was the spice of life!
Amongst the students, a soft, but loud enough muttering of "Bullshit!" that came from Kagekatsu's end had the foxboy wishing that he could just shrivel up to the shadows with all the eyes that turned to him. He should've coughed louder if he knew what was good for him! But what else was he supposed to do?! It wasn't like anything would change no matter how they did it, the end result was always going to find a way to fuck him over! Plus, it was Subaru for the love of God! Anything that came out of his mouth was probably a lie!
"An-y-way, I don't see the need to drag the charade out further. SO! Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Future Heroes of all ages! It's time to get this show on the road!" Frankly, they could have done with the circus ringmaster style introduction. However, dealing with a clown magician who probably spent 90% of his life there wasn't going to have them win that battle any time soon.
Not that they exactly had the time to react in any serious manner, though, the whole situation turning on its head upon the ominous hum of mechanical whirring echoing throughout the whole room. Before they even knew it, each member had a hidden door opening behind them. The feeling was almost like they were about to get ejected out of some kind of airlock in a spaceship.
Noticing the oncoming dread and the already set in stone confusion, Subaru continued. A devious smirk splitting his face in two, the light reflecting in harsh patterns off his piercing laden face. "As you can see, we're already ready to start your training for the day. Niijima-sama's induction test might have separated the trash from the useful trash, but I like to think that my style of training will separate you all from the main eventers to the jobbers!"
Having remained silent and almost zoned out during the whole time she was present, even during the times when it seemed like everyone was at least trying to figure everything out, Mei finally clocked what was going on around her. The sudden movement behind her had triggered the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up, the cold shiver down her back sensing the impending danger that was no doubt heading straight for her.
Her eyes tracked Subaru's movements with careful precision as he approached where the rest of the students were. His presence forced Mei to suppress herself from gulping, remembering that Subaru seemed to have this uncanny habit of noticing her, as she tried to calm down her wayward urges from exposing her apprehension.
As he walked down the line with his hands on his hips, Subaru said nothing but let all of his body language do the talking for him as he analysed the prospective victi-candidates he was going to send to their slaugh-training. The sharp smirk had yet to fall off his face as his free hand went to twirl around the long strands of hair he hadn't managed to fix in time before this meeting.
It also seemed as if he was giving particular attention to certain students, such as Fukuro, Arius, and in particular Shiki. Something was definitely amiss there, and it didn't take a genius to notice either. The way his eyes lingered for so long the Ice Dragon girl was not lost on anyone, and the perceptive might have just been able to notice the slight curl of Subaru's glossy top lip.
As he began to speak again, his attention shifted again. Eyes darting over briefly to Kyte and the rest of the staff, before those ruby red eyes were back to bury them in dread. "Now, not all of you will be sent to the same place over the coming weeks. The simple reason is that we recognise that some of your Quirks aren't exactly conducive to the traditional world of a Hero, but you're lucky that we have such a wide berth of talent here at the Foundation! For example, wouldn't you be a dear and be an example, Ari-chan?" He said, pointing to the spiky-haired teen in a move that perplexed a good number of people present. Even some of the staff, mainly Sateriasis and Shion, seemed to not quite understand what was going to happen.
After the minor widening of his eyes, once he was picked, the cocky grin of Arius was in full force again and he stepped forward like he was achieving promotion to Field Marshall for his heroic achievements. Hands in his pockets and a smug aura radiating around him, the teen spoke with a calm, confident tone. "Yeah, whaddya want, Teach? Need me for a one and one demonstration of what we're going to be doing? If so, I'm all ears and I'm all ready for what you got in store for me!"
A mirthful chuckle on Subaru's end, however, alerted Arius that maybe this wasn't going to go the way he wanted. The thick cloud of suffocating smug lifted as soon as the pink-haired adult got his words out. "Nishishishishi, is that really what you want, Ari-chan? You think it would be fair for me to go against you right here and now? Don't get me wrong, I would love to take you on right here and now since you were so willing to throw yourself at my feet. Howeverrrrrrrr, I have different plans for you! Sati! Get over here!"
Much to the surprise of both Arius and Sateriasis, Subaru was completely serious in his tone of voice. The beckoning hand that was held out was something that not even the continued animosity between the pair could stop, the white-haired nurse unable to resist knowing what was going on in his colleague's messed up head. "What do you want, Subaru?" Once again, gone was the cacophony of droning voices, being replaced by the inflection-free, stout delivery of what could only be assumed to be his normal voice. For all they about the Foundation's nurse, his voice seemed to be one of the more schizophrenic things about him.
With another smirk gracing his lips, Subaru with a speed that commanded involuntary gasps of awe swung around and grasped Arius' shoulders. The crushing grip digging hard into the teen's shoulders, the talon-like nails threatening to tear a hole in the other's jacket in the process. The overpowering strength locked the two of them well into place. "Well, Sati, I feel kinda bad for leaving you out the last time we did this tap dance with the previous lot. As an apology, and of course, I mean this in the most sincere way possible, I had a look through the files to see which new member would be best to take the role of your protégé."
Sateriasis' eyebrows skyrocketed up to his hairline, whilst Arius also looked like he had seen some kind of ghost and couldn't be more shocked with what was being placed in front of him. Out of the pair, it was the nurse that decided to take a swing at figuring this arrangement out. "Do I even want to know what you expect me to do with this one? What good is it even going to do? Seems like a huge waste of time." He answered, a weariness underlying his head as his assistants started to slither over to his side.
Instead of Subaru, though, it was Arius that was the next one out of the gates. "Yeah! Like… Did you not see what I did to the big guy over there during our match?" Arius clamoured, turning his gaze to the floor and away from the chance he was going to spy on either of the staff members. By his side, his fist trembled. Although, there was just the slightest hint that maybe, maybe it wasn't out of anger but something else entirely. "I didn't come here to sit about in some musty office that probably has about ninety different health violations to it!"
Before Arius had gotten to the end of his sentence, he had heard rustling in the background and a slight loosening of Subaru's grip on him. However, by the time he had ended it, there was something sharp pressed to the side of his neck. The cold surface of the Eight of Hearts was easily breaking the top layer of his skin, its presence also preventing an instant regeneration of that area. A cautious look upwards revealing the glare of utter death that Subaru was giving him "You don't get to make the decisions here, Child. One more word against me and I'll gut you." There was no hint of emotion in those words, they were the demands of a ruthless sociopath.
"Okay! Okay! I'll do it! Jesus!" Arius reacted, feeling the card leave the side of his neck with the skin quickly patching itself up to cover the superficial damage that had been done. He had been bullied seven ways to Sunday by Fukuro during their fight and had taken ungodly amounts of punishment during it before getting the victory by the skin of his teeth.
And still, he found himself shaking at what had just occurred. No matter how much he might have tried to stop his body from trembling, it was embarrassing. What would his old be saying if he could see Arius now? What would the others in the platoon think as well? They had spent so much time building him up all for the prized project to just shrivel up to some random-ass psycho clown.
