Katsuki looked grave, his eyes going from Shoto who, knives in hand, was looking at him, puzzled, to the squad of nervous soldiers hungry for blood.

“Everybody calms down, alright ? Put your guns down”

The captain shook his weapon vigorously toward Shoto. Sweat was rolling between his brows, down the bridge of his nose, and puddling on his flaring nostrils.

“I said put your fucking hands on your head !”

Shoto didn’t move, and Katsuki swallowed nervously.

The island was a wreck as if someone had dropped a bomb right in the middle.

From the helicopter, he’d seen wounded soldiers dragged to boats and he’d felt as if he were in a war zone.

“Neutralize him”

Each time someone spoke through the earring it felt as if his whole cheek was pulsating. Shoto perked up. He’d heard the order, too.

“There’s no need to get violent”, said Katsuki, and he wasn’t sure who he was addressing.

The air was thick with tension; if any of them breathed the wrong way, it could go wrong.

He was sixteen : why the fuck did they send him ?

Katsuki tentatively moved forward.

Pebbles cracked under his shoe, breaking the heavy silence.

Some of the soldiers jolted up. The captain didn’t tell him to back off.

Facing them, Katsuki raised his hands in a placating manner and slowly walked until he was between both sides.

“What are you doing ? You are to neutralize him !”

Katsuki slowly raised his hand to his ear – as to not unnerve anyone more than they all were already - and threw the device aside.

His heart was beating so fast he could feel it pulsing on his skin.

He was facing the soldiers, his back to Shoto in a protective gesture.

Miles away, the man in charge of giving Katsuki his orders was screaming helplessly into his microphone.

“Do not turn your back to him ! You are to neutralize-”

Fingers pressed a large button, cutting down the communication.

The sitting soldier raised nervous eyes to his superior officer who, leaning against the table, hands on either side of it, was looking at the screen.

He was deadly still, his skin so white he looked bloodless.

“All Might hasn’t given us someone that could face Todoroki”, said Shirai, a slow, chilling realization lighting up his eyes. “He’s given him an ally”

“There’s no need to fight”

Calmly – and with a confidence he was only feigning – Katsuki walked to the captain and put his hand on the barrel.

Their gazes met – falsely reassuring and jittery.

Katsuki nodded, and slowly pushed the barrel down.

“There is no need to fight”

A ray of sunshine hit Katsuki’s back head and a golden glow lit up his face.

The soldiers looked at their captain, then they slowly lowered their weapons.

Katsuki looked them all in the eye and swiftly turned around.

Katsuki stopped in front of Shoto.

“Do you trust me ?”

Shoto’s eyes went from Katsuki to the soldiers lined up behind him, ready to pounce at the slightest threatening gesture.

Slowly, Shoto nodded.

Katsuki leaned forward and sneakily put his hand in Shoto’s pocket, putting the stolen phone in his pocket.

Under Shoto’s watchful gaze, Katsuki took measured steps back.

“You can arrest him”

Warily, a few soldiers walked forward.

Eyes locked with Shoto, Katsuki nodded.

Shoto’s knives fell on the ground and he kneeled, fingers intertwined behind his head.

They arrested him.

*

There were a few times rare times in his life when Shoto realized he was utterly screwed: and today was one of them.

Sitting in an underground cell, he was chained to a wall like an animal experiment.

They’d handled him roughly and, to be fair, he would’ve done the same.

They’d looked as if they’d wanted to shoot him dead as soon as he got handcuffed.

He didn’t bother asking for a lawyer or trying to defend himself: there were severe punishments when it came to trespassing on military grounds, so trespassing on Tartarus, the forbidden island…

And Shoto had done worse : he’d set off all of the alarm bells, shattered the island, and punched his way until he got to Keigo’s cell.

Keigo refusing to come with him was akin to his brain turning upside down.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

He’d felt so confused, so puzzled, that he’d barely been aware of his surroundings.

