Broken Heart Foundation (SYOC)

by LordMammon

Far into the future, for those who have had everything ripped away from them, the Broken Heart Foundation is there to put the pieces of your shattered heart back together again. For one reason, and one reason only, no one is going to fix it for you. (SYOC closed)

19. Chapter 19

Separate From the Hell That Guides You

"To tell you the truth, Little Lamb. I lied."

How long had it been haunting Mei…? How long had it been since that voice, foreign and invasive, slicked its claws into her mind and marked it as its territory? How long had it been… How long had it been since Mei was able to look into the setting sun and remember anything other than the sight of the man she trusted the most dead at her feet?

A single stab through the back… Quick, clean, remorseless… It was all so sudden…

Rey had been right in front of her… She had felt his warmth… Been able to see the terror and desperation in his eyes… Hers had reflected that same terror, unable to understand why her makeshift home life was being invaded by these men and women that were armed to the teeth for a fight.

The next time she blinked that day, it had been the last time she had known the world through different eyes. The final time that she had been able to look at the world the right side up, without her thoughts instantly tracing back to the tragedy that she had once avoided in her homeland, only for it to seemingly follow her wherever she went.

"Jeung-san, are you okay? Are you sure you want to go through with this?" The voice of Shion spoke out to her, clear and directly to the point. The Foundation's therapist had witnessed the absolute despondence that rolled off Mei like a thick red carpet being laid down for the film industry's biggest stars. Simply looking at the girl across from her made Shion's heart twist in her chest.

Mei pulled her feet up on the couch she was sitting on, dipping her head between her knees and using her hair to hide the rest of her face from view. The small comfort the furniture provided her was nice, she supposed, but wasn't anywhere near enough for her to rid the feeling of disgust that crawled under her skin. The ebony-haired girl had almost forgotten the other was in the room with her in all honesty, unable to shake the thoughts that had been assaulting her mind since she had spied Kagekatsu's earrings.

…She had seen them before. She knew what they were, to whom they belonged. She might not have known the exact story behind them, but the glint that they had taken in her eyes was nothing short of unmistakable.

"I'm a snake… I'm the Devil himself, you stupid, stupid girl."

Shion's lips creased into a deep frown, her brows furrowing as she picked out a notepad and pen for the upcoming sessions. When Subaru had first told her that there was going to be a change to her schedule once more, she wanted to roll her eyes and tell the man that if he wanted to make any more alternations, then he was going to have to get into a different business. Clearly, organisation was never his strong point.

Yet, whenever he had trundled in Mei behind him no less than five minutes ago, Shion's opinion had done a complete 180-degree flip, much to the delight of the psychotic clown that hovered over her shoulder the whole time.

The young girl had looked wrecked, like she had been dragged through a warzone. Her baggy clothes, something Shion had already noted that was desperately in need of being replaced, appeared more ripped and destroyed than they did in the previous adjective. Her hair was a total nest on her head, like she had been through a powerful storm and then decided to stick a leaf blower on for good measure.

Dark circles that claimed their haunt under her eyes stood out like a sore thumb. Said eyes were then unable to even make the attempt to rise from the ground, sticking to it and not budging an inch, as if they had lost the strength to cry out after having seen so much hell. The tiny spider's thread of sleep attached to the corners of them was the one salvation Shion was able to find.

"Seriously, kid. I know what Fujinaga can be like, but his word isn't as binding as he likes to think it is." Shion spoke again, trying to keep her tone as calm as it could be. All she could do in her position right now was try and coax Mei into cooperating with her, any other method might have required a lot more moving parts. As incredible as her Quirk could be in gaining information, there came a point where ethics had to be considered. Even if the concept of ethics itself was a bit of a loose code when you worked in the Foundation.

"Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing."

Mei kept her head locked downwards. Around her knees, the grip her arms held grew ever tighter, right to the point where it felt like they could snap through her legs at any given moment. Her trembling body was visible for all watching to see, shivering like the arctic had just blasted a powerful blow of sub-zero wind into her face. Was this what a panic attack felt like? The teen girl didn't know anymore.

In fact, what was the point of being here anymore?

Hong Kong was supposed to be different. The escape she needed after everything that had happened back in Mainland China, far from those remote rural plains that had bequeathed her the punishment for simply existing the way she had. Far away from the yokels and cultists that spoke of Quirks like they were some gift from the High Gods up above, only to treat them like a gift from the Devil himself if they stuck out of line even the slightest amount.

Rey… Rey had taken her in. No one else had even spared so much as a thought towards helping that tiny, ten-year-old girl on the corner. No one else had taken to notice her presence, letting her fade into the background of the dilapidated streets like some kind of phantom, with the belief she would soon turn into another one of those banshees that haunted those unfortunate to come into contact with them.

Yet… Rey had spotted her… Even given her his coat… Taken her home… Given her a home… For four years, she had been showered in an affection she had long imagined was impossible. It had made her malnourished, withering frame grow stronger day by day. It worked to make her soiled out, dry mind soak in the praise piece by piece, training her to never again have to remember the terrible feelings that had wrecked her body on that fateful tenth birthday.

But… It had all been snuffed out like the flickering candle in the path of an almighty wind of destruction. The three-pronged blade that had shattered Rey's heart had done the same to Mei without her even needing to be attacked. The mere image alone of her seeing her saviour's body, Rey's body, laying at her feet was punishment enough for the crime of feeling like she could be happy.

Why was the Foundation going to be any different? Did they think they were going to be able to get her free from this curse that coursed through her blood? The illness that stole her life force, draining her blood drop by drop until it made its triumphant conquest near her death?

Were things going to change simply because Kyte said they would? Were they going to be able to tell her what it meant to be alive? Where was this ability they claimed they had to fix her broken heart, and was it even something that could be pieced back together after it had been shattered so many times?

"And I know I'll live on forever! With Satan himself by my side, that's the truth that cannot be denied!"

Shion sighed, standing up from her desk and walking over to Mei. "Kid, seriously, you don't have to do this." She said, repeating herself in the vain attempt that something might have changed in the few seconds that had passed since her last attempt. The welling fury directed at Subaru grew ever stronger the more she saw the girl in front of her recoil further.

Just what was that terrible man thinking? Ever since she had stepped foot in this Foundation, Subaru Fujinaga had been someone Shion found herself unable to crack. As much as she could stomach the thought, the therapist often had to tip her hat to him and assume that every one of his out there plans and schemes had some kind of worth behind them. Kyte wouldn't have allowed him such a great sway in the background politics and administration otherwise.

However, as much as she trusted the Boss' judgement, Shion found herself grasping and pulling at stray hairs that flicked themselves in front of her face. Mei was clearly in no position to have herself exposed to all her traumas all at once. If doing what amounted to a trial run with Kagekatsu had told her anything, Shion needed to be excessively careful around this intake. One wrong move, one hairpin trigger, and everything would be worth utter shit.

Her Quirk was not built for situations like this, that was as much as she could admit to herself as she pulled up a chair just in front of the couch. All she had to fall back on now was the wealth of experience under her belt, regardless of whether it was directly comparable to the present situation or not.

"I'm ready to start whenever you are." Shion leaned forward, but far back enough that she wasn't invading Mei's personal space. Her eyes remained locked on the other girl as she pulled the notepad and pen down with her, propping it up on her knee and taking a brief glance up at the words that swirled around Mei's head.

"One bullet… One bullet that can decide your future. Follow your heart… Follow your wrath… Follow wherever the wind blows, you're sure to find your answer there."

Mei bit her bottom lip hard, her slightly sharper than normal teeth cutting into the top layer of flesh and drawing tiny specks of blood. The words spoken to her that day still rebounded in her head like the echo off the walls of a tunnel. At this stage, she didn't know if they were ever going to be escapable, putting her hands up against her ears didn't have any effect on quieting them down.

In fact, the more she remained stuck here, the louder and louder they got. They built to a crushing crescendo within her mind, turning sneers and jeers from faceless goons of the past into deafening cries of her own in the present. Tears fell from her puffy red eyes, steaming with the edge of a lavender flame as they fell upon her knees.

Among those voices, one sound stood out above the rest as everything reached its sickening climax.

BANG!

One bullet. One shot. One choice. Her choice.

On the one hand, she could've put an end to the Fairytale right then and there. She could have joined Rey in the afterlife, living out a fantasy that she had grown far too attached to for ever wanting to stay away from it. She could have finished the job that her home village had tried, which drove Mei into ending up at Rey's feet as a result.

However, on the other end of the equation, Mei held a different future in her hands. The saying often went that revenge was a dish best served cold, striking whenever your target least suspected it and the boiling rage within your body had simmered down to nothing but a calculating desire to see them suffer. Yet, even now, Mei struggled to know if that was the feeling truly welled up inside of her.

On that day, the choice had been a simple one, binary in nature. Either put the revolver to her skull and see the other side or put the gun to the face of the man who had robbed her of the one life she felt comfortable in. For most people in Mei's situation, it should have been a no-brainer. Their bodies pulled them in one inexplicable direction before their brain caught up with what was going on.

But… Somehow… Mei had… she had managed to pick the third option… The bullet fired from the barrel of the revolver that day hadn't struck the man in front of her, nor did she find it ricocheting around in her skull and sending her to a premature grave. Only when she dropped the shaking weapon to the ground, smoking pouring from the muzzle as it recoiled with an almighty thud in her tiny hands, did she recognise what happened.

"Bathory!"

Shion pursed her lips, pressing the pen into the side of her cheek as she stared at the girl in front of her with keen interest. Whilst Mei had made a single movement since she had first curled up on the couch, there had been a flurry of words developing around her head that the therapist's Quirk had been able to decode.

Each one, though, seemed to appear and disappear at will. One second, the ten keywords that Breaking Speech provided to Shion would be loud and clear, scribbled in deep blue eyes like the date of death in a Shinigami's eyes. The next second, all ten would be replaced and a new batch of seemingly unrelated crap came into view. To say it caught the therapist off guard would be an understatement.

However, despite that, she had been able to glean a few common words from the storm that possessed Mei's mindscape. Each one was scribbled down furiously as her gaze remained steady and collected upon the broken girl in front of her, hands moving at a breakneck pace to get them down before they switched and underlining the one name she had found that seemed to tie it all together.

Monsoon.

Whenever she had seen it around Kagekatsu's head, it was a bit of an eyebrow raiser. What could a simple storm, one that rarely hit Japan nowadays, have done to have such a great degree of an effect on the foxboy's psyche? To the point he was ready to harm himself like a feral beast at the mere mention of the word? The numbers simply didn't add up at first for Shion, like a puzzle so close to completion but missing the final few pieces.

Now that she saw it floating around Mei's head, the intrigue only got deeper. Mei was Chinese, wasn't she? That's what the file passed to her by Hiroto through Subaru had told her. Shion even remembered joking that this was their most diverse intake in years, given that more than a handful of the selected students had some kind of foreign background. Therefore, it made it even more confusing that it turned up in one of their Japanese students as well.

It couldn't possibly be a coincidence… Could it?

Shion frowned, taping at the word on her notepad, making sure to underline it some more and keep a mental note on if it ever turned up again with some of the others. If it was a simple coincidence with her Quirk, which was never out of the question, then it could be written off without much fanfare. However, if the gut feeling rummaging through her head was correct, then there was going to be much more at play.

"Kid, I want to ask you a question, if that's all right with you?" Once more, Shion refused to be too forceful with the matter at hand. Mei might have been far less choleric on record than Kagekatsu was, likely meaning she wasn't about to witness a self-harm-laden breakdown, but there was still every chance her fragile mind could break with a single mistake.

And there was no chance in hell that Shion was going to allow that to happen, never again.

Carefully, Mei's head began to rise up. Not too far, though. Just enough to the point where Shion was able to catch sight of the puffy mess the young girl's eyes had become. The royal purple colour faded into what could only be described as a dull amethyst, devoid of any other emotion but boundless sorrow. Her head was tilted slightly, almost inviting in a way that still remained restrained and closed off.

Shion shuffled forward in the chair, pulling the piece of furniture a small distance forward in the process. Blue eyes that were normally stern and direct, a hold over from her time before the Foundation, softened. "Look, I don't know how many times I have to say this, but you don't have to speak it if you don't want to." She started, flipping through a few pages of the notepad and tearing off the list she had written down before offering the pad over to Mei. "However, if it would be easier for you to visualise it, then I'm more than happy to continue this session."