Shaking his head and clenching his fists by his side, he grunted. No, he couldn't allow himself to get so worked up about this. All his training simply couldn't have been for nought, even if Subaru wanted to bury him by taking him out of the main group and away from his true calling, he was going to show that clown exactly why he deserved it more than anyone. Why they could rely on him no matter what!
Sateriasis had been watching the whole thing unfold with a bored look on his face, the presence of Hiroto and Hideyoshi by his side putting confidence into the step of the nurse as he circled the back of Arius once Subaru had backed off. Cursory glances were sent the way of the others, making sure none of them were going to step out of line before he was finished. "So, you're the one with the regeneration Quirk, huh?" His tone was even, his arms folded behind his back.
Arius nodded. He had the best damn regeneration Quirk there ever was! It wasn't labelled by the others in the platoon as "Immortal" for no reason! Everyone else here had already seen why he was going to be one of the best heroes out of this place in years because of it, and he wasn't going to be modest about its power. That simply wasn't his style, nor was it in his mind to ever hide the true extent of his abilities. "Yes, Sir." His reply was strictly military in nature, his body ramrod straight and his tone perfectly respectful.
His circle around the teen finished, Sateriasis looked Arius dead in the eyes, tilting his head up slightly to make up for the height difference. "Very well, follow me, and I'll get you started with something so that asshole doesn't get on either of our cases. Meet me in my infirmary." Flanked by his assistants, Sateriasis went to leave the room with Arius following behind him.
Or at least, he had expected Arius to follow him right away to the infirmary. Needless to say, he was not amused when he turned on his heel to see the spiky-haired teen stood in the same place as before.
To the students nearby, namely Yuusui and Ani, they kept their eyes locked on Arius. Being the ones closest to the other teen, they had the best seats in the house to his reaction. "Is he…?" Naturally, it was Yuusui that spoke first and with a hushed whisper. The newest addition to the group unaware of much of what Arius was flinging about, but he didn't need to know the past that something was wrong in the present.
On the other hand, Ani looked as if she couldn't less. A gravelly, dark snigger loosed from her. "Hehehe, serves him right…" It was impossible to hold back the utter pleasure of the schadenfreude she was experiencing. Karama was a real bitch, it seemed… Although the chimera girl did feel a slight twinge of disappointment, it looked like it would be just a little longer before she got her hands on him fully.
The muted discussion was still lost on Arius, the Immortal Quirk holder still looking like he had been caught in a time vacuum. It certainly felt that way to him as well, time seeming to slow down to a painful crawl as he replayed Sateriasis' words in his head like clockwork. There was one word playing on repeat above all else; "Infirmary."
It was an accursed word, and it wasn't like anyone would know the extent of his feelings on it. It was why, even though he had been the only one after the induction that hadn't been licking wounds, he wasn't present in the infirmary whenever Kyte and Subaru announced the end of the test. Instead, he had confined himself to the outside, patiently waiting for when he could seamlessly re-join the fold.
Lucky for him, Kagekatsu had been there to allow that transition to go off without a hitch. It also had the side effect of allowing him to dodge the question of why he was waiting outside, but now it was going to be a massive challenge. There was no way out of it this time… Was there?
As his calloused hands went up to the dog tags around his neck, he ran his thumb across the cold metal. "You wouldn't want to disobey your superior, would you?" Sateriasis' voice from behind him, however, didn't let the situation lay dead any longer. The soft caress of the tags became a harsh pull as Arius wheeled around.
"Yes… Sir…" What else was he supposed to do? Just as Sateriasis had said, it wasn't within him to disobey a superior's orders. No matter what they were asking him to do. He could thank his old man for that wonderful quirk of his personality.
Trudging off with his hands now firmly planted in his pockets and a look on his face that no one could pinpoint, he found himself standing in and amongst the weirdest staff grouping in the Foundation. He already felt somewhat dirty, and that in itself was an achievement. "It's only until I figure out what glue that moron sniffed before coming up with this idea." The nurse's attempted consolation offered nothing; Arius ignored it in totality. His mind totally elsewhere.
Holding hands up in mock surrender at the snappy response from his colleague, Subaru shrugged his shoulders, ignoring the glare from Kyte that was burning a hole through the back of his head. "Wow, such a biting retort~! How shall I ever recover!" The mocking didn't stop, the clown magician rubbing fake tears down his face. The emptiness to the apparent pain being faker a snake oil salesman. "Either way, you're not going to be alone, so don't worry about it!"
"Focus on yourself and try not to kill them before their first month is up!" Came one last snide remark from Sateriasis. The animosity between the two staff members evidently not dying down as eyes that went over to the nurse's side saw him flipping the other off, a borderline snarl on his face as the quartet he had acuminated disappeared with him into one of the Foundation's many hidden doors.
"Well! Now that is all said and done, it's time for us to finally get to the main event!" Subaru clapped his hands together, grinning from ear to ear in a way that could only be described as utterly depraved. It was easy for the remaining members to picture the thoughts inside his head for once, and not a single one of them was good. "Head into there and we'll get this show on the road!"
Entering through the doorway, Kagekatsu took a deep breath. Even if he could see where he was heading, there was little chance he was going to let his guard down. Everyone in this place was seemingly out to hurt him in unimaginable ways, and there was absolutely no way that the thought of booby-trapping the doors was out of the realm of possibility.
Some others caught onto that line of thought as well, Akashi in particular was crossing the floor like it was made out of lava and one wrong move was going to send him to the deepest, darkest, hottest pat of Hell.
One could never be too cautious in new situations. Their cautious optimism had led them here in the first place, so it wasn't as if there was a shining, flawless record for its success. But, for once, it looked as if it had paid off.
Maybe booby traps on every door were a step too far, after all.
Whatever the reasoning was, and whether he was right to assume it in the first place, Kagekatsu let out a large sigh of relief, like he had just found a stream of water after walking around in the desert for weeks on end.
Just like the rest of the Foundation, the new location they found themselves was coated from wall to wall in right. The comment from Hiroto the other day seemed to hold more weight every second that ticked by. Subaru easily could've spurned the entire paint budget on that one hideous collage next to the simulation room. With how large this place was, that wasn't out of the realm of possibility.
However, what marked a notable difference about this room was that it really did look like there was no end in sight. As the doors shut behind them, fading into the wall as if they were never there in the first place, there was no longer any to mark where they had entered and where the exit was supposed to be. The ever-present white void sucking up any sense of orientation.
In fact, it was impossible to tell if they were in a large room like the simulation chamber; or they were in a small, cell-like room that would fit more at home in their dorm rooms. Just trying to figure out the logistics were giving the smarter ones enough of a mindfuck, which meant that there was absolutely no chance someone like Kagekatsu had a chance in hell of figuring it out.
