Obliterate All Who May Defy You
For Hisumi, life at the Foundation had been… Well… How should she put this exactly without sounding like she was ungrateful? It… hadn't been what she had expected? Truth been told, when the offer had first been dangled in front of her face like a piece of tantalising red meat, the lycanthrope hadn't gathered the slightest bit of useful info from the man purporting to be her saviour. Perhaps she was a bit foolish then, desperate for any scrap of freedom she could attain.
Then again, whenever Hisumi had first walked into the Foundation, and over the past few days in particular, it didn't look like anyone was aware of what they had walked into. The blonde knew the looks in their eyes well, the same shellshocked gazes of young cubs that had been exposed to the harshness of the elements moments after their birth. Their minds too addled by the culture shock to prevent the physical shocks coming next.
Golden amber eyes peered up the walls as she trotted down one of the many winding hallways back to her room. Never before had she seen a structure this, well, big, for lack of a better term. She was sure the others had noticed it as well, but it truly felt like one stared at the sky itself whenever their gaze was tilted up to the roof. The sharp, bright lights that beamed down were like the twinkling crack of stars, albeit much harsher than the ones Hisumi was so intimately familiar with.
…Those had been the days… When everything had felt right… When the wind had been her friend…
But they were never the same… Even now, staring at artificial light could never match the sincere majesty of the true, natural star-laden night sky. Nor would it ever match the same feeling that welled in Hisumi's chest like a massive balloon every time she had been able to take in their beauty, consigning the memory to be just yet another thing that was ripped from her.
Bringing her head down with one violent snap, her body marched down the rest of the way to her room, moving on like a creaky old machine in desperate need of oiling. Her arms remained bolted to her side all the while, as if the hinges that otherwise would control their movement had been rusted and decayed. The doldrum beat of her boots on the ground became as regular as 1s and 0s in coding.
Everything about the Foundation was stark. White rooms, white walls, and white lights. It matched not the snow that Hisumi had frolicked about in her youth, but the oppressive clinical kind that had haunted much of her early teen years. The kind of which found in those sensory deprivation chambers she had heard about in passing, and given Subaru's persistence for making impossible space, part of Hisumi had started to come along to that idea.
The journeys across the Foundation were always long and arduous. Whoever had constructed this place, and Hisumi already had a sneaking suspicion of the man responsible, seemed to love sending people on wild goose chases. They had drawn up a labyrinth so perversely wide and impossibly constrictive at the same time, all whilst making sure even M.C. Escher would faint at the sight of the place.
Every time Hisumi watched one of the doors shutter down, vanish, or appear with no apparent warning was just another reminder of who was really in control of this place. Each time would make that pounding in the back of her head that little bit more pronounced, slowly turning the soft beat into the blare of an alarm bell.
However, Hisumi's attention was nowhere, with her eyes almost half glaring towards her hands. Hands that shot up in front of her face with a rigid jolt, like someone had just turned the crank in the back of her body like an old toy. Each finger bearing a callus from a more wistful time before all of this had been forced upon her like the rule of an oppressive king.
They were… shaking? Hisumi couldn't make heads or tails of it, tilting her head as her lips remained pushed into a thin, flat line. Out of all the times it could've happened at the Foundation; her induction test, the first time she had reverted out of her Quirk naked and much embarrassed, or even with the sub-zero temperatures some rooms held, it had to be now?
And why was it… so fast? Before, Hisumi had been able to at least see the tremors taking up her fingers like the parasitic feeling it was. But now, she found herself unable to discern the flashing phantoms that streaked across the air in front of her. Such was the speed that they possessed in that moment.
Hisumi stopped on a dime, slamming to attention like a well-drilled soldier. The clack of her boots on the hard ground echoed down the twisted hallway before her, waking up the silent world into which she had slipped. The extra sheen of lights that fell into place, by her motion alone, served to illuminate the true depravity of the way that led forward.
The blonde didn't know how long she had been walked for, anywhere between ten minutes and ten hours had begun to blend into her mind; nor did she know how far she had ventured into the core of this monstrous place. Yet, when her eyes had struck what lay before her, none of those things mattered anymore. Not even the constant tremoring of her hands.
The hallway in front of her, in that instant, looked like true hell. All of a sudden, the stark white that had possessed every inch in its grasp had fallen victim and given itself over to its new overlord. Deep tones of purple suppressed everything; splashes that looked like the claws of an all-consuming devil scrawled across the walls and seemed to home in on Hisumi's presence.
Just a single step further then revealed the nature of this new dimension Hisumi found herself in. Instantly, the colour drained from her face, leaving the flax blonde of her hair and the shimmering amber of her eyes to fend for themselves in the encroaching darkness. A darkness that subsumed all manner of light, even the ones that had come down with the blonde girl's presence.
The hallway itself twisted and turned in every conceivable way, like a mini-maze trapped inside of a larger jigsaw puzzle. The walls both closed in her like those out of a stereotypical horror film and widened to the level sprawling dystopian cityscape all at the same time. The musty smell of what seemed to be copious amounts of perfume, picked up by her enhanced senses, stained every corner it could and forced Hisumi to ram her hand over her nose to make sure it didn't get too overpowering.
Each step forward, be it a small tip-toe or a large stride, felt like it made no progress. The soul-sucking purple had expunged everything from sight, and without that crucial sense, Hisumi could have easily been walking backwards the whole time without knowing. Not even her Quirk appeared to be helping as she closed her eyes quickly, trying to use the Hunt to visualise the best way forward in this prison of the night.
It had been so long since she had experienced true darkness like this. A darkness that was black, cold, and unforgiving. A darkness that beheld nothing of the night she had come to love just as much as the day when she was but a mere child. A darkness that truly felt like an endless abyss, allowing nothing but itself to remain as her whole body shivered with another step.
The night… The night was different. The night was dark, but it was peaceful. It brought out the stars which shone with such glorious aplomb, it brought out the nocturnal animals that would treat the time like their hallowed kingdom, and it allowed the gentle lulling of temperature and huddling together to keep warm. It wasn't perfect, but it felt like nature itself had deemed its existence a necessity.
This whole area felt like it had been built in defiance of that very night.
Hisumi could barely see the hands in front of her face now. The only way she knew they were still trembling in wild blurs was because she could feel the one taking hostage of her nose, and how it took all of her power to stop it from shivering. The hallway and Foundation itself were always warm, but in this instance, a chill of condensed air puffed its way out of her frozen lips.
The one thing the blonde lycanthrope could do was walk forward. Going back would change nothing, Hisumi was pretty sure if she did anything close to that she'd find herself trapped deeper in the prison. Her eyes might have been failing to even see her nose at this point, but there was no other option left. She had to keep on moving forward.
Keeping her posture was… hard. In all reality, it shouldn't have been. This was simply a mere hallway, one of the thousands in this whole Foundation. Sure, it seemed unnatural at every twist and turn, every ascent and descent Hisumi found herself going through, but it remained a hallway, nonetheless. It shouldn't have pricked at her soul the way it did, it shouldn't have made those carefully oiled joints start to rust.
The continuous clack of her shoes, left right left right left right, worked as a metronome to take her mind off the general location. The dull, robotic march might have driven another man insane, mimicking the ancient form of waterboard torture, but it helped the rising heartbeat in Hisumi's chest to die down from the manic pulse of earlier.
Soon… Soon, she would be out of here. Soon, she would be back in the comforts of her dorm room and would be able to lose herself once more in the warm embrace of days past, but not forgotten. Soon, she would be able to condemn this memory, this hellish hallway, into the dustbin of history and forget a single soul had stepped foot in it.
But what was soon when the path she had trodden down seemed to have no end? Time ticked on by at an excruciating pace, the fine dust of the world's hourglass trickling down the syphon at the speed of a snail. It was long enough to feel like Hisumi could live two lives, at the bare minimum, before she could dare to spy where she would be spat out by this unending nightmare.
Reaching out with the one free hand she had, Hisumi swatted in an attempt to find the walls once more. The blonde had little sense of where she was in the grand scheme of the hallway. She could have been present in the dead centre, but the walls easily could have stretched on beyond her normal wingspan. On the other hand, she could have been right next to the walls, but enclosed in a space so tight that finding out where the wall was meant nothing.
Regardless, Hisumi knew she had to try. Letting this darkness defeat her would be inadvisable, she had faced stronger predators before in her life without daring to cower in their presence. Her father had made that one thing clear above all else… She wasn't going to let anything shackle her down…
"Curse or praise me, it matters not, Lamb. Your submission is inevitable."
Hisumi's hand slammed hard on the wall as that voice powered its way to the forefront of her mind. The jolt of hitting solid steel shocked her eyes wide open too, making them barely able to see the shaking fist which had punched itself into the Foundation. What felt like entire canisters of oxygen poured out of her mouth all in one guy, releasing the pent-up breaths that had made her as ready to pop as bubble wrap.
That day… She couldn't think about it. It was in the past, it wasn't relevant anymore. No matter how much those days might have been longed for deep within her soul, they were a simple memory at this point. So, so much had changed in the in between years. Voices that she heard and how they spoke, faces that she saw and how they looked at her as nothing more than a deviant to be corrected, even the country she had called home had been shifted.
All without Hisumi getting a single say in the matter.
With care, Hisumi shuffled forward to the wall and removed her fist once she was close enough to feel its presence by her side. Her hand, though, remained shaking by her side. It was met, in kind, by the pounding sound of her heart battering down on her eardrums. "Calm… Calm… Spokoyny…" The blonde muttered to herself, trying to quell the rising tension once more within her person.
That voice… She could still hear the howl in the back of her mind… Hisumi knew she had to get out of here now. It was no longer a simple question of how or when, it had become a dire need.
The footsteps that had been following a dull single beat quickened in pace by a half. The movement was still very much rigid, however, and if someone had the ability to watch what was going on they would've likened Hisumi to a nutcracker given its own autonomy. Yet, the speed was unmatched by anything prior regardless.
Hairs on the back of her neck flicked upwards at an alarming rate, Hisumi could feel them also start to multiply in small numbers too. The trembling hands that had been a curse since she had first spied her doom began to slow as well, her lips creasing into something akin to a snarl when she felt them start to meld into an inhuman, animalistic mass.
Transforming now, of all times, would be inefficient to say the absolute least about it. Not only would it rob her of her clothes, making walking around once all was said and done an exercise in seeing how embarrassed she could get, but it would also be much harder to put a timer on when she could shift back.
The pace quickened another half step once more. Rigid, robotic movements turned themselves into more primal, streamlined strides. Without even thinking about it, Hisumi shoved her transforming hands into her pockets, and gritted her teeth together to soldier through the pain of each crick, crack, and snap that came way of her fingers. She knew before long that the monstrous claws of her Quirk would be present.
It took all of her power to keep it at that. The rumbling beast within her soul was begging to be let out, the Quirk itself clawing at the inner walls of the sanctuary she had kept it locked inside. Using it during the Induction test against another person with an animal mutation was logical, at least to Hisumi. However, allowing it to escape now because of this darkness would be foolish.
But still, the hallway refused to end. Hisumi felt like she was taking three, maybe four normal steps at the time with every stride she made. However, she found herself no closer to discovering the exit, despite knowing for certain that she was making progress as she felt the wall by her side start to shrink. There was no way that this place was truly endless and that she was trapped…
Was there?
Every second that ticked on by, flowing at the sickening crawl of a handicapped snail, made that realisation verge even closer to merging into reality. Hisumi felt like she was drowning on dry land, her transformed legs trying their best to swim through the pure oxygen that tried to suffocate them at every opportunity. Before she knew it, the lycanthrope had begun holding her breath.
Every second that ticked on by, the walls around her seemed to suck away even the tiniest sparkle of light that dared to enter their domain. The claw-like way it had been splattered onto the walls had never felt more ominous, they were just like the encroaching grip of one of those hunters. The ones that had ripped away everything she held dear within a simple slash, who had then melted away into the mist without a trace of their memory being left behind.
Every second that ticked on by, Hisumi's body twitched and shifted more. Despite her best efforts, more induvial hairs started to sprout and take hold of her body, spreading like an untamed wildfire across her legs in particular. The sharp, blooming claws that were overtaking her smooth nails started to puncture through her vulnerable pockets' fabric, ripping away the one thin veneer that Hisumi was still clinging to with all her might.
Six.
Eight.
Ten steps were taken up by a normal stride now. What had started off as the soft pitter-patter of feet down a normal hallway had morphed into a primal, frenzied gait that rolled on like a thunderstorm. Yet, as her feet pounded on without any end, so too did the hallway.
Could she ever truly be free?
Would she ever be free?
Free…
Free…
FREE!
What was this place to rip her freedom away so effortlessly!? Like a ghost in the night, it had arrived and vanished without a trace, yet had managed to steal so much away from her before golden eyes could notice. Hisumi could scarcely begin to comprehend how such a thing had happened, something only worsened by the continued degradation of her humanity into primal beast.
At this point, only her face remained untouched by the all-conquering fur. Flecks of golden, sun-kissed fur had once been such a happy sign to her, back when the world still made sense, when the only thing she needed to worry about was whether she could name the stars she slept under. Back before the cold, industrial reality had fell upon, and crushed her, like a ten thousand tonne weight that acted with indiscriminate fury.
Each strand that threatened to pop out of her face like a pimple, every single tooth that pulled to sharp points with the squeal of a dentist's drill, and the pinprick pupils in her eyes that could fall into slits before the next time she blinked, had become symbols of her defeat. Of the subservience to this vile, cruel, cold world that she had been thrust into without so much as a say in the matter.
"Nature doesn't choose, nature doesn't wait. Instead, it acts, Little Lamb. It doesn't care whether you like the results, only that you accept the consequences."
Nature was beautiful. The amount of times Hisumi's jaw had dropped open at the wonderful sights she had seen, the lovely dreams she had dreamed under those soft, red, drew-dripped morning skies, went beyond the human capability to understand numbers. To think of it as anything other would be a sin.
Nature, though, as much as it pained her to admit, was horrible. Or, more accurately, the human world was horrible. Giant concrete structures like this infernal Foundation had rubbished the land once vibrant and green beneath it. Humans polluted those clear, clean, comforting summer breezes with smoke, methane, and all manner of disgusting scents that sent Hisumi's nose haywire.
But above all else, the worse sin that her biggest love had created, was creating the man that had ripped her father away from the mortal coil, and had handed her over to the oppressive, gilded cage that her so called 'Grandfather' had set up.
A guttural growl snapped up the back of her throat, shooting out into the endless hallway like the graceful lunge of Hisumi in battle. The pure bestial anger, the animalistic hatred, was unmatched by any scream, yelp, or exclamation heard in the Foundation over the past twenty years of its existence.
By this point, Hisumi's gait had outstripped what should have been mortally possible. A mammoth twenty steps left her so low to the ground that she may as well have been running on all fours. She might have entered as a human machine and transformed most of the way into a deadly beast, but the undercutting robotism didn't fade away. In fact, it may have increased.
"Look up at that night sky… Beautiful, isn't it? I can show you how deep the abyss of the night truly goes, if you long to walk with me instead."
The offer had been a slap to the face then, and it still stung all these years later. The man who was paid to rob her of her freedom, killed her own father, dared to think he was allowed to dictate her freedom!? Hisumi recalled how she had stood in the man's decrepit grip, struggling with all of her might to escape, but remaining rooted to the spot without having the power to do much of anything.
Hisumi swore that at this point she must've been running for upwards of twenty minutes now. Her body had morphed beyond recognition, only a few spares spots offered pockets of resistance to the oncoming transformational tide. Any normal human body would've collapsed of exhaustion by this point, crawling along limply on their hands and knees, begging to be let out.
However, Hisumi powered on, unclouded and unfettered in her design to get out of this lingering hellscape that even Hieronymus Bosch would fail to adequately paint.
And finally, finally, there looked like light at the end of the tunnel. It was just a small pinprick, barely beyond the size of a chewed off fingernail. But it was enough, enough for Hisumi to come barrelling towards it at full speed and without any signs that she was going to take out her pent-up feelings in a healthy way.