Maybe it was something of a holdover from the force, maybe it was motivated by her suspicions over whatever Monsoon meant to both her and Kagekatsu. It didn't matter. If making Mei draw the source of her trauma worked, much like a police officer doing a mock sketch of the perpetrator to hunt them down, then Shion had no qualms about the method.

The therapist watched with waiting eyes as Mei's shaky hands extended out from her curled-up prison and prised the notepad from Shion's hands. The trembling waves that overtook the page on first contact made Shion's heart constrict in a million different ways, the blood pumped through her veins felt like a liquid fire that had been crafted and flayed by a cat o' nine tails.

A year at the Foundation… With the whirlwind her life had been over the past twelve months, it was easy for Shion to forget how little time she had actually spent employed by this place. Of how little she had seen of the other intakes that came before her, having to rely on stories from both Subaru and Sateriasis to fill in the blanks.

Was… Was this what they dealt with on a daily basis? Seeing all of this pain, this suffering, up close and personal for close to twenty years? Kyte included?

"Oh, look… The frightened princess doesn't know what to do…"

At the sound of the voice in the back of her, Mei began to scribble on the page. Phantom fingers joined her own as they imposed themselves over her trembling hands, the bony, cracked mess they were visualised clearly in her mind. The sensation of their touch was as slimy and repulsive as she remembered it.

Long after she had chosen the third option on that day, she had felt Rey's murderer place his hands on her face. It had felt like the grip of a monster ripped straight from her nightmares, one that she was never going to be able to escape from, the nightmare that would never end.

On that day, she had stared into those dull red eyes and watched as they became emblazoned with the first emotion she had witnessed other than sheer apathy. They looked like those of a supreme hypnotist. A man with the ability to command with a simple glance was a scary thought to Mei back then, and it terrified her even more as she was forced to relive it.

Mei's drawing was shaky. Late nights spent sketching the layouts of various buildings might have honed her skills, turning her drawings from stick men into sprawling landscapes, but there was no substitute skill that allowed this attempt to be refined. Jagged lines cut across the page in haphazard scrawls. Circles that otherwise might have been smoothed out were transformed into hideous chicken scratch.

Yet still, Mei carried on. It was the only thing she had left to do at this point, and it was the least she was capable of. As much as she might have wanted to curl into a ball, ignore the past, and simply run away from it like always, there was no escape this time. Not when she suspected the cameras littering this place to be tacking her every movement, and especially not whenever Subaru was very possibly still stalking the hallways.

The teen girl had been drawing for a mere five minutes, but by the time she had put down the pen and handed the notepad back over to Shion, it felt like it had gone on for five years. Mei had done the best she could with the tools provided for her, however, she also instantly dipped her head back into her knees the second the pad left her hands.

"Your existence is a poison, Little Lamb… I hope you're aware of that. All of this… is because of you."

Upon receiving the pad, Shion studied it with the fervour of a mad scientist reading alchemical memoirs of forbidden secrets past. Her blue eyes scoured every nook and cranny of the page, willing to comb every individual molecule if need be to see if there was anything that could be useful. This was, perhaps, that one chance she would be getting to help Mei.

Although the art was a little shaky and haphazard, it was simple for the therapist to pick out the objects that had been sprayed out of Mei's soul and onto the page. Soon, the original sheet of paper with all the necessary repeating words was back in Shion's hand. No stone would be left unturned trying to connect the meanings of this tragic jigsaw puzzle before her eyes.

There were three drawings in general, each one with a varying level of detail. There was little doubt in Shion's mind that they were related to how well the girl across from her was able to remember it. The size ranged too, once more suggesting to the trained mind that stared at them that there was some vague connection to how prominent they were in Mei's mind.

Number one was small, almost to the point where Shion had to squint to see it. Right in the corner of the page, there was a pair of diamonds. A flick of her eyes to the piece of paper by her side made them widen ever so slightly. Written just underneath Monsoon was Diamonds and judging from how they seemed to be dangling from the edges of ears too, then it was clear what their purpose was.

Wait… Diamond earrings? Shion gave another quick scan of the sheet by her side. The word Red was also as prevalent as Diamonds and Monsoon. As far as she was aware, there was only one person in this Foundation that also carried the word Monsoon around his head, and sported red diamond earrings no less. It took all of her training over the years not to let out a gasp as everything started to slot together in her head.

Which the next drawing only made harder to do. Smackdab in the middle of the page was the largest drawing of them all. It didn't take long for Shion to work out that it was a mask of some kind, the dead, hollow gaze couldn't have possibly belonged to another living, breathing creature on this planet. The mask itself was adorned with two black horns sticking out of either side of the forehead, much like those that oftentimes got attributed to the Devil. The rest of it appeared to be a sickly pale colour, drenched with black goo if the shaky streaks down the front were meant to be taken that way. The hollow black voids that sat in the middle where the eyes were supposed to be seemed to reinforce that idea even more.

Painful lips pursed on Shion's face as she took in the black lips of the drawn mask. With the word sheet now almost seared into her hand, she scanned the list for what the possible connection could be.

Sympathy? No. There was no way that was the one she was looking for. Who would ever attach a word like sympathy to a hideous creation like that? It would be like going into a game of Russian Roulette and then complaining the penalty for losing was death. Shion'd have to be a fool of monumental proportions to fall for that claptrap.

Tenderness? Hell no. Seeing that word on the list made Shion roll her eyes. It was exactly the same as the last one! It told her next to nothing, and to make matters worse, it didn't seem to fit in with any of the others as well. So why was it coming up often enough for her to note it down? Something wasn't adding up here, and whilst the answer might have been on the tip of Shion's tongue, she found the solution dying before she could say another word.

Hatred? Now, that seemed more like it! However… It didn't line up as well. A cursory glance over at Mei could tell one all they needed to know about the girl. She might have been broken, fractured into a million pieces by a great tragedy, just like everybody else in this Foundation. Yet, it would be a push in any case to consider hatred her motivation. Call Shion crazy as one pleases, but the therapist knew that in the face of doubt there was no doubt.

Still, as Shion continued to tap the pen under each word, the frequency increasing all the while, progress had slowed to a crawl. None of what had been provided appeared to line up with the mask that, even in paper, now jeered at Shion from its prison. The black lips curled into a half sneer, its eyes narrowing almost like a predator stalking its prey after being released from the zoo.

Furthermore, Shion wasn't quite sure what it was, but simple staring at the mask made her feel… uneasy… Her stomach, usually conjoined with her iron liver in being able to handle anything that came its way, felt tight. A half-gag reflex caught her in the back of the throat, piping hot acid and phlegm up her oesophagus until it gracefully caught itself right before her mouth.

That was until finally, finally, Shion came across one word that she might have been able to attach for definite.

Devil.

In a way, Shion was going to be kicking herself until the end of the day, maybe the end of the week. Witnessing that word placed right in front of her face, she couldn't believe she hadn't noticed it sooner. The therapist just knew that if either Subaru or Hideyoshi was present, she'd never hear the fucking end of this.

Before she knew it, the brunette therapist was releasing her tensed-up shoulders from the high point they had worked themselves into. The tight breath she had been holding onto, constricting in her mouth like a powerful snake, escaped in one quick, long burst, much like the act of deflating a balloon.

But at last, she would be able to move on to the third and final picture. Then, she'd be able to end this session and let Mei go free without any more trouble or things that could possibly trigger her.

That was until the hitch of her breath when she spied what Mei had drawn on the left side of the mask.

A pair of Sai.

Shion rubbed her eyes instantly, wondering if she had made some terrible optic judgement and if it was just her eyesight failing her as she got older. This might have been one of the only times where she was in a drunken stupor, at least then she'd have been able to tell herself that it was a case of seeing double. At least then she'd be able to sleep peacefully for a short time until reality hit her like a brick shithouse.

Rummaging through the list once more, Shion spied that it had indeed turned up too, near the bottom of the list. Its infrequent sightings seemed to suggest that it wasn't a particularly relevant word at first glance, and Shion mused that maybe it was the reason why she had missed it on previous searches.

However, the fact Mei had designed it to turn up as the three objects that poured out of her soul, Shion had to take it more seriously now. The twin blades, each with their three points drawn in excruciating detail, held small blotches of ink at the tips of them. Shion's face darkened, with no doubt in her mind that the small splashes were intentionally designed to be like that of trickling blood.

The reality that had hit Shion had hit hard, like the weight of a gigantic man-mountain of individual cutting a colossus down with a single chop to the chest. The ramifications of her discovery bounced around in her head as she gently began to pull the chair back to her desk, setting down the pen and paper back on the top of her desk as well.

The full story wasn't clear yet, and with a heavy-heart that sank down to her feet, she knew exactly what she would have to undertake in order to get it. Hands went up to her hair, making sure that any stray strands hadn't flown out of her bun as she approached and crouched down in front of Mei.

"Mei-san, can you look up at me?" Shion didn't know if her request was going to be reaching Mei's ears, let alone did she entertain the idea that the teen was going to be able to co-operate right away. Yet, as she felt that painful lashing of chains on her heart once more, there was little else she could do but provide what light she was capable of imparting.

Mei's head craned upwards at a crawl, slower than a snail and trickling down like the last fine grains of dust in an hourglass. For the first time since they had begun, her face was fully revealed to Shion.

The same puffy eyes that had overtaken Shion's first glance had only gotten worse; the tears that fell had stained Mei's face. The streaks that otherwise would've been invisible had been scorched onto her skin, the faint burns trailing down and over the scar around the mouth Joseph had given her during the induction.

Snot clogged at her nose, clearly trying desperately to escape before it was subsumed and assimilated into the assorted mess and mass of bile that pumped out of it. Shion soon passed the poor girl a handkerchief from her desk, only able to watch in abject horror as it soon found itself submerged as shaky movements tried to clean the offending appendage.

To see someone like this… Shion had never wanted to experience it. She had never planned to experience it her whole life. Her time on the force might have made her deal with one or two victims, grieving families, or other assorted duties when they didn't need her for the primary job. However, even when she had been forced to console people that had witnessed loved ones die in front of them, there was never this level of abject destruction left in its wake.

"We're going to find who did this to you, Mei-san. We're going to find him, and we're going to help you out of this." Shion spoke with a conviction she didn't know she even possessed anymore. The white-hot fire that had prior worked to flay her skin now used its power to channel the rage she felt, supercharging it into one concentrated convergence point.

There was no difference in Mei's face, not that Shion had expected it to change. Broken objects needed careful care and consideration to simply begin the journey back to recovery, expecting them to work when they were in a million tiny pieces in the ground was wishful thinking at best.

"People like you are born every day. Why do you suddenly believe that you're going to be any different from him if you step to me? If you do, your death would just be an insignificant flash in the infinite timeline of the universe."

Mei wanted to believe what Shion had told her with all of her heart. Nothing more would satisfy her mind and her body than wanting to imagine the world she could possibly live in when the man who had done everything to her was behind bars. Nothing more could satisfy her than finally getting retribution and revenge for the man who had stabbed Rey through the back, like a coward, and then washed his hands by saying it was "a soldier's orders."

But even now, as the voice prepared to slick its way through her mind once more, that dream gave her no respite. There was, in the words of the man behind the slaughter, no point in believing a vision when the real world was right in front of your face.

Dabbing her eyes with the one corner of the handkerchief that wasn't caked with snot, Mei shook her head at Shion. Though no words spilt from her mouth, the message was loud and clear as she slowly started to ascend from the couch. Her tearful gaze didn't shift from Shion, however, even as she walked back to the door.

"Mei-san…" She heard Shion trail as she turned her back and started to walk out of the room. The dejection that reached her ears was so thick she could taste it, and the smouldering residue of the anger it had been laden with assaulted the teen girl's nose.

Mei… Mei knew that Shion was only trying to help… But…

"As heads is tails just call me Monsoon. Remember my name because I always come back."

Mei knew that she would never be able to escape the Wind of Destruction for as long as she lived…

---

Yua was bored, to put it in the simplest terms imaginable. So bored that she could probably stomach another lecture from Kyte or one of Oscar's personalities about proper etiquette in the Foundation without falling asleep halfway through. So bored that spending time in the infirmary watching Sateriasis figure out what a scalpel was seemed more productive than what she was doing now.