"What the fuck…" The foxboy muttered, at least assured that he was still standing on the floor. He thanked his lucky stars that they hadn't found a way to flip gravity to make them stand on the ceiling instead, his breakfast would be eternally grateful for that bit of mercy.
If there was one saving grace, the bright lights of the room made his and everyone else's shadows go on for miles and mile on end. At least, if this training session turned out as violent as the induction, he had more than enough room to hide until it was over. He just had to be vigilant about keeping track of his time limit.
"Why does everything here have to look the same? Bah, no variety at all!" Grumbled Hisumi, who was sniffing around the air of the room for any danger. Folding her arms against her chest soon after with a frown on her face, the lack of expression in this stone prison she found herself part of was unbearable at times. Her politeness only held back so many of her opinions, at the end of the day.
"I dunno… Maybe Mr Vamp likes to keep things the same?" Came the voice of Akashi, finally standing normally and without fear for his life dominating every waking moment. His disconcerting smile not slipping an inch as he tried to reason out possible motives for the white colour scheme in his head. "Might just be easier to maintain?" Of course, one could only be so positive in a room full of negativity. The catboy sweatdropped when his mind ran blank after two meagre ideas.
"Trust me… These kinds of rooms can be nightmares to clean…" It was now Fukuro's turn to add his two cents into the mix, having dealt with more than his fair share of "clean-up" jobs over the years. Although, it didn't take a genius to figure out what was essentially basic knowledge. It was just… More of a warning for the future, if their training went down a dark path.
"Where is that bastard clown anyway?" Kagekatsu complained, sneering all the while. Not wanting to hear a single second more of people talking about fucking colour designs. "Saying he doesn't want to waste time, then he goes around and does just that! I know I shouldn't trust him bu-!"
Before the foxboy could continue his rant, it was interrupted by the voice of the man he was railing against. However, much to his confusion and everyone else's, Subaru himself was nowhere present. It wasn't as if they had missed some kind of booth either, the room was completely blank as far as they could see. "Need not be alarmed, Kage-chan, everyone else! I am here! Ready to fill my role as the supervisor of your training!"
Kagekatsu furrowed his brows, the "supervisor" of the training? The implication of that word set his tail wagging like a madman. Did that mean they were actually going to get a competent training session? Were they all going to be saved from the whims of a sadistic madman? Who should have been condemned to the stony lonesome so long ago?
If so, then this was a cause for celebration! Maybe, for once in his life, luck had sided with Kagekatsu Nakamura for the second time in a row. The feeling of elation could only be matched by the feeling of those who went all-in during a poker game to win millions, and the cockiness that was bubbling in the foxboy's head was certainly getting to that level.
"As many of you will have figured out by now, despite what I might have implied or said earlier, I will not be taking a direct training role on for today. Instead, I've arranged a little replacement that is sure going to help me split you all up into the proper tiers, nishishishi!" The dark laugh, however, shattered any chance that that feeling of Kagekatsu's going to last more than a few fleeting seconds.
Just then, another whirring sound reached the collective eardrums. This time, though, they were neither descending nor ascending. Instead, they were met with what could be assumed to be the room's centre opening up. The hexagonal hole greeted them with the presence of one Oscar Morales, the guy who was supposed to be their "normal" teacher.
Compared to the rest of them, he was pretty dressed down, his normal attire across his torso gone for the most part with only the black turtleneck remaining, the lab coat tossed to the side without a second thought.
Alongside that, there was the addition of a new piece to his outfit. Hanging from his neck, a large, circular amulet reflected the glistening lights. The globe shape in the middle was stationary as the teacher cracked his neck to the side. His ring laden hand flexed as half a grin broke upon his face.
"Can't believe they didn't even give us training kits…" Whilst everyone else might have been focused on the arrival of Oscar, Joseph had his mind set on a more productive model of thinking. Electing to focus his attention, once more, on the utter lack of professionalism being shown. If his mother tried doing something like this with her sidekicks, they would be well within their right to complain about it.
Yet, a supposedly retired Pro didn't even think to do it? What an utter shambles…
"OI! Who said you could talk?!" The blistering yell from Oscar was something that was genuinely not expected by just about anyone not named Subaru Fujinaga. The only prior experience of the man they had told them, if anything, he was one of the people that was least likely to raise their voice in a manner such as that. To hear it loosed from his mouth was stunning. "I don't want to waste any more time here, so if you know what's good for you, LINE UP!"
The barked orders had certainly spooked Kagekatsu into moving fairly quickly, his tail shooting up straight as he swiftly tried to fumble his position into something a lot more passable. Hell, those kinds of orders sounded like they belonged more at home from the army.
As Kagekatsu huffed and puffed, eyes darting from side to side to see if everyone else had followed the orders, he couldn't help but wonder just what was planned right here. They were in a mostly empty room, Subaru was present but impossible to see, and the morose Gen-Ed teacher had transformed into his best Full Metal Jacket cosplay.
Fortunately, one of those people was there to clear up the confusion. Unfortunately, it was Subaru that heralded the message. His tone was casual… Too casual for the horrors he was assumedly going to unleash. "You know, I realised something about our induction test the other day. Did we really test you? Or did we simply make it so the ones who won the genetic lottery were always going to be at the top of the top? So, I had a little thought that I've decided to turn into your training for today. I'm sure Niijima-sama would love to see what you're all like on a base level without your Quirks!"
Kagekatsu narrowed his eyes, did Subaru not see what was wrong with that? Nearly half of this class, himself included, were fucking mutants! How were they going to be able to do this and have it be fair and impartial!?
Wait… Everyone was looking at him all of a sudden. Why were they doing that? Why were their beady fucking eyes staring at him like had committed some heinous crime, and he was about to be sentenced to death? Had he just gone and said that part out loud?!
Had he been saying everything out loud the whole time? Oh fuck, oh god…
"As Kage-chan has so gracefully pointed out, some of you may indeed be mutant Quirk users, and that's fine! I like to think I'm a paragon of inclusivity and diversity! However, this is why I mentioned earlier that some of you won't be training with the others from time to time. Just so we have an equal playing field, you know?" Replied Subaru, sounding like he was trying to suppress his laughter throughout the whole explanation.
Needless to say, Kagekatsu was absolutely mortified. His ears dropped downwards and curled inwards, his tail slinking between his legs as he dropped his head and tried to forget that had just happened. Why did he need to constantly embarrass himself? Did he have a secret humiliation fetish or something?!
"Right! As Subaru said! Mutants on one side and the rest on the other side!" Oscar barked, watching with fervent eyes as the group did as they were told. Kagekatsu shambled his way over to where Fukuro, Akashi, and Ani were positioned, whilst the rest of them sorted themselves out on the other side. "I hope all of you ungrateful worms will be useful today! No one ever got anywhere in their life by flunking out of training!"
