I had never realized how unnerving it was to fight a kid that could kill you.

There was something tremendously immoral about the childish, innocent face of an infant murderer.

He was barely as tall as my elbow and yet I felt aversion merely by looking at him dressed in his fatigues.

His eyes were cold, set, determined, and yet his cheeks were round and full, like those of any kid.

He was a paradox in himself – a kid with the power of a man – so much so that I felt reluctant about fighting him.

“Get out of my way, kid !”, I shouted, voice laced with chakra.

I truly, truly didn’t want to hurt him.

If he heard me he did not show it.

Rather, he raised two fingers lazily, cold eyes boring into mine.

And he abruptly dropped them.

My left kunai twirled in my hand then flew out of my hand : I barely had time to move before it buried itself deep in my thigh.

My flesh popped like a fuzzy can, and the kunai twirled viciously, turning my flesh to mush.

Blood poured out of my thigh in buckets.

This kid had hit my fucking femoral artery.

Using all my strength, I gripped the kunai, jaw angrily set, and removed it.

The kid raised an eyebrow in surprise, yet nothing else showed on his face.

Panting, I threw it aside, a hand on my thigh to keep the blood from gushing out.

My fingers grew as hot as burning iron : I crudely cauterized the wound.

The kid blinked slowly, lazily, letting me heal for our little match was too far beneath him.

“You shouldn’t be here”, he said evenly. “These are military grounds”

I wondered if that’s how people used to – and still did - see me: ruthless and removed, capable of great violence through surgical precision.

My left leg was too weak to stand on it properly, yet I did, throwing on the ground every last bit of my weapon made with iron.

I felt like I was stripping naked: it wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

“This will be my only warning to you”, the kid said lazily. “Kneel and put your hands on your head, and I promise no harm will be done to you”

It was uncanny to see such a young child acting like he had the utmost authority over everything and everyone on this island.

I spit blood on the ground, my heterochromatic eyes never leaving his.

He snorted.

My eyes crinkled.

A bold of thunder – larger and more powerful than the previous ones – lit up the gray clouds as if the sun was bursting.

It fell with the might of Zeus himself shooting it from the sky.

The kid didn’t even raise his hands.

Behind him, the metal building shook.

The sound of screeching steel rubbing on each other echoed loudly.

The building leaned forward as though it wanted to touch the sky.

Large metal beams from the lower floor detached themselves and flew to the top of the construction.

It looked like the building had turned into a long finger whose pointy nail was raised towards the sky.

The lightning strayed from his course and veered at a near-right angle.

It hit the structure with the sound of a million birds chirping loudly.

It ran from the top to the bottom and dispersed in the ground.

The kid was untouched.

He raised his hand, and the metal beams shot from the building straight to me.

I avoided them all easily, although my leg was hurting painfully.

Wind blew my hair in all directions as the flying pole flew past me; clouds of sand and dust rose.

I jumped on one of the flying rods – larger than the previous ones – then jumped on another, running on them while they were still flying to where I’d been a moment before.

My hands flashed in a quick ninjutsu

“Great Breakthrough”

A gust of wind as strong as a tornado shot from my lips and hit the new wave of flying metal.

It pushed them all back as if a giant had slapped them away.

They flew above the island and fell far into the sea.

There I closed my fist, willing the water to bury them down deep beneath the sand.

I jumped from the sky right onto the kid who still hadn’t moved an inch.

Sound of metal groaning: flying rods - not yet embedded in the ground -turned around in a loop, flying right to me.

I was right in on their path.

I twisted around, my back to the kid, and a new gust of wind shot from my lips, exercising a contrary force and blasting me toward the ground.

The metal rod flew right in front of my face.

I backflipped and landed smoothly on the ground.

The kid-

My breath was taken away.

I spit out blood, looking down at my chest from which my own set of reddened kunais was waving hello.

Throat, heart, kidney, stomach.

I had more spikes than a porcupine.

The comparison made me laugh.

I staggered while turning around, my eyes landing on the perfectly fine child.

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I laughed, and my blood bubbled in my throat.

Then I realized I couldn’t breathe and I fell on my knees, the light around me getting dimmer.

My eyes were heavy.

Darkness crept into the corners of my vision.

I blinked more and more slowly, catching the sight of the kid, arms crossed, looking down at me with contempt.

He did not even smile.

My eyes closed.

“Pathetic”, he spits out.

My hand wrapped around his neck and I leaned over his shoulder, unscathed, sharingan twirling lazily in my eyes, looking at my illusory dead body like he was.