Twenty. Hisumi, in whatever of her non-primal mind that was left, reckoned that she was no more than twenty seconds from tasting the sweet sensation of freedom once again, from kissing the ground she had taken for granted before being stuck in this prison beyond man's comprehension.
Ten. She… it was getting hard to think. Not so much because the beast locked in the back of her head was pounding on the cage keeping it captive, but more so because the overwhelming happiness and joy that spread through her body at the mere thought of finally seeing the light once more.
Five. In a way, Hisumi could even kid herself into believing that this was total freedom she was inches from attaining. The freedom of the wind blowing through her hair and fur, the freedom of once more feeling the snow under her feet, and the freedom from the darkness of the eternal night her whole life had been in since that fateful day.
One. Hisumi reached out, clawed fingertips cresting the door.
Zero. The lycanthrope slammed at full force into the semi open door, the power and speed of her arrival not even giving the door time to open fully. Which, in turn, lead to Hisumi rendering it null and void by tearing off the hinges, watching it collapse to the ground as its tumbling sound echoed in her sensitive eardrums like the crash of thunder.
Instantly, the stark lights of the Foundation were shining on her with their trademark harshness, and Hisumi, for one, had never been so pleased to see them in her life. She might have had to shun her gaze from them, her pupils only just returning from their scattershot state as she gazed to the floor, but oh how she felt like kissing the ceiling they resided on.
However, it was in the stark lights of the now normal hallway she resided in that Hisumi found out about the true cost of her transformation.
The light reflected off shaking hands of golden fur and twisted claws that looked like those of a feral beast, hardly the soft, almost silky hands of her human form. Each individual ridge on her claws looked rigid too, like she had been subconsciously chewing on them the whole time, for however long she truly was stuck in that hell.
But that was not the end of it. Hisumi almost didn't want to look at it, but with the freezing cold that now washed over her legs, torso, and upper neck, it didn't take a genius to figure out that she had managed to shun and shred most of her clothes in the process. So much fabric… All wasted now, and it wasn't like she had an infinite supply of them.
If there was one respite for Hisumi, though, it seemed as if most of her face and head had remained in her human form. There wasn't the tell-tale twitching of ears on the top corners of her head, nor was there the feeling of fur fluffing up her mouth with endless hairs that were a nightmare to pull out when she returned to normal. However, that wasn't to say that some hair had popped up… Ugh, that was also going to be terrible to rectify.
Covering up her body as best she could, she really needed to ask about some support equipment sometime in the near future to stop this, Hisumi walked forward as best she could. In midst of the hellscape that had consumed her, she had almost forgotten where she was even travelling. At least now though, once she had returned to her room, she would be able to kill two birds with one stone.
Once more, though, that niggling question, that hideous idea, crept up from the back of her mind.
Could she ever be truly free?
Unbeknownst to her, however, she wasn't exactly the only one that had been present in the whole ordeal.
To say that Subaru was a man that lurked in the shadows as much as he loved lapping up with the spotlight would be an understatement. The Foundation's mad clown, and Kyte's right hand man, might as well have been as much a creature of the night as his superior was. In a sense, the two of them were inseparable, both taking their own personal kingdoms in a place that would have reviled others.
The pink-haired adult watched Hisumi's departure with a smirk on his glossy, black lips, which stood in complete contrast with the cold, dead look of his soulless, crimson eyes as they regarded the fallen, solid steel door like a deceased corpse. What raw, untamed power… If Subaru hadn't watched it with his own eyes, he might have thought it the work of a vanguard's invasion force of multiple men.
Fighting tooth and nail for that hallway, when even Hideyoshi and Hiroto got cold feet about its inclusion, was the best decision that Subaru had made in the past five years. Such a marvel of engineering it was. It was able to be manipulated just as the simulation and training rooms were, owing to the creation of a potentially unlimited space he could control at his discretion.
A small, claustrophobic box that felt like the walls were crushing you? It could do that, a lot of the places in the Foundation could be like that. A large, expansive domain that was like a never-ending nightmare? It could do that too, much like Hiroto's godforsaken library. But like the cosmos itself, it could also go on forever, twisting and turning to whatever tune Subaru wanted.
Titling his head up, Subaru glanced in the direction Hisumi walked off in with her file tucked under his arm. Was it a little cruel to spring the trap on her without any forewarning? Perhaps, but it was all necessary in the pursuit of further knowledge. One didn't achieve the true, correct results of an experiment by rigging the odds in one's favour. What the clown had needed, above all else, was the true, authentic terror that stretched through Hisumi's soul.
And he had achieved that in buckets. All thanks to one man in particular, who never knew the meaning of the word "departure" with how often he slimed his way back into the picture. A slight laugh bubbled in his mouth, floating out in off-key tones. "Nishishishi, well, well, well. You really do have a way of getting to these kids, don't you, Monsoon?"
But alas, Subaru couldn't dwell on the results for too long. Today was an important day, Kyte-sama's announcement was sure to be an interesting one and all the right pieces needed to be in place…
Painful.
That was the one word that Yuusui could use to describe his stay in the Foundation's infirmary so far. Pain which had lessened the longer he stayed there, but pain, nonetheless. The faint, dull ache of his chest was the worst of it all, it made even the simple act of breathing difficult and irritating. Every time it dared to rise, the brunette was either wrecked with a coughing fit or grunted his way to the top of the mountain and fell down with insane speed.
Compared to his father's former work office, there was something unique about the Foundation's infirmary. It looked less sterile, but far more decayed. White walls were flecked with muck and mould, not at all conducive to good health, but remaining because someone was too lazy to clean it. The tools that remained by the side of his bed were the same, left without a precise clean since the time they were used the other day, dumped without care in some cleansing alcohol that crested the tip of them if it was lucky.
Had his father seen the state of this place, he would have been apoplectic with rage. Yuusui could almost imagine the how the scene would play out, the vivid details of how Father would first rant and rave about how the 'Flesh of his soul' was being 'dirtied' by shoddy craftsmanship. He would then clean all the tools, make sure everything was in place, before mentioning how foolish the young brunette had been in allowing himself to fall into a situation like this. "I can't believe you," he would say, lips quirking into a frown "Your mother would be so disappointed."
As he stared at the door with his dead, glassy eyes, it took Yuusui almost two seconds to realise the depths of his delusions and release the painful, deep breath he had been holding in. No, Father was dead now. He was gone to the wind, committed to the earth he had buried so many under in the sake of his twisted endeavours. The scourge of the villainous 'Good Doctor' was no more than a footnote of history by this point.
Yuusui took another deep breath, haggard and barely able to puff it through before the pain got too much and he was forced back onto his back. He needed to stop thinking about things like that. What was it that Seizou-san had told him? That the past was the past and he had to focus on the now? The brunette's lips almost curled up into a smirk, if it only it was as simple as Seizou-san had made it seem…
What if he didn't want to let go? What if, for a few brief moments in the years before he had stumbled into government hands, happiness had pricked at the edges of his very soul? What if, for such a short eternity, he had known what it was like to be truly cared for and experienced the real kindness of strangers?
Who knew an aggressive shadow could be the saviour he had needed his whole life?
"You look like you're deep in thought, Kid. Doesn't make a very attractive look." Oh yeah, Yuusui had almost forgotten that the white-haired nurse was present in the room too. The man in question giving a soft snort at his own joke as he approached Yuusui's bedside. If his stay here had confirmed one other thing, it was that Sateriasis Fauser was as skilled as keeping his presence on the downlow as he was in coming off like a total creep. "If you keep doing it like that, you're going to get wrinkles by the age of 30."
Yuusui huffed, was that last comment really necessary? Sometimes, and to this day he still didn't know why, it felt like people just piled onto him for the sake of it. Still, something regarding a smirk worked its way onto his lips as he resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
Beside him, Sateriasis was swirling around a vial of the most peculiar looking blood that Yuusui had even seen in his life. Well, he assumed that it was blood. Realistically, and given the intense proclivity of this Foundation to the dark side of anything, the brunette wouldn't have been shocked if it were some liquid made from the souls of the innocent. Its liquid silver colour, which glinted like a knife in the stark light, froze at the nurse's will as it sloshed against the sides.
With a desire to know what the strange concoction was, parched, cracked lips opened, yet nothing more than a hoarse strangle of noise came out as Yuusui heaved an equally chesty cough. Turns out speaking was still far beyond Yuusui's capabilities at the moment and had been for quite some time. Just wonderful…
"Your treatment isn't going to take much longer, Migoro-kun. Another day and you'll be allowed back into the Foundation proper by Niijima-sama." Sateriasis supplied, his attention still mostly focused on the vial, which he set down on the small table by Yuusui's gurney. "Of course, proper precautions will still need to be undertaken, but so long as you're not like that annoying fox, I doubt I'll be seeing much of you."
Yuusui didn't need to be a genius to figure out the thinly veiled, bitter jab Sateriasis tossed the way of the absent Kagekatsu. For someone that had initially been so eerie to meet, drawling every word like the mere action of speaking was a pain, the brunette, and the rest of the new intake for that matter, had quickly learnt the nurse liked to wear his heart on his sleeve. His outright, almost visceral dislike for Subaru appeared to just be the tip of the iceberg.
But hearing that his time in here would soon be over was great news. If he simply stayed in the infirmary his whole three years in this place, all because he had gotten one almighty vampire very pissed off by his intransigence, then Yuusui'd never be able to fulfil that promise he had made on that stormy night the last time they had been together.
"You should try to do what's right… Even if you don't know exactly what right is…"
"Don't ever let your past dictate what you'll become… Don't let that path to Hell be paved with regret and pain…"
"Please, don't go. Stay. We can live off the land, it sho-shouldn't be too hard…"
The first time Yuusui had set eyes on that aggressive shadow on that dimly lit night, he knew he'd never be the same. The mere aura rocked him to his very core, and even still, the words from their last meeting had passed over in his head so many times that it may as well have made its nest there. Domination, obsession, were the only words Yuusui could use to describe the feelings he had retained and how their hands had conquered every inch of his soul.
Anything less than being able to meet that gaze again… No, he couldn't think of it like that. Yuusui couldn't allow himself to believe in anything less than the dream he had long etched into his mind. GLAD had been a few years wasted arguably, and the wounds he received from there would never heal, but if it had done nothing else, it had delivered him to Kyte. It had delivered him his one chance to come out a changed man that reflected the kindness the stranger had sent him.
"You're doing it again. Does anyone ever listen? Honestly!" Sateriasis' whine snapped him out of his reverie, glassy eyes blinking as they focused themselves on the lights above. The nurse was still standing by his side, this time propping a cool, gloved finger just beneath the brunette's hairline. "Hmm, still a bit feverish… Is that a possible side effect?"
Yuusui frowned, once again huffing as much as his body would allow him. At first, he wanted to roll his eyes again because this was clearly about to become a thing at this rate, and it would be mighty annoying to hear it for the rest of his stay here. However, he found himself focusing more on the tail end of what Sateriasis had said. A fever? That did sound about right, but he hadn't had one when he was first dropped in here, so what was the change?
The only thing Yuusui could remember happening when he was conscious was the injection Sateriasis had given to him, did that have an effect? The brunette struggled to recall what exactly had been present in that syringe, the memory foggy and unclear in his mind as the feverish haze he had long settled into clouded everything but his deepest desires.
However, as soon as he saw Sateriasis re-establish contact with the vial from earlier, everything started to click for Yuusui. That vile, silver liquid… It was inside of him, wasn't it? Before too long, and without truly realising it, glassy eyes were staring at the vial in question like it was the devil taken corporeal form. After all, it wouldn't be the first time he had been used a test dog for sordid experiments like this.
"Oh, interested, are we?" Sateriasis said, noticing the obvious glare that was being sent his general direction. Without much care for if it shattered or not, the nurse began to twirl the long, cylindrical vial around the backs of his fingers. A slippery smirk was on his face, one that made Yuusui wish he were looking anywhere else. "You needn't worry so much, Migoro-kun. This is a perfectly ethical, organic solution that I have extracted and dedicated towards your recovery process."
Trust wasn't exactly a feeling that Yuusui had for most people in this world, it was a thing that everyone was owed, but seldom ended up having reciprocated. Betrayal was far more commonplace, and it was much easier to imagine the off-putting, self-proclaimed, 'nurse', whose tongue twisted like a snake every time he spoke, into that category.
Once more, he must have been wearing his emotions on his sleeve again, because Sateriasis simply shook his head and heaved a sigh before speaking. "Let me put it this way. Would you really believe that Niijima-sama would let me be in control of your, and the others,' well-being if he didn't think I was both capable and trustworthy?" The nurse stated, raising an eyebrow at the end as he posited the question.
'He also employs a clow whose job seems to be gutting people,' Yuusui thought into himself as he heaved another huff. Despite of what was true, was he already being a bit too judgemental? He had gone through, what, one lesson in class, one training session, and then a test that he was promised was going to be difficult? It wasn't as if they had strictly broken what they had promised directly to him, and the negotiations between Seizou-san and Kyte were still confidential until the vampire took his time to say the terms.
His calloused hands twisted the corners of the cover, pulling further up his body. Ugh, if he stayed here by himself any longer Yuusui knew he was going to go stir crazy before he knew it. Idly, he wondered if that liquid, which Sateriasis was still contorting in his hands, really was helping him. If he trusted in the other's words, then the injection which had made his chest feeling a million times lighter was courtesy of it.
But, then again, it was odd. If Sateriasis had access to some kind of liquid that could heal people quicker than natural, why didn't he give to the others after their own induction test. Yuusui might not have been present for the direct aftermath, but the haphazard stitching, the endless aches, and pains he saw the others nursing, and the inexorable list of complaints Kagekatsu had made about his broken nose were all signs that it wasn't present before now.
So, then, where did he get it from? Once more, Yuusui's face settled into one of deep thought. His solid, glassy eyes were always had their most unsettling, uncanny whenever he had them focused on understanding the problem with clinical precision. It was one of the traits, alongside his observance, that Seizou-san had first noticed about him when he been delivered into GLAD's waiting hands.
Yuusui scarcely knew the Quirks of everyone here, bar what was exceedingly obvious. Kagekatsu was a fox, Joseph was a demon, Ani… well, Yuusui wasn't quite sure what Ani actually was, but she sure as hell wasn't going to be producing anything positive out of her. Either way, once the mutants had been shifted out, and the more noticeable Quirks, such as the frosted horns that broke the surface of Shiki's forehead, were put to rest in his mind. It left him with only three options on the table, realistically speaking.
One, was Mahoro. It was an idea that almost instantly made Yuusui gurn, and about the most farfetched idea he had still left. From what he heard passed through the grapevine, both Fukuro and Akashi had seen the girl drinking from an ink bottle. Which was just enough to make the brunette want to vomit right here, right now, no matter what his chest thought of it.
Two, was Mei. It was another, equally unlikely option. If she truly had some kind of healing Quirk or happened to have something intrinsic to her blood that made her heal wounds faster than others, Yuusui had yet to see any evidence of it. The scars which still stretched her face into a sick smile were more than enough proof to the contrary.
Which, in turn, left Yuusui with just one option left, and it made him almost want to roll his eyes.
Arius had been with him when he first woke up, Arius had been the one to complain about doing more to help Yuusui than the supposed head doctor of this place, and Arius was the one who, if he remembered correctly, could regenerate any injury within a flash. Yuusui almost wanted to punch himself for jumping through so many hoops to get to the answer.
And from the look he was receiving from Sateriasis, all sharp angles and predatory glee, it appeared that it gave the other man present in the room some satisfaction as well. "Didn't I say that it was alright to trust me?" He said, walking his way over to Yuusui and placing a hand on the teen's shoulder. "Now, would you kindly allow me to make the last injection needed. Arius' blood is only effective in inconsistent doses, you see."
At first, Yuusui's body wanted to tense up at the sensation of Sateriasis' hand on his shoulder. However, before he knew what was going on, the same body that felt like a tightly screwed on bolt fell under a dream-like reverie in an instant. His mind fogged up like he had just walked into a steaming hot sauna, and his eyes had never felt heavier in his life than they did in this one moment.