"That sounds like a threat," Kagekatsu murmured, not at all pleased at the state of affairs. Moving from crisis to crisis was just the spice of his life now, wasn't it? Honestly, it would not surprise him in the least if this was already his ¾ life crisis happening right now, his current path had him headed to an early grave at this rate.
"No… It sounds like funnnn…" The shambling voice of Ani emitted from behind him, reminding the foxboy to quickly get out of dodge and scuttle to the other side of the makeshift group. Akashi could deal with being the one closest to the walking mess of flesh, and no, Akashi's opinion on the matter was also not relevant in the slightest. No matter how much the catboy was clawing and whimpering to leave the whole time, the pleading looks he threw Kagekatsu's way never going to win him sympathy.
It was a very convenient time for Kagekatsu's hearing to stop working, to put it lightly. Saving his own hide was much more important, at the end of the day. Just as his mentor would say, it wasn't personal, it was just business. Regardless of how much amusement he might be taking from watching someone else but him take the fall, it was rather cathartic.
Amusement, however, was not on the face of Oscar. Just like a stereotypical sergeant, there was no sign of joy, just cold, detached anger that was waiting to be unleashed like the wild beast it truly was. His jaw clenching as he barked his next order, pointing over to the non-mutant group. "You lot! I want you to see how you deal with stealth-based exercises! You may be able to kick one another across the curb without much effort, but what good is that if you can't even get there without being noticed in the first place!"
At the mention of their training being stealth-based, Mei perked up. Finally, something that was going to work to her strengths for once. Something she wasn't going to have to play the underdog in. Her actions in the initial induction, getting the drop so easily on the hyper-vigilant Joseph, showed her skills more than she could have ever thought.
"And how do you intend we do that?" With his eyes still shut and arms folded, Joseph licked his tongue. "Without our Quirks, and in a room as open as this, how are we supposed to be stealthy?" The undertone carried his words like they were the most obvious thing in the world, and it was hard to deny he had a point. Even Kagekatsu found himself agreeing to how counterintuitive the instruction appeared to be.
Contrary to the rage that was expected, Oscar smirked instead. He too folded his arms; a slight puffing laugh being let out as he looked up to the ceiling where the lights were. "Oh? Still thinking on such a small scale, are we? Do you even know how big this room really is, Cadet Weaver?" Oscar leaned in, not caring that the energy demon made no move to open his eyes.
The smirk on the Australian's face only grew wider with the re-emergence of Subaru's voice. "Nishishihsi, your worlds are so boring. Always thinking in traditional spaces, don't you know who designed this place?" Subaru laughed, the crinkles of white makeup at the side of his eyes just about visible over the mass of piercings as he leaned back in his chair.
The control room he was in tucked away in a location that few in the staff knew existed, and only himself knew how to get into. Not unlike the security room that Sateriasis' parasites colonized for themselves, Subaru could see everything he need to from here. The large array of speakers, dials, and other contraptions laid out before him to be used at his pleasure.
One would have thought the Simulation room would have the most options, as the name would have implied that pretty clearly. However, they would've been very, very wrong in that assumption. Nothing was simple in the Foundation, with Subaru being to thank for a lot of that. Simply simulated a shifted environment was one thing, but the pink-haired adult had much more than that on his mind. "Why don't you all let me teach you a little excitement for once? I'm sure you'll be more than happy with teaching from yours truly and Morales-san to back you up."
Flipping the key switch that would set everything in motion, Subaru reclined back in his black chair, resisting the childish urge to spin around in circles on it. The lopsided grin on his face being one of pure mania, just waiting for the sadistic crescendo to reach its climax to gain the utmost pleasure from it.
Back in the room itself, the tension that hung in the air got more and more oppressive with Subaru's words adding another thick layer of pressure onto them. Then, with the sound of more whirring in the background and the systematic click of the lights had the end of the room shutting off, the tension was becoming too much to bear.
The clicking of the lights continued on and on for what seemed like minutes, not one of them being the smoking gun for how long this room was. In fact, it didn't look like they were anywhere close to being finished. The darkness may have been approaching rapidly, but it was the slowest and most agonising conquest of the light of all time.
All the final effect did was make Kagekatsu pissed off to an even greater extent than before. No lights meant no shadows. No shadows meant nowhere to hide if this whole operation went south. Sure, his eyes might have been more adjusted to the darkness befalling them than most, but that meant nothing for the great lugs by him that had ever chance of striking him by accident.
However, that wasn't all that was happening. On top of the darkness, there was the incessant whirring that was wreaking havoc on anyone with vaguely above average hearing. Needless to say, the sooner it was over for the mutant team, the better everything about this would be.
That was when they felt the floor under them shift, Kagekatsu and the rest with him struggling to maintain stable footing. The feeling was like they were being ripped apart from the rest of the class, the floor slipping away from them only to then trap them in the same place like it was some paradoxical quicksand.
What's more, it wasn't as if it was just the floor that was a major issue. No, that would be far too straightforward for the Foundation's tastes. The walls were also the enemy. As the floor was slipping away from under their feet, the walls were extending outwards. Had the lights been on, it might have been easier to pick out just what was going on, but even Kagekatsu was having a hard time paying attention to everything going on.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see the two on either side of him. Fukuro, as one would expect, seemed the most heavily centred on his feet. A monolith in perfect control of his standing for the time being. On the other hand, Akashi, on Kagekatsu's right, was mumbling so fast under his breath that his words dribbled out as utter gibberish. However, he too seemed to at least have recovered some degree of control.
Meanwhile, Kagekatsu was stuck still wobbling, balance never being a tremendous forte of his. Especially when he was dealing with his still gammy leg from the fight against Hisumi, which just had the excellent bonus of making basic coordination even worse.
His ears soon perked up, twitching rapidly and almost swivelling around on his head as they picked up the shuttering and locking of the wall around them. The four of them were trapped inside a dark, void-filled, almost featureless box that just barely was enough to contain them. All that was needed was one stray elbow and the whole collective would've been in a right mess. The top of the box was mere inches above Fukuro's waiting head, having used the Owlbear as a marker for how tall it needed to be.
On the other side of the room, knowing full well what was going on, Oscar's voice reached them. "As for the mutants, I worked with Fujinaga to think of the best way to separate you as well as to not impede on the rest of our work. Now, I would tell you maggots how to properly deal with it, but I believe there's already a failsafe in there to keep your motivated on your task."
Just as the confusion set in for the quartet, a robotic voice, just another wonderful addition to the mindfuck that was going on right about now, jumped into the fray. "Procedure 24061 engaged! Initiating plan F-5! Procedure will not end until subject performance is judged as satisfactory!"
"Oi! What the fuck is this thing!" Kagekatsu yelled, unable to hold back his anger and frustration anymore. The sharp teeth within his mouth bared, ready to take a bite right out of the bastards that had set him in here. "You listening to me, you hear?! Why do you people think it's okay to try and box us up like this?! First, it's making us bleed! Then it's the fucking rooms, and now this! This isn't what y-!"
