A/N: Started in November 2021 and now here we are! This is a monster of a fic and I never knew I was capable of something like this! Thanks so much to all my readers, both the ones who have been there from the beginning and the new ones who are just finding this story now that it's completed. Thanks for being a part of my journey and I'm glad you've stuck it out through this longfic!
The prisoners had started to relax.
Ever since the people's hero had come and gone, taking Full Throttle (and maybe a chunk of the ceiling) with him, it showed everyone, prisoners and guards alike, that Tartarus wasn't as inescapable as it was made out to be since it was erected all those years ago. It just needed the right people and the right weak point, and BAM! They blasted through like it was tissue paper.
No others escaped.
Not for their lack of trying.
It was oddly suspicious that their attempts weren't met with escalation and degradation and scare tactics like usual, though. Instead of being shoved into solitary confinement like usual, they were just led back to their typical place in general population, kindly asked not to attempt to do it again as it would not work, and largely left to their own devices.
It was weird.
Nazato Janari didn't like it.
He had already felt like he was walking a thin line when he had helped the people's hero back when he still believed him to be Toga, and then continued to help him and give him information about what it was really like being a prisoner in Tartarus when he asked once he figured out that he was, in fact, actually Chargebolt and not Toga Himiko in disguise.
When Eraserhead, the underground Pro Hero who had been the one to take down his family's drug ring, had been walked through the halls, trailed by Pro Hero Phantom Thief and another Eraserhead, Nazato felt deep in his soul that something big was happening and was waiting anxiously for the other shoe to drop.
Would he be pulled aside for additional interrogation? Did they need more information on his family and their crime organization?
If he didn't have the information they wanted, would the guards beat him down? Would Eraserhead and company help or just idly sit by and watch, thinking that made them innocent in his mistreatment?
Phantom Thief is associated with Chargebolt—the people's heroes. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as he feared, but he couldn't afford to get his hopes up. Prepare for the worst, wish for the best, as his family's saying went, and it surely had helped him out more than once behind Tartarus's walls already.
But then days passed and Nazato hadn't been pulled aside for interrogation (or torture under the name of interrogation; all the same inside the walls of Tartarus). No one had, as far as he could tell, and he hadn't seen a reappearance of the weird trio of heroes again.
Nazato had allowed himself to relax, and then promptly regretted every decision he had ever made that had led up to that moment when he and a few others were called by name to stand at attention in the recreation center. Looking around, he noticed that he was surrounded by familiar faces, and he nearly startled when he realized it was the same exact group that had cornered Chargebolt and then spent the afternoon playing cards instead of ravaging him like they were supposed to all that time ago.
Was their punishment so delayed? Were they waiting until the media moved onto bigger and better things? Until the heat was off of Tartarus from Chargebolt and Full Throttle's history-breaking escape?
Nazato felt woozy with the sweat gathering on the nape of his neck as he mentally berated himself to pull it together and fell in line with his fellow inmates, trying to stay calm to keep the calm among the rest of them as well. If one panicked, they could be sure that they all would.
It was hard to not panic when they were led toward solitary confinement.
But none of them had done anything wrong in a while.
The guards had been going easier on them.
The harsher guards had even taken a vacation or something, so the nicer guards had only really been around. No one was pushing inmates into walls for no reason, instigating fights, or planting contraband in their rooms.
Maybe the harsher guards were all back from vacation and needed their fix of sadism?
The prisoners were marched into the solitary block, their hesitant footsteps echoing in the long corridor, the stark white walls blinding them with the reflection of the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. The guards were practically bouncing on their toes with excitement, but Nazato could hardly share in the emotion, feeling as though the guards had sucked the energy right out of him and were refusing to share.
"Well, who the fuck pissed in your cereal?" a cruel voice asked from the observation deck.
The prisoners stood at attention and looked up only to have their jaws drop when they saw the people's heroes, all three of them. There stood Chargebolt, Phantom Thief, and even Mindjack, holding sledgehammers and with safety goggles on—the only things that were different from their signature on-street Pro Hero looks.
"You can't say that, Neito," Chargebolt immediately turned to argue. "The guards here—" he shivered. "They were terrible. I wouldn't have put it past them to actually—"
"Ugh! Gross! You can't be serious!" Phantom Thief said. "Fuck solitary; let's tear down the whole thing!"
"We did not get permission for that!" Mindjack sang, swinging his sledgehammer around like it was nothing.
"Better to ask for forgiveness than permission?" Phantom Thief tried.
"Hey! That's how we all got here!" Nazato called up.
Phantom Thief looked down with a furrowed brow at Nazato, who questioned if he had just sealed his own death warrant, before Phantom Thief's face melted into pure amusement and he cackled.
"Oh, I like that one!"
"That's Nazato! I told you about him," Chargebolt said excitedly, pulling on Phantom Thief's sleeve. "Hi, Nazato!" he said, waving erratically like he would be hard to see up on the platform, high above all the inmates.
"Hi, Denki! How's life been treating you?" Nazato responded, allowing himself to relax against the wall instead of continuing to stand at strict attention. The inmates on either side quickly fell in line, relaxing and allowing smiles to replace the anxious worry on their faces as they also returned waves of recognition when Denki would point them out to his soulmates.
"Pretty fantastic, actually! I made quite the deal with the HPSC, and that's why I'm here actually! You should have already seen some changes, but we wanted knocking out solitary confinement to be a gift to you guys specifically, you know?"
"What do you mean by there should have been some changes already?" one of the inmates down the line to Nazato's right questioned.
"Don't tell me that they haven't changed the guards' policies!" Neito crowed, but Denki temporarily placated him by placing a hand on his shoulder.
"The guards aren't allowed to mistreat you guys anymore. Have you noticed?"
"Oh," said the man to Nazato's left. "That's what that is?!"
They all laughed.
"There's a one-strike policy," Mindjack supplied. "They mess up even once, and they are no longer employed here."
"So, the mean guards just aren't all on an extended vacation?" another inmate questioned lightheartedly.
But Nazato and everyone else could feel it. It was like a weight had been lifted from their shoulders.
"And I'm sure you're the reason why solitary confinement hasn't been used in months," Nazato guessed.
"You'd be smart to place money on that bet," Chargebolt said. "And to make it even higher stakes, we thought it would be fun to make it more permanent. Sorry for taking so long—we had something to take care of first. But now that we're free, we wanted to join you in tearing solitary confinement to the ground."
"What will it become next?" Nazato asked as he caught the sledgehammer that Chargebolt threw down to him.
"I thought we'd put it to a vote, but with the shape, I was thinking a bowling alley?" Chargebolt suggested, swinging and putting a nice, big dent into the wall next to him.
"Indoor trampoline park?" Mindjack offered, taking a chunk out of the wall.
Over the noise of everyone getting started tearing the separating walls down, Phantom Thief screamed, "if we get a big ramp going from this side down and a big hamster ball—"
Mindjack turned toward him, wiping the dust from his safety goggles to see him more clearly. "With a pool?" he yelled over the noise.
"What kind of idea would it be without a pool, Hitoshi?!" Phantom Thief retorted, swinging his sledgehammer with all his might.
Denki nodded, a huge smile on his face. "This is either the best idea or the worst idea we've ever had!" he yelled over the noise of a dozen inmates armed with sledgehammers, tearing down the walls that would no longer hold them solitary ever again.