From the corner of a barely open eye, Yuusui was unable to do anything else but watch Sateriasis slowly fill a syringe full of the silver blood, which quickly frozen to the sides of the warm container. "I'm glad he's finally useful for something at last, I might have bitten his head off otherwise, kehehehe." Said the nurse as he finally broke the surface of Yuusui's flesh and injected the contents into Yuusui's bloodstream.
Within an instant, whatever haze had settled over Yuusui like an oppressive weight was vanquished like the injection was some kind of sword swinging hero that had just saved a fantasy world. The immediate sensation of energy that pulsed through his body was identical to the feeling he had on the previous occasion, an almost euphoric mix of vitality and life that made his muscles feel brand new.
Pulling down the cover ever so slightly, Yuusui witnessed his chest, the one part of his body that had been given the most punishment and delivered the most torture of all slowly stitch itself back together. With his eyes as wide as they could be and breathing that no longer sounded like a dying old man's final breaths whilst being choked, he saw the odious handprint that had been emblazoned on his chest vanish.
Yuusui could scarcely believe it, a tremor-laden hand dusted around the areas that had been the most tortured during the past couple of days, and each of them felt as clean and as soft as a baby's skin. There wasn't a single imperfection, beyond what had been irreparably carved and branded into his skin.
This was… Arius' Quirk? How could someone so insufferable have a Quirk that was so invaluable? Yuusui sighed, why was the world like this sometimes? Honestly, it felt like there was some ironic god out there, granting powers that flew contrary to people's personalities, and always shoved the most useful ones in the most annoying vessels. GLAD was choc-a-block with them, each one more irritating than the last, salivating at their chance to house train the puppy.
A soft clink beside him knocked Yuusui out of his thoughts, making him drop the corners of the covers he had been twisting without realising. Sateriasis, with his own lips creased into a frown, had placed a glass filled to the brim with water. Where he had got it from, and how he had managed it so quickly, Yuusui didn't know. "Don't look at me like that, it's just water. Drink up, you want to be able to speak right?" The brunette didn't need to be told twice.
But as he placed the now empty glass down to the table, another much more pertinent question that he wanted the answer to had brought itself to the front of his mind. "What was… How did you make me docile?" Yuusui said, kneading his bottom lip with endless chews and hunching his shoulders inwards. His voice still sounded rough, but it was nothing compared to the nails on chalkboard levels it could have been.
The question earned him another one of Sateriasis' predatory smirks, which looked so different to Subaru's, yet so similar at the same time, which sent his goosebumps into red alert. For Yuusui, it looked like every member of staff was cut from the same cloth. "Come on, Kid, I'm sure Subaru's already told you that a magician never reveals his secrets," Sateriasis began. "You'll learn my Quirk in good time, and you'll understand why Niijima-sama hires such a 'quack' in this role. Once you reach the other side, of course."
So, it was a Quirk after all. Yuusui didn't know if that was exactly a positive thing or not, Sateriasis had taken over his body so quickly and without any chance for the brunette to defend himself, it was a frightening prospect. It even made his newly healed body feel like it was shrivelling up into a wrinkly prune with how much the concept made him sweat. What was the upper limit? Was there even a limit to what the nurse could control?
"Still, one can never be tooooooooo carefulllllllllll." The nurse drawled, walking over to the cramped desk in the corner of the room, and rummaging around the filled drawers with graceful fingers. It was an almost painfully familiar, domestic sight for Yuusui to witness. Soon, Sateriasis was by his side with a file within his grasp, passing it to the teen. "Niijima-sama is making an announcement today, and he wants everyone to be present if they are able. Far be it from me to criticise his orders, but it may have required me to expedite my experiment, would you mind noting down any possible side effects if you experience them?"
Yuusui took the file, filled to the brim with endless amounts of paper, and the occasional questionnaire from what his glassy eyes could glance, but it was far from an enthusiastic smash and grab. "A… Are they likely?" He asked, brows furrowed and forehead once more wrinkling as he placed his right fist under his chin.
On his end, Sateriasis shrugged, decidedly not the thing a medical professional was supposed to do when trying to instil confidence in their patience. "It might be. Like I said, Niijima-sama's announcement has caused a shorter window for me to test and make sure that Arius' blood is compatible with everyone in this place, without any side effects that could cause damage. As of right now, I have no reason to suspect that there will be any serious drawbacks, but if his blood is as toxic as he is, I will need to know." He said, not missing any chance he got to throw Arius under the bus. It looked like the spiky-haired teen had already managed to weasel his way to being Sateriasis' second most hated person in the Foundation.
The brunette gulped, his mind supplied him with the earlier comment Sateriasis had made of him possibly having a fever. Whilst he didn't feel like crap right at the minute, Yuusui's father had made good time in teaching him that humanity was a rather fragile creation, prone to breaking if just a single cog was slightly out of line. Mankind was a machine of a certain level of complexity, he remembered hearing from a deranged book his father had once read to him. He had even threatened to show him a live example once, and a rather gruesome one it had turned out to be.
Yet, still, Yuusui had been given a task, and he had to carry it out to the best of his ability, whether he wanted to do it or not. With a short nod, not seeing the need to add anything further to the situation at hand, the brunette clutched the file towards his chest and slowly made his way out of infirmary. "Thank you, Fauser-sensei," he supplied as he passed by the man in question and gently closed the door behind him.
With Yuusui sorted, Sateriasis let out the deep breath he had been holding in for God knows how long. How long had it been again since Niijima-sama had first dragged that kid into his infirmary alongside Oscar? Even if it had simply been under a week, it had forced the nurse to spend his days cramped in this underwhelming infirmary and completely destroyed his sense of time in the process.
However, he could now finally relax, and the first free roll of his shoulder blades he had been allowed since the new intake had come in was going to be heavenly. It was such a shame that Hiroto and Hideyoshi were busy though, regardless of the fact they had a proclivity to drop all important tasks the second their 'Boss' called on them for anything. If he called on them now, he was sure as hell going to be getting an earful from Niijima-sama. Especially considering the upcoming speech.
The fact that Kyte had decided now was the time to make an announcement was certainly an interesting one. For the twenty years that Sateriasis had worked in the Broken Heart Foundation, the Kingpin had only ever once broken with schedule and delivered an unplanned speech. That was during the very first intake, so it was to be expected that not everything was going to run smoothly through what was essentially a trial run.
But to do one now… It made Sateriasis curious as to what his Master might have wanted to say. Conversations with Kyte, even for the staff, had proved to be rare. As far as he remembered, the newest addition; Shion, had only spoke with Kyte the one time since her appointment. Oscar was no different, although one could never really know for sure what the true number was with how his personalities worked. Either way, the Australian had often been Subaru's problem, so it was just as uncommon.
Yet, even when being one of the longest serving members of the Foundation, and the one who had never once taken a break during the near twenty-one-year operation of this place, Sateriasis was lucky to speak to Kyte one on one four times a year. Hell, the last time he had managed to not have that godforsaken clown in the room with him, it was during the medical evaluation for the new intake three months before they all officially joined.
The nurse walked over to edge of the bed Yuusui had been in, curling his hands around the metal and leaning his arms around the side. Compared to some of the other intakes, this one had a fairly flawless record when it came to their physical health. Some, like Arius and Fukuro, could even be argued to be specimens in the prime of their life. Sateriasis' face cringed when thought back to that one plant kid who constantly needed sunlight or else they wilted away, that had been one of the harder tasks he had.
Pain… Every person in this world; man, woman, young, old, Quirked, Quirkless, had to experience pain at some point in their life. It was one of the worst inevitabilities in this world, right up there with the inevitability of death and the crushing hole in your wallet that taxes left behind in its wake. What made it even worse was how unavoidable it was, with no one, not even with their new Quirks, being able to avoid its existence.
Pain, death, destruction… They were terrible, terrible things that sickened Sateriasis right to his core.
Yet… There remained idiots that encouraged it. There were idiots that took pleasure in it, made it their whole identity, and proclaimed themselves to be the living definition of it. Those who walked with the authority of kings, but had the depth of character roughly equating a puddle. If Sateriasis had no better way to describe them, he would term them as the fools that lived to die, just like the man who had set the groundwork for that path with his philosophy.
The white-haired male looked over his shoulder, his ever-changing eyes narrowing at his desk. Within it, lay the object that had once lit his smoke-covered path, the object that had both delivered him into Niijima-sama's hands and nearly sent him down the same path as the self-proclaimed Prince of Pain. A soft chuckle broke out of his lips at the thought of what might have happened had a different person found him on that day.
"The choice is yours, if you're willing to choose the right option."
A cold world... Those were the words he had used, that he remembered well. A cold world that prevented those who deserved peace, acceptance, and love from attaining it, shunning them at every attempt they made. It was only after a few years as Niijima-sama's servant that he had realised how similar their messages had been in those days, and how foolish he had been for initially trying to reject it. Since then, he had trusted the Vampire Lord's judgement in just about everything, expect for his continued insistence in keeping Subaru employed.
Returning his gaze in front of him, he stared at where the one other exception to that belief had been moments prior. Sateriasis had still yet to be offered an explanation for why Yuusui had been allowed into the Foundation despite the mandated test period being over, and why the rules, which had been set in stone for twenty years, had been bent for this one specific teenager.
Sateriasis ran his hands through his hair, trying to relieve the tension that had been building up in them. The nurse grunted as he remembered Subaru's annoying insistence that Sateriasis should only receive the medical records of the new intake, and that as the main co-ordinator, it was Subaru alone that should receive the papers that actually mattered. He had to fight tooth and nail, and twist Niijima-sama's arm at the right time, to even get a glimpse at most of the files once all was decided.
Yuusui's one, though, had been conspicuously absent from that list, it was like Subaru and Niijima-sama were intentionally hiding it from him at this point. His fist curled in his hair, clutching at a bunch that he threatened to rip out if one more annoyance came into his life. What was so special about this kid that it warranted different treatment?! If he didn't find out soon then he would have no choice but to use his Quirk to f-.
Sateriasis' ears pricked up when he heard a cough in the room. Instantly, he dropped his arms to the side and his eyes scanned the surrounding area with the same kind of precision belonging to a trained assassin. Him and Yuusui were the only ones in the room, that he was sure of, so a sound like that should have been impossible.
Yet, as he heard it again, Sateriasis knew he wasn't going crazy. He hadn't forgotten anyone… had he? Surely, Hiroto or Hideyoshi would've alerted him by now to an intruder in the Foundation, and they would've been banging down the door to protect him from what the danger was. As he found no messages on his phone, though, the nurse was once again at a loss for what to think.
A third time was enough for him to take more proactive action. The area in front of him was totally clear, but only consisted of seven out of the fourteen beds that were present in the Infirmary, and it didn't sound like the noise was coming from nearby either.
With cautious steps, Sateriasis made his way around to the second half of the infirmary, and there he finally managed to find who the one causing the noise was. "Fuck me! You're still here?!" The white-haired adult exclaimed, taking a step backwards. For the first time that any of the new intake had seen, those constantly shifting eyes of his managed to widen and stay in one colour for more than a second in pure shock.
Right there, before his very eyes, was the literal forgotten man of the Foundation. Haru had been patient, really, he had. He had answered the questions that Kyte had asked him when he was first dumped here, and he had followed what the vampire lord had told him to do following said questions. Again, it was expected, and therefore he had no reason to be annoyed about it.
However, as he pressed a hand to his eyepatch whilst his other eye regarded Sateriasis with something resembling derision, what Haru had not expected was to be left behind with no one regarding his existence! Seriously, was it like he didn't exist or something!?
Before Haru even got the chance to plead his case, or even remind Sateriasis that this was supposed to be KYTE'S plan for him, he was cut off by the sound of the slightly calmer nurse heaving an exasperated sigh. "Go! Get out of here before Niijima-sama yells at me for leaving you behind!"
Ugh… Now this is just wonderful, both of them thought at the same time. There was absolutely no way this was going to end up going well for either of them.
"And here I thought I would be having a peaceful day. Well, if it isn't Subaru's little tyke. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Hiroto, Yua had decided from a young age, was someone to steer clear of. Both him and Hideyoshi, despite being a part of the crazy family she had assembled during her stay, had eyes like snakes and teeth like sharks. Her "dad" had never much been fond of them, and vice versa. It served to make every interaction between them, of which there were many, all the more awkward as they spoke only through a flower.
Yua toyed with the envelope in her hands, messing about with the already bent corners of the purple paper. Hiroto's gaze on her had never made her feel smaller, despite her already minute height of five foot zero. Shakily, she raised the offending letter into the air and began to speak with a slight tremor to her voice that reeked of a terror mixed with desperation. "I-I… Daddy had this in his room… H-He didn't tell me how he got it, so I-I t-thought you'd know for sure."
"Ohhhhh? And whyyyy would that be the caseeeee?" Hiroto said with a lazy drawl that imitated Sateriasis' eerie droning without fault. The more eloquent of the twins' eyes might have looked racked with interest, especially so whenever he took note of the particular colour of this offending object, but the loose grip he maintained as he plucked it from Yua's hands spoke to the opposite effect.
The young girl bit her bottom lip, kneading it without end. Her luminous, emerald eyes darted to the ground, unable to hold themselves upon Hiroto for a second more. Why did every conversation with either of the twins have to go like this all the time? Especially during a pressing issue like this. "Umm…" Yua murmured, scurrying through her brain to come up with an excuse for searching him out other than 'everyone else is busy and you're the only one left.'
Luckily, or unluckily, she wasn't quite sure of either at the moment, the gears turning in Yua's head were shuttered by a soft chuckle spilling from Hiroto's lips. "Ehehe, you're so cute when you try and think, Tyke." The Foundation's parasite said, patting the young girl on the head with a smirk gracing his sharp, predatory features. The tips of his shark-like teeth jutted out just under his top lip.
Before she knew it, Yua melted into a conditioned mewl. The first time Subaru had been proud of her, when she was still but a young girl endlessly running through shifting halls, the small pat on her head she'd received for a job well done felt like pure heaven. Ever since then, it had become something of a quick way to calm her, and if she was fully honest, she knew full well why Hiroto had suddenly broken out into doing it.
"Look at you. Finally ready to break free of your 'daddy's' shadow, are we? Guess I owe Hideyoshi then." Hiroto said, still resting his hand on top of Yua's head, his silk gloves meeting with the cool material of the hazmat suit. Eventually, though, he moved back to the couch he had been enjoying his free time on and patted the space next to him. "Won't you take a seat with me?"
With a slight gulp and no further words, Yua climbed onto the leather couch, letting herself be subsumed into the comfort it provided for her. Being in the staff room, despite spending her whole life in the Foundation, was a luxury. The few times she had been allowed in, Subaru had cajoled her over to the side and showed her the massive tower of cards he had been spending most of his free time constructing.
From the corner of her eyes, she could see that very same tower. It was no longer the same height at it had once been, whether that had been because she had grown over the past handful of years and Subaru didn't need to lift her to place the cards at the top anymore, Yua didn't know. It looked so much more… wobbly now too, barely being able to stand near the top. Just the slightest gust of wind, she thought, would be enough for it to all come crashing down.
But her attention wasn't on the tower for long, especially not when Hiroto pulled himself by her side and placed his arm around her shoulders. Instinctively, Yua went to pull away from the older man, already gurning at the prospect at having to be in physical contact with Hiroto. Subaru had always told her that the twins had a dubious history with their hands and their Quirks, was Hiroto trying to use his Quirk on her already? A quick look up to his eyes said no, but the sinking feeling remained in Yua's stomach.
"Now, what do we have here?" Hiroto began, deciding to ignore the uncomfortable girl beside him in favour of the purple letter in front, Yua'd be coming around to his side of things very soon all things considered. Right now, all he needed to do was carefully message the doubt he could see prick her very soul. "Quite the interesting symbol on the seal, I have to say."
Yua's eyes and ears perked up, did Hiroto know something about that symbol? When she had first set eyes on the Goat's Head, there was no doubt that there was a deeper meaning behind it. However, what exactly it was remained incredibly unclear for the young girl. For as much as Subaru had taught her about the world, he had been awfully coy about certain different kinds of symbols she sometimes saw on his old clothes, or those that were tattooed on his body. "W-why so, Hiroto-san?" She asked eventually.