Kagekatsu didn't get the chance to finish though, interrupted by the robotic voice. "Subjects too noisy, implementing protocol 006!" As soon as the cold, unfeeling voice was finished, there was a new cold, unfeeling addition to the booth.
They couldn't see it, nor could they physically feel it, but they could sure as hell sense the change in the air. The coughs, sniffles, and slight shuffling of shoes on the ground of everyone that had been omnipresent were now dead silent. Like they have never existed in the first place, and like the quartet was stuck in a world detached from objective reality.
"What did you do, Nakky?!" Akashi whispered. It sounded like he was trying his best to both sound harsh, but also to not sound harsh at the same time, as if he were duelling two different personalities within his head. However, assuming that to be the case, there was one universal truth between the pair. They were both utterly frightened.
Kagekatsu bit back on his tongue, scoffing at the question like he had just been asked to give his mother's maiden name to some stranger looking for his bank details. "Me? What did I do?! I didn't do shit! They're the ones doing everything!" He replied, indignant at the idea he was the cause of any of this craziness. These were people they were supposed to be able to trust, yet the whole thing was turning to be a massive sham at the minute. How could the foxboy not be angry!?
The ferocity with which Kagekatsu snapped seemed to be pretty successful in shutting Akashi up, not a single peep coming from that direction. However, that didn't mean there were no cries of objection at all. "You didn't have to say any of that… To him and to the teachers…" Fukuro mumbled. He was just about as lost as everyone else here, and he could easily sympathise with what was likely flying through the other's head, but it was no excuse for lashing out like that.
Before there could be another chance for a bust-up, however, the robot voice swooped in to save the day. "Subjects are given until the end of the time allotted to the other groups to complete the following task: 1,000 Push-ups; 1,000 sit-ups; 1,000 Squats! Should they be completed before, you will be able to leave before the other group! Good Luck! Your time starts now!"
And just like that, where it seemed like there was going to some degree of tension-filled calm, the raging anger of one of them lit back up again like a fire just had a whole canister of petrol dumped on it. "1000?! For each?! No way! No way! Nope! Bullshit!" Kagekatsu screeched, his anger no doubt incredibly grating at this point to everyone around him.
"Get down!" Ani was the voice that spoke out to him this time, already in the process of trying to fill the quota. It wasn't what she wanted, very clearly enjoying the brute violence of the induction test more, but she would have to tolerate it. Plus, if she could show off then that was just another arrow to her bow.
The gnashing of teeth coming from the hideous creations on her body also spooked Akashi into following along, the catboy the next to go down as he was soon followed by Fukuro on the other side.
All of which left Kagekatsu by himself, outraged by the conception of this training. Not only was it betraying their trust, which was already lacking on his end anyway, but it also made him long for the old training methods of his mentor as he ran fingers across the Sai he had taken with him.
A bitter smile crossed his face at that thought. Had he really been reduced to thinking that already? Missing the training of some psychopath because his hopes with the Foundation had been so callously crushed? Although considering Subaru's presence, training from psychopaths seemed to be a pretty common thing in his life now that he thought about it.
Positioning himself on the ground, making sure that his grip on the Sai was as perfect as it had been trained to be, he couldn't help but think how flat the circle of time itself must've been for everything to end up like this.
Every new venture in his life seemed to end up like this. The hope of the new tomorrow being met with the same psychotic present he always found himself re-entering no matter how hard he tried to escape it.
With the Sai angled on into the ground, his muscles already aching because of how much they had degraded over the years, he started his push-up section. Hopeful that this was all going to be over soon…
Meanwhile, with the non-mutant group, the sudden cessation of sound from the other group was ominous without a doubt. Arguably it was a benefit on account of no longer having to listen to the ravings of someone with a temper shorter than the average lifespan of a fruit fly, but on the other hand, it was also scary how quickly all the noise could be snuffed out without them knowing the status of the other.
"Now, it seems like everything's finally in order for a start!" Oscar proclaimed, everyone's attention moving from the utter insanity that preoccupied the last few moments to the conduit it all flowed through. "One of the more important parts of being a Hero, as I said earlier, is making sure you're all ready to work in the situation you not only have lacking sight but also lacking equipment. At the end of this room, Fujinaga has left a timer on a switch that will bring everything here back to normal."
"…Well, that sounds easy enough…" The voice belonged to Mahoro, putting her two cents in for the first time since they had entered this chamber of hell. Her words carried a kind of soothed undertone to them, no doubt from the relief that abounded at the seemingly easy task.
Although she should have known better than to poke the bear like that. "Shut up! I never said I was finished!" Oscar exclaimed, his next sentence shutting down any glimmer of hope for anyone in the group who still thought this would be simple. "As you should expect, maggots, Fujinaga has decided to place many obstacles on your path that you're going to have to avoid. This task isn't so much about ending the lockdown you're all in, it's about doing it right and without detection you got that?"
With the nods that were coming his way, Oscar, with everyone else in the dark, gestured with three fingers over in the direction Subaru was. Everything was ready in place, and the sergeant in him couldn't help but crack a grin at what was going to happen. "Then go!"
And like that, with his single declaration, it was off to the races.
For Mei, it was like being in her natural element. There might have been a literal shadow bender in the class, but there was no one who felt more comfortable in their embrace than she did. She took to the whole thing like a duck to water, finally able to work up the confidence to emerge from the hidey hole she had made for herself in the corner of the hidey-hole
First things first, she had to figure out what the lay of the land was. Due to the darkness, the faint outlines of the others in the group, no doubt trying to work through the same train of thought as her, were scarcely visible. They looked more like those shadows you would always just see out of the corner of your eye when you woke up in the middle of the night.
Still, it was enough to position herself far away enough to prevent herself from bumping into any of them. This was a test of stealth, after all, so acting like a bull in a China shop wasn't going to get her anywhere fast. Looking around the room again, feeling the dwindling presence of those around her as she retreated her mind into one single focus, she was the first to inch forward.
Walking across the cold, metal floor, her footsteps were quiet and purposeful. Not knowing the length of the room was the main issue at play here, as far as she knew. Of course, there were no doubt any manner of booby traps as previously stated, but those were easy to avoid with her expertise.
Not knowing where the end of her journey was… That was going to throw a wrench in everyone's plans. Her previous heists had all been planned out well ahead of time, a set path for her to traverse with an exit waiting for her if it ever threatened to go wrong.
This time around, just like everyone else, she was trapped in a cold, unfeeling space she knew nothing about. The bevvy of hidden doors and shifting landscapes manipulating this mechanical abomination added another layer of unpredictability to the equation. Like trying to find X without even knowing what operation you were using to solve it.
Whatever was waiting for her in the darkness, Mei was going to have to find it whether she liked it or not. Her cautious steps betrayed the anxiety gathering in her body, the prior comfort giving way to concern as each step forward gave her no reward other than more of the unrelenting darkness in her path.