“Isn’t it ?”

Still leaning, I turned my face to his, my hot breath brushing away locks of his reddish hair, gaze locked on his glassy blue eyes.

A long time ago I’d been like him, cocky and foolish to the point it should have killed me way too many times.

I whispered in his ear.

“When you’ll wake up, you’ll wonder what happened. There will be no use beating yourself over what you should have done to win because you were doomed from the start”

His face was smooth, unblemished.

This was the face of a kid who’d been hailed as a god since he’d been born, the face of a kid who didn’t realize what kind of world he was in.

“I want you to remember that I could have killed you”

My fingernails dug into the soft flesh of his throat, leaving five, crescent moon, bloodied marks on it.

“The next one won’t be as merciful”

I let him go.

He fell on his knees, face raised towards the sky, mouth open in silent wonder.

A long time ago, I would’ve killed him to prevent him from becoming a threat in a decade or so.

But it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do.

He was lucky he’d gotten a warning.

My eyes roamed over the place.

The island looked like a shattered mirror: the ground was uneven, cliffs separated by crevasses.

Farther away soldiers were dragging wounded comrades on the beach.

I shunshined inside.

I had to deactivate my sharingan to minimize my visual processing of information and thus, to reduce how sick I felt just by looking around.

I lost no time and struck the floor, focusing all of my strength on one simple point.

The floor collapsed in a jagged circle. The building shook and I wondered if it would collapse on itself.

A foul smell hit me with the might of a slap.

It smelt as if a thousand people were putrefying.

Something akin to mucus recovered the underground prison.

I jumped down, landing softly on the piece of broken floor.

As soon as I landed I heard a loud sigh of long-held suffering coming from everywhere around me.

Hair raised on the back of my neck I spun around, trying to pinpoint who had made it.

A drop fell on the bridge of my nose.

I wiped it with a finger and brought it in front of my eyes. Blood.

The broken ceiling was bleeding.

Something wrapped around my ankle.

I smashed mercilessly the pink tentacle crawling up my shoe.

Blood dirtied my pants.

It seemed as if the walls were sighing in pain, making a sound similar to a balloon getting slowly emptied.

Yet more and more mucus tentacles rose and tried to wrap around me as if to eat me.

Fire erupted from my skin and all of the tentacles moved away, shrieking as if hurt.

I frowned and shunshined as fast as I could, goosebumps on my skin.

I tried to feel Keigo’s energy but everything here was overpowered by the uncanny energy radiated by the sentient-like prison.

I tried to pick Keigo’s odor but even that proved close to impossible: the place seemed to be making my senses go haywire.

I had no idea who had created Tartarus but even that seemed far above Nezu’s level of craziness.

The first floor – and consequently the highest – was the one where I saw people who looked the most like functional humans.

Some weakly tried to hit their door cell when I ran past, their glassy eyes following me with a moment's delay.

One of them looked like a squashed juice box, cheeks hollowed and lips sucked in, making him look like a cadaver.

All of the prisoners looked old and emaciated as if someone – or something – had been sucking the life out of them.

Clearing quickly the first floor, I smashed the ground and searched the next one.

Mucus flew everywhere in a shower of blood.

I felt as if I were in the stomach of the gigantic creature, smashing wall after wall of intestines to find my way out.

The lower I got, the hollower the prisoners, the fouler the smell.

That’s on the fourth floor that, stuck between two other cells, I found Keigo’s.

I kicked his door in.

He was sitting on the ground, his back against the only non-mucus wall.

He looked up slowly as if he hadn’t heard me coming.

His eyes were empty.

“Shoto”

Said with neither warmth nor relief.

“We don’t have much time”, I said, bending down to wrap his arm around my shoulders “I’m sure they’ve sent-”

Keigo pushed me away.

I frowned, momentarily surprised, but grabbed his arm once more.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up, but right now is not the time to-”

He pushed me and this time I let him go : he fell to the floor, numb.

His dull gaze rose to meet mine.

I looked at the mucus, lips pinched

“This place is doing a number on you... I’ll get you the best doctor available and you’ll recov-”

“You didn’t drug him”

A rock fell in the pit of my stomach.

“What ?”

It shattered all of my organs, blew them all out until I was but a frail, shaking, empty shell.

“I asked them because I thought it would explain why we fought. I…”, he licked his chapped lips. “You didn’t drug him. You didn’t.”

“What ? Of course I did”, I kept my voice clear of shaking. “We’re losing time now, so just-”

He scoffed and slapped my extended hand.