The question earned her a smirk from Hiroto, one that reminded her of Sateriasis, but lacking the safety she had felt in the same expression. "Well, far be it from me to be the ultimate authority on this kind of thing, but I do believe I have seen this symbol before in my collection. Give me a second, and I should be able to find what I'm looking for." Hiroto said, his voice calm and serene, but carrying the underlying glee of a man who had finally figured out what his boss could use against the annoying clown who stopped them at every twist and turn.
At first, Yua was overjoyed with the news! With Hiroto, it was important to translate what the parasitic butler said into actual modern speak instead of equivocations and vague, cryptic statements that always made him sound like he was fishing for more information. What he had essentially said, in effect, was that he 100% knew where this letter had come from and for that the young girl could be nothing more than grateful.
However, she soon found herself frowning. If Hiroto knew the origin, then Subaru for sure knew it too. Her dad knew everything there was to know about what came into the Foundation and what had been stored in its ever expanding halls for the past twenty years, it was almost inconceivable that he would neglect to tell her about a simple letter. Even if it was addressed to Subaru personally, it couldn't be so personal as to hid it from his own adopted daughter, right?
Yua was left with no other choice but to watch Hiroto walk over to his side of the staff room, one that was littered with even more books. Honestly, Yua knew her dad was bad when it came to cards, always somehow managing to leave decks of them all of the place like they weren't useful for his Quirk at all. However, Hiroto seemed to be just as much a hoarder with how many books he had, sometimes she wondered whether or not even Kyte knew the true extent of the stockpile, the amount it must have cost was astronomical.
The young girl waited with bated breath as Hiroto's delicate fingers scoured the pile in front of him. They were all neatly arranged in order, but from his attitude, Yua could tell that he was looking for one very specific book and it didn't appear to be easy to find. The green eyed girl must've been holding her breath ten, fifteen seconds, her face turning red, by the time the parasite had been able to find what he wanted.
"Ah, there you are. I was wondering when you were going to be useful again, my friend." Hiroto smiled to himself, pulling out what seemed more like a tome as opposed to a simple book. To say that the book was big was an understatement, it looked like it would be able to contain Yua entirely and have some additional space for another person. "It seems like I will be able to soothe your troubles after all, Tyke. How wonderful~."
Yua remained wordless as she allowed Hiroto back into his seat, her eyes remaining locked on the tome. Like most of the books in the other's possession, he saw that there was no clearly defined author on the front cover. In fact, this front cover was no different from the one belonging to the book Kagekatsu had received from the teal-haired man earlier in day, with it being a deep purple. However, unlike Das Lied vom Meister, this one lacked a title, and instead Yua's eyes widened when see saw it carry a very specific symbol on it.
"Is that…?" She trailed off, pointing towards where the same Goat's Head that was on the letter stood pride and place. Just like when she had first seen it, Yua found herself transfixed on the symbol that had taken on this almost mystical quality in her mind. Something so intricately designed didn't come about naturally, and as much as the man by her side might think she was just Subaru's shadow, Yua was by no means an idiot that believed in coincidences like that. This book had to be connected in some way, but how so and by what metric were the real questions.
As patronising as they came, Hiroto patted Yua on the head once more and spoke with a wide, toothy grin that made him look so much like his twin that it was scary. "That's correct, this here is the symbol of a certain little group called the Schism. I'm not so sue how much you might know about them, but if they're sending your Daddy a letter like this then, well, it can't possibly be good." One would think with the tone that Hiroto used that he was celebrating a birthday, as opposed to telling someone's child their parent was in danger.
Beside him, the little girl shook at the news, her shoulder crunching inwards with each further word that he uttered like they were being attacked by an invisible assailant with one thousand knives. Her dad was in… danger? Well, it would explain the almost confrontational tone that the letter had taken on, especially towards the end of it. The "I have no intentions of letting you leave again," had perhaps struck the young girl deeper than she would've liked to admit. Yua placed her hands together, twiddling her thumbs together as she waited for Hiroto to continue.
"Now, I have my own curiosity about who the person behind it might be, but I think it would be for the best if I were to leave that to the wayside for the time being. Instead, it may be more prudent of me to tell you what exactly this book here is, and how it relates to your daddy's letter." Hiroto, in another life, might have ended up as a teacher. He certainly came off, all things considered when Yua was concerned, like a fully qualified professional in anything he spoke about. Maybe that was the benefit of being around all those boring, dusty books? Yua didn't know.
With her curiosity peaked, and her apprehension fading away by the second, Yua crawled in slightly closer to Hiroto in order to get a better look at the text as he opened the tome in question. The writing was pinprick small, but elegant brushstrokes spoke to it being written by a master of the craft in the process. The fine-lines, perfectly crafted kanji, and overall neatness was nothing like the chickenscrawl her father liked to spew out. In fact, as her eyes darted back over to the letter, the penmanship looked remarkably similar.
In the blink of an eye, though, she was back to following Hiroto's finger through the text. By this point, Yua hung off every crumb of information she could get from the other male. "This book is the sum of many other hours of research that others have done on the Schism over the years. Believe it or not, just like many villain groups that existed in the times of Deku and All Might, the Schism has been around for longer than one might have initially realised. A whole twenty years to be exact."
Twenty years… Yua knew that was about as long as the Foundation had been up and running. To think that a villain group could survive for that long, though… "What else does it say?" She knew that Hiroto was barely through the first paragraph, but the craving for answers to each question that shot into her mind and out of her mouth like a speeding bullet grew more prevalent by the second. Yua needed to know every inch of the people who had threatened her dad, and more importantly, why he hid it from her in the first place.
A short snort emitted itself from Hiroto, the man's mismatched eyes darting from the book over to Yua's face. Another pat on the head, which would usually make Yua mewl under the soft touch, was shrugged off by the young girl as Hiroto continued speaking. "The Schism is not a group defined in place and time. If I had to put it in very simple terms, they jump from place to place and run on their own time, there's no way to know, despite the letter your father received, if they are even in the country at the minute. Legend says their leader is known as the Invisible Warrior and the Wind of Destruction, able to cause damage of untold scale, but able to vanish without a trace right afterwards. If you ask me, though, I'd like to meet him at one point. If only to pick his brains and see how a man like that can truly exist."
That last comment earned Hiroto a sharp glare from Yua. Well, as a sharp a glare as was possible for a girl whose Quirk was literally based around people perceiving her as a cutest thing in the world. All that her efforts gifted her, was another condescendingly slow pat on the head and a smirk from the man who held her whole world in his hands. "Please, Hiroto-jiji… Is there anything you can tell me in there about the man who wrote this letter? There has to be! Look! The writing is basically the same!"
She was so close! Yua could practically taste the answer on the tip of her tongue, and with it the sweet sensation of victory she would have running through her body like the nectar of the Gods once the knowledge was finally passed on. It wouldn't reveal everything, but if she knew the person, then she could help protect her dad! Surely, he'd have no issue she explained it to him!
Unfortunately, if one speaks of the Devil, he's bound to appear. In this case, the Devil had just opened the door to the staffroom and was currently leaning on the frame with his head titled upwards to the skylights. "Oh, Yua, Yua, Yua, if it were that easy I would have told you long ago." Came Subaru's voice, the clown sounding somewhere in between tired and frustrated, which was a mix that Yua had been hearing increasingly often.
The frown the clown wore, though, was perhaps the most striking thing to Yua. Seldom did she see her adoptive father solemn when she was in his presence, the ability to cheer him up had been something she had held dear to her heart ever since she had first been able to speak. Had she done something wrong in searching out answers? "But-" Oh… she knew this had been a bad idea from the start…
All she had wanted was that precious, precious answer to the question of who had sent the letter. However, as she was now stared down by Subaru's unflinching, uncaring crimson eyes, Yua had never felt smaller in her life. The leather couch that had been the source of such comfort beforehand now transformed into a barren desert of fabric, full of a quicksand that rapidly pulled her towards her demise. An immoveable, cold Hiroto added further to that sinking feeling within her soul.
After what seemed like a life time, Subaru heaved a sigh. The clown pinched the bridge of his nose, Hisumi's file still tucked firmly underneath his arm. "No buts, Dear. I'm telling you, stop looking into it. I can handle it; this is not for you to stick your nose into, do you understand me?" He stated with a cold tone that felt like it could give Yua's ears frostbite.
Even as he walked towards her, for the first time since she could remember, Yua didn't want to go right towards Subaru. It was hard to put her finger on it, and to some extent, she had no desire to do so. Just watching the way that the pink-haired adult moved towards her, with sharp movements that cut across the floor like a Samurai slashing its blade against a foe, irked the young girl.
When he knelt down in front of her, Yua wanted to crawl into the back of the couch regardless of what might have been hidden back there. Never before had she seen Subaru's face so cold, all of those metal piercings that had robbed him of the ability to look normal had previously reflected the light so brightly that it made his face look warm by default. Now, though, with a neutral expression that carried with it the stench of death, and eyes that looked like those that had stared into the abyss too long… The man in front of her might have worn the appearance of the man who had brought her into the Foundation, but this was not the man who had become her father.
The young girl's breath hitched, striking the fever pitch, whenever Subaru placed his hands on her shoulders. His dead eyes regarded her with no particular emotion, merely leaving an endless void behind them for Yua to stare into. A tone, likewise, was struck at a stunning monotone for its content. "Look, Yua, Dear, Sweetheart… Just… Trust me on this one, okay? I'll tell you someday, just not right now. When I get my hands on that idiot and finally get the truth into his head, then everything is yours to ask and know. Alright?"
Lips that had been chewed to tatters had no idea how to respond. Maybe five minutes ago she would have been satisfied with the answer, willing to drop everything with a smile and joke, going back to the same routine that she had always taken during the past ten years. However, now, she scarcely knew if the man who she had trusted for so long, slept in the bed of, ate with, could be held at his word.
Luckily for her, though, Hiroto became the saviour she didn't know she needed. "How are you doing on this fine day, Subaru? What brings you around to my abode at this time?" The parasitic butler asked, sounding as chipper as his brother, and no doubt sensing how heavy the atmosphere had gotten in the process.
Instantly, Subaru's head swirled around and morphed itself into an entirely different visage. With nostrils flared, eyes narrowed, and frown turning into something akin to a snarl, the clown responded in kind. "None of your business, Parasite. I hope you haven't been filling my daughter's head full of your lies again. I was just here to collect her in time for Niijima-sama's speech."
"Ah! Why didn't you say so earlier? If it's for Niijima-sama, then I have no reason to keep her any longer! I was just helping her learn a little history, nothing too major." Hiroto replied, stepping up from the couch and closing the tome with a single, authoritative thump. "There's nothing wrong with encouraging some curiosity in a child sometimes, they wouldn't be able to learn anything new otherwise."
Yua felt Subaru's grip on her shake at what Hiroto had said, and it was becoming deadly clear very quickly that it was not a simple matter of the cold. Green eyes shot up to red eyes with a desperate plea hidden behind them. "It's fine… I… I believe you, Dad…" The young girl muttered, unable to hold the eye contact for long as she choked her dying words just about across the finish line. In one last roll of the dice, Yua grasped Subaru's nearest hand within her much smaller one.
As if she had been granted mercy by some arbitrary God up above, it appeared to have worked in an instant, with the shaking sense of rage that had built up fading away into the wind. Although, it didn't necessarily mean everything was in the clear just yet. "Good girl, I knew I would be able to count on you." Subaru said to her, squeezing her hand within his own as he took her off the couch with one fluid motion.
Without waiting for further affirmation from his daughter, Subaru was already in the process of leaving the room with her in tow by the time that Hiroto spoke next. "I hope you enjoy yourself, Yua. Niijima-sama must have something very important to say." The comment only earned a snarl from Subaru, who jerked Yua with him to get out of the room quicker.
Yet, before the door closed, Yua was able to spy Hiroto placing that fateful tome into the wall once more making her look up to Subaru's cold face once more.
Just what was so dangerous that he had to hide it from her?
Meanwhile, halfway across the Foundation, and just as tired as he had been for the previous few days, Kagekatsu sat right on the edge of his rock-hard bed with the very same book he had taken from Hiroto earlier in the morning. Its purple cover rested within his hands, cradled in their tense grip that threatened to tear the pages asunder the second golden eyes saw something they didn't like.
Das Lied vom Meister.
Kagekatsu had little idea what the correct translation was. It sounded like one of those pretentious titles you'd see on a book from an author who thought they were the next William Shakespeare, only to end up being about as successful as the world's first cold air balloon. Nevermind that the foxboy also had no knowledge of what he assumed to be German, only the slightest niggle in the back of his mind reminded him of one person he knew in the past, but that was a long time ago.
Still, as his fingers traced the edges of the pages, Kagekatsu's mind flashed back to what little that creep Hiroto had told him about the author. A man who knew German, happened to have blond and black hair, and happened to prattle on about "Nature the supreme" endlessly by the sounds of things. The foxboy's gut churned at those three pieces of information, if his suspicions were correct then this book… And that would mean colour was no accident too…
Ugh, what had he done in his life recently to deserve this tangled web? The weight of the earrings that swung from side to side on his twitching ears had never felt greater, never once letting him forget the curse he had accepted the second he had signed his life away to the Inner Circle and Monsoon. Kagekatsu rolled over onto his side, keeping the book close to his chest as he hid his face from the world at large.
Whatever the case was, whether this book was just another reminder of the life he could never leave behind or if it was just the ramblings of some madman, he was going to have to pry it open at some point and read it. Any questions would be just that; questions with no answer in sight if he continued denying that he deserved everything that had come his way since those fateful decisions he had taken as a fifteen-year-old. It made Kagekatsu want to laugh sometimes, laugh at the fact he had once deigned to tell someone to follow what they thought was right.
In a way that sickened him to his core, it reminded him of Monsoon, of how he would state "How can I do wrong? I don't know what wrong is," with such childish disregard for the concepts of good and evil, like he didn't believe them to be real despite everything terrible he had done in his life. Kagekatsu didn't have the depth of vocabulary to spew the extent of his true feelings towards that monster.
Heaving a sigh, Kagekatsu pulled the book out of his chest and set down in front of him. He knew he was putting it off at this point, acting like a child in a game of Duck, Duck, Goose that didn't want to pick someone. The longer he waited, the more the tension in his body grew. His tail, already mostly indicative of his true feelings at any given moment, was thumping from side to side as the stress coursed through every inch of his frame.
His ears pricked up the second clawed, black fingernails were finally able to draw back the purple cover and reveal the fine cream-coloured pages that lay underneath. Once again, if Kagekatsu was forced at gun point say one thing positive about that creepy butler wannabe, Hiroto ran a very tight ship when it came to keeping things clean. If the foxboy's suspicions were correct then this book had to be at, the bare minimum, seven years old. That was a long time to keep anything in pristine condition…
Ah, he was letting his mind wander again. Kagekatsu shook the thought out of his mind, letting his stringy, dishevelled hair form in front of his face like a curtain that kept his yellow gaze only on the book in front of him. Although, that didn't stop him from sucking in a deep breath as he turned the cover page, ignoring the cursive writing that plagued the first page just like the cover.
It really, really shouldn't have been this difficult. It was a book, a thing made out of dead trees! It wasn't like some kind of 9th century manuscript where he was touching dead animal skin, feeling the stubs of the saved fur as he turned each and every page. Nor was it like he was reading something that could physically harm it, not unless he decided to roleplay as a two-year old and shove it in his mouth.
So, why then… Why did the first words he see on the page force that deep breath he had sucked in just moments earlier to escape from his mouth like it was desperate for its life? Why did his hands shake the second he spied the follow through from that initial deranged sentence? Why did his heart feel like it was within seconds of exploding out of his chest, desperate to burst free of its confines and run away into the hills where no one would be able to find it?
WHY WAS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO ESCAPE FROM THESE PEOPLE?! WHY DID THEY HAVE TO HAUNT HIM!?
'I am Doctor Mattias Renfield, and I have glimpsed the future… I have seen miracles that only my eyes are privy to, and secrets that would stun the mind of laymen. I speak, of course, about what the fruits of my research can possibly attain in the future, and what it will attain once an environment conducive to research is found.'