Her lips remained bolted shut, though. Any peep out of anyone could set any array of sound-activated traps off, and Mei was no stranger to their existence, already having enough experience with those things to last a lifetime. The last time she had met them… Well…
"Oh, Little Lamb… How nice to see you again… No hard feelings, right?"
…There was no use thinking about that now… All it was… It was a distraction from the task at hand. Slapping herself on the cheeks, enough to prevent any repeat from what had happened in her dorm room, she steeled herself and trudged on further. Wondering just how much longer it would be before the first trap was triggered…
"ACK!" Lucky or not, the wait was not much longer for Mei to figure out that someone had found themselves caught in the first trap. The high pitch yelp belonged to no one else but Yua, the shortest of them almost sounding like she was whimpering at this point. "Daddy! You said you'd be gentle this year!"
Despite the outburst, however, there was no indication of how far ahead of anyone she was or what she had just managed to run into. As much as the traps were their enemy, the darkness was becoming the much more overpowering factor. Robbing them of the crucial information which might have made the task easier.
"Oi…" It also appeared that Mei was not out of the woods at the moment either, her spine shivering and her eyes widening as the deep voice of Yuusui emerged from somewhere around her. The bone-chilling experience of a hand brushing her side being something she would never get over, no matter how many heists she went on. "Umm, sorry, but do y-you know where we are?" He whispered, keeping his voice as low as possible. He too recognised the possibility of sound traps, it seemed.
Mei shook her head, the fact it wouldn't have been able to be seen forgotten from her mind. "No… I don't think we're in danger yet…" It was as much to reassure herself as it was to keep Yuusui placated as well. There were still so many variables that could pop up, it was impossible to know for certain just how safe they were.
"I see…" Yuusui muttered, feeling out the location he found himself in. His right hand was pressed firmly against the wall beside him, the only sense of solid ground he had in this void that ate everything helpful up like the demon of gluttony himself. "That was the small girl earlier, wasn't it?"
"Yeah." The ebony-haired girl muttered, not wanting to continue the conversation any further. The sheer uncertainty of what was lying in wait up ahead, matched with the current emptiness, took her anxiety for a ride to hell whether she wanted it or not. As a result, Yuusui's presence wasn't helping with keeping it in check at all.
Marching onwards and making sure to leave Yuusui behind, Mei tried her best to keep her face as blank as ever. One slight crack in the dam holding back her emotions would spell disaster if she weren't extremely careful, Yua's pained cry had spelt that reality out clear and proper for her to hear.
"…It's okay… It's okay…" The teen huffed to herself, muttering not unlike a famous hero of old. She needed the reassurance, no matter the outlet it was coming from, chanting it to herself as if she were going to trick her brain into believing it as true. "It's okay… It's okay… It's oka-"
It wasn't okay.
It wasn't okay, at all.
She was lucky her reflexes were as refined as they were by years of training.
All she had felt before she flung herself to the ground like she was jumping on top of a live grenade, was the faint, yet sharp, edges of a blade dangling in front of her. The wire-like surface triggered her fight or flight reaction by floating over her neck with the deadliest tickle known to mankind.
Her heavy breathing, in and out, in and out, showed just how close she had come to being shish kebab'd in only her first training session. She quickly clamped a hand over her mouth to shut out the breathing, anything could be a trigger as far as she was concerned.
Her voice could have easily triggered the voice centre to drop that thing from the ceiling, airing on the side of caution wasn't the crazy thing to do here. When you were met with insanity, the one thing you could do to counteract it was just hope that normality would return eventually.
Mei's face turned red as she crawled across the floor flat on her chest, the ambling motions of her arms and the power of her legs carrying her right underneath the other dangers she sensed above her.
It wasn't just one wire-like blade, and in fact, it wasn't a blade at all that had caused her life to flash before her eyes. What she had just ducked under was none other than long rows of barbed wire formed into the biggest fence the Foundation could muster. The tension in said wires no doubt set to the tightest it could be.
Every slight inch was a struggle, Mei trying to manoeuvre her body as far away from one wire as she could, only to feel another one lodged into her baggy clothes. The ripping and tearing, painful as it was to hear, was a necessary sacrifice to make. Getting to the end of this labyrinth became the only thing on her mind.
With one final heave, having spent God knows how long on her stomach in a painful crawl, Mei finally emerged from the other side of the confinement of the barbed wire. The absolute state of her clothes afterwards wasn't immediately obvious but had the lights been on, no doubt would the extent of the damage the fence had done be anything else except cataclysmic.
Fortunately, however, Mei herself was without many scratches. Her baggy clothes might have gotten caught on the wire, but it also functioned as a makeshift shield to protect her flesh from the vicious assault.
Mei's knees shook as she gradually worked her way back onto two feet, the aching pain of being crouched and crushed down like that wreaking hell on her bones. She had no idea how long she had been down there for, whether it was just a few minutes or if it were closer to an hour. It certainly felt like the latter if you asked her body.
Haggard breaths dogged her continuously, shambling movements indicative of just how much energy had been sapped from her body. "Damnit…" She involuntarily let out, placing a hand over her fast-beating heart. The organ raced at the thought that that was just the first trap of many that were going to come her way.
A tiny, loud part of her body just wanted to collapse then and there. It wasn't so much the energy that had been expended, more so the intense stress that was now taking hold of her body with every intention of piledriving her into the earth the first chance it got.
"And that's the game!"
So, when Subaru's voice emerged from the darkness, Mei couldn't help but treat it like the words of a sadistic guardian angel.
The blinding darkness was replaced by the blinding lights, which forced Mei to cover up her eyes. The swift changes, naturally, had a detrimental effect on everyone as their eyes raced to adjust themselves.
"Nishishishishi, very good! Very good! First try as well!" The magician's voice wasn't coming over the speaker this time, meaning at some point he must've re-entered the room, the utter joy in his tone suggesting he also managed to watch everything that was going on. "It's been a long time since we've had someone do it like that. Have to say, I'm impressed, Jo-chan, Migoro-kun."
As Mei's vision started to clear, she was finally able to survey the damage around her. Just as she thought, she was in an absolute no-man's land. In fact, she was stuck right in the middle of everything, exactly equidistant from the start and the end of the hellish torture chamber she had gone through.
A quick glance over her shoulder revealed Yua, Shiki, and Mahoro, the younger of the three girls stamping her feet like a petulant toddler that just got told they needed to go to bed. The hazmat wearing girl frowned as she crossed her arms, surprisingly quiet for once in her life, the gash from inside the suit cut right across the middle and back no doubt showing what had hit her earlier. There wasn't even a pleased look at the emergence of her "Father."
Mahoro looked like she was just happy to get the whole thing over with, although one wouldn't consider her as looking exactly flustered. She was still a good distance ahead of the other two, but it would be a struggle to say that she was attuned to this kind of environment. Stealth never was one of her strong suites, and it didn't look as if it was going to change any time soon.