Even if Katsuki hadn’t come, he’d have let them take him in.

It was time he stopped waiting for other people – more particularly his Dad – to deal with his messes.

He’d talk to Shirai, do whatever he’d ask of him, and then get out in no time.

If only he’d managed to get Keigo out…

He sighed, and the metallic ring surrounding his head hit the wall when he tried to lean against it.

“If you try to even flare your Quirk”, they’d said. “This device here will blow your brains off”

Shoto had felt weirdly challenged and had nearly wanted to try on the spot to see what would happen.

He closed his eyes, focusing on the people he felt buzzing around him.

A few levels above was a monitor room.

Shoto was the first prisoner in this temporary base. Soon would come Tartarus’ prisoners, for they had to build back the island and needed to detain them somewhere else in the meantime.

“He’s unstable”

Yet they only managed to imprison him only because he let them do so.

The prison’s director nodded, lips pursed.

He was on the verge of speaking but was abruptly cut off :

“If he was”, drawled Katsuki, slightly defiant. “He would’ve fought me right when I landed”

Shirai didn’t spare him a glance.

How sweet it would be to bring All Might back from his island and choke him for the mess he’d put them in.

“I want him monitored closely”, said Shirai. “Double the amount of prison warden”

“Yes sir”

They talked logistics – how to rehabilitate the place as soon as possible for the other prisoners' arrival – and Katsuki didn’t care enough to listen.

He stood up.

“I need to pee”

None of them cared.

On his way out, someone nice enough smiled at him and told him where was the bathroom.

He sat, pant on, on the toilet then took out Shoto’s phone : locked.

Katsuki knew the combination by heart: Shoto had never bothered much to hide it.

Katsuki went into his contacts – who could be counted on one hand – and stopped the one labeled Dad.

He dialed it.

*

There was so much boredom that one could endure, and Shoto had reached his limit.

He’d started doing as many push-ups, jumping jacks, crunches as he could, trying to reach a thousand for each.

The good thing was, that he didn’t have to move any furniture: the room was as bare as it could be.

Maybe they were scared he’d manage to use the leg of his bed as a weapon and murder them all.

The idea made him smile.

Although he was dressed in the common orange prisoner uniform, he’d still managed to retain his face mask.

If they’d tried to take it away, he would’ve fought tooth and nails.

He marveled at the way they’d handled him.

They hadn’t taken his mugshot and they’d blindfolded him so he could not map the place.

He knew they were on the outskirts of Tokyo, in what was probably a disaffected military b-

The hair on the back of his neck shot up. He froze in the middle of his push-up, torso close to the ground.

His eyes locked with Jin Woo who was towering over him.

“Glad to see you know how to occupy your time”

His voice was sharp.

Slightly sweating, Shoto rose.

“I didn’t expect to see you”

There was a wary spark in his gaze, a hidden hostility in his oil-slick eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“Why didn’t you ? I’m their best option when it comes to keeping you locked in”

Jin Woo cocked his head and suddenly the room seemed darker, the light dimmer.

Shoto hated that he was agreeing with him.

From all the people he’d faced, he and All for One were the only ones to have made the impression that they could win against him.

Yet Jin Woo’s Quirk had this peculiar uncanny undertone that unsettled Shoto.

Suddenly Shoto couldn’t tell if he was draped in shadows or if it was just the ambient darkness that made him look like he made one with the shadows.

Shoto knew it was done on purpose : they wanted him to know that between one breath and the next, Jin Woo could kill him.

Jin Woo surveyed the decrepit with something akin to mock amusement.

“Interesting place”

“Why are you here ?”

His carefully pleasant smile vanished, and suddenly he was all businesslike.

“Or we can start with that”

He waved his hand and a table made from shadows appeared in the middle of this cramped up room.

He took place on one chair and invited me to do the same.

Shoto briefly hesitated before sitting.

“I’ll ask you a few questions and I’ll need you to answer properly : do not try lying, we have someone who will be able to tell if you do”

He nodded.