Mattias Renfield… Morax. Kagekatsu's mouth went as dry as the Sahara desert, how the hell had Hiroto not know who he was talking to when he received this book? Why had Morax even given it to the parasite in the first place? For as much as the foxboy had tried to avoid the mad doctor's existence, Monsoon constantly floating the idea of bringing him in to help with Kagekatsu's training had made him intimately aware of who the man was.
A deranged madman. It was the only accurate description that fit Morax to the letter, a man even more dangerous and sacrilegious than the ideas he spewed forth with both rhetoric and literature. Someone who was rightfully chased out of every respectable circle in the world for the claptrap he dared to think was a serious idea.
But still, his mind came back to the same question. Why had Morax given this book away in the first place? All he had heard of the Dutch scientist had dripped from the lips of Monsoon, who lied like he told the truth. Furthermore, the description Hiroto gave of the man being homeless was an extra caveat. Was Morax initially trying to sell it before just giving it up for nothing?
Against his better judgment and his general rising anxiety, Kagekatsu pressed on. Maybe… Just maybe there was something further in this madman's ramblings that could give him a hint, a hook as to where Monsoon was at the moment. He knew that the book was likely predated his first encounter with the Wind of Destruction, but he also knew that the man was as stubborn as they came about hating Japan. Knowing his true base would just be one country to avoid.
For the common folk, the secrets of this world and mankind are cloaked in an impenetrable mystery. No matter how much they prod at the edges with their pitchforks, try to light up the shadowy corners with their torches, and try to rationalise it as best as they can, they will never come close to understanding it. For their minds are weak, fragile, and most of all, they are terrified of uncovering something they hate.
Mankind is no more than a machine with a certain level of complexity. If one presses the correct buttons, inputs the right orders, and keeps it well-oiled, then man is more dependable than any machine out there. Man does not have the severe limitations of rust and decay, nor does it require intricate hours of design to come to life. In fact, in that aspect, mankind is rather extraordinary.
It's incredible that man can live for as long as it can, given its proclivity towards endless greed and destruction. As the Master says, there is only one God in this world despite the various ones that people believe in. 'The mind is its own place,' he would profess with his boundless knowledge that even I learn from. 'It can make a Hell of Heaven, and a Heaven of Hell. It matters only on the individual where they end up.'
Yet, we sully ourselves. So much potential is lost because of this virus we call Quirks! When was the last time anyone saw a scientific breakthrough that wasn't tied to those infernal things? It's like the fools think the sum of human knowledge has been discovered and learnt! The idiots! If only they knew…
Ah, for so long, my research was just a notion in the minds of many. A single spark yet to be ignited into the pale flame of knowledge. Only his Gift has given me the ability to take the final step into making my dreams a reality. Those fools at the University… They had the chance to squeeze my work dry like liquid gold, and they passed up on the unlimited knowledge I had the ability to show them.
Provide me with an environment conducive to research, and I'll break open doors that even God himself doesn't know about!
That girl… One of these days, I'm going to find her. That is a promise. And when I do? She's going to be the masterpiece to end all masterpieces, the spearhead, the first of her kind. Like a sterling piano concerto, my quest shall reach it glorious crescendo, and mankind can finally evolve to where it should be!
And if the Divines try to stop me then I'll plunder the heavens blind! I'll steal from all the Gods! I'll show the world that for tonight, and forever, they will know the name Mattias Renfield!'
The longer Kagekatsu read, dragging his eyes drown each and every word, forcing his head to not turn away from the deranged text and towards something more productive, the shorter his fuse became. Every passing second became another one where he inched closer to doing what he should have done second he received the book.
His clawed fingernails trembled at the tear-away corners, almost begging for their master to give them the go-ahead to make the pretty pages of insanity into the most beautiful, shredded origami of all. It was soooooooo like Monsoon to quote from Paradise Lost, it put a nostalgic smile on the foxboy's face as he re-read that particular section again and reminded him of the one time the Wind of Destruction had spoken of it after a training session.
"Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven, huh? You never fucking changed…" Kagekatsu whispered, his voice bitter and hoarse with the lack of sleep he had gotten over the past couple days. Morax's view was not as clouded as his when it came to Monsoon, but the depth to which that teaching had already pierced the doctor's soul must've been the case long before either of them were aware of the mercenaries' existence.
However, for as long as Kagekatsu could read this so-called 'book' for, it wasn't going to change a Goddamn thing, was it? Merely affirming what he already knew; that Morax was a madman with more money than sense, Monsoon was a pseudo-philosophical asshole, and that he had been a massive idiot in allowing himself into their clutches because of his mistake in joining the Inner Circle, wasn't going to help him with anything.
A growl broke out of his throat, slamming off the walls of his cramped, crappy room as he turned on his side once more. The book lay languid in his hands, slumping over the side of the bed with his arms as his gaze glued itself to the ceiling with little care for the world around it. An equally lazy tail had worked its way down from its panicked state, now being barely felt by Kagekatsu.
He was here to get better, right? So why did it feel like he had gotten himself trapped in a fucking cycle? First, it was his shit getting kicked in from the very moment he had stepped into this place. Second, it was seeing those fucking Inner Circle books littering Subaru's office. Now, it was finding Morax's insane manifesto of his beliefs. Everywhere he looked in this place, it just reminded him of what had come before.
It was a never-ending, reprieve-free cycle of entrapment. Because that's what he was; trapped. Why did he even bother trying to be a good person at this point? The solitary attempt he had once made on a dark, rainy night led to him saying things he had never believed once in his life, all because this person had trusted him with his life. And even that had ended in failure as his incorrigible nature drove him away from the other male before he had the chance to explain anything.
Kagekatsu could only hope the other hadn't taken things to heart too much… Oh, it would kill them to know the state the foxboy was in, he just knew it! The happy dreams that had been created by that scared teen were something he was never going to be able to fulfil, and not a second went by where that realisation went by where it didn't crush him and his heart.
Again, it was all a childish dream, a pack of lies. Kagekatsu had tried looking at the world the other way up, but it looked so terribly gloomy all the same, so what was the point in trying to kid himself that there was some kind of future out there for him? What was his life even worth? A flash of lightning? A drop of dew on morning grass?
Once upon a time, it had been a motto of sorts for him. "I could wish for nothing more than to die in a childish dream in which I truly believed." In his wilder days, where the world of darkness had blanketed him in its protection rather than shunned him it had meant boundless hedonism. Taking what he wanted, indulging every base urge that so much as filled his devious head, and not giving a damn if he was going to end up in Hell for it.
Now… Well, now Kagekatsu could barely have a single dream, let alone one he could truly believe in.
With nothing left to do, and to distract him from the creeping, unknown darkness of his own thoughts, Kagekatsu pulled up the book and sent him back into the known dark world that Morax and Monsoon provided for him.
'If an entire nation could dream, I wonder, what would the result be? Does nature itself dream?
I have the feeling, and far be it from me as a scientist to question the laws that govern fantasy realms, that they would not be pleasant dreams filled with love and adoration. No, instead, I believe, just like the Master, that the dark dreams which blight mankind are attached to us from birth. Nature is the Supreme, but it is also Nature the Terrible.
It longs to see us suffer.
If a man wrongs his fellow man, is his duty not to commit himself to revenge? Therefore, if Nature itself wrongs a man, is his sworn duty not to execute the same revenge, but better the instruction?
Man is born free, but lives in chains. Would it be so wrong of me to simply… expand the avenues needed to finally break them? To re-find the true gnosis of humanity? To gift Logos back to them? To divine upon them the synderesis that they've had ripped from them by cruel Gods jealous of their success?
For I am the Modern Prometheus, ready to sacrifice all for the good of humanity.'
Prometheus, huh? Kagekatsu let out a small laugh. It was certainly an interesting figure to attach oneself to, and with such pride and gusto as well. Trust the mad doctor to make an equally mad assertion and twist it into something that was almost positive. The sick and twisted side of the foxboy almost wanted to know what Morax would sound like whilst his liver was pecked out by a God disguised as an eagle.
This bastard had the audacity to dream, did he? Dreaming dreams that no mortal ever dared to dream before? What made Morax's dream so different that it needed to be actualised? Why was he, the madman who had probably butchered more people than Kagekatsu had met in his life, allowed to do so in the first place?
Kagekatsu set the book down again, this time turning the cover upside down so he was never tempted to look at its cursed pages again for the rest of the day. Opening it had both been a blessing and a grave mistake at the same time, importantly though, he had learned nothing new or relevant about Monsoon.
He was right back at square one, perhaps the worst place in the world to be. Be it for better or worse, movement backwards was still a kind of movement and left behind the potential to move forward once again. Where Kagekatsu stood, his path was almost entirely stationary at this point. There was no beginning and no ending, simply an endless repetition of the same steps he had taken one thousand times before and would take one thousand times again, until his body collapsed from exhaustion and finally joined the void that called from him.
But still, a lurid grin came over his lips whenever he did think of one dream that did come to mind.
No matter what it was…. Nor how he had to do it… Kagekatsu was going to make Monsoon, Morax, and the Inner Circle pay for everything that they had done to him.
"This is a final call for remaining staff and students that are available and able to heed it. Niijima-sama will be speaking in the main meeting room in the next ten minutes, and he demands full attention and attendance. We'll see you there, Hideyoshi out!"
The more manic twin's voice darting it into his room initially caused every hair on his body to stand up, including his tail. Was there no warning system on those Goddamn speakers? Was it possible for Hideyoshi to just fall asleep and accidently broadcast his snoring to the world? Kagekatsu wouldn't have known whether to laugh or cry at that point.
Without further fanfare, and finally with a chance to leave the book discarded to the side for the moment, Kagekatsu pulled himself off of the bed and brushed his hair back behind his shoulders. The leader of the Foundation speaking out of the blue like this could never be a good sign, but if it meant that he would finally start taking their rehabilitation seriously, then so be it.
His promise to himself was one that would never die.
Well, all right, no stars tonight. The moon had to hide, couldn't bear to see his face? Not like it made any lick of difference. A simple void presented itself in front of him, just like it always had done, leaving just one path ahead that he could walk down? That was a piss take at this point. That one raven who had been pestering him before ascending once more into the sky? Annoying, but expected.
Monsoon could work with all of that, with relative ease no less.
His Sai twisted in his hands, melding as easily into his skin as the that water flowed through his body. Their gleaming silver prongs standing out even amongst this void, the tips dancing in the single drop of silver moonlight that Nature the supreme had afforded him. Oh, it took everything in Monsoon's power not to rub his calloused grasp against those sharp edges, longing to feel the rush of steel that had been deprived of use for so long.
The Wind of Destruction had been on his best behaviour, as per the instructions of Kyte. As much as they failed to see eye to eye anymore, if they could even stomach the sight of the other at that, it was simple to follow the Vampire Lord's orders. Orders, at the end of the day, were the easiest thing in the world to follow. They were exactly like a contract, set in stone from the moment of conception, and to be broken by only the Divine itself.
The night might have shunned his existence just as much as his former colleague, but the crisp air that nipped at Monsoon's neck and snatched at his nose like an underhanded thief made the mercenary wish he had donned another jacket. His present leather one was much too thin, if only Morax hadn't stolen them all… Was this how Katsuyori felt all the time?
A cracked lip quirked up into a smirk. Perhaps Monsoon owed his second current progeny an apology, all that endless whining was justified after all. Either way, his right-hand man's insistence on taking anything of rudimentary warmth would have to be rectified at one point or another. Lest it cause unnecessary issue.
Another chill assaulted Monsoon, striking him from both sides and ramming its fists into his guts as he continued walking. A frozen puff of air seeped out of his mouth, almost seeming heavy in the atmosphere. The ground crunched underneath his feet with each step he took, the tiny bits of gravel jamming themselves into the grooves of his shoe, which would be a complete pain to fix when he got back.
Still, he couldn't allow it to distract him. Placing a cigarette to his lips, forgoing the lighter for the time being, Monsoon reminded himself of just why he had come out into the howling night once more, trading the comforting warmth of a bar for the frigid harshness of this despicable night.
The opulent church was as tacky as it was grand, Monsoon mused. In a country where its denomination comprised the majority perhaps it would be seen as the jewel in the crown, its sharp arches and glistening domes acting as a beacon for those of the cloth to circle around. Not too different from how Shrines kept their pride of place at the appropriate time.
However, as it was, the church itself was an avaricious monument constructed by a bitter, bitter man. Monsoon rapped on the door three times. The first time was a minor knock to make sure he didn't send the whole rotten structure tumbling down, and the second one was no more than an assurance of that previous fact which let him breathe a sigh of relief.
It was on the third knock that Monsoon swung with intent to make his presence known. He half expected to hear the sound of thousands of locks sliding back from the door, combined on the side with the endless complaining of "What time of the night do you call this, then?" or "Do you have any idea how loud you're being?" The rusty jingle of keys would no doubt be the icing on the cake, allowing Monsoon to present his biggest shit eating grin in time for the other's arrival.
Instead, Monsoon heard nothing. There was no shuffling of feet against a marble floor, zero signs of heavy breathing caused by lungs wrecked with smog, and absolutely no indication that church he knew doubled up as a home was inhabited at the minute. The Wind of Destruction couldn't help but raise an eyebrow, this was all very strange…
For once, there was no immediate answer from the ocean-haired male. Red eyes scanned the door in front of him, pressing the flat of his dry hand into the slimy, oily, grimy mess that constituted the church's entrance. Monsoon's lip curled back as he wondered what had gone wrong, had he simply not knocked hard enough? With the amount of gunk covering this disgusting thing, it was a very distinct possibility.
"What took you so long?"
The voice was almost enough to send the all-powerful, all-conquering Wind of Destruction jumping out of his skin. Monsoon's hand drew back with the speed of All Might in his prime and nearly ended up going the other direction to strike the new arrival in the face for good measure. Luckily, depending on the party and attitude, Monsoon was able to stop himself just before skin met skin, forcing his hand back in a rigid motion.
"It's a filthy habit you have, you know." Like Father, like Son. They were so similar that it hurt. Monsoon had to resist the urge to roll his eyes as he tapped the end of his cigarette, would he ever be free from these people's judgement? Surely, men of the cloth such as them had much more important things to do in their lives than pretending to care about petty sin?
"Sneaking up on me now, are we?" In turn, Monsoon ignored the other's point in totality. Instead, he turned around and levelled the man across from him with a hateful glare, like he was planning the most painful way possible to rend the head from those shoulders. The Sai in his one free hand curled in his grip, almost like a dog beg for its master's attention.
Father Kimura's form was wreathed in the glow of the moonlight, casting himself in the centre of a divine spotlight in the process. No doubt, the Divines had anointed him as one of their favourites a long time ago, long before Monsoon ever had the chance to wrench him down off that pedestal. Snow white bangs dipped in front of blue eyes as the Priest spoke. "It matters not what I do. Only your actions."
Holy shit, were they all like this in that godforsaken family? Not only did both he and Flashfire sound constipated every time they spoke, but the tone. That was the tone of men that found even uttering words a chore and regarded the people who stood across with them with nothing but the utmost contempt. It made Monsoon want to flay the man's skin off, or maybe sew his mouth shut for daring to speak to him like that.
However, before he could catch a moment to reply, Father Kimura interrupted him. Blue eyes, another thing that he shared in common with Flashfire, kept themselves trained on Monsoon's hands whilst their owner's twitched. "Your creature came the other night. I was more than ready to assume he had called for you to return to him, thus I prepared as such." The corner of his lips creased into a frown, mind only half wanting to remember the meeting with Kyte.
It was almost imperceptibly small, but Monsoon's dull red eyes widened a fraction. Feeling his grip on the Sai loosen, and eventually seething it back onto his waist, the taller of the pair licked his lips before responding. "Oh, that so? It was my understanding that you and Kyte were no longer on speaking terms. Why the big about face? Finally showing some of that so called 'compassion' you like to preach about?"
Each question was like another blade that stabbed itself between Father Kimura's shoulder blades, the Priest's body visibly tensing and clenching with each syllable that dripped out of the vile mouth across from him. Narrow eyes were flung back, alongside a tone as hot as hell. "It is my duty to maintain the will of the Divines, and if they so place that… creature back at my feet and have him willing to confess, I will not be the one to judge them."