Finally, Shiki was the one furthest back of her. The distance between her and the rest of the group being so great that Mei was forced to squint to even pick her out of the background. The ice dragon girl looked as if she had barely even moved a muscle, never mind having taken a single step forward.
However, as much as she may have wanted to dwell on it, her gaze soon turned to the person that was directly in front of her.
Hisumi had been someone she had never thought would be in front of her. Not that she had a negative opinion on the other girl, but the blonde was a bit… odd to put it very bluntly. Just a quick once over was more than enough for one to see how robotic everything she did was, until it suddenly flipped 180 degrees, as was the case during her showcase fight against Kagekatsu. In this case, she was firmly placed in her robotic mode. Her head facing forwards, eyes locked, and her arms firmly bolted to her side.
But this was not where Mei's main attention was placed. That was instead reserved for the very end of the room.
At the top of the room, with Subaru present beside them, was both Yuusui and Joseph. How Yuusui was able to get there, and so far ahead of her at that, mystified Mei totally. She had been the one to walk away from him. He should've also been trapped trying to navigate that barbed wire trap, and yet there were no marks on his person or his clothes that suggested he even knew of its existence.
Frankly, Yuusui too looked a bit shocked at what he was seeing. His brows furrowed as he curled a tiny bit up into himself, almost like he was embarrassed by what he had done. His eyes wandered the room before settling back down to the grinning form of Subaru beside him, the magician throwing an arm around his shoulders. "Th-Thank you, Fujinaga-san…" He muttered, biting his bottom lip in the process.
On the other side, and without the addition of Subaru's other arm for well-known reasons, Joseph looked as bored and collected as ever. His eyes looked down at where his hand was placed, right over the top of the red and blue button on the wall that had ended this whole exercise. "Was that it?" He asked, the monotone perhaps robbing some sense of genuine curiosity from being vocalised.
Subaru shrugged his shoulders, his grin not faltering. "For now? Yes! We did tell you this was just going to be a test of stealth, and stealth is all about being undetected, is it not? If it felt easy for you, then you must have been doing something right! Nishihsishi!" He finished, patting Yuusui on the back as his giggles made the sweat on Yuusui's back run cold.
Whilst Yuusui seemed to be the unfortunate subject of Subaru's attention, Joseph looked up. His eyes scanned the room, the slightest twinge of confusion in his gaze when he saw just what it had shifted into.
The room literally separated, the shifting floor no sensory illusion, with the right side of the room where the rest of the Foundation members were what almost felt like kilometres away. A distance that shouldn't be possible, assuming the dimensions here were the same as the meeting room.
That wasn't the only thing, though, which caught Joseph's attention. Their side of the room was just fitting into frankly impossible dimensions and spaces. His light orange eyes took notice of the huge tangle of barbed wire right behind Mei, something in his chest beating just that little bit harder at the sight of her tattered clothes as well.
However, what was most striking about it, was the fact the barbed wire didn't look like it belonged at all. Not in the simple "Well, of course, it doesn't belong here, it's a trap!" kind of way, but instead in an uncanny way where it was all self-contained within that one area Mei had trudged through.
There was no beginning, no end. It just existed now, and once they left there was no doubt it was going to leave as well. Vanishing without a trace as if it was never there in the first place. It was… Unsettling.
"I think it's also high time we let our other friends out!" Slipping out of Subaru's sleeve, a single remote button was clicked that lifted the box formed around the mutant group. "Bet you they're just dying to get back to normality!"
The sight that met the non-mutants was almost comical. The highly intensive training regime that had been dished out to their colleagues had taken its toll and then some, returning like a school bully that wasn't satisfied with just one payment of lunch money.
"Please… Please… I concede! I concede! Don't make me do this again!" Kagekatsu's fatigued voice cried out, the foxboy collapsed fully to the ground and laid out like he had collapsed on his feet, not able to see the concerned glance Yuusui was sending his way. Everything in his body was on fire, a feeling he hadn't had since before he could even remember.
The same could be said about Akashi and Ani. Akashi's pains were more obvious, there was nothing about him that suggested he was even remotely capable of doing that intense a workout, cuffs notwithstanding.
Ani was the more surprising one of the lot, one would have assumed she'd take to this like a fish to water. However, all that energy and brutality that was contained within her body just wasn't geared to long-form exercise. All her actions in the box had done was knock her out even quicker than before, to the point she was basically asleep on her feet.
Fukuro remained the paragon of the physical specimen, although he too was far from okay. He was about the only one who could stand on his feet under his own power, but the wooziness of all the adrenaline running out of his body was starting to get to him. However, he was more than conscious enough to take note of the chaos the other side found themselves in. "What happened there?" He said.
With the dust finally starting to settle, Subaru backed away from Joseph and Yuusui, grinning from ear to ear. This first training session had been a tremendous success, better than he could've ever hoped for.
Truly, he hadn't expected anyone to get to the end of the line already. Maybe that was more on his end for not ramping it up as much as he could, but if there was one thing Subaru Fujinaga was, it was magnanimous and graceful in defeat.
It had taken a lot of arm-twisting to get this room built, both figuratively and literally, but it had already started to pay them back tenfold. The pink-haired magician made a mental note to later thank the man who had given him this idea and helped him build it from the ground up, fucking around with the actual concept of space was way more fun than it had any right to be!
But that was just on his personal level, as he made to leave the room and the other kids to their own devices to let Oscar take back over, he mentally returned to the initial point he had brought them here for.
The fact not one, but two people had been able to get this challenge out of the way was no doubt going to please Kyte to no end. The addition of one of them being the newcomer, Yuusui, was just like the extra cherry on top of the cake. What wonderful things were going to come next in their training?
It just made Subaru giddy at the thought of what was going to come next… Endless amusement and pleasure, that was the Fujinaga way.
And things were only going to get better…
Especially with his boss' newest addition.
Just because one system might fall, and the circumstances surrounding its existence might fade, did not mean that the features of the system were going to collapse so quickly. Markets were stronger than any kind of political being, all because they feasted on the inherent desire to consume more and more. As such, one can imagine a simple "Symbol of Peace" being unable to fully snuff out the idea of black markets as a concept. One man simply couldn't kill such an iron-clad, bullet-proof idea.
Running black markets was not in his usual remit, such business was so beneath him. He had seen enough of them in his life to know they were infested by bacteria you wouldn't even want on your toilet seat. Every single person just an onion with ten more layers of cocksucker once you started to peel away the layers.
Dumb, idiotic villains that would rather play with their dicks than bathe. That's all these rat dens were. Places for morons who thought they were worth more than they really were to circlejerk about how they were going to be the next symbol of Evil, and it made him sick to his goddamn stomach.