Falling into the plush of her bed was always supposed to be a sanctuary from boredom. Over the years she had spent in the Foundation, fifteen if Subaru was to be believed correctly and she never had any reason to think otherwise, Yua had collected enough stuff to make even the worst hoarders say she had a problem.

Turning over onto her back, the small girl kicked her feet up in the air and puffed a hot breath of air against the front of her hazmat suit. Her bed was nowhere near as comfortable as her 'dad's" one, but certainly came as a step above than some of the others, who may as well have been sleeping on stone.

Yua's bed was like a big, fluffy mess. Stuffed animals abounded over the whole layout, snaking around Yua's body even now as she continued to twist and turn for a better position. The memory foam that had been provided to her felt like a soft cloud every time she sunk her tiny body into it, but it still didn't match Subaru's silk one that felt like cloud nine itself.

With a loud groan, Yua planted her face down on the one pink pillow that wasn't covered with an obscene amount of stuffed animals that Subaru had forced Sateriasis to pay for. Why did everyone have to be so boring all of a sudden?! Whenever the intake had first come in and she had poked Subaru for ages to get involved at last, Yua had a blast!

That fight with Ikariko was some of the best fun she had in years! The rush of adrenaline that had coursed through her body was like nothing she had ever felt before! Getting to watch the fights that came before her was also just a blast, being able to see all the Quirks up close and personal for the first time was a feeling she was never going to forget.

But then everything had just gotten boring. First, they were all expected to go to class? Boring. Yua didn't need to go to class, all she needed to do was follow what Subaru had taught her and everything would be fine. That's what her dad always told her regardless. The last thing at the back of her mind that she wished to be brought to the forefront was droning lessons from the boring versions of Oscar.

Then, there had been a brief flash of hope. The training session that Subaru had organised gave her the chance to flex her muscles and sink her teeth into something proper. Although her dad had promised that he would be more gentle this year, Yua still felt the soft sting of the gash struck across his chest as a result of it.

The swinging, pendulum-style blade was obviously not prepped to give serious damage, Yua knew that. Her dad would never put her at risk, no matter what he might mutter into the mirror at night or under his breath about the others at the Foundation's beck and call. Yet, she would be lying if it didn't hurt like a bitch the first time it struck her. Especially given that it took nine stitches to patch back up and had come out of the dark at the same time.

For as much as it hurt, Yua lay now with a bright smile on her face. Next to the induction test, it had been the best thing the Foundation had done so far! The smile got brighter and slightly dopier as she began to imagine what could possibly come next as a result of it. Would she get the chance to fight the others when Subaru moved them to one-to-one training? Would she get a rematch with Ikariko? Would she even get to fit her dad? That last one made Yua positively giddy.

But once more, it had all faded away into boring nothingness before Yua knew it. Even Subaru seemed to have turned on her, telling her that not everyone was going to be like her and not to pester Ikariko for that longed for rematch any time soon. Had something gotten into the water?

Her dad deciding that now would be the time to be a boring stick in the mud had been the final straw. Oh, Yua had very much enjoyed nattering the ears off of Ikariko two days prior. However, that was then, and this was now! As childish as that sounded, at best it was the one piece of logic Yua had to use as a weapon.

The tiny girl jumped up to her feet, springing from the bed with a pep that looked at home on a professional acrobat. She landed right to the side of her bed, right in the parting of the stuffed animal parade that drove her right to the front of her wardrobe. Having to be stuck in the Hazmat suit until people would acclimatize to her Quirk was a pain, but the longing gaze she threw towards the metal cupboard wouldn't have to be much longer.

With a skip in her step, she bounded over the remaining strewn toys and burst out of the door in one fluid movement. A wide grin stretched upon her face in the process of seeing the familiar lights of the Foundation greet her, the room she occupied being far away from the others at the behest of Subaru.

Ostensibly for her own safety when she was younger, in reality, it was safety for literally everyone else.

On top of that, the position away from everyone else had given Yua one advantage that no one in the current intake had at the minute. One that made her feet bound up and down like jackhammers on the ground, chipping away and assimilating every other emotion in her body to one of boundless, restless joy. If it was possible for Yua to cough up rainbows, the whole Foundation would be covered in them like it was an infectious disease.

By placing her away from the others, it meant she got to be close to Subaru and the rest of the staff! In fact, Subaru's room was only a hop, skip, and jump away from her own. It sat before her green eyes like the treasure at the end of a long question, like Yua's personal helicon. Its mere presence alone might have terrified any rational human being, who wondered what horrors lay beyond, but not for Yua.

The small girl had been present in that room more times than should be considered healthy. Enough that if she so wished, and Subaru so decided it, she could move into it without a second thought and nothing in the general scheme of things would be changed.

Before she knew it, her joy had taken her from her own door to Subaru's in the blink of an eye. Three simple skips, two long jumps, and a final jog had taken her to it in the space of a few short seconds and now she stood at the front in rapt attention. Yua then bumped her forehead on the door, treating the object like it was something worthy of utter reverence.

As far as Yua was aware, Subaru was out. He hadn't come around to tell her what he was doing, which did hurt thank you very much, but he had certainly made a point of deliberately walking past her door very loudly. If there was thing Yua could always count on with the clown who had raised her, he was very much deliberate in just about all of his actions.

Some would call that habit intimidating, even more so when the man flipped from affable to sociopathic in the same amount of time it took to say his name.

Yua would call that her dad being himself. What was so wrong with it? Plenty of people in the outside world had to be like that too, right?

Pressing her hand against the door, Yua nudged it open with a deep breath. There was always the chance Subaru had misled her, and that he would be waiting around the corner to catch her intruding again. It had happened that night she slept in his bed not too long ago, and it gave the black-haired girl shivers simply thinking about the look he had given her.

One eye poked around the corner. Then another. Then the full head. All worked in conjunction to make sure that every single atom in the room had been surveyed for the pink-haired clown's appearance. Soon, they completed their search and revealed absolutely nothing in Subaru's shape in the circus-like room.

With her worries and fears assuaged, Yua bounded into the room two at a time. In the brief time she had been away, she had nearly forgotten how spacious it could be. How did only one man need so much space? Not even Kyte, for as infrequently she had been in his office since the incident that shall not be named, carried this much spare room. Every step across Subaru's floor was like traversing the Pacific Ocean and then coming to the realisation that it had just merged with the Atlantic.

For Yua, though, it was like second nature at this point. There was no stopping her as she promptly plopped herself down on the much more comfortable bed, submerging herself in the sheets and letting their soft silk carry her away to cloud nine. It would be rather nice if she could just sleep in right about now, not having to worry about class and being carted off to the land of dreams until something far more interesting could happen.

Oh yes…

This…

This would b-

"Ow!" Yua exclaimed, something sharp pressing into the side of her body and ramming itself into the soft flesh further as she tried to wiggle out of the soft tomb that she had constructed for herself. Had Subaru left one of his cards behind and forgotten to morph it back to normal? Right about now, that was the only thing Yua could think.

Twists and turns became fiercer, holding behind them a determination to rid the body of the pain as soon as humanly possible. It took only a minute more for Yua to burst through the sheets, gasping for air and with the weapon stuck in her side held aloft in the air like a trophy to her invisible triumph over adversity.

Yua was just about ready to cast whatever had broken her peaceful, planned slumber into the fireplace that was gently rumbling in the far corner of the room. However, as soon as she passed it by her face, her eyes widened. Green eyes that had been layered with contempt now viewed the offending object with utmost curiosity.

The object was a simple letter, encased in a purple envelope. Scrawled across the back, the side presently facing Yua, was a symbol the young girl could best describe only as demonic, devilish. What appeared to be similar to a Goat's head was plastered on the back covered in the darkest, midnight black. A black semi-circle undercut it with four jagged lines jutting out and acting as the seal.

With her curiosity peaked, Yua flipped the envelope around and let her eyes widen for the second time in consecutive minutes. In lovely, cursive handwriting, much better than Subaru's own, lay the clown's own name. Dabbed in by a red pen, it made the name pop like a warning light underneath the soft light present in the room.

For once, Yua was at a total loss for words. Time ticked by, but she remained stationary on the bed, not taking her eyes off what she could only assume to be a letter to her dad. But in that case… Where had he gotten it from? When had he gotten it? She had been with him all of yesterday, and the night before that too, which made the situation all the more perplexing.

Careful hands tugged at the top of the seal, the young girl snapping her head over her shoulders to make sure Subaru wasn't standing right behind her. It was one of those old-fashioned wax seals by the looks of things as well, firmly pressed in place with no chance that the letter could open by mistake.

The act of opening the letter was excruciating. Each passing second felt like the noose tightening around Yua's neck, leaving the door open for Subaru to waltz on in and pull the lever to her death. Her thoughts might have been getting a little melodramatic, but one could hardly blame her. The old saying of curiosity killed the cat had never seemed more relevant to Yua than it did right about now.

By the time Yua had been able to extract the actual letter from the Fort Knox-like protection the envelope provided for it, her hands felt like they had been through a decade-long war. But at last, they held their prize and treated it with the care of a newborn baby.

The soft white paper was a total mismatch to the envelope it had come out of, which now lay discarded at Yua's feet. Just like the envelope, the handwriting was as neat and prim as one could have possibly imagined. It looked like the type of scrawl one would develop after having to sign an autograph ad nauseum for ten years. Even the threatening red pen was unable to thwart the poise and eloquence the mere sight seemed to project onto Yua.

Taking one deep breath, and holding on tight once it had reached a crescendo, Yua began to read.

'Cousin… It's been a long time, hasn't it? 5… 10 years by this point, is it not?

That's a long time to go with no attempt at communication, and I feel like being magnanimous for once. I think that's rather ironic, don't you?

They say that time heals all wounds, and for the longest time, I hoped I would believe that hard enough for it to become reality. Have you visited Masahiko recently? If so, tell him that I sincerely wish him the best in his life, regardless of what he may think of me at this point.

They never do speak about what happens when said wounds cannot be stitched back together. No matter what would happen if I gave all my future days and all my past days for one more night, I feel like the result would remain the same.

But maybe that's all I need to know? There's no map out there that can show me where I'm going, and that's fine by me. I gather it will be the same for you too, lest you've somehow managed to rid yourself of your own curse.

I think it's rather funny, actually. For all you did to sever our fates, we both end up in similar places following men with similar hair and eye colours. Fate must have a wicked sense of humour if this was what it planned for us all along.

But my Lord's eyes are like those of a supreme hypnotist. Overbearing, overpowering. Before I knew it, I was dragged into his world and treaded behind him like a lost puppy without a clue. My soul was floating above the sea, but at the same time, I felt like I was drowning on dry land.

…I have no idea if this will even reach you, or if you will even open this before you toss it in the fireplace. No blame will be placed upon you if you choose the latter. If I were in your position, I would do the same. The longer one lives, the more one realises that the lustre of life will always fade quickly when held to the hellish flames of reality.

However, if you are still reading this, I have one thing to say to you. When we meet again, I have no intentions of letting you leave again, not like before. The time I have left in this world is much too short for me to worry about pussy footing around like a fucking toddler.

I'm still unsure what I seek, but now, at last, I know I won't be seeking it alone. Maybe then… Maybe then I will be able to know what the true meaning of being alive is, regardless of if the Devil laughs at me in the process.

Your Dear Co-'

Before Yua could read the name of the person who had sent the letter, said object was ripped from her hand in one fluid movement. The speed at which it was done meant that it could only be courtesy of one man too. "Yua, dear, don't read things like that. They're meant to scare you."

Craning her head backwards, Yua took in the sight of her "Father" standing behind her. Subaru's arms were folded tightly across his chest, the letter gripped within his hand with the force of twenty hydraulic presses whilst another object, a book, rested within his other hand. His red eyes stared down at her through his nose, regarding her with nothing but contempt.

"But…!" Yua started, wanting to ask Subaru the many questions that were swirling around in her mind. Who was the one who had written the letter? When did it get here? How did it get here? What point did it have? Why did the person who penned it think that Subaru was going to cast it away so readily?

And why had they referred to Yua's dad with a term such as 'Cousin?'