Despite the presence of the fiery priest, a cool chill had picked up once more by the time Monsoon was ready to reply. It tore at the edge of his nose, threatening to freeze the whole thing off if it got a little bit more power behind it. "I see, I see. Whatever makes you happy, I suppose." He answered, a teasing smirk on his lips as he rubbed his hands together to get a small bit of heat through his body.
The response was met with a growl from the Priest, who moved in closer towards Monsoon, the two men now being so close that not even a thin sheet of paper would fit in between them. "State your business here or leave. I will not play your games any longer, Wind." Father Kimura's voice was terse, conjoined in restrained rage as he flicked the cigarette right out of Monsoon's mouth.
"Well, well, well. All business tonight, are we? That's a shame. I was so looking forward to some more small talk." Monsoon replied, biting back a snarl as he placed decayed hands back in his jacket's pockets. The look of utter disgust in his eyes as he first watched the cigarette tumble to the ground, and then as he returned his gaze at the Priest, could only be matched by the stench of raw sewage. "I wish to see the crypt, Father. Don't hide it from me any longer."
The rotten prison of God behind him… Monsoon had long suspected something truly decrepit lay underneath. A man like Father Kimura didn't just set up shop in any random place, nor would the church itself commission a construct as massive as this one without something equally massive to hide. Yet, the Wind of Destruction needed to hear it from the horse's mouth in order to genuinely believe it.
Father Kimura sucked in a harsh breath, like the beating winds of a storm. Those blue eyes that looked at the world in such an austere light switched, dilating into those of a man that had just seen his entire life flash before his eyes. "No. You will never be allowed access to such a sacred place. Leave! Before I have to make you." If his tone had been terse before, Father Kimura had now swapped into one of unspeakable rage, like pure lava seeping out of every syllable, let alone word.
"Heh, I'm no longer suggesting, Father. Take me to the crypt, and if you do, I might just give you an answer for why." Monsoon raised one of his hands up in the air, feigning a mock surrender that only served to further deepen the furious frown from the man across him. The Sai that rested in his other hand? Well, that was just a warning…
A warning that Father Kimura was all too aware of. The Priest's eyes were ripped from the Wind of Destruction to the ground at their feet, the lingering flame that licked at his soul quietening down as his voice dipped down to a soft crawl. "Then all me to pass, and I shall give you your desires, Monsoon."
The name was spat out with total derision, lingering in the air with the bitterness of someone who had just chugged an entire bottle of vinegar. If the situation weren't so serious, and if the fun and games Monsoon had planned weren't dismissed with such callousness, he would've been laughing his ass off. Had it really been so easy to extract the information out of him? My, my, how the mighty fall.
Of course, as Monsoon stepped aside and followed Father Kimura into the Church, the Wind of Destruction was more than aware that it could be a trap. Only a fool in both mind and body would dare to think that. At the end of the day, Flashfire didn't learn his habits in espionage and destruction from an ordinary man. In Monsoon's humble opinion, the Priest in front of him could be quite the extraordinary figure when push came to shove.
The raging fire that remained imprisoned by the gilded fireplace was all the evidence Monsoon needed. It was an inferno the likes of which he had never seen on his travels across the world, the embers that flicked out brought back memories of the time hot flecks of sand from the Sahara Desert time pounded his face. Where every single drop of water was like a precious diamond, conserved in canteens worth more than their weight in gold.
Standing back from the fire did nothing to quell its heat. Monsoon was, at most, a good ten steps away, and it was already bringing back more memories as the shadows flared in his red eyes. This time, it was when he had been forced to traverse the Dasht-e Lut, a task even more dangerous than the notorious Sahara. Vicious sandstorms had buffeted him, blowing with the strength of his own wind. Even now, any time he would dust his face with his hands, small specks of the desert would emerge on the edge of his dehydrated fingers. Perhaps it remained the Supreme's reminder of what it thought about his existence.
Many of the locals had expected to never hear from him again, expecting him to vanish into the night without a trace behind to mark his memories. His footsteps were widely expected, and somewhat hoped, to be swept away by the next storm that rolled around. But Monsoon came back.
Just like always.
"Are you coming?" Father Kimura's voice called out to him, the Priest already halfway across the Church floor and near the altar by the time he sought to call after Monsoon. The snow-haired male hadn't spared so much as a glance back in the Wind of Destruction's direction but knew full well that just like the Night Creature, he would be entranced by the flames all the same. The result was always that same in the Kimura family.
"Don't you ever stop to enjoy life, Father? We've been given such a gift." Monsoon replied, a teasing smirk at the corners of his lips as his eyes remained shut. Feeling the heat from the flames roll onto his body was such a welcomed change from the frigid Russian nights he had grown accustomed to, and almost made him forget about the terrible Japanese weather on the whole. If only his protégés could come from non-shithole countries…
"How many skulls did you need to step on to come to that conclusion?" The Priest's reply was dour, tossed out of his mouth like a javelin aimed right for Monsoon's withered heart. How could a man like Monsoon speak so freely about the world as if he had done no wrong? The fire in the background raged as Father Kimura's hands clenched on the corners of his robes.
"About the same amount your son has burned." Monsoon shot back, opening his eyes up to the world once again. The massive burst of heat was the confirmation that his shot had fired home. What was it Morax said over and over again? That man was no more than a machine with a certain level of complexity? Heh, the mad doctor had one or two actual sane ideas bouncing around his head after all.
Animals trapped behind bars at the zoo needed to run rampant and free. Predators lived by the prey they pursued and consumed. Flashfire was no different, just another person who had given into the base desires that Katsuyori had proclaimed as the curse of mankind. In a sense, the only sensation that overtook Monsoon when he spoke to Father Kimura, Yusho his mind now supplied him, was nothing but pity.
The thought of which made the Wind of Destruction lick his lips every time. The tingling sensation felt like he had just shoved an entire wad of spiced gum into his mouth, which somehow exploded into the sweetest taste in his whole life. It took a great amount of care to not become addicted.
"But we're not here to talk about that, are we?" Monsoon continued, hearing no reply from the stationary priest. Shuffling further towards the fire, he stuck his hand out and allowed the heat to conquer his fingertips. "Life is a gift, no matter which way you see it. This world… It's full of awful beauty. Nature has given us many gifts. Honestly, it's hard to look at the world without noticing them. The sun, the moon, the grass, the wind, the soil…"
"All of which you desecrate." The priest replied, tugging one a snow-white bang that had dipped in between his eyes. "Even now, you demand to come onto these hallowed grounds for a sordid purpose, and then dare to waste the time away with endless talk and lollygagging." Yusho Kimura was a man who spoke every word with total conviction no matter the situation and keeping his gaze on this demon in his church made his gaze reflect as such too.
"I'm allowing you to show me the entrance. If anything, Father, it's you that is wasting time." Monsoon said, dropping his hands back to his side and resting one on top of the Sai attached to his waist. His eyes slashed over to where Yusho stood, studying the priest's every movement with the gaze of a trained assassin, and drinking in the heavy fumes he could see puffing from out of the fireplace.
Yusho huffed, clicking his tongue, and swivelling around on his heel. The clack of his boots against the solid ground remained the only audible noise besides a soft "Insolent…" that Monsoon was able to pick up with a quick twitch of the ears. Their journey soon taking them right to the very end of the Church, behind the altar in question, and into the small room that Yusho had shared with Kyte no more than a couple of days ago.
Just like Kyte before him, Monsoon knew full well what redecorating effort had been undertaken. Ah, what a sad state of affairs! A man who can't even keep the mementos of his own son! What the Ocean-haired man wouldn't give to have seen the look on Yusho's face when word of his son's exploits filtered back to him! Oh, to be a fly on the wall in those ensuing days would have been absolutely divine! It would have been much better than slumming it out in the backass of China because Morax couldn't help himself.
Ah, now he was sounding like Kyte. More accurately, he sounded like some old bourgeois parasite that could talk endlessly about rock formations if the fancy struck him. The decreasing temperature of his hands, moved away from the fireplace at last, were close to scratching the iceberg that the Vampire Lord called his pair.
Monsoon, though, remained ever silent. Until the time came, there was no reason for him to speak, and it was far more useful for him to stare at the fine specimen that the Divines had pulled towards him. Even more so when the man, every bit the bodybuilder that his equally impressive son was, started to shift the altar that stood with such opulent pride in the centre of the room.
It was a heavy-set thing, lined with golden threads and white sheets. Monsoon hadn't been in many churches in his life, but it didn't mean he had missed seeing the massive monuments of faith that looked as if they carried the weight of the world on their shoulders. Hell, even the presence of All Might's statues, cleaned up after the rise of Deku to the pinnacle of the Hero world, gave such a strong impression of weight that it felt like crushing gravity.
The horrible grinding noise it made across the floor, screeching like a banshee in the dead of night, made Monsoon throw his hands over his ears. Metal scraping against metal was a hideous sound matched only in memory by that one time he had heard Morax's attempt to sing along to one of his songs. In fact, he swore that he almost saw sparks flying as Yusho let the altar settle at the far-right side.
"Through here." Yusho stated, picking up a candle that had been placed on the altar as a golden flame started to slip out of the tips of his fingers, lighting the wick in one fell swoop in the process. "Don't think for a second that you'll be going alone. With God as my witness, the day you walk in here unchecked is when the night has subsumed even Heaven's Light." He said, handing the candle over to Monsoon.
Monsoon took the candle with a soft bow of his head, the soft glow highlighting just how decrepit his face truly was. Whilst many might have gagged at the sight of Tomura Shigaraki, whose face had become a spectre in the minds of men for its cracked insanity, there were fewer that looked upon the Wind of Destruction without anything short of disgust.
Skin flakes cracked and decayed at seemingly random patterns, sometimes cutting his face in two with their zig zagged jabs. His eyes were the worst affected. Not only did they lose any spark of life a long time ago, but the bags that sunk in deep were stained black and withered away under the intense light of the candle.
But the candle lit up another area of interest, one far more enticing for Monsoon. The entryway to the crypt stood before him, a simple flight of stairs that stretched down into an impenetrable darkness. Their rustic quality wasn't lost on him by the time he took his first steps, following behind Yusho, making small movements to avoid slipping on the oily surface.
"Need you be so dramatic? You act as if I'm about to spit on a thousand corpses." Monsoon replied eventually, ducking underneath the low-hanging ceiling. His height was a blessing on the battlefield, not so much in the everyday. "One thousand accusations don't make a single truth, Father. I'm almost hurt."
Yusho remained dead set on the path ahead, not stopping his inexorable match for a single second. His words echoed like the cry of a canary down in a coal mine, bouncing off the walls and back into the pair's heads with ear-shattering speed. "I accuse you because I know you, Monsoon. Look around you, tell me that this scene isn't one you're intimately familiar with."
Monsoon knew for a fact that Yusho wasn't talking about the architecture of the crypt. The priest's point wasn't about the high arches that now swept over the top of his head; nor was he fussed about the Wind of Destruction's opinion on the exact ratio of brick to mortar lining the wall.
Instead, he knew that the fiery priest was concerned with the skulls that lined the walls like the catacombs of old. Each one marking the passing of a lost soul that had found respite in the eternal darkness of death. Monsoon could beat that each and every one of their times as nature's wonderful creations had been so long and fruitful, so much so that a bitter snarl worked its way onto his lips. How lovely a life like that must've been…
One such skull lay in his path. A pitiful thing, it was. Its sunken eye sockets were dripping with a sticky, black goop that coated the bottom of its bronze jaw. Said jaw was hanging on only by a thread, withering away like the dispersal of flower petals in a storm. Soft cracks, minute in detail but noticeable enough to pick up on, dotted its vertex, signs of the struggles that had turned its owner to an early grave.
Without even thinking, Monsoon scooped it into his hand. The gunk was just as horrid as he had imagined, caking his fingers in its secret shame, and causing him to make a mental note to take a shower as soon as he got back. Yet, as he stared into those sunken sockets, it felt like he could understand the world that those black voids had once looked upon with such wonder.
"What I cannot hate, I can never embrace." What Monsoon said was secondary, really. The Wind of Destruction's attention had been shifted once more, this time enraptured by this simple skull. What Quirk did this person have? Were they from the time before Quirks? How old was it exactly? How did they see the world? What kind of life did they lead? So many questions, so few answers…
It was a curse… Monsoon wanted to growl right then and there, his hand curling around the fragile weight in his hands. The longer he lived, the less he knew all there was to know. From the start, it had been one of the more foolish endeavours of his, trying to learn the sum total of human knowledge. When Morax was the one trying to speak sense into you, there was a clear disconnect between yourself and reality.
"Alas, what I save must also be destroyed." Monsoon continued, feeling his grip tighten on the skull's vertex, his fingers stressing the cracks to their breaking point. "What I bless has to be tainted and cursed. I must ask you, Father, why do you think I enjoy this life?" He added on, feeling the insides of the skull now through the larger holes he had created.
Yusho heaved a sigh, the kind of exasperation of a Father having to discipline their child for the same thing over and over again. "Why do I think that? Do I even need to explain it to you?" The tips of golden flames crackled from his fingers, enough to light the way for him and him alone, shuttering Monsoon back into the darkness that was only broken in spirit by the candle.
The crypt was vast. It sprawled for miles on end, deep into the darkness that lit their path like a shadowy hand beckoning them further in. If there was one thing that Yusho knew for definite about the church he had constructed with painstaking effort, it was that this… memorial would never be tainted by another living soul. All of the deposed were to have their eternal rest, their salvation away from the rest of mankind.
But as his blue eyes scoured the walls, the reflection that shone back in the flames spoke the opposite truth. It looked more like the walls deep underground in Paris than the place of repose he had first designed it to be. Each skull, be it a mutant's or a regular Quirked individual's, stared back him with shadowy despair. Yusho was hard pressed to decide what the worst feeling in the world was at the moment; the sensation of Monsoon's eyes on his back, or the dread of hollow gazes that came at him from every angle.
"You're like the Night Creature. Your soul… It craves destruction like one might crave salvation." The priest bit back a snarl, the flames on both his hand and the candle stick Monsoon carried jumping. "Good and evil may indeed be relative concepts, turning up whenever we deign them to play their role, but with you I have a bevy of evidence that the latter is all that fills you."
Keh, Monsoon wanted to burst out laughing, the kind of manic laughter you reserved for only the funniest jokes. Of course, in a situation as terse as this one, their travels through the crypt continuing at a steady pace, kept him from plunging the true depths that welled within his person.
Truly, it was the funniest joke Monsoon had ever heard in his life. Did Yusho know so little about him that he was running assumptions under what had happened between them a few years ago? Or was he choosing instead to base his opinion off the two-faced Vampire Lord that lied like the truth? Either way, even Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to write a comedic tragedy so brilliantly!
The skull in his hand had remained teetering on the verge of disintegrating into nothing but dust and shadows. Right now, it would be so easy for Monsoon to shatter it whole. A simple flick of his wrist and the last memory of whoever this was would be tuned out of the world. Their existence would have been snuffed out like a brief candle, a poor player that strutted and fretted upon life's stage and was then heard no more.
"Only death can have no end, Father. Is that different from salvation?" Monsoon questioned, loosening his grip on the skull as he posited the suggestion with a cold, detached tone to his voice. The mustiness of the crypt was starting to get to him, the ocean-haired male having to temporarily cover his mouth to prevent the sound of a cough startling anything hiding in the dark.
Once more, it seemed like his words had managed to stab the erected barrier clean through. Red eyes watched the priest's body tense up, shoulders shooting into high angle that should have been impossible for a normal human, even in this crazy world they both resided in. "When the time comes for you to learn your lesson, Wind, you will be taught it. In fire, in blood, in brimstone, and in anguish." Came the authoritative decree.
The slight stops his words had caused allowed Monsoon to catch up to right behind Yusho, what was left of his shadow loomed large and proud. The priest being the shorter man in a situation wasn't a common occurrence, and never before had the Vietnamese mercenary been smiling from ear to ear for such a simple fact. "You'll be waiting an awful long time for that, I fear." He replied glibly, almost wanting to pop the sound of certain syllables.