Above all the rest was the Japanese one. That was the fucking worst of an utterly shit bunch, their egos bigger than the space in between their ears. He hadn't met a single man or woman here that was worth their salt, or even worth the shit their words were clearly layered with.
"No! Hey, hey, hey, hey! Pl- We can work this out! The Director he ju-!"
Oh, and there one of them went fucking whining again. Their nasally cries were just the purest form of poison dripped into his pointed ears, like nails on a chalkboard turned up to eleven! Honestly, they talk like they can talk for all of Japan, and then when you pull a gun to their head, they all crumble like a fucking house of cards because their life is apparently worth something now! Snivelling little cretins…
Coming back was a massive fucking mistake. Ever since they stole his protégée from him, he never forgave the Japanese. Conniving, thieving bastards that they really were. It was all stressing him out too much. If he stressed any more his navy-blue hair would soon be grey, and he wasn't going to look like an old geezer anytime soon. No matter what his age suggested.
"Shut your mouth." Came his only authoritative deceleration to the pest whimpering before him. All those muscles on such a tiny body, and they couldn't even be put to use doing a damn thing against him. Imagine being blessed with all that strength just to waste it all away, trying to be some big, hardlad enforcer for a guy who looks like he came out of the 14th century.
Typical of the gutter trash infesting this shithole country.
With two strides of his long legs, gifting him the towering height of 6'6, he was back at the pest's side. Their hands and legs were tied together, naturally, with a cinder block locking it all in place. The rope securing it was tied around connected to all three parts of the contraption. He was already kicking himself for not bringing enough rope to keep the other's trap shut.
Placing his foot on the block, he looked out onto the pier and down into the ocean. The sight must've finally clocked in the lout's head because, all of a sudden, they were screaming their head off as if they had just seen a bomb go off. "NO! NO! NO! Please! Please, don't do this! Mons-!"
"Hey." He interrupted them, there was not a single part of his being that wanted to listen to them any longer. "I don't know about you, but what the Director thinks doesn't matter at all here. His contract with me was torn up, see? Unless we've suddenly made up on good terms, then there's no way he has any right to try and talk me into working for him again. If he was so willing to want me back like you say, then why didn't he come meet me himself?"
Without a second in between him ending his question, the other person was already fumbling across an answer. The sheer desperation in their voice only reached by those who knew their life was no longer under their own control. "Busy! He's busy, okay! He's been trying to look for the one that got away again! When he's back, the Coliseum can be whole again! Please! Just think about this!"
"No." The slight breeze coming off the peer tousled through his hair, blowing his bangs back into his lie of sight as he grumbled. The one time he forgot to wear a hairband, and this was what happened. Of course… Well, his protégé had to inherit the luck stat from somewhere. A slight movement of the block to the edge of the pier, though, was all he needed to regain momentum "I'll tell you again, our "deal" is up. I have a new contract in mind here, with someone who is of much more importance to me and is holding someone much dearer to me than your boss. So, unless you can deliver what I want, which you can't, why should I listen to you?"
The grinding of the block across the ground, and the irrepressible forward momentum, one you couldn't scuttle away from, meant that if there was any time for regret or hesitation it was long gone by now. "Oh, fuck you! Fuck you! Fucking prick! Burn in hell!" The anger flowing from the other only emphasised that irreversible track even more.
But no matter how irreversible something seemed, nothing was ever truly inevitable. As he removed his foot, for the time being, he stalked over to the other one final time. His face was a mask of blankness and serenity, with not a single hint of emotion behind those cracked ruby eyes. "Hey, can I ask you a question? Have you ever masked your emotions under so many layers of indifference that you can no longer tell where the mask ends, and reality begins?" With that all it took was one more step, a foot soon resting upon the cinder block that held the fate of a life in its sentience-less being. "I'm here to reclaim what's mine. Just remember, though, it's nothing personal. It's just business."
Pushing the block finally over the edge, the satisfaction as he saw the struggling, skating form of the other fall into the ocean with no chance of escape was almost too much to handle for his cold, dead being. He was so glad this method had been imparted onto him, made for a hell of a lot more interesting kills than just stabbing someone until they bled out. That method was getting a little tired, and his wrists were going to start a revolution if he wasn't careful.
Leering over the edge of the pier, he watched as the lout sank deeper and deeper to the seabed below. How they desperately tried to claw their way through the rope, or how they tried in vain to disconnect the cinder block. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic, they had no chance in hell of ever getting out of it.
People just didn't know what they were good for, really. Whether that be the circlejerking shitheads that thought they were the heirs to All For One's and Tomura Shigaraki's legacy; or the hare-brained Heroes whose world view got narrower the wider the space between their ears became.
Vigilantes were arguably worse. People who had convinced themselves they could take matters into their own hands, walking the thin line between Hero and Villain. However, in the end, they would always become one or the other. The label might have been different, but the actions were always the same, were they not?
Vigilante. Hero. Villain.
Who said he had to be one? Who said he couldn't be all three at the same time?
He had been all three at the same time. Such were the joys of life itself.
You didn't need arbitrary classifications to know exactly who you were.
Entropy leads to decay, time would remain a flat circle.
On the bright side, now that he was done with this whole debacle, he could finally focus his attention back on what he came back to this shithole country for. Not to be the lacky of some wannabe human trafficker, but, as he said to the goon, to reclaim what was his from the clutches of those who stole it from him.
Taking his phone out, he waited in the cool, midnight breeze for the person on the other end to pick up. Reliable wasn't a word he would associate with them, but he hoped for once in their sorry life they would be possessed to listen to reason.
"The bells are ringing; can you hear them calling your name?"
Voicemail, of course. The same fucking thing over, and over, and over again with this moron. Why was he trying to think it would be any different now? He clicked his tongue, opting to place one hand in the pocket of his black, leather jacket to shield it from the cold.
"I'm back, I told you I always come back. This time, though, it's not for you. However, once this is over, know I'm going to settle things between us." A smirk graced his lips. If the other wasn't here, he could say whatever he wanted. "So, if you would, I invite you to breathe with me. You have eternity to spend, what's one more moment out of it? You took something of mine? Well, I'll take something of yours."
Shutting off his phone after that monologue, he turned his attention to the city behind him. Japan was all nice and glitzy on the front cover, but it didn't take a genius to see through that awful disguise. The back-alley slums were some of the worst he had ever seen, the result of decades of neglect and decay. He could've sworn that half of them were either filled with dead rats or dead bodies that they couldn't be bothered to clean up, probably why the places always smelt like someone had baked raw shit in the sun.
Unfortunately, they were unavoidable, He was going to have to walk past them as quickly as he could if he wanted to get down to business soon.
But when that was said and done, there was going to be nothing stopping him from heading to his ultimate destination.
The Broken Heart Foundation.
The Wind of Destruction; Monsoon needed to talk to Kyte Niijima about bringing him back.
A/N: No author's note this time, I'm tired. Just hope that you enjoyed this chapter, the second longest one of the story.