Subaru sighed, placing a free finger on Yua's lips as he set the book down on his bedside table. Yua, not speaking another word, scuttled over to the right and allowed her father to take a seat by her side. "Now, now. I've had a very busy day, you wouldn't want me to miss tucking you in tonight, would you?" He said, a lilt to his voice that Yua wasn't sure she liked. He was avoiding the question…

"But… I don't get it…" Yua trailed off, trying to gather the mess of questions in her head into one reasonable point. Green eyes looked into ruby red ones, trying to probe deep and see if there was something within the clown's soul that was screaming out the answer she sought.

However, her hopes and dreams died behind equally dead eyes that stared back at her. Subaru's free hand extended outwards, clasping her tiny one like he had done so many times in the past. The comfortable feeling was almost enough for Yua to forget about what she read, almost.

"They're idiots, dear." Subaru began, looking away from her and towards the crackling fireplace. The letter sat perched in his hands, but one could easily imagine the clown forgetting it was there. "Idiots that couldn't recognise the truth if it socked them in the face and buried them in cement." He added, biting his bottom lip, and getting up.

Yua only watched as Subaru trudged over to the fireplace with a sombre mood in his step. It was… Unusual. The clown's boundless energy, be it sadistic joy or genuine excitement for whatever he had cooked up in his mind, was one of the features that Yua had come to associate with him. Just like the head of pink hair or the numerous piercings that dotted his face.

To see it missing… Yua shuffled on the quilt as she watched Subaru slowly lower the letter into the fireplace and let it burn to ash. "Some people, Yua, cannot be pleased. You can send them flowers, their favourite kind mind you, and then you'll receive nothing in return. Some people, Yua, are like us. However, they may not fully deserve the second chance that we at the Foundation provide."

The black-haired girl saw the tight grip Subaru held over his injured elbow. The collection of shattered glass she had seen upon waking up that night meant there were no secrets to be hidden in regard to where it had come from. However, an inkling in the back of her mind dripped in behind her ears and whispered doubts into her thoughts. Doubts about why he had truly done it.

Why he had burnt the letter too now that they were at it.

She never got the chance to ask, however, as Subaru wheeled around and broke out into one of his trademark smirks. Soon, the book at the bedside was in his hands once more, and the smirk turned into a grin. "Now, sit with me, dear. I got something you might like. I've had it in my personal collection for a bit, and I thought it would be lovely if I got to share it with you."

Whilst Yua might have accepted the change quickly, smoothing her dad's sitting place back down, for the first time in her life she had come to a realisation. She felt almost foolish for not considering it sooner.

Subaru was hiding something from her, and if something as simple as a letter and mirror could break the illusion, then what was next?

As she witnessed Subaru open The Other Side, the rumbling of Yua's stomach told her that the answer wouldn't be a pretty one.

---

Kagekatsu's life at the Foundation had settled into something of a routine as of late, and the foxboy wasn't much a fan of it, to put it bluntly. To put it even more bluntly, he'd rather have slathered his lower half in honey and stuck it into fire ant hill in Father's Garden. Every iota of his body could have been screaming out in intense pain, and it would still somehow be preferable to what his life had become.

A peaceful night's sleep had long been something he'd had the luxury of attaining. Whether it be the dingy conditions he had spent the past three or so years of his life in or the terrible amount of noise that would hunt down his sensitive ears, something always found its way into the one escape from reality he still retained. Hell, even his time in the Inner Circle, The Cradle of Civilization as the Erudite Painmaker had put it, gifted his back nothing but hell because of the rocky mattress he had to subsist on.

Perhaps that was why he was still awake right now. He had no way of knowing the exact time, only that it was well into the early hours of the morning, and he still hadn't slept so much as a wink. Instead, he remained curled up in a ball on top of the hard, attached to the wall "bed" he had been gifted. Not even the harsh routine of the prison system, with its even worse conditions, had left him in a situation like this.

Tired hands dragged down his face, pinching at bags that sagged with the weight of nineteen years of shitty choices. Since he had arrived at the Foundation, he had maybe slept upwards of five hours in a night if he was lucky. Three seemed to be the much more prevalent number, though, often striking out for some time around 3 AM or 4 AM if fate was feeling particularly nice that morning.

A bitter, ironic laugh seeped through him, coming out as a hoarse giggle as he swung his bare feet down to the cool ground. The one night he may have been able to get some good sleep, the one before the previous day no less, he had ended up overcompensating and missing the one 'bonding' activity this supposed Foundation had bothered to set up.

Even worse, it had left him once more at the mercy of Subaru. The sadistic clown that guided him through the place may have been the one man that got even less sleep than Kagekatsu. Each time the foxboy was able to steal a glance, the pink-haired adult looked more worn and wearier than before. Never mind the smell Kagekatsu sniffed whenever Subaru had glibly tried to tell the teen that everything was fine as he shuffled his feet across the floor like a shambling corpse.

With a half-hearted smirk on his face, Kagekatsu shuffled his way up to the mirror that hung in his room, taking the bed cover with him as a kind of protective robe. Father had always told him that Nakamura men had something of a curse about them when it came to looks. His family's lineage with the Kitsune Quirk had been long and storied, fitting the tales of the unflinching beauty without so much as a single spark of effort having to be used. They could wow people at first sight, charming them with their looks, before securing the kill with their sweet voices.

At least, that was how Father had worded it to Kagekatsu. Right now, looking like a ghoulish collection of shadows and mutant fox parts, the foxboy was having a hard time believing anything close to it. Probably didn't help that he had inherited Father's propensity for bedhair, his stringy locks smothering his face and looking like he had just been through some windswept storm.

Opening his mouth, the state of his teeth didn't help detach him from the feral look he was sporting. Small fangs had always been in his mouth, his canines slightly sharper than the average non-mutant male. However, the crooked gleam of the mirror reflected them in a scolding light, highlighting vicious shadows of how long they could truly extend. The rough seabed that made up the rest of his mouth didn't help either, spinning jagged, almost yellow teeth into an almost predatory state.

Another light chuckle came to his lips, he really looked like a feral beast, didn't he? Well, it wouldn't be the first time he had been inflicted with this curse. Three years ago, it might have even been his natural appearance. During a time when caring for one's appearance was about as welcome as the suggestion of speaking out against your betters. His yellow eyes crinkled slightly, heavy with sleep that was crusted at the corners of them.

There was no use in fixing himself up now, not when it was probably another four or five hours until the rest of the Foundation would be awake again. Off the top of his head, the one person he could assume was still awake was the very vampire that ran this place like his own personal kingdom. Right now, Kyte was probably busy swirling blood in some fucking wine glass with Shostakovich on in the background, brooding endlessly about some fucking inconvenience. Not exactly the prime target for good conversation.

The whole image made Kagekatsu scowl, the feral features he retained more than highlighted by the small growl that began to build in the back of his throat. Being lorded over by some brooding loner wasn't what he had been promised when first met Kyte, fresh off the back of spending close to two years in prison. If the Vampire Lord added that to the pitch meeting, the manuscript and screenplay would've been set on fire and sacrificed to whatever God Kagekatsu felt like believing in that day.

Kagekatsu didn't care if he was starting to sound like some broken record, because he knew others felt the same way about it too. Were they going to be eternally grateful for the Foundation at least giving them a roof over their heads? Sure. They would be fools to be anything but grateful for that. However, were they going to sit idly by when their purported opportunity for overcoming their past was mired by sadists and psychopaths that needed therapy more than they did? Hell no!

One of the foxboy's hands started to make its way up to the side of his head, uncaring for the scar tissue that had built up there over many years. No, he didn't care what Sateriasis was going to think if he saw a pool of blood either, because it wasn't like their doctor was an actively qualified one! The degree was literally painted on the wall, so he'd been told! Dark nails were already in the process of picking out the last few stitches that had been haphazardly sewn into his skin, a raging fire building itself within Kagekatsu's soul.

What little warmth the thin bed cover had provided was shattered by the angry shivers that rocked his body like monsoon season. The only thing that prevented him from marching right up to that vampire's face, shoving his middle finger in it, and telling him that he could go and find someone else to fill his slaughterhouse, was the vague hope that what they had been sold wasn't a total lie. But even now, as his free hand struggled to keep the sheet covering him, there was little part of Kagekatsu that believed in it.

Blood once more caked his hands in dribs and drabs. In a way, the sensation had become comforting for the foxboy. A routine that he could establish under his own power exclusively, it made a change for once. He didn't need to ask permission or wilt under the gaze of a man more powerful than him… It was all under his control… A self-satisfied grin, wild and untamed, settled onto his face shortly after. His tongue soon joined in, licking up what it could from the fingertips as the rest trickled down past his cheeks.

Yellow eyes darted upwards towards the scar, ready to check for how many stitches it would take their butcher of a doctor to fix later on. However, as soon as he tilted his head to get a better look, Kagekatsu's eyes instead locked onto a completely different feature of his body. One that made the smile from before promptly fade as if it had never existed in the first place.

The red diamonds that hung from his ears glimmered in a shimmering red, reflecting the sliver of light that had illuminated the mirror. They stood out like a warning light, the spark of red in a world of black and white. They weren't the only mark of his time in the Inner Circle, the tattoo inked on his back was going to be something he would never be able to turn back from. However, they were the only memory he held onto from the time his "Mentor" had spent honing his skills.

The Wind of Destruction; Monsoon… Kagekatsu's jaw clenched, and it took all of his power to not eviscerate the mirror or his head any longer. He had never so much as learned the bastard's real name, the Vietnamese mercenary more than happy to play dumb around the question and placate him with vague allusions to him 'Learning it when the time was right.'

Kagekatsu clicked his tongue in annoyance, fussing about with strands of hair that began to dip themselves in the small puddle of blood forming on his forehead. Whenever he had told Shion that Monsoon had been an utter headcase, he meant it. There was no chance in hell that even knowing the whole man's life story would make Kagekatsu understand every minute detail. It made the vague promises that had been made to him all the more meaningless.

Yellow eyes squinted in the darkness, able to take sight of the gleaming Sai that had sat in the corner of his room since Shion's therapy session with him. Why the woman was so fascinated with weapons, or why she happened to have them in the first place, were questions Kagekatsu remained unsure if he wanted the answers to. If he didn't know any better, she could've easily been some sort of villain herself. It would go in swimmingly with the other insane members that made up the staff.

Treading over to the Sai, the quilt acting like a long, ghostly cape, Kagekatsu picked both up and rested them in his hands. Like clockwork, he knew the best way to angle them for both defence and offence. They had been out of his hands for close to three years at this point, and his muscles still remembered every inch of the metal that had become his life's work under Monsoon's guidance.

The weight in his hands was too familiar, and he could already feel the phantom presence of Monsoon in front of him. The monstrous hands of a decaying man's ghost felt like they wrapped around him at the moment. "Come on! Show me what I've been teaching you, Kage! Surpass me!" The Wind of Destruction yelled in his mind, grinning face and all.

Even now, simply holding the weapons he had once called his own Kagekatsu's wrists ached with the memories of the training sessions that had pushed his body to the limit. Placing the Sai back in the corner of the room as quickly as he had retrieved them, the phantom touch and pain of Monsoon's presence faded into the back of his mind. His attention then returned back to the last mark of Monsoon that remained with him.

A slender hand went up to tug at the diamond earring in his right ear, pulling the twitching mass downwards and into sight as the other ear flattened against his head. His tail lulled itself into a gentle swish from side to side, enough for a calm feeling to wash back over the foxboy.

The diamonds were worth more than his entire life, and that was no understatement. If Monsoon's word was to be taken at face value, as much as Kagekatsu considered said word to not be worth the second asshole it was spat out of, then they totalled close to 140 million yen per carat alone. The fact he had given Kagekatsu not just one, but two of them had been mind-melting to the foxboy at the time, and utterly baffling to him in the present day.

Much less that they were from Monsoon's own ears! Kagekatsu always shivered at that thought. Back then, there was no way he was going to turn down the offer. He would be a fool who lived to die if he did that. Spitting not only in the face of Monsoon himself but also souring the relationship for the whole of the Inner Circle, who had seemed to take a liking to the Wind of Destruction. Which, frankly, had just made the whole situation terrible for all involved.