“How did you find Tartarus ?”

It was an open secret: there were blogs and YouTube conspiracy videos about it, with blurry pictures taken from miles away.

“Everyone knows where it is. I just had to go to the only restricted Japanese island to find it”

“How did you get to it ?”

There was no point lying about something they already knew.

“I ran”

“You ran ?”

“On the water”, Shoto explained. “I ran on the water”

Jin Woo looked at me blankly, with a look that said ‘Of course’.

“Did you receive help of any sort ?”

“No”

“Has anyone furnished you information about the layout of the place or the soldiers monitoring it ?”

He’d bulldozed my way in ; there couldn’t be better proof of not receiving help.

“No”

“Why did you breach into Tartarus ?”

“I wanted to see Keigo”, I said, then corrected quickly “Hawks, I mean”

“Why ?”

“I knew Shirai or whoever was in charge wouldn’t let me see him. I had to find him by myself”

“I mean, why was it so important for you to see him ?”, Jin Woo clarified.

He cleared his throat.

He knew it was not the moment to show that he was affected by the situation, yet he couldn’t help it.

“I thought they’d done the same to him as they did to…. I needed to confirm for myself that he was alive”

“Did you intend on getting Hawks out of prison ?”

Shoto pursed his lips, trying to find a way to word it to make it sound less incriminating.

“I wanted to know if he was alright. He said I shouldn’t have come, and that I had to leave him alone”

Jin Woo insisted.

“I asked you if you intended to get him out of prison”

“… he said he deserved to be here and atone for what he’d done”

He asked a few more questions about how many people Shoto had fought, what he'd done to the ‘captain’ - the iron bender kid – of Tartarus (question her refused to answer), and worded previous questions differently to see if he'd change his answers.

“When Hero Ground Zero landed”, Jin Woo said. “Why didn’t you fight him ?”

“He’s my friend”, Shoto said as if it explained everything, and it kind of did

Jin Woo quirked a brow.

“Does it mean you don’t fight your friends ?”

He had few enough people who mattered to waste his time fighting with them foolishly.

“I had no reason to fight Katsuki. He was merely doing what he had been told to do”

Jin Woo seemed to consider before standing up ; Shoto did as well.

The furniture disappeared, turning to ink before dissolving in the stirring shadows.

“When can I get out ?”

He looked bemused.

“I beg your pardon ?”

“I just needed to see Keigo”, Shoto explained. “No one was hurt”

“Our reports beg to differ”

“Listen”, he insisted. “We both know I’m not going to stay here for long. Tell me what I have to do-”

“Do you know why I wasn’t the one they sent first when you breached the prison ?”

There was a vein throbbing on his neck, a coldness in his eyes that hadn’t been there previously, and suddenly Shoto realized that his business-like act had been merely that – an act.

“I was out of the country”, he said coldly. “Be sure of one thing : if I hadn’t, I would’ve killed you then and there”

Shadows were stirring on his temples, looking as if they wanted to spread all over his face.

Shoto's chakra was churning in his guts.

Sung Jin Woo, late twenties, Quirk : Shadow manipulation-

“You trespassed onto some on a no-access zone, you fought soldiers, you destroyed military grounds”

“You are a terrorist, Shoto”

The word – more than the venom with which he spit it – cut him deep.

He may not have been the greatest person on earth but he was far from being the worst, right ?

Right ?

“The only reason you’re alive is because your friend refused to follow our orders”

Guilt crept onto him and he wished Jin Woo would just shut up so he didn’t have to think about that kind of consequences Katsuki would face.

He was not yet as powerful or as connected as All Might ; he couldn’t afford to make enemies for him.

Sung Jin Woo, late twenties, Quirk : Shadow manipulation-

“What value you thought you had as a possible asset is now null and void. Tomorrow morning you’ll be trialed in court martial for what you’ve done”

- one day we’ll fight, and only one of us will get out alive.

*

A/N :

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