"You want me to sell you drugs ?"

Leo looked at me, mouth wide open, bloodshot, yellowish eyes wider than a fish's.

I got impatient.

"I'm not a cop, don't act like you have nothing"

His eyebrows were so furrowed that wrinkles creased his forehead vertically, as if a line split his face in two from the bridge of his nose to his hairline.

"That's not what I'm saying"

I stifled a sigh, my eyes sliding to the window overlooking Tokyo.

Léandre lived in a penthouse in one of the few parts of the capital that hadn't been struck during the attacks three days earlier.

His parents were extremely wealthy, they loved him dearly and spent all of their free time with him when they returned from business trips.

Leo decided to sell drugs for some reason that had nothing to do with lining his pockets ; I assumed it was boredom.

I guess when you don't have problems you feel the need to create some in order to feel alive.

"By the way, where is Natsume ?"

He took so much time to answer that I thought he wouldn't.

"He's training," Leo said, voice trailing off. "His coach says he's got what it takes to be a gold medalist"

I nodded.

"Why did you ask ?"

"I was just wondering what he was up to," I said. "It has been a long since I've seen him..."

"No, I meant, why do you want drugs ?"

I knew where he hid them : his apartment reeked.

It would only take a second to grab the packages and run - but I didn't feel like stealing from a friend.

"Why do heroes usually want drugs for ?"

Leo scowled.

His whitish skin was thinner than I remembered, drawn over his cheekbones like a thin curtain. His cheeks were more hollow and he looked weirdly tired.

"How do you know I sell to Heroes ?"

I snickered mockingly.

"How could you not ? They're the most overworked, exhausted guys in the world. After what happened this week, there's no way any of the heroes in this town are clean"

Except dad, of course, but he had the luxury of having tens of sidekicks taking care of paperwork and other administrative tasks, unlike everyone else.

"Is that why you want it ? Because you're tired ?"

I didn't have enough energy left to beat around the bush.

"Yes"

"What are you so tired of ?"

I frowned.

"You ask too many questions"

Leo laughed.

"If I didn't know you so well, that look would've scared me"

Sometimes I forgot that to people who'd known me for years, I was just a taciturn kid wearing a mask.

"Give me what I came for"

Leo sighed, slapped his thighs with his palms and shook his head sadly.

"Whereas I was so happy to see you : now all I want is for you to take you stuff and leave me alone"

He smiled and went to find what he needed in one of the bathrooms he didn't use.

He returned with a bag of white powder in see-through plastic, which he put into an empty flour bag.

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"These are special bags," he explained. "I know a girl who knows a girl... Anyway, someone's Quirk can make bags odorless. No police dog will be able to catch you with it: but be careful, the moment you open it, the magic wears off"

He handed me the package : I raised my hand to take it but he pulled it back, eyebrows furrowed.

"Do you even know how to take it ?"

I was definitely irritated now.

"Leo"

"I don't want you to screw up and have Endeavor banging on my door, wondering why his kid died in his bathroom"

He pushed back his sofa and sat down in front of his coffee table then patted the floor next to him.

I reluctantly sat down.

He spent twenty minutes telling me how to take it, in which quantities, the ideal way to take it without dying, and all the emergency things to do if I felt something was wrong.

Then we tried together for he wanted to be sure I knew how to do it properly.

We ended up sitting on the floor laughing like sea lions, Mario Kart controllers in our hands, playing while the TV wasn't even on.

And then I threw up because I hadn't eaten in three days.

Leo laughed even louder.

*

Doing fuinjutsu under influence was either the worst mistake of my life or a stroke of genius.

I was painting at breakneck speed, the brush whirling and the ink hardly drying in time.

By letting my clones do all the work I'd forgotten the excitement of creating something new, of trying to push the boundaries of reality.

I didn't need to tire myself hoping to recreate Edo Tensei or Rinnegan or any other fantasy : fuinjutsu was art and I was the artist.

I needed to recapture the state of excitement that had allowed me to create my artificial sharingan ; drugs, in small doses, put me in a state of near-spiritual reflection. It allowed me to forget my physical limitations and focus 300% on what I was doing : I hadn't felt this energized in months.

Moving my head to the rhythm of an instrumental rock song, I was working in a darkness shrouded room.

My father's headquarters had been temporarily vacated until the Heroes got their licenses back ; his entire skyscraper had been emptied.

His side-kicks belongings were still scattered around, but apart from the two of us, there was no one else.

I leaned down and inhaled a line of coke through my nose, a finger pressed against the other nostril.

My body seemed to consume and purge drugs much faster than average ; I had to take doses every half hour to keep the effects from wearing off.

At this rate I'll have to go back to Leo’s in a few days.

Dad was asleep a few floors up : he'd come home late from who knows where.

I'd used a headache as an excuse to go to bed early, and fortunately he hadn't paid too much attention to me, preoccupied with other things, thus I had no trouble slipping away.

I'll have to study the effects of drugs on my body. I feel like I've already recovered more chakra than I should - but maybe I'm just delirious.

Maybe that's what the soldier pills were all about ; drugs in capsules that make you forget your limits and boosted your chakra.

I just had to be careful not to become addicted.

There.

I lifted the paper sheet up to my face.

I still didn't understand how Tsunade was able to create her Seal of Creation and Rebirth without blowing her brains out, but maybe I had found a way to bastardize the process.

Two clones appeared next to me.

I put the matrix on the ground. The first one stepped on it, bare feet flat on the circles.

I glued my hands together, all fingers folded except for the index and middle fingers, which were facing their counterparts.

I activated my Sharingan and stepped back : the clone focused, his chakra flowing from his body to the drawing.

The concept was easy : if I could enclose a kunai in a storage seal, why not a clone ?

I had a vague recollection that you could seal corpses : the main difference with what I was trying to do was that kunais and human bodies were both physical and tangible.

Although clones were tangible, they had no physical matter as such and left nothing behind when they disappeared.

When sealing an object, it was necessary to coat it with a layer of chakra and then activate the seal with the same energy so that the matrix would recognize what it was : since a clone was pure chakra, I believed that-

The seal exploded.

I remained motionless and expressionless as a blast of hot wind swept across the desk and sending all of the things I'd been drawing everywhere.

Fortunately I'd put a silence seal before any experiments.

I grabbed one of the flying paper while my second clone cleaned up the mess.

I closed my eyes and visualized my clone's last memories, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

It's going to be a long night.

*

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