“You didn’t. You truly didn’t”

He burst out laughing, and I could see in his eyes that the sudden shout had surprised him as much as it did me.

His hysteria turned my blood ice cold.

“They were right. All along they were right about you”

He stopped laughing – as abruptly as someone pushed the brake to avoid an accident – and I felt as if, merely by looking in his eyes, I was witnessing his mind shattering.

“I shouldn’t have taken you in. I shouldn’t have cared about you”

His expression chilled me to the bones.

I grabbed his arms and forcefully put him on his feet, looking at everything but his eyes.

“Quit your nonsense”, I said, speaking loudly to draw strength from my voice. “I don’t know what they’ve told you but they lied. We have to-”

“Shoto”

I froze.

“Look me in the eye”

I tried not to but it was as if something inside me – stronger than I could ever be – was inexorably pulled towards him.

“Tell me you didn’t try to frame me for your brother’s murder”

His voice was a sharp guillotine falling on my neck.

I firmly held his gaze.

“I didn’t”

Disapproval shone in his eyes, and I knew that from now on, for him, I would always be the lowest scum on earth.

He tried to push me away : I didn’t move an inch and he stumbled.

“Go away”

There was so much hurt in his voice that I wish I’d never heard it.

“Keigo”

I held my hand out in an inviting gesture. My fingers were slightly shaking.

“Come home with me, I beg you”

He turned his back to me.

“You didn’t care about me. You’re like all of them. You’ve never cared”

“Of course I care. I broke into Tartarus to bring you back with me”

They would label me a traitor, an enemy of Japan, a terrorist.

“… I killed her”

A pang in my heart.

Keigo wasn’t a killer.

“Of course you didn’t. They-”

He laughed soundlessly – his shoulders shook – and it was enough to shut me up.

“They framed me like you were going to frame me ?”

“I did it out of my own volition. When I woke up… do you know how much it hurts to wake up from a coma and realize you’re alone ? It took close to two days for anyone to visit me and even then I thought you’d be the first. I would’ve come for you”

“I visited you every day”, I said breathlessly.

“And then she said”, He swallowed heavily. “She said that it didn’t matter if I didn’t have my Quirk anymore, she said that would be alright if I were only Keigo. She said there were other ways for me to be useful. She said… she told me I’d have children. Dozens and dozens of children”

He turned around and I cowardly avoided his gaze.

“I couldn’t bear to let any of these kids suffer the same way I’d suffered”

I heard the tears in his voice, saw them roll down his chin.

“I couldn’t bear it. It was too painful”

He’d cared about unborn kids more deeply than he did about himself.

I could never hope to be a tenth of the man he was.

“Keigo, come with me-”

“What for? To live like fugitives? You’ll have to drag me around like a dead weight”

“You’re not a dead weight”, I protested.

“Of course I am”, he scoffed. “Without my wings, I’m neither Keigo nor Hawks, and Keigo never has had anything for himself”

“I know people”, I insisted urgently. “I’ll make sure no one can ever hurt you. You’ll be free”

He frowned, stunned as if the concept of freedom was so foreign to him he couldn’t wrap his mind around it.

He shook his head.

“I have to pay for what I did”

And under my astonished gaze, Keigo sat back down, arms crossed.

“Kei-”

“If you try to bring me with you by force I’ll kill myself”

I swallowed heavily.

“We-”

“Get out and never come back. I don’t want to see you again”

I knew this expression of his – jaw set, eyes focused, voice unwavering – and I knew he wouldn’t change his mind.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And then I left, baffled, unable to wrap my head around what had just transpired.

Walking out through the holes I’d made to get down felt surreal.

I had never considered that he would refuse to come with me.

He’d rather die in a cell than spend a second more in your company.

I stopped right outside the metal gate, blinking for the sun was dazzling me.

Four platoons of soldiers were surrounding me from all sides, their weapons trained on me.

I looked around.

They’d taken the iron bender kid away.

“I just wanted to talk to him. I’m done”

“Put your hands on your head ! Now !”, shouted a nervous

A helicopter was looming above the broken heliport.

A cord was launched out of it, yet someone discarded it entirely and jumped out.

“I said hands on your head and kneel on the ground !”

The propeller blades made an infernal noise.

A cloud of sand and dust rose around the jumper.

I spun to face him, and my ears picked up the sound of guns’ safety nervously removed.

Standing in full heroic gear was Katsuki.

*

A/N : Fun fact : If Keigo hadn’t (surprisingly) ended up in prison, I had planned for Shoto to rip his wings out in Part 3

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