The one solace he could take, though, was that Monsoon was gone. He was out of his life, away to terrorise some other shithole with his ruthless training methods and other assorted methods of bullshit that he had told Kagekatsu he was rather partial to. If there was one thing he was glad that the Inner Circle had done for him through their betrayal, it was that it had gotten him away from Monsoon above anything else.

The asshole could crow "I always come back!" as many times as he fucking wanted. It didn't mean a goddamn thing if he never once stood before Kagekatsu again, so long as the Foxboy lived it was a life mission of his to make sure that it never came to fruition. Lord only knew the reaction he would have… The dark thoughts that swirled around in his mind simply imagining it wouldn't have looked out of place in Painmaker's psyche.

But that was all it was, a simple stream of thoughts coming from a tired mind that barely was awake. In the dead of night, nothing mattered anymore. Everything that was light was subsumed and rendered into dust and shadows, the same shadows his namesake had come from. If Kagekatsu didn't know any better, he'd have assumed his name was picked because his parents already knew what his Quirk was going to be from birth.

Ugh, Kagekatsu slumped forward. He definitely wasn't getting back to sleep right about now, was he? Why did he even entertain these thoughts anymore? The foxboy inched his way back to the bed and dropped himself on the edge, his tail just about managing to avoid getting crushed at the very last second.

Nature itself hated him, didn't it? When he had first grown up, a pure innocent little kit with no idea what he would become, nature had ostensibly been his friend like the rest of the world. Greenery and life had greeted him with open arms, welcoming him and inviting discovery for his own personal Eden. Kagekatsu had taken the warm embrace like any other kid would've done, the coming in of his Quirk appeared to be the cherry on the top of that delicious cake.

Who could have foreseen where his life would head? Trapped in an endless night, doomed to wake up to the same memories inked on his back as the ones that were attached to his eardrums. Of how quickly his life had flipped from the idyllic green fields of his family home to the dusty and decrepit halls of the prison he had been shoved in with callous disregard, it was pure madness.

As blood continued to trickle down his face, Kagekatsu stood up once again, making his way towards the corner of his room. There, he slapped on the faintest t-shirt he had been able to find, a weak black colour had been washed out of it and holes were strewn everywhere, but it would be enough for you. A pair of shorts, also filled with holes, served as good enough filler for the time being.

Kagekatsu pressed his door open with a soft nudge, not wanting to wake anyone nearby. There was every chance someone else could be awake, but unless he wanted to turn the soft trickle into a rushing geyser-like normal, then the foxboy's twitching ears were swivelling around turning to pick up any sound.

Once they were satisfied, he tiptoed out of his room, much like how a cat burglar would. Where was he heading? Well, Kagekatsu didn't quite know that yet. The spinning walls of the Foundation were mind-melting in broad daylight, always twisting into different directions like an MC Usher painting.

At the night, when the lights above had been extinguished, the dark maze that presented itself in front of the foxboy felt like crawling up shit creek without a paddle or a boat for that matter. One wrong step and it was easy to see his face going splat into one of the walls, and with Kagekatsu's broken nose still barely healed, he'd very much have liked to avoid that. Sateriasis'd have his guts for garters if he trundled himself into the infirmary at this time of night.

The eerie beep of the security cameras, signalling that someone was still awake on them, became his only company on the long, winding corridors. Putrid yellow eyes stared up with hatred at the infernal things, their incessant beeping driving his sensitive ears fucking mad with noise just loud enough to cause discomfort to him and no one else.

It was run by one of those creepy ass twins, wasn't it? Kagekatsu, even now, had less trouble deciding on whether a dress he was sent as a kid was yellow and gold or black and blue than he did with figuring out which twin was which. His mind supplied Hideyoshi's face, but either way, it was one amorphous blob of eeriness in his mind.

The fact one of them was even still awake… Watching him no less… A growl worked itself through Kagekatsu's throat. They were probably both watching him right about now, like a pack of hungry wolves that had noticed a wolf kit separated from its own pack.

Biting back the growl any further, not knowing which one of the rooms he passed by held a person, Kagekatsu's rage siphoned away from his lips and towards the steps he stomped across the Foundation with. It wasn't the molten heat he had watched people like Kyte generate at the snap of fingers, but it was more than enough to feel himself sinking into the ground on a metaphorical level.

Did this place have to be so fucking expansive?! How much did this place cost?! Did they have fucking Monsoon and Morax both bankroll this place? That was the only scenario that Kagekatsu could think of as he passed by even more rooms and doors that probably held all manners of dark secrets behind them. What self-respecting human being, vampire or not, allowed themselves to build a place that was like a circus funhouse?

What use did half of them even have? Kagekatsu was willing to bet his life savings, Monsoon's earrings, and the skin off his own back that some of them were kept there with the skeletons of people Kyte had fed on in a fit of blind rage. Either that or Subaru had stolen some poor child of the street and shoved them into a tiny-wardrobe-sized room as some kind of sick experiment.

What? He was tired. He was allowed to fantasise about the gothic edgelord that presided over the Foundation and the sadistic clown he kept in his employ like some kind of dark court jester. Given how Subaru had treated him the past few days, mental shots were about the only thing Kagekatsu was allowed to fire toward him.

…As Kagekatsu continued to walk, his legs began to ache more and more. Of course, he was far too awake at this point to even think about going to sleep, yet his body was already beginning to shut down on him. It felt like he was moving through molasses at this point, the blood on his head congealing into a sticky mess as it captured baby hairs he hadn't managed to save from its grasp.

By the time he had taken five more steps forward, Kagekatsu was ready to collapse then and there. The pressure growing on his legs had forced his tail to carry most of the balancing act as he placed his hands across the walls, wanting to sink his growing claws into them and provide himself with enough of a stable footing to make his way back to his room.

However, even that was proving to be a pointless task. It might have just been a sleep-induced stupor, but Kagekatsu could've sworn on his bitch of a mother's grave that they were moving back on him. That they were trying to escape from his claws and conspiring to plant him face down on the floor like everything else in this world.

"Come on… Fucking… Bitch…" Kagekatsu swore under his breath, still scrambling for a hold as his legs turned into nothing more than jelly. The contortion of pain on his face as his tailbone desperately tried to find the strength to support his string-bean body, proved to be a more difficult task than first thought.

Not even a second later, Kagekatsu felt the cold sting of the floor against his back. The foxboy was sprawled away the way across the corridor, his face contorted in agony as he rolled like a turtle trying to get up after being flipped on its back. To put it, simply, the sight was humiliating. If Arius had seen it, Kagekatsu knew he was never going to hear the end of it.

Thank fuck that for once no one seemed to be around to witness it…

"Ah, now… What do you we have here? A straggler breaking the curfew?"

Oh, fuck Kagekatsu's life. Fuck it with an iron road, piss on him and tell him it was rain, and then dump shit on his head. Was he not allowed a single FUCKING BREAK FROM THIS SHIT?!

Heralded by meek candlelight balanced delicately in his hand was the Harbinger of Doom himself. Hiroto, if Kagekatsu bothered to remember the twins correctly at this instant despite the blob they took up in her mind, had his smirking face illuminated by a soft purple flame. The mismatched eyes looked even eerier under minimal light than they did up close under the sun.

Kagekatsu could do nothing but sit and wait for the slimy parasite to approach him, watching Hiroto drop an insincere hand out to him for the foxboy to grab. "Kagekatsu, was it? I'd ask you why you're out here, but your face is telling me more than enough about your predicament." Like every time that had come before, Hiroto's voice was clipped and proper. Yet, its mere sound made Kagekatsu shiver in his skin.

The foxboy stared up at the hand that was offered to him, following it up to the glimmering candlelight before settling directly on Hiroto's smirking face. Did this guy think he was a total idiot? Father might not have had the time to teach him much when he was a kid, but Kagekatsu's time with Monsoon and the Inner Circle had made him more than aware of sinister characters like this. "Put that thing away. I can do this on my own!" He proclaimed, batting away Hiroto's hand.

For a short instance, a flash of shock crossed over Hiroto's poised features, those mismatched eyes narrowing into a dangerous slant. "Suit yourself." The veneer of civility and class had dropped faster than the stock market after a bubble burst. A deadly sneer, one Kagekatsu had seen thousands of times before, crossed Hiroto's lips as he turned his back on the foxboy.

It took a few more seconds before Kagekatsu was able to self-right himself, clawing his way back up to his feet and finally being able to sink his claws into the walls to hold himself up. If one had seen the scene in isolation, it would have been easy to mistake Kagekatsu's haggard breathing as him coming back from a great conquest. Not that he had been as prone as a newborn kit for the past four minutes or so.

"Nice to see that your legs still work." Hiroto's snide reply came, laced with polite venom. The shorter of the twins, still much taller than Kagekatsu ever hoped he could be, turned back around soon after. The flickering candle in his hand was cradled with a protective hangover of his free hand.

"Nice to see that you still live in the 19th century." Kagekatsu snapped back, his eyes trailing back down to the candle once his body was upright. "I know you work for a Vampire, but did you have to go as far as to roleplay as his fucking butler?" Whether it was out of sleep deprivation or crankiness from waking up too soon, the foxboy felt particularly bitchy as he spoke.

Hiroto gave a deep sigh in response, shaking his head as he covered the purple flame with his hand. "If you wish, we can continue the rest of this conversation in darkness. I don't know about you Nakamura-kun, but I won't have much issue navigating myself back to where I need to be." The latent threat was obvious, a gloved hand hovering over the top of a flame ready to be snuffed out at the first sign of resistance.

Kagekatsu's lips curled into a sneer of their own. Who the hell did this jackoff think he was? Staff member or not, the foxboy was sick to death of being treated like an afterthought by the people who were supposed to be helping them. "What the fuck are you doing out here?" He spat, ignoring the threat and standing his ground as best he could.

What he got in a reply from Hiroto, though, did nothing to dissuade him from following the path of anger rapidly developing in front of him. "My job, Kagekatsu. Making sure that no one is wandering around the Foundation at night, they might pose a security risk otherwise and my brother doesn't much appreciate 'Little Fishies' roaming out of their aquarium."

The long-haired teen raised an eyebrow, Hiroto's solution to the problem was to walk around with a dim candle like some kind of Gothic servant? Now, Kagekatsu might have never been a wiz at quizzes or aced every test that came his way, but he was the furthest thing from a drooling moron. When lies became one's truth, no matter for how long it was, picking up on subterfuge came like second nature.

"You kidding?" Kagekatsu said, his other eyebrow-raising upwards as he tried not to give out a breathy laugh of disbelief. "Doesn't that seem a bit, you know, fucking pointless if he's the one running the security office?" He almost scoffed as he spoke, having to bite back his tongue for being any more disrespectful than he was already being.

For what it was worth, it appeared that Hiroto paid no mind to the glib, borderline disrespectful responses he was getting. The teal-haired man merely shrugged and turned back around to already walk away. "Hideyoshi gets awfully bored in there sometimes. Can you imagine your life if you had to spend every second of it awake and watching over five hundred cameras tracking fourteen kids and young adults?"

Kagekatsu shook his head, pulling back the curtain of hair that had dipped into his vision. The whole scenario was just getting more and more impossible to believe by the second. From the implication given, Hiroto was suggesting that Hideyoshi was not only still awake, but also bored enough to send his brother to do his work? And there were supposedly over 500 cameras? Just how big was this fucking place? Something wasn't sitting right here…

Before he knew it, Kagekatsu found his body moving behind Hiroto like it was under some kind of trance. His yellow eyes dulled under the purple glow of the candlelight, following it like it was the chauffeur of his own personal ride to hell. "So, he sent you out to do his dirty work? Keh, some brother he must be." The foxboy muttered, voice as dull and monotonous as his steps.

Hiroto didn't turn around, only walking on ahead like he too was on some kind of rails. "Brother simply needs his time to feed, Kagekatsu. The least I can do to assist him in his work is subject myself to a more primitive model of his task." The reply was about as vague as one could get and had he been more awake, Kagekatsu would've questioned it with an angry fervour.

However, as he stood right now, Kagekatsu simply nodded his head despite the fact he knew he was clearly missing some details. As much as he was unaware of the Staff's Quirks, it was simple to make a rough, educated guess as to what they were. Kyte, evidently, was a vampire mutant. Subaru's Quirk was likely to do with the playing cards that populated his body. Sateriasis, as much as Kagekatsu was loathed to admit, likely had some kind of Quirk that worked with healing.