The rumble of rage that emanated from his side was more than enough for Monsoon's smile to widen to the end of the known universe. Ah, it had been way too long since he had a fun conversation like this one. Most of his present days had been spent trying to cajole Morax and Ilya into not being wrapped up in their own "artistic" pursuits, although he had made another mental note to get Katsuyori to talk about something except theatre for once.
Ack, now he was rambling. Just how long was this journey going to be? Truth be told, his feet were feeling like they were going to fuse permanently into his boots if they continued any further. Partnership with Kyte and the mad clown he carried around like a charity case had shown him the true depths that one could create with a seemingly finite room.
But, not to put too fine a point on it, Yusho didn't seem like the man that treasured the same kind of limitless space. Compared to the shifting walls and endless hallways of the Foundation, Monsoon could feel the nauseating breath of each and every skull that lined the small passageway. His head skimmed the top of them the further down they went, too, adding yet another string to the ever-weaving tapestry of the hands wanting to trap him.
At last, though, there was light at the end of the tunnel. The constricting arches of bones widened once more, and Monsoon's eyes took in the sight he had waited upwards of a decade to finally witness. There would be no way for any more secrets be held by his beloved any longer…
The room was wide, far different in setting than the skull strewn hallways. Unlike the opulent top floor, it didn't gleam with the shine of tacky debauchery. Instead, just like the skull that remained in Monsoon's hand, it dripped with sticky, black slime that fell like rain from the marble arches that were constructed by deft hands.
Seven pillars were erected around the room, the number making Monsoon chuckle somewhat once he figured out the symbolism in his head. Once more, they held none of the opulence and sheen of the golden pillars that propped up the cathedral proper. These were constructed of mere bricks and mortar, any wood that had been placed down on them to hold candles had turned wet under the humid climate, filling the area with a rotten smell that reminded the taller male of days old fish.
Compared to the mounds of bones and skulls that had populated the rest of the crypt, this room was filled with coffins of all shapes and sizes. No doubt, they were reserved for those that had the coin necessary to pay their way into death's good graces. Whether it was within a tomb of white ivy that shone like a spotlight even without any fiery glow on it; or if the body resided in mahogany confines, they were infinitely better off than those shuttered behind bars.
In pride of place, dead centre of the room, Monsoon gazed upon exactly what the past decade had been about.
Two coffins lay before him. Marvels in and of themselves. A freshly hand-carved masterpiece that not even Morax could replicate with his skill hands. The black body, somehow managing to stand out despite all the attempts to suck it into the void, was tilled with silver and gold. Purple silk covered the top of the grave, just about managing to obscure the name from view.
However, just like the one beside it, the motto that was encrusted between them gave Monsoon all the information he needed. 'Nemo me impune lacessit.' No one attacks me with impunity, is what it meant. Red eyes regarded it with flames of mirth… How quaint of that man's family, especially given their progeny's current quest.
The soft glow of Monsoon's candlestick remained omnipresent, illuminating the almost fond grin that had spread onto his lips, as he pushed his way past the stationary priest. Placing the skull on top of the silk, and the candlestick on the ground, the Wind of Destruction drank in the sight with all the greed of an alcoholic slamming back their ninth beer of the night. All these years… The visits to the Forest of Eternal Night… That manor that cut the darkness in two…
"This is what you wanted, no?" Yusho's voice cut in, slicing the rock-solid mania that held dominion over Monsoon. Blue eyes had always taken the coffins before him in deep regard, but their reflection was never less than pure poison. It had been a full decade since he had been down this deep, committing these… abominations of the night into his crypt… It made him want to vomit.
Monsoon, on the other hand, nodded his head and made his way closer to the coffin on the left. It was the cleaner of the two, not yet having succumb to the ravages of time like the other one had begun to. The silver had tarnished in slight, sharp flicks, but the gold was still as resplendent as ever and worth more than its weight.
Beneath his shirt, Monsoon rested his hand on the red diamond pendant that swung down close to his heart. "Yes. Everything and more." He replied, not letting his gaze slip from the coffins as he drew himself even closer, almost melding his body and becoming one with them. For the Wind of Destruction, in this moment, the rest of the world didn't exist.
In fact, only his shadow reflected as he delved deeper into the darkness, with it sprawling across the ground through the faint flicker of the candlelight like a dangerous spectre. It looked as if, even in this endless night, he had found the one place where he would always be welcomed. Just as was the case with his initial protégé, who had been so fond of it in his wilder days.
"Gott ist tot, nach ihm wird nicht mehr gesucht." For a man wreathed in total destruction and death, Monsoon's singing voice was full of macabre grace that danced on the edge of darkness. "Wir sind zum ewigen Leben verflucht. Es Zieht uns… naeher zur Sonne, doch wir fuerchten das Licht…"
Yusho hadn't moved an inch, his eyes locked onto the shadow and the haunting, melodic baritone that drifted across the air like a cool breeze. If the Priest didn't know any better, and if he had closed himself off from his soundings, he would have been mistaken for letting himself fall to its tone. Instead, as he picked up the candlestick, he shone it towards Monsoon's morphing shadow, taking in every shifting movement of the man he could no longer see.
"You asked me earlier if I enjoyed my life… I love mankind, Father. I love it with all of my heart." Monsoon spoke from the darkness, his form fully subsumed into the shadows. His own shadow being the one medium his movements were available to Yusho through. "My problem with man is that it is sometimes, inexplicably, in love with torment and suffering."
The bodies in the coffin before Monsoon were the epicentre for that. One might even say they were the original sin that started it all, all in the search for a new original sin with a twist and a spin. Their actions having dragged their only begotten son into a world that he had no hope of escaping from, and into his waiting arms.
"We yearn for the sun yet shun its bright grace." On the wall, Monsoon's shadow shifted before the priest's eyes. The ocean-haired man's arms were spread wide, hands looking like the Sai he carried with him religiously in the dull reflection of light. "For no other reason than we simply are infatuated with making ourselves suffer… It doesn't have to be that way; we don't need prayer or flowers on our graves."
Many moons ago, Monsoon had chanced upon a grave. Nothing like the ones that were in pride of place before him. This one had been a small, barely noticeable dent in the earth. The headstone was crooked, barely able to be read after the wind had swept away years of history like scattered petals in its uncaring breeze. Hell, half of the coffin stuck out of the turf as if the people hadn't been able to bury the poor soul properly.
There were no flowers, no one in black to mourn the loss. There were no church bells ringing in the background, no ashes or commitment for the eternal cycle of dust back into dust. It was a poor player, a lifeless shadow that strutted and fretted its hour upon life's stage. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.
"What we need, above all else, is understanding of our own mortality. People who long to give all of yesterday for one more night… What a childish dream that is." The Wind of Destruction spoke, steeling his voice with the hardened tone of a man who had seen every inch of the world. From the desert plains of the middle east, the frozen taigas of Russia, the swirling rainforests of Brazil, and the technological marvels of Eastern Germany. He had met both triumph and disaster, becoming master of both, and thus, the supreme deity of the physical world.
Yet, the world would not turn until both Kyte Niijima and Kagekatsu Nakamura turned back to him. Monsoon lived for the day where they belonged to him once more, trapped within his gilded cage instead of this foolish notion they were fine on their own. Meeting the former of the pair had elucidated him to that fact above all else; the pain regret in those crimson eyes called out to him like a lighthouse in the dark mist.
"I love mankind! I love it with all of my heart!" Monsoon repeated with gusto, his shadow once more crawling on the wall in sharp, deadly angles. "We're capable of so many great things, overcoming great obstacles in the process. Yet, paradoxically, and not to put too fine a point on it, the more I learn about man, the more I've come to despise each and every person I meet."
From his position, Yusho growled. The candle in the priest's left-hand erupting into a plume of dangerous gold as his own internal body temperature streaking ahead of an average crematorium. "Cease with your talk at once! I will hear no more of your hideous ideas! What gives you any right to think you can speak like this?!" The underlit fire that always carried under the snowy-haired priest's voice sound like ten tonnes of petrol had just been dumped over it.
"You're the same, Father. You all are." Monsoon responded, the soft clinking of metal in the background forcing the priest onto his back foot as the ocean-haired male had no doubt pulled his Sai back into his hands. "How can my ideas be hideous? How can they be wrong? How can they be if I don't know what either is? If we were all judged by our very sins alone, why would the world wind up the way it is?"
No one was special in this world. Not a single goddamn person. Preach to the world about your Quirk as you pleased, curse the world for your lack of one in the same manner. All of it was fruitless, all of it pointless, all of it lies! As far as Monsoon was concerned, until someone had deigned to actually defy Death Himself, then the shadow casted in this world meant nothing!
"And what if you're wrong regardless? Objects don't stop existing just because we fail to perceive them. Morality doesn't fail to exist just because you deny its reality." Yusho bit back, the tips of his fingers awash with tingling pricks of flames, ready for the rising tension to explode into a crescendo of violence.
"Right or wrong, you have the admit that breaking something that irks you is pleasant from time to time, no?" A dark chuckle emerged out of the endless blackness, a flash of gleaming silver, of Sais, cutting through the void for just a second. "There are those out there who believe in various Gods... In Heaven and in Hell, in science and in matters of money, in love and in matters of the heart... Yet, I... I believe there is just one God in this world."
Monsoon placed his hand on the coffin before him, on top of the skull he had planted on the centre of the silk cover. With all of the force available in his body, he crushed the fragile head he had already half destroyed into nothing more than a pile of broken bones barely recognisable as once being a person. The satisfying crunch as it dissolved into dust was just as much Heaven to him as it was hell to Yusho across the divide.
With no response from the priest, Monsoon continued. On the wall, his shadow had twisted into something hellish, something with unmarked evil and corruption. Even the wall itself seemed to sag under his presence. "With Satan himself by my side, I'll show the world that tonight, and forever, that the one Divine that reigns supreme over all of us... is the God of an endless, insatiable, inexorable, destructive greed and appetite!"
Then, without warning, the shadow vanished from the wall and Yusho's eyes were as wide as flying saucers. Not a single step had been heard, the utter silence was deafening in his ears. As the only two men present in this tiny world of death and decay, any movement of the living should have been heard with the power of thundering cathedral bells. Not even the wind passed through this place in total silence.
The priest's breathed quickened. First, by a small half step as his eyes darted around to try and find Monsoon's shadow. Second, by a full pace as they soon found no trace had been left behind in totality, despite the fact Yusho would have been more than able to see a man of the other's height streaking across the crypt in front or behind him.
So, when Monsoon's voice broke out of the silence, punching through the dead air and whispering its hellish tone into his right ear, Yusho'd be forgiven for letting his breath hitch as high as a kite. "Oh, what a poor, sorry scene we have out in front of us, Father. I fought to overcome and at first, I thought I could. But in the end, everything turned out the same no matter what I did."
Although every sense in his body screamed for him to run away, the priest was rooted to the spot. Every bead of sweat that dripped down from his brow, gushing like a veritable waterfall, evaporated, and sizzled into a soft mist as it hit the ground. "Another step closer and I'll send you to that Devil you proclaim as your friend." But still, his voice was calm and serene, almost accepting of what his fate might end up being.
Another dark laugh slipped out of Monsoon's disembodied voice, the temperature in the room slowly dwindling down despite the fire's presence. "Now, be glad, Father. Only a small space separates us, you're just as capable of striking out at me as I am at you." A short pause, and then came "Does that not please you?"
"What would please me more is to see you join those two creatures in eternal repose." Yusho bit back a snarl, composure was everything at the moment. In the back of his mind, he cursed the two coffins that had started this whole thing… If only they had been done away with sooner… None of this would have ever happened.
"Again, with the death threats? I'm so, so hurt." Monsoon decried in mock fashion, decidedly ignoring the situation he himself had instigated. "I take it that you would never say that to Kyte, would you? Mocking the death of his parents… I would say the same about me mocking the death of your dear old wife." He added, a sly lilt to his disembodied voice.
Any hope of retaining his composure for Yusho was flung out of the window with just that one comment. The fire in his hand roared in tandem with his voice "You keep her name out of your mouth, Satan! You know nothing of what happened, how dare you compare such an angel to hideous devils like that!" Nothing but spite, wrath, hate, and vitriol shoved their way through into the ether. The calm façade had been shattered in no more than fifteen carefully hand-picked words.
Fire roared throughout the crypt, sucking up the oxygen in a blaze of golden fury. The pure lava that pumped through Yusho's hand could only be matched by two people in history: the supervillain once known to the world as Dabi, and the superhero once known to the world as Endeavour. Not even his murderous son could match such temperatures with his inferior Quirk, which surpassed the heights of Prominence Burn.
Yet, as it subsumed the room with the priest in the centre of it all, conducting the flames like that of a great orchestral composer, there was no scream of mercy reaching his ears. There was no howl of pain from the Cleansing Flame's wrath, no admission of sin being prostrated at his feet, and no begging for ultimate grace and forgiveness.
Where the fuck was Monsoon? Yusho's teeth ground back and forth, working themselves into small nubs. The man's voice was everywhere, and yet his body turned up nowhere at the same time. Not a single inch of that 6'6 frame had gone anywhere, but it seemed to have faded out of corporeal reality all the same, like the coward that bastard truly was.
At least, until Monsoon's voice pricked up all the same. "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die all in the same way?" It was a taunting, haunting tone that percolated through the crackling fire. "What would Rosalyne think about you now? Being angry at me isn't going to bring her back."
Another roar of flames was sent out, right in the direction where Yusho thought he heard Monsoon's voice. Behind them there was every intention to incinerate the man without any mercy, and when they struck the wall of skulls behind the area in question, the whole scene was lit and disintegrated within the blink of an eye. A stunning display of the raw power at his fingertips
That bastard… That bastard… How dare he bring Rosalyne into this… How dare he bring Yoshihito into this earlier… This demon, this devil… Yusho needed to do what should have been done a long, long time ago. The priest clenched his hands close to his chest, making a solemn commitment to see the man's end no matter what.
It had been a mistake to allow Kyte into his church the other night, knowing this would be the natural outcome of things. It had been a mistake to entertain Monsoon's desires in the first place, knowing what his true desires always were. But what he made no mistake in was his next move, knowing that he only had one chance to right the wrongs and correct the timeline.
With a viciousness that Flashfire had inherited in spades, Yusho swung out of his whole forearm and unleashed a wave of flames that licked the floor around him like a swarm of serpents. "Come out! Hide yourself no longer in the shadows! Face your execution like a man or die as another creature of the night!" He proclaimed, resolve now steeled in pure vengeance.
But once more, his attacks were not met with any screams, or yelps, or cries. Yusho knew that Monsoon was a mercenary by trade, one that had trained himself to never reveal the true extent of the challenges or torment he had faced when fighting his marks. However, no man's resolve would, or even could, match the sensation of their flesh being melted clean off the bone that his Quirk instigated.
In fact, much to his shock and alarm, the first sound of pain loosed itself from his own lips. There was sudden jerk back as he felt an arm wrap around the back of his head, which was then thoroughly smashed into the floor by the sheer power and momentum of the forearm that came crashing into it with all the force of a freight train.
Sanguine scarlet dripped from the back of his head in the direct aftermath. The dull thud of his head against the floor reverberated like the cracking of egg against the side of a pan. No doubt, more signs of bloody sacrifice would mark Yusho's face as he dipped his hand up to the crown of his head, feeling the cold, iron laden liquid coagulate quickly on his pale fingers.
"And if you wrong us, shall we not commit ourselves to revenge?" And from right above, Monsoon spoke to the downed priest with all the authority of nature's darkness. Backlight by the flickering candle, and despite now being in the light, the man's body was misty, shadowy, unclear. "Shall I not extract my pound of flesh?"
Yusho growled, immediately fighting his way back up to his feet. "You will have nothing of the sort! For all you have done in this world, for all the suffering your Schism has caused, and for Rosalyne and Yoshihito, you will never see the sun again as long as I live!"
The Priest rushed the misty man in front of him, a flame that burned with all the passion that he had shoved down into his body over the past decade erupted in his palm, with enough heat to burn the surface of the sun into a crisp black. All he needed to do was land one blow… One blow, and he could brush away this nightmare.