Hiroto and Hideyoshi, though… Their Quirks were like a black void. Even people who didn't seem to line up, like Oscar and Shion, had Quirks that one could guess upon first sight. The fishy-looking twins, beyond their personality Quirks, had little hint towards what great power they wielded.

As he continued trudging behind the older but smaller of the twins, the first thought that crossed Kagekatsu's tired brain was that they were Quirkless. At the end of the day, it would make sense for the MO of the Foundation. Taking in a bunch of Quirkless twins and letting them rise to the position of staff? It was almost a perfect Cinderella-like story, the kind his mother would read to him before…

Kagekatsu swiftly punched the thought out of his mind, letting another memory supersede the one that tried to worm its way through the gaps of his defences. When he had been in the infirmary following his feet, nursing all manner of injuries, Hideyoshi had come into the room and had been passed a massive bag of something by Sateriasis. There was little chance it was anything close to normal, and with how Hiroto had just mentioned the other twin needing to "feed," Kagekatsu's brain wired a new conclusion.

"You're… You're not some kind of vampire too, are you?" Whether it was a stupid question or not, Kagekatsu felt his hands and body clamming up. Lithe fingers twisted around his stringy hair in an attempt to relieve the pounding headache that assault him out of nowhere. His eyes remained trained on the back of Hiroto, who gradually came to a stop.

The purple candlelight, reminding Kagekatsu of a certain Prince of Pain's hair, glowered as the Foundation's parasite faced Kagekatsu once more. With an open-mouthed grin, revealing no such fangs, Hiroto spoke. "Heh. Sometimes, I wonder if you're brave or stupid." He said, brushing off the question as if it were some kind of joke. "Niijima-sama wouldn't keep us around if we were like him. Vampires, traditionally, don't tend to get along very well with other vampires not in their coven."

"Then what was all that shit about 'feeding', then?" Kagekatsu didn't let up, his curiosity abounding. He never was one to get deep into people's Quirks, preferring to let them pass him by unless he was physically forced to spend a long amount of time with them. That happened to be the only reason he was aware of the true terror behind Painmaker's Quirk, which even thinking of right now gave him shivers.

"Hehe, that's what it was?" Hiroto laughed, the kind of sound you'd hear from a cackling witch, which was about the absolute last thing that Kagekatsu wanted to hear in the middle of the night. "No, no. Hideyoshi and I are the furthest things from vampires, please excuse the vernacular I might have picked up from Niijima-sama over the years." Condescending didn't begin to describe the tone with which he then spoke.

To make matters worse, Hiroto had once again dodged the question, and Kagekatsu's tongue was getting rather tired of being bitten by his sharp canines that were developing at a breakneck pace. Was it so impossible to just get a straight answer? He knew that trying that with Subaru was a losing battle, but for staff that was allegedly out to help him, they had a real penchant and talent for being cryptic fucks!

Yet, the languor that had been possessing his body since his untimely rise from sleep prevented Kagekatsu from saying any more. The pounding doldrums of their steps reverberated in the foxboy's ears and seeped into his mind like water permeating the ground after a large storm.

Left, right.

Left, right.

Left, right.

The dull, military-style march felt designed to wear him down. His wrists also ached with the memories that had been etched into their muscles. The swishing of cold wind around his arms and head, Monsoon's domain, caused goosebumps to break out on them in the present. The sticky congealed mess of blood had never felt frostier than it did right about now.

In front of him, Hiroto hadn't let up a single step. The Parasite seemed to be in the prime of his life, the peak of his athleticism. Kagekatsu wouldn't have put him a day past thirty-one at a push, and the other male looked even younger than that. Same could be said for Hideyoshi too, now that his face became fresh in the foxboy's mind.

However, it only served to bring about more questions. If they were old enough to have worked with Sateriasis, to call him Boss, then they had been around the nurse's age. Yet, they were able to gallivant about the place looking like fresh-faced graduates, there simply had to be a secret here! It had to do with their Quirks, and Kagekatsu felt his hands constrict in his hair as he wrecked his brain for the answer.

"We're here."

Hiroto's voice broke him out of his self-induced mania, Kagekatsu's whole body grinding to a stop alongside the parasite's own. The foxboy could thank his lucky stars that whatever curse or trance had infected his body was smart enough to stop him from crashing into Hiroto or what now lay before them.

Unlike every other door in this place, which was pressed into the walls and stunk with the industrial press of mass production, this one was different. It was black in colour, sticking out like a sore thumb in the sea of white it found its homes in. A sleek, silver door handle was present too, which made a change from the flat surfaces that seemed to respond more to specific pressure points. A golden design at the front, almost like a leech of some kind, coated the top of the door whilst what looked to be a serpent took its place on the bottom.

"What?" Staring at the door, one he had never seen before, Kagekatsu let the question fall out of his mouth. His jaw was locked open, making him look about as empty-headed as he felt at the moment. Just how deep into the Foundation was he now? Nothing in the surrounding areas gave him the same bleak familiarity the normal areas did.

"You didn't think I was leading you on a wild goose chase, did you? Kagekatsu, I'm almost hurt." Hiroto replied, finally pressing his ungloved hand over the flame, and snuffing it out without a single sign of a wince on his face. "Truth be told, the thought only came to me recently, but if what Fujinaga-san said holds any weight, then you seem like the type of person that would appreciate a place like this."

Not waiting for Kagekatsu to answer, Hiroto pressed the door inwards and revealed what lay beyond.

The room was deceptively large for the tiny door that housed it all. The back wall stretched so far that Kagekatsu had to squint to even see the first inkling of where it was, and the walls at the side followed the same pattern. A world-class telescope would likely have been undertaking the same issues as the foxboy stepped into the room further.

Compared to the inky black outside, a beacon of light shone from the chandelier that took centre stage on the ceiling. Subaru's bed might have been the most expensive thing in the Foundation, but the glistening rhinestone and rubies of the chandelier Hiroto possessed ran it close. Numerous golden candelabras took their position at the side as well, Hiroto electing to carry one of them in place of the weak candle he had held up until now.

"So, what do you think?" Hiroto asked, knowing he wasn't going to be getting an answer for a while. All the previous times he had let people into his and Hideyoshi's sanctuary, they were always left slackjawed for aeons. A stolen glance Kagekatsu's direction revealed the foxboy to be suffering from the same fate.

As Kagekatsu wandered further, past the smirking Hiroto, he found himself coming face to face with what populated the majority of the room. Books. Tons and tons of fucking books. A metric shit ton might have been the most accurate measurement that he could attribute to them, scientifically speaking, of course.

They were held in place by dark oak shelves, hand carved no doubt. For as picky as the Foundation was with their students' accommodation, it appeared they spared no expense for those that live here full time. The shelves themselves ranged in height and shape. Some were tall, striking the heavens with their dark crowns. Others were tiny and rotund, holding a great depth but looking far less impressive in the process.

"I've only shown it to Shiki at the minute, but if I can pull Niijima-sama's arm, I'll have you all in here soon enough." Hiroto supplied, finding his way through the maze of shelves like a snake slipping over its prey. His mismatched eyes watched Kagekatsu's path with a keen intrigue, idly wondering if they were going to go down the same direction that Shiki had travelled down not too long ago.

"What…" Kagekatsu began, slipping through around four shelves before coming to a stop in front of a fifth one. This one was far larger than the rest, standing as almost the pinnacle of achievement with a mouth-watering number of books in its grand grasp. "The fucking hell do you in this place?" The foxboy finished, swivelling around on his heel and staring dead at Hiroto.

"Librarian, teaching assistant, supplementary nurse, bartender, butler. Really, I do whatever Boss and Niijima-sama ask of me." Hiroto replied, idly lighting the candelabra with a box of matches in his pocket. A fishy smirk was on his face, halfway between predatory and condescending. Just the right gesture to make those with a hairpin trigger fill with animosity.

Had it been the middle of the day, Kagekatsu would've tried to punch the smug bastard right in his face for dragging him here. But as it stood, the foxboy found himself much too tired to do anything but study the books in front of him. They were so much more bountiful than the ones in Father's own study…

Subaru's collection, as limited as it was, seemed to possess some of the classics that had formed the backbone of his childhood. Never mind the other books that still made Kagekatsu want to burn them for their mere existence. The one thing he could hope as he reached him up and door the towering structure's first five shelves was that he'd pull out something he'd enjoy.

With the eerie gaze of Hiroto trained on his back, Kagekatsu felt around for a good few seconds. The fronts of the books were all glistening, polished to perfection, and kept at the pinnacle of their existence. Like they had been frozen in time, just waiting for someone to thaw them out of their icy prison.

Before too long, Kagekatsu pulled one out at random and flipped it around. The book itself was a deep purple, and the cover reached prim perfection as its colour blotted out everything else on the front. There were no pictures. No marks of an author on it. No ownership whatsoever as Kagekatsu finally took in the golden cursive that made up the title.

Das Lied vom Meister

"Ah, don't read that! It's sad trash." Hiroto suddenly exclaimed, his browns furrowing and lips curling into something close to a sneer. The sincerity in his voice was so much of a shock to the system that Kagekatsu's ears and tail stood up to ramrod straight, nearly forgetting the other was capable of emotion than practised politeness.

Kagekatsu turned his head back around, cradling the book close to his chest. "Why? I ain't even fucking touched the first page yet and you're already telling me I have shit taste? Why the fuck do you even have it then? You goddamn scuzzbag!" Okay, maybe that had come out slightly harsher than Kagekatsu intended, but was it possible to blame him?! You walk around sleep deprived and then have someone rubbish the first thing you do and stay calm. Not so easy, is it?

Hiroto placed his hands up in the air, the candelabra flames following with him. "My apologies, Kagekatsu. It's merely because that book and I… How to put this… We don't get along?" Placing the candelabra on the floor, the teal-haired male rubbed at his temples. "A few years back, a homeless man with blond and black hair gave me that very book when I was with the Boss on a private meeting. Never quite understood what he meant by it, but I've held it ever since."

Kagekatsu couldn't help but raise an eyebrow, holding the book close to his chest with a little less force than previous. Curious eyes scanned down the front of it once more and equally curious fingers went to feel the white, untainted sheets that lay beneath. "Did he tell you his name?" Something about the description… Maybe it was the hair… set Kagekatsu's brain whirring.

And for once, Hiroto was ready to reply with a straightforward answer. "No. He said nothing else but that he was looking for someone to hand it off to." What's more, the Parasite, for the first time since Kagekatsu had come into contact with him, seemed dissatisfied and couldn't hide it on his face.

It was an emotion that Kagekatsu mirrored in totality. The rumbling of discontent that settled between them had completely derailed what had been going on prior. The foxboy looked down at the book once more, the pages between his hands felt brand new, which didn't make sense if the book was as old as Hiroto was implying. Then again, everything else in here was cleansed with a ruthless level of OCD, so who was Kagekatsu to complain?

"Don't you get bored being in here all the time?" Kagekatsu eventually asked, resolving to hold onto the book for the time being. Whatever had been assaulting his mind wasn't going to rest until he had managed to figure out why, all of a sudden, this book was the paragon of mystery from one simple conversation. "What about your jackoff of a brother?"

"Oh, Hideyoshi? Please. He's got his hands full trying to run the security of a place that looks like Dante's Circles of Hell on the schematics, the last thing my brother needs is to be distracted from his task." Hiroto replied, clearly feeling more at ease than before. The candelabra back in his hands was similarly joined by the return of the fishy smirk on his face. "As for myself, it's quite the opposite. I enjoy being here. You get to meet so many interesting people, like you for example."

The foxboy had never heard such utter bullshit before in his life. Did someone enjoy being cramped up in a library and being treated like a butler on the side? Kagekatsu might have been partial for raiding his dad's study every now and again when he was younger, but the easy punishment was simply to lock him in there until he learnt his lesson.

To think that Hiroto enjoyed being around this… dusty, opulent shithole… Kagekatsu was discovering more and more eccentric weirdos every day at this point, wasn't he?

"In fact, it's a lot more of an important role than perhaps you realise." Taking a few steps forward, Hiroto shined the purple flames underneath his face. Said face was also pressed so tight into Kagekatsu's own that he could physically see the reflective ring of flames that popped up in mismatched eyes. "I know everything about you, perhaps more than you know yourself."

A cold shiver ran down Kagekatsu's body despite the burning heat now in his face. His first instinct was to gulp and wonder how it had gone from zero to sixty in the space of about two milliseconds. His next was to swear to himself that he was never following this creep again as long as he lived.

Seriously, who fucking went around saying shit like that and was a sane person?

Kagekatsu opened his mouth to reply, ready if needed to use his sharpened teeth to bite into the neck of the man in front of him, but was stopped the second Hiroto placed a finger to his own slimy lips. "Shh, it's not for me to divulge what I know Don't you know that every contract works both ways?" He whispered like he was telling some kind of sick, dirty joke.

Contract? What the hell was going on here? Kagekatsu could literally feel the hair being burnt off his head at this point, the stragglers caught in the blood on his forehead were almost certainly incinerated to dust by this point. Did this asshole not know the meaning of personal space?! Not even Subaru was this bad!

Lucky for Kagekatsu, then, Hiroto soon pulled away. Although, it did nothing to clean the hot sweat that now dripped across his brow and down his face like a waterfall as he kept his yellow gaze trained on the Parasite. It was about the only thing he could do now as the purple flames still coated the bottom half of Hiroto's face, much like a young teen trying to tell a spooky ghost story.

"I suppose I lied to you a bit earlier. That man did tell me something on that day. He said "If you break a contract and spit on the Gods, don't be surprised when they rain down on you later. Those are the rules of nature the supreme." Funny, don't you think?"

No, it absolutely fucking wasn't it! Apart from all the terrible things he had done when he was in the Inner Circle, what had Kagekatsu done to deserve any of these creeps that stuck him like fucking superglue? Didn't they and fucking God Himself know he was sorry about that! This was cruel and unusual!

"Words are the currency of the soul, Kagekatsu." Hiroto said, stepping back and placing the candelabra back to where it should be. For the first time, revealing another lie he had been told, Kagekatsu witnessed just how sharp Hiroto's teeth really were. "And you paid me very well with your file, Hikage."

"Niijima-sama was over the moon to find out we now house another member of the Inner Circle."

---

Time was one of those forces that, no matter how much one tried to fight back against it, would always remain undefeated. An unwavering constant unfettered and inexorable in its march towards its predestined conclusion. Sure, it was possible to make one's finite time worth it on this planet. However, all would turn to dust eventually, leaving behind no traces of memory. Death at the end of time remained the only thing that all people were equal in.

For Kyte, though, time was a little different. Oh, it remained the cruel master of his fate. The flickering candle of his life could be snuffed out if enough effort was put into the task, just like anyone else on this planet. However, his time trickled like the slow-flowing stream of a great waterfall. Oftentimes, the Vampire Lord mused that if his life had been shown before him in an hourglass, the sand would barely be a third of the way through falling naturally.

Even now, as he sat in his darkened office, he imagined the hourglass laden before him. Heavyset, it would be, on his desk with its dusty cobwebs clinging to the inky black frame it would surely be set in. No doubt too, would it be adorned with silver skulls across the top and bottom, fate preferring to give him an easy reminder of what will happen if he should ever think the Sun and the Light were his friends once more.

However, that would all pale in comparison to the contents. The white dust, if he could touch it, would be fine within his fingers. It would crumble under his touch and then trickle onto his desk as he pondered the thought of its meaning. All the while, the hourglass itself would slowly tick away with the seconds. Sometimes, it was more merciful, in Kyte's opinion, to bash the problem in the head with a sledgehammer. At least then the painful erosion of sanity could be done away with, the dribs and drabs were always the worst part of living for as long as he had.

Fifty-one years… Maybe it was even sixty? Much like his former friend, Kyte failed to remember how long it had exactly been since he took his first steps on this planet, into this unknown world that would seek to crush him at every twist in turn. For someone as long-lived as he, you stopped counting after a while. A normal man would be crushed under the knowledge their time was nearly up.

Yet, from the moment of his birth no less, Kyte knew he was far from a normal man. The owner of the Broken Heart Foundation, the Loyal Heart of said Foundation, it wasn't a job a simple man would be able to carry on his shoulders. No, they would collapse under the weight before they even took the first step on the march of a thousand miles that was needed.

With a Quirk like his, living forever was a simple task for Kyte. Vows of eternity were made, promises were exchanged, and connections were forged all with the knowledge that they would crumble to dust whenever time would decide to use its ultimate power. With the eternal punishment being the fact he had to watch on without the power to do anything about it.

But now… Twenty years after that day… The day that had changed everything… He had the power to finally, finally wrench control away from the powers that be and land it in his own hands. Spitting on the Gods guaranteed them to rain down on you later, but Kyte no longer had much of a care for those pitiful beings.

Swivelling on his chair, Kyte pulled out a small wastepaper bin that had been filled to the brim with destroyed pages of books Hiroto had considered obscene and not fit for children's eyes! "You always keep the most eccentric company…" Kyte muttered to himself, forcing the paper down slightly further as his other hand reached for a small set of matches that was present on his desk.

With the box in his hand, Kyte carefully and coolly slid out the packaging and struck one of the many assorted matches against the side with a fierce, swift swipe of his hand. The tiny amount of fire was nothing compared to the raging inferno he had faced when travelling to Father Kimura, but holding it so close to his face made the flame even hotter than even the wrathful priest could manage.

Soon, he dropped the tiny match into the wastepaper bin, watching with his intrigued crimson eyes as the corners of the pages turned black. How they crumpled under the searing flames was always a beautiful sight, the bleak, yellowing pages of rot turned into wonderous light and heat that always warmed up his cold heart. The flickers of flames and embers danced around his feet, spitting out and singing the ground around them. Ah well, that could always be cleared up later.

With the first task complete, Kyte now turned his attention to the one object that could turn the tide of this fight against nature. The one object that could, would set everything right in the dark cycle of despair he had been trapped in for twenty years.

Even now, though, his crimson gaze felt sullied by simply laying eyes on its black cover. The putrid yellow pages that spat out like mucus from a sick patient's mouth were hideous to look at, churning the Vampire Lord's stomach. Tiny scratch marks that littered the front and back were too accurate and precise to be anything other than accidental with five tally marks front and centre above the rest, each one stained the most sanguine shade of red.

Simply holding the book in his hands made Kyte's body recoil in horror. His hands gripped the edges of the corner with a white-knuckled clutch, his fangs extending further out of his mouth like a snake that had just discovered the next prey it wanted to devour. It felt… Unclean to hold such a devilish piece of literature in his hands. The Vampire Lord knew that under all the chicken scrawl and rambling it contained, the mind of a dangerous madman ran right through these pages.

And tonight… As he turned his gaze to the fire… Kyte was going to rid the world of one more thing that should have never existed.

But it would also not be going alone. Oh no, there was much more work to be done than simply ridding the world of one of its many accidents. Arguing that you had solved the squabbling of polecats by summoning a lion to eat them all was the quintessential definition of a pyrrhic victory, and Kyte couldn't ever afford to be happy with one of those again. It had cost too many lives the one time he had seen it as the only way.

The other object destined for the fire was resting on his right hand. It was the very same ring he had shown with such recalcitrance to Father Kimura, the red diamond on his glove-free middle finger shimmering like crimson bloodshed in the increasingly potent flames of the fire. Still glued to his hand like the totem of misfortune it had become of the years, a far cry from the initial promise it represented.

Its mere existence blistered his hand more than any other serious injury could. Scars on his body would heal within a couple of days should the right situation strike itself, a weekly supply of nutrients that could be shared with Hideyoshi also served him well in that regard. But they would do nothing when it came to shielding the odious mark of possession that he carried with him like the curse it was.

With delicate fingers, Kyte slowly wrenched the ring away, leaving a band of pure white skin behind. In the palm of his hand, the ring was heavy. It might have been a tiny one, but it had cost an absolute fortune to purchase in the first place. Red diamonds weren't cheap. His eyes had bulged out of his skull when he read that figure, wondering how anyone could even afford that before the memory of who it had been in possession of beforehand slicked its way into his mind.

Holding the ring like a newborn infant, Kyte rolled it across his palm at a snail's pace, keeping his fiery crimson glare tracking every movement like a buzzard stalking and waiting for its prey to die. He wasn't the only one who had received a gift like this, everyone who had walked with Monsoon at any point in their life had attained one through the Wind of Destruction's 'boundless generosity,' as had been so eloquently put by the man himself. Forever trapping them physically to the man who bound them by contract for life.

Those who had come before him didn't matter, they were simply ashes in the wind as far as Kyte was concerned. The ones who came after him, though, were much more important to the Vampire Lord. Namely, the one teen he had seen in his Foundation that carried not only the odious mark of Inner Circle membership but also the crown of thorns that Monsoon and the Schism had stapled to his ears.

It had taken a lot of restraint the day he visited Kagekatsu in prison. His whole body had screamed out to the high heavens, wanting to yell the second he had seen the earrings the foxboy wore. At first, he had thought it was a mere coincidence, another one of fate's cruel jokes at his expense. Nature always found some way to laugh at his life's misfortune, reminding him that he wasn't meant for this world.

However, the second Monsoon had returned to Japan and invited him back out for "Old time's sake" without the same earrings hanging from his own pointed ears Kyte knew the game that was being played. It forced him to bite back the snarl that was rising to his lips as he clasped his hand over, and subsumed, the ring in its entirety. The bastard knew full well what he was doing, his demand that he be gifted Kagekatsu back once this was all over proved only further their connection.

Kyte's hand coiled around the ring, pressure increasing until he could feel one of his black nails starting to crush the actual metal with miniature puncture wounds. Almost straight after, though, he stopped and took several deep breaths. He had to bring himself back from the cliff face… There would be no future for him to lead the Kids towards if he let himself fall…

His hand opened once more, the damage to the ring done, but the red diamond remained unbroken and unwavering in its existence. Kyte's gaze also remained firm at first, staring at the gem with all the rapt attention of an alchemist scrying for a sign from the Gods. However, it soon began to waver between the fire and the other object he would have to cast into the flames of Hell.

The fire in the bin raged on, although its heat had greatly dissipated as the smoky ash of burnt pages caught themselves in the back of Kyte's throat. The resulting pungent smell forced Kyte's hand free hand to slam over his nose, it was worse than the first time he had come into contact with one of the men truly deserving of the title 'Sweathog.' Ugh, even now, his body shivered at that memory. How was it possible for a man that physically vile to still be alive? It was beyond all reason!

Placing the ring back down on his desk, Kyte used the one hand not stuck up his nose to take hold of the book, clutching the top of it like the extended claw of one of those arcade machines. The grip was as hard as chrome and as strong as iron, never tiring as it held the novel over the top of the small fire that might as well have been Hell's Inferno to Kyte by this point in the night.

All it would take right now would be for that grip to be released, and his war would have truly begun. If he thought that simply moving around pieces on the chessboard and taking a few pawns was the sum of Kyte's efforts, then he was going to be sorely mistaken. A grin tugged at the corner of Kyte's lips as he thought about everything he would be able to repay him for. All the pain and the suffering over the years would finally come to a head and he would be able to walk out of it with his head held high.

"Revenge, Kyte, is no more than a confession of pain."

Kyte's eyes almost bulged out of their sockets the second he heard Monsoon's voice in the back of his head, his body had immediately coiled and was ready to strike like the man himself was standing right before him. Of course, in the dark confines of his office, it was foolish to believe that it was anything other than the phantom voice of his past calling out to him once more. Yet, in the instance he heard those dulcet tones, he was ready to believe in his delusions so readily.

Hearing any kind of voice wasn't what Kyte wanted at the best of times, they all annoyed him in some way or another. Be it Subaru's incessant chattering about pointless bullshit that got mixed in with the macabre truth that bubbled under the surface, Sateriasis' endless droning about what his leeches were doing to piss him off, Shion's weird obsession with weapons and her ass-numbing laugh, or Oscar's constant switches from manageable to deranged. It would be easier for Kyte to draw up the list of people he'd like to get a restraining order on than the people he'd want close to him.