Yet, once more, as he swung out, Monsoon seemed to meld into the shadows and fade out of existence. Whatever outline had been lit by the flame remained, but there was no solid ground to connect to besides the wall that was now another pile of ash the second the golden flames touched them.
A bitter growl erupted out of his throat again, the Priest pulling back his hand and wiping away more of the blood that continued to trickle like a stream down the tip of his nose. Had he been in total silence, the soft drip, drip, drip of the blood might have driven him even more mad than he was now. Yusho looked like a wild beast, his fingers twisted and tensed like the claws of a tiger ready to hunt its prey.
However, yet again, the supposed predator was caught off guard by the supposed prey that they were here to execute. With the swift and precise strike expected of ninjas from antiquity, Yusho felt the cool press of metal from Monsoon's Sai swipe across the back of his neck. A universe shattering roar of agony ripped through his lips as an entire chunk of flesh was torn from his body, forcing the priest down to one knee as his hands went to try and stem the flow.
"Very poor choice of words, Father." Monsoon stated nonchalantly, as if he were reading an annual earnings report. One of his Sai hung loosely in his hands, the three prongs having drunk with reckless avarice the blood of the man in front of them, positively dripping with the lifeforce that sustained the existence of the Wind of Destruction's beloved. "Pray to that God you adore one last time. That is the mercy I will grant you."
It was child's play for Monsoon, complete and total child's play. The kind where he almost felt bad for beating up what was akin to a defensive toddler. Keyword, almost. The dastardly smile that crossed his misty, everchanging lips reflected nothing but the sadistic pleasure that coursed through his body like a livewire.
Intoxicating. That was the one word he would use to describe it. How long had it been since he last sent someone to meet the Reaper? His mind supplied the sap that the Director had sent his way who ended up in the bottom of the ocean but calling that satisfying would be like calling garbage a gourmet meal. No, this sensation… This was the greatest high. This was the feeling of being alive!
The intoxicating feeling was too much for even the calm and cool Wind of Destruction to manage. Like a greedy demon, he lunged in again with the second Sai within his other hand, ready to strike more than his pound flesh from the man's back and send him into a pain that would be legendary even in hell.
However, before his blades could connect against the waiting back, Monsoon was the one that found himself suddenly on the backfoot. A sudden strike, a backfist, had clocked his jaw and sent it flying to the side with a crunching blow. His gag reflex kicked in soon after, making him spit out the two teeth that had been smashed and obliterated down his thought alongside pungent phlegm.
"A man who considers himself already victorious before the final blow has been struck is a fool of unimaginable proportions." Yusho wrestled himself up to his feet, his ascent arrested by the searing pain even moving his head up an extra degree sent though his body. "A man who considers himself still capable of winning the war, despite losing the battle, that's a man with wisdom untold."
As Monsoon fought with himself to bring his consciousness back, he cracked his jaw back into place and brought a vile snarl to his features. "You get one hit in, and you suddenly think you're special? I have news for you, Father. You've just expedited your punishment from a pound of flesh to your whole body and immortal soul!"
The Wind of Destruction, forgoing his usual style, rushed in to meet face to face with the priest, who did likewise. Both of their arms crashed into each other as metal met fire, mercenary met priest, and villain met nominal Hero. Their brute strength was such that, even though they were evenly matched in force, they would have torn the heads off of anyone that was one rung below them on the ladder.
Yusho was the one that struck first blood. No matter the blood that streamed down his face as the heat in the room increased, no matter the fact his head felt like it was hanging on by mere threads and lollipop sticks, the man's determination to end Monsoon superseded all of it as he struck with a hard elbow right across Monsoon's nose. The priest soon letting out a victorious baying roar as he watched Monsoon's stumble back.
But he did not relent nor relish his triumph, not for a single second longer. With a speed a man of his size should have not been able to muster, he was able to race to the stumbling Monsoon and smashed him across the face with a headbutt that, if Monsoon's nose wasn't already broken, had certainly finished the job and destroyed the Wind of Destruction's ability to smell anything anymore.
Blood percolated down Monsoon's cracked face now, a dusty blob of goo that looked nothing like the source of life, but was blood, nonetheless. The Wind of Destruction quickly wiped it away, only for more and more to follow out of the same area without any signs of stopping. His whole face felt like it was on fire, stinging with the fury that he had incited with his words.
But… He loved it. Oh, how long it had been since he felt so alive! A lecherous grin crossed his face as his dusty blood seeped across his cracked lips and stained them crimson red. Even as Yusho continued his assault, smashing forearms, punches, and kicks against his body like a storm of hellfire, which now caused him to mirror the priest's earlier fall to his knees, Monsoon couldn't help but drink deep from the debauched pleasure that flowed through him.
The grin, likewise, had an effect on Yusho, who grew more and more enraged at the sight. The solitary candle that had lit their fight from the start had worked its way into his hand, and before he even registered it, the priest had it pointed towards the increasingly crimson visage of the man now at his feet. "Submit to me now or else face your pyre and take your pride of place in Hell!" He said, growling out each and every syllable like an animal just freed from their cage at the zoo.
Infernal heat poured from the flame, ready to turn the dust that made up Monsoon's face into nothing but pure ash. A strong hand clamped itself over Monsoon's neck, crushing his ability to speak and breath at the same time. Each digit callously forced its way around, acting in nothing but the malignant, malevolent intent to squeeze every last gasp of air from his body.
Still, Monsoon smiled the smile of a madman. Not one inch of sputtering or gasping tore the emotion from his face, nor did the increasing heat of the candle pressed right up against his eye that had every intention of ramming itself into the socket. Yusho wanted to play dirty, huh? He wanted to use outside forces? Well, what's foul is fair and what's fair is foul.
As Yusho raised the candle to the sky like a dagger, making it impossible to tell man from flames, Monsoon struck. The Wind of Destruction's reputation preceded him in many ways, making his patronage one that was highly sought after by all walks of life. One didn't become such a feared killer without getting their way out of situations like this before.
In one fluid motion, Monsoon wiggled his arm free from the mounted position Yusho had taken upon him and jammed it with all of his might right into the neck he had torn asunder. The squelch would have turned a squeamish man inside out, but the Wind of Destruction ploughed on without mercy. His hand dug deeper and deeper into the gash, individual fingers seeking to rip the flesh apart like he had watched Kagekatsu do to himself.
The effect was instant, the candle tumbled from Yusho's hand, and rolled into the darkness as the priest released another hellish howl of anguish. Desperate arms flung back trying to wrestle Monsoon's parasitic grip out of the afflicted area to very little effect, the cries getting stronger the longer and deeper it maintained the hold.
"Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven!" Monsoon proclaimed, the words bursting from his dark, black soul. With his other hand, still holding the Sai, he struck with a viciousness yet unmatched as he tore through the front of the priest's robe and cut one clean, deep, slash into the man's chest.
The attack left Yusho reeling enough for Monsoon to return himself to stable footing, still maintaining a grip of iron on the priest's neck that never tired for a second. There was a macabre kind of elegance to the dissection he was undertaking. Each movement had been fluid, almost delicate in its execution. Unlike some of his prior associates, he didn't need to rely on being an utter monster among men to pummel his opponents into submission.
With his dominance now re-established, Monsoon went back on the offensive. First, he levelled Yusho with a forearm to the face that just about sent the priest's skull into the same state of the one he had crushed earlier. Monsoon might not have been as muscular as the man across from him. Hell, he might have only just surpassed Ilya's fuckbuddy, who was scrawny in his own right. However, the technique that had been honed over countless battles more than made up for it.
Before Yusho's skull was even done registering the first hit, a second one came in. Then a third. Then a fourth. Then a fifth. Then a sixth. Then a seventh. The barrage of forearms seemed almost endless and inhuman, striking, and cleaving bits of skin clean off with their utter power. All until it crescendoed at the tenth and final blast that ripped through the air like a stream of lightning. Once upon a time, one of his old associates had termed it Ten Beats of the Bodhran, and in fairness, the rhythmic nature to the assault made Monsoon feel like he was playing the very same instrument off the priest's head.
The priest soon fell the floor, his head loosely flapping about like the twirling of a single strand of string. The smack of bone against concrete was never a sound Monsoon found pleasant, it was nothing like the rich tones of cartilage snapping nor did it hold the same intoxicating scent as freshly spilled blood. Yet, it remained the more effect of the three, nonetheless. Yusho must've been barely hanging onto consciousness at this point, fighting back against the encroaching darkness that clawed at the corner of his eyes.
"You know…" Monsoon started, drawling, and almost half slurring his words on account of the blood that swirled around his mouth. "I don't remember the last time someone nearly made me use my Quirk in a serious way. For that, Father, I can at least commend your tenacity." Though his tone contained within it a mocking leer as he edged his way closer to Yusho, it was nothing but the honest truth.
Sure, his Quirk was useful. What Quirk wasn't? Unless your Quirk was the ability to have perfect twenty-twenty hindsight because of some third eye or simply turning up one hour late to everything, then there was always use for a Quirk. Wasn't that the thing that Morax lamented all the time, and what Deku had spent his whole career trying to propagate despite having the most broken Quirk ever?
Yet, Monsoon could scarcely remember the last time his had been under consideration for use in combat. The memory tickled at the edge of full recollection, and he knew his body had not soon forgot the torment it had been placed under, but the ocean-haired male drew a total blank on the exact details of the scene.
Ack, no matter. That wasn't the important detail here. Monsoon still had to tie up a rather annoying loose end he should have cut off a full decade ago when he had first cut another thread of life short. Even as he stared at Yusho right now, his mind couldn't help but recall the bountiful, beautiful fair lady that had once given the priest such joy. How those sweet, dulcet tones of an angel could calm the raging beast with a single melodious word…
Without another spoken word, keeping his eyes locked on the kneeling man in front of him, who was wreathed in agony, Monsoon pointed his twin Sai blades downwards. The least he could do, despite the thousand searing cuts and insults that were sent his way, was dignify the man with a death that he never afforded the man's love.
"There is no dignity in what you do, remember that well, Devil." However, almost like the priest had read his mind, Yusho bit back with his own declaration of defiance. Simply moving his jaw was agony personified, and his head wasn't much better, barely hanging on by a single loose thread that could snap at any moment. Whiplash was the least of his concerns, especially now he could feel just how broken his neck was. "It is a dirty, decrepit life you lead. You can hide behind your philosophies, your self-imposed exile, but know this. You think it's the living that will hold dominion over you because the dead will have no claim over your soul, but you may be mistaken."
The corners of Monsoon's lips curled. Even as they resided in the crypt's howling darkness, Monsoon's personal kingdom, the priest remained defiant to the last, desperate to slick his claws into his imminent murderer's head. Had it been any other situation and man, the Wind of Destruction might have let them live out of amusement for their courage.
But no one moved against the Schism, no one insulted him, no one attacked him with impunity and decried his beloved but him, without feeling the wrath of the self-proclaimed Devil. The eyes of a Supreme Hypnotist, as Katsuyori had once described them with such eloquence, stared at their victim with no other emotion but cool detachment. "The villainy reflected in you; I will execute tenfold, and I will better the instruction."
The final swing was serendipitous. There was no fanfare like there would have been with Morax. There was no drawn-out dramatic pause as was often the case with Katsuyori. There was no artistic grace like Ilya. Only clinical efficiency and ruthless darkness followed as Monsoon plunged his Sai directly into the priest's head and chest at the same time, targeting a double whammy of the skull and the abdomen at the same time.
For a moment, it didn't seem real as Monsoon watched the life that surged like a spark in Yusho's eyes once the weapons were stabbed through fizzle out into nothingness. It felt like another one of his nightmares had just become a reality, the dryness in the back of his throat and across his whole body making it feel like he had woken up with a start in the middle of the night. His grip on the hilts weak, almost shaking under the weight.
In the corner of his vision, he saw the candlestick he had been handed before journeying down those fateful steps. Only a trickle of flames remained, desperately holding on the wick like an abseiler claiming down a cliff face on a broken harness. Seconds ticked by as Monsoon's full attention landed itself on the golden spirit of the priest, and seconds more flowed by as he watched it sputter into ash and finally drench the crypt back into eternal darkness.
Monsoon released a deep breathe he didn't realise he had been holding. For so long, it had just been a notion at the back of his mind. Time was never on his side, not like it was with the seemingly eternally young Kyte. Forty-one years had passed him by before he had even realised it, many of those adult years trapped in his endless journey around the globe to wherever the wind called him. Which, on top of everything else, had him pick up about as many strays as he did injuries to his body, making each successive mission harder than the last.
But now, staring down at the lifeless corpse that lay by his feet, and pulling his shaking hands into his body, maybe now would be the starting point where his journey could finally come to a head. Kyte might have been fighting a twenty-year-long war, but that was nothing compared to the sordid campaign Monsoon had spent his whole life waging against the Divines. The very forces that had decried his existence from the very start.
"I'm sorry you both had to see that. I didn't have a choice." The Wind of Destruction said, feeling his way back to the two coffins that had started it all. "If you see Kyte at any point in the near future, make sure to tell them, alright? I would be remised if he didn't find out that I did it for his benefit, and his alone."
Here lies Camilla and Béla Bathory, beloved parents and partners even in death. Requiescat In pace
Nostalgia. That was the one word to describe the feeling that coursed through Monsoon's body. He could still remember the fond stories he had been told by Kyte of his parents, how they would guide him in the earlier years when he was still getting used to his vampiric Quirk, or even about all the times they had spent acquainted with the night that was their birthright. Many more tales than what Monsoon could say of his own parents, the boring simple farmers that those layabouts had been.
With no meddlesome priest leering over his shoulder anymore, Monsoon was free to approach and touch them intimately with gentle caresses usually reserved for only the fondest of lovers. The coffins had been something he had to pester Morax about for ages, using the mad doctor's equally insane bank account to fund only the proper burial that they deserved. No flowers on the grave, of course. Although, a mischievous part of his mind had toyed with placing two Wild Roses on each, just to make sure they stayed in there.
A reluctant grin curled his upper lip up ever so slightly as he removed his lighter from his pocket and struck a small, normal orange flame into the air. His attention, thus, soon switched to the one object that had always been present in the room, but that neither man had elected to bring up. As he shielded the tiny flame in his hand, Monsoon tip-toed his way over to the object of his desire.
A single pedestal of marble was raised, slightly to the right of the Bathory coffins, tarnished by the squalor around it. Covering the top was a crystal, see-through cover, which had somehow managed to avoid the cursed corruption around it and protected its dearly held contents that flickered at the edge of the lighter's flames.
What was its content? A silver locket within which contained a lock of platinum blond hair. The hair of Rosalyne Kimura, born to this world as Rosalyne Chibana, and erstwhile known as the Fire Butterfly that could save a crowd of trapped civilians with elegance and power in the blink of an eye.
Truly, she had been one of Monsoon's finer executions.
"Dear Rosa, I am so dreadfully sorry that I kept you apart all those years." The Wind of Destruction said, eyes not moving but hands placing themselves on the sides of the container. Yet, he never dared to touch the locket as his voice took on a more sorrowful tone. "Please, treat him well wherever you are. I bet he missed your voice; I know I do."
When you removed the human from the equation, there were only two things that mattered in this world. The money and the miles. Nothing else meant a goddamn thing. Not the connections that you made with your supposed friends and families, not the good times you had, not the laughs you shared, not the passionate kiss the two of you might have shared under the starry night sky.
Dinners spent over candlelight, bottles of champagne that had been popped to mark the birth of new life, and sweet words exchanged between two happy couples. They were all lies, all fake.
"Make a heaven of hell, will you?" Monsoon continued, resting his head on top of the crystal container, letting himself finally rest after all the effort he had put in during the fight. His body ached, bones no longer in places they should have been, and sticky, cold blood dropped onto the glass like black ichor. "I want my stay there to be pleasant."
As the storm clouds rumbled in the distance, the Wind of Destruction made one final declaration to the world. His voice pierced through the heavens themselves and aassaultedthe Divine that stood in its path to absolution as he surrounded himself with mementoes of a fake life long gone.
"Only my Gift can save the world…"
A/N: Chapter, it's here. Me tired. Review if you can, please.