Monsoon's voice, though, remained second from the top on that list, and it was never going to buzz. No matter how hard his swinging brick for a heart might have ached at that, the Wind of Destruction was never again going to be someone he walked alongside under his own power.

As the fire continued to wilt away, now down to the bottom third of the bin, Kyte's grip on the book in his hands shook. His arm trembled, aching out from the constant motion it had been in for the past five or so minutes. Normally, his body would be more than capable of not needing the rest others did. Alas, it seemed like all those mornings he had elected not to spend in the confines of his coffin was catching up on him.

The Foundation's owner hadn't revealed himself to the kids at large since he had first shuffled them around with Subaru by his side, and he hadn't seen them since his last spat with said clown resulted in his evisceration of Yuusui's chest. Kyte's had still stung with the weight he had carried behind it that day, forcing him to change gloves when he had realised how much blood had gotten on them.

Why… Why was it now that he felt his body tremble? Why was it that when he had the first step on his road to redemption… The ultimate tool and weapon he could use to right the wrongs of twenty years ago… That he… That he was hesitating?

Two fingers had managed to peel themselves away from the cover, dangling the book into a precarious position where it sat slanted inside the shaking iron grip of Kyte. However, three stronger fingers held it from falling into the fire below. All three refused to allow such a vital manuscript to be rid of this world, no matter what the brain that controlled them shouted at down the central nervous system.

Kyte gritted his teeth, the fingers that refused to budge now dug themselves in deeper as they punctured the front of the cover much as they had done with the ring minutes prior. The Vampire Lord's fangs extended outwards as his back teeth ground against each other, rubbing down the sharper points into fine nubs that would surely grow back in the space of a couple of hours.

Why… Why… WHY?!

What was making this so difficult?! He had it! The key was in his hand! He was at the door! And yet, he was hesitating to put the goddamn thing into the keyhole and make the decision to walk through the gaping doorway that was inviting him in with two beckoning hands.

His breathing laboured on, puffing out whiffs of smoke and oxygen that mixed in the air above him. Each huff sounded like the hissing of a snake, the soft Wryyyyy acting like the noise of the last gasps of air that wriggled their way through a dying man's lip. Had it been possible to see his reflection, Kyte would've easily seen the utter feral, primal gleam that had overtaken his entire person. The ghoulish cracking of his mask made him appear like the undead creature he really was.

Another finger dropped from the cover.

Come on… It shouldn't be that hard! The feral Kyte wrestled with the last remaining fingers that still clung to a remnant of the past that they should have long, LONG forgotten. All interest in burning the ring that was set on his desk had vanished from his memory. Instead, his whole interest was set firmly on making sure this… thing would never see the light of day again.

Because if Kyte didn't do it now, there was going to be no tomorrow. He was the only one that could do it. The one man that held what lay in these pages to his memory, a wicked world lay within that spun like golden flax on a spinning wheel, waiting for someone to prick their finger on it and fall under a terrible curse. One worse than those that had unearthed the Necronomicon.

One last finger remained.

It was here! This was the moment! The moment that Kyte had been waiting for his whole life! For twenty long years, he had been in search of this tome… this vile piece of literature. The search had been long, hard, and pushed him to the absolute limits of his sanity. Seclusion on the journey had been a small price to pay for the ultimate prize.

"This wasn't our moment, Kyte. This is MY moment."

Twenty years ago, it had indeed not been Kyte's moment. That moment was the one cause of the lingering scar on his body that stained his heart black in the first place. It was the one cause of why he had fallen to the sweet words Monsoon had spun in his ears, and why he had travelled with the all-powerful villain like a wandering vagrant. It was the one cause of why he had been lost in the darkness for so many years.

But now… As the dark side of the sun rose favourably towards him, Kyte's smirk grew wider. He could feel the taste of victory on his tongue, like the sweetest blood he had ever drunk in his life. Burning that man's life work would be but the start of the war, and each victory over him would provide enough nourishment for the Vampire Lord to live on forever.

The final finger fell, and with it so too did the book.

Kyte half expected a plume of black fire to spout out in front of him, ghoulish spirits of the underworld escaping the soon-to-be crinkling pages. The lich of a man who owned the book would shrivel up in Kyte's mind, the object that his life force was tied to fading away with the wind.

Destruction, as Monsoon had once told him, could be beautiful.

However, as Kyte shut his eyes and waited for the rush of adrenaline to die down, something was wrong. By now, he had assumed he would be bathed in the rush of heat and smoke that came from extra fuel to the fire. Much like the lantern he had once owned whenever he added finely pressed oil into its flame. But, instead, he felt no such thing. Only barren cold greeted him at his doorstep, gone were the faint flickers of heat that he had felt up until he had finally wrenched the book from his hesitant grasp.

Cracking one of his eyes open, the eye itself beady and still halfway deranged, Kyte found the issue without much difficulty.

Ah… The fire had gone out.

Just like that, he had missed the one moment he had to destroy the book. Oh, sure, he could try it again another day. The resource of fire was not a finite one, and it would not be difficult to simply start another one with how often the stuffy and uptight Hiroto tossed away books. Honestly, Kyte found that man more and more perplexing by the day. Going from bartender to butler had been a weird career path and a half.

However, that wasn't relevant. Bending down, Kyte fished out the book from the seat of ash that it had been submerged in. Brushing away the residue that blackened the already dark cover to the nth degree, the Vampire Lord tucked the book under his arm and used his other hand to grab at the ring on his desk.

Not even a second later, the ring was back in its rightful place on his finger, settling right back in like it had never left in the first place. The gleaming light it had reflected from the fire had vanished, but the gem still shone brightly in the world of darkness that was Kyte's office. The dim light of the candles that dotted the corners was no longer going to be enough, though.

Stomping over to the light switch right next to his office door, Kyte heard the soft hum of the lights above him before they shuttered with great fury into their noisy whirring. Soon, his whole office was bathed in a lilac, almost inferred glow. Subaru, always fond of the colour purple, had told him that it left the room looking rather mystifying and enticing.

"Bathing such an elegant décor like this… You have a real eye for aesthetics, don't you, Kyte-sama?"

Maybe it had once been like that, spun with Gothic tones of red and black that clashed with the white void that existed outside of the door. But the colour of the walls had long faded away over the years. It wasn't helped whenever that little annoyance had been let loose in his room by a certain clown's careless hand, leading Kyte to dish out a punishment that one might have considered "inhumane."

Though, if his memory served him right, that had been six years ago. The colours and life that had once dotted this room had gone grey long before Yua had run through it like a whirlwind of destruction.

Long ago, the floor had been paved with only the finest material. The small fortune in his back pocket from his time as a Hero had been put to good use when put together with a decent haggling head on his shoulders. Even people as dull to the arts as Hideyoshi and Sateriasis had made more than enough comments on what they felt a lift in their chest as soon as their feet glided across it.

Now, though, it was an absolute warzone. Strew, broken glass bottles of blood substitute that had kept him fed for the past few days lay shattered and scattered across the floor. The smooth landmines they set up were a danger for infection, which meant the even greater danger of someone being forced to get surgery from Sateriasis to remove it.

Kyte's steps through them, book in hand, were careful and precise. For as much as his body would be able to withstand the pain and heal from any wound, tonight was not a night he wanted to spend with Sateriasis and his leeches. Nor did he want to feel the slight prick in his foot if he stepped on one, not when he was already in the process of feeling his fangs prick against his lips as his breathing gradually became normal.

Right now, his goal was simply to get to the other side with as little effort as possible. With his office at the top level of the Foundation, not hidden in the depths down below like the rest of the staff and the students, it left him free and open to experiencing the sombre world that lay outside of the stained-glass windows that shuttered him in. The radiant yellows and green, in daylight, were mesmerizing in his opinion, casting wonderful streams of light and colour throughout the dulling walls.

However, even now they too had fallen victim to the rot and decay. Storms had shattered several pieces against each other. Furious snowball-sized hail had smashed through during the harsh months when his hibernation was at its shortest in comparison to other humans and animals, striking at the door to his coffin so often that he had moved it deeper into the room. The heavy drawn curtains now hid them from the view of the world, from the view of people like Subaru.

Pushing through the dark, doubled-up doors that stood on the other side, Kyte walked out to the wind biting at his face once more. The balcony he stood on had been one of Subaru's ideas that he hadn't immediately shut down on hearing it. Sometimes, the clown he kept so close to him could be worth a few good ideas. If you were willing to deal with the millions of ones that had been tossed in a chest and drowned at sea because of how insane they were.

The clown's expensive tastes had bled over into giving his saviour a mahogany frame on which to rest his arms and shoulders. The years of endless day and night cycles obscured much of the time that had gone into crafting it, but simply falling into its embrace was enough for Kyte to feel more at home than he had felt in his office.

Red eyes scoured the streets below, trying to peer through the thick veil of mist that had settled over yet another cold, dark, remorseless night. The dark stars above gave him no love once more, preferring to act like the man who walked underneath them was no more than a mere accident. It was another one of those dreary midnight skies that had become increasingly more common as a fixture in Kyte's life.

The Foundation itself, though, stood above the mist below. Its pure white, ugly design pierced above like the one pillar that had yet to fall into the dark underworld beneath. The walls and house Kyte had built were stronger than anything else in this world. A diamond shining down in the coal mine, ready to await the arrival of the one canary that would be the harbinger for things to come.

Kyte sighed, running his free hand through the hair he'd have to get cut soon. His failure to burn the book under his arm was just another reminder that time was dwindling away, albeit very slowly. Another chance to burn it wouldn't come for God knows how long, and the vampire was unsure if it would ever rear its head again.

Dark Soho-style lanes that had once been his kingdom, filled to the brim with feasts that triggered his sense even now, were no more than a reminder of a yesterday that no longer filled him with joyful memories. Before he even knew it, the people on the street had turned him into another pale face in the fog, staring down at him like they were hungry creatures of the damned.

The soft pitter-patter of rain soon reached his eardrums, his pointed ears twitching in anticipation of the rumbling of clouds he heard coming in the distance. Was nature truly so perverse that it had to rain on him right now? Kyte would've laughed to the high heavens at the fact if he didn't know that the heavens would open up on him even further. He shielded the book under his arm more.

Cold water soon splashed his face, dampening his hair and folding it in front of his face. At least… At least he could be okay with this form of punishment from the Sublime. The real cruel joke that could be played had fortunately been shoved into the back pocket by the looks of things, though, he'd be a fool to believe the sun wasn't out there hiding, Lurking. Ready to strike when he let his guard down.

As the rain soon became a permanent fixture, Kyte turned his attention away from it and back to the book that he shielded under his arm.

The master, the boyar, who summoned men from near and far to play intoxicating music. That's the man that Kyte Niijima had become, whether he wanted to be it or not. Fate chose its favourites, and it was then left up to nature to parcel out the blame. It seemed like Mother Nature itself had turned on him long ago, twenty years ago if he had to give an exact time. Possibly fifty if he wanted to be particularly melodramatic.

Much like it had done so with everyone under his care from the day they came into contact with him. The kids that populated the sterling white walls were much the same as the staff, age and experience was the only thing that separated the two of them. The last bastion of their hope, across aisles of the divide.

Could he condemn these innocent kids to the dark circle of despair? Forever locking them into an insane world far beyond their means and understanding? Kyte had seen how the knowledge affected Subaru, how it changed Sateriasis, how it morphed people he trusted with all his life. The thirst and hunger for the forbidden fruit of knowledge was hellish, no matter how heavenly the flavour on the tongue might have been.

If Kyte could go back in time, maybe… maybe things would be different. Then again, was there any worth spending time moping about yesterday? When tomorrow existed, there was always the chance things were going to change, no matter how slim they may be. Twenty years ago, he hadn't expected his life to radically alter as it had. But more importantly, it left every indication that soon his thirst for revenge could be filled.

Like coals to a primitive fire, Kyte would quench his thirst. If it had to be in blood and anguish, so be it.

Tomorrow… There was always a tomorrow.

He'd tell them all tomorrow.

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A/N: Because I have no sense of self-control, here's another 20k-long chapter because I'm a fucking psychopath. Again, not much to say about this chapter that hasn't already been said. Just hope you enjoyed this chapter and make sure to give a review if you have anything to say. Until next time.