Chapter Text
It’s interesting because in that moment, I didn’t feel anything but rage
The last thing she remembered was running through the darkest cell, escaping from a hero. Well… actually, he wasn’t just a hero, he was the hero. The number one hero in the world, All Might’s successor, the one and only hero that she knew something about. Not because of her doing of course, she hadn’t seen the light of the day for a long time now, but her distant cold-hearted guards had and they sure talked about him:
—Have you heard about Deku, rookie?
—No sir, I don’t know what you are talking about, sir.
—Oh yes…, of course you don’t know! Low level personal like you do not have access to outside! Of course, you haven't heard the biggest news since All Might arrived!
—You are correct…, sir…
—Well… now that I think about it, I might be wrong… I’m sure that your mates know about this, it’s being a huge new, they just won’t tell you! Only an idiot like you could have miss this!
—…
—It’s said: yes sir!
—Yes Sir!
—What am I going to do with you… Agh… Listen to me, Deku is the new number one hero, he was All Might apprentice and I have to admit it, he is one of a kind… He is as powerful or even more than his master. With him on our side, the few villains that are free will be here soon.
—That’s what these animals deserve, a man that put them on their place: here, with all the other things that don’t have a way.
—Those politics can say whatever they want, rookie. But I have spent my life working in this hole and I know that all that gets send to Tartarus must stay inside Tartarus.
—Yes sir.
—Yes, and by the way, for your lack of a proper answer, you’ll be punished with feeding the crazy one.
—But sir, she-!
—You dare to reply?! Now you are going to be feeding the crazy-one until I have forgotten this incident! Got it?!
—Yes… Sir…
At the time she heard of him, she didn’t think it through she couldn’t think at all, it was a miracle that she got to remember any interaction at all. But, after taking a glance of those sorts of green rays made of pure energy that where brighten him till the point that she could see him in the darkest room in Tartarus anyone could say that he was strong. After all, his straight as a steel guard wouldn’t have praised him for nothing, it had to be a fact.
How could she fight over a man that was praised by someone she had lost to.
So, she followed her instincts:
After all, heroes are liars.
Until something kept her from running.
—What!?
The villainess screamed just before crashing into some sort of mass. She tried to get out of it, as it was keeping her from escaping from the most dangerous hero in the world, but she couldn’t. The sliminess and sticky form of the mass had rooted onto her body; she tried to kick, scratch and even bite it, but nothing seemed to throw the mass off her.
Her attempts only made things worse.
The mass grew stronger with every new desperate movement that she made, if the first sensations she had were “being sticked to something”, the next ones were “being carried inside something”. Her insistence on breaking free and her passion on trying to escape, made the feeling even worse; till the point where she stopped seeing and hearing the hero who was chasing her.
—¿¡!?
Feeling the lack of an exit, she started panicking and, in the most desperate move, she tried to scream, but neither opening her mouth was an option right then. She lacked of vision and hearing, so the only thing she could do was feel the touch of that viscosity that was pressing her non-stop. And with every second that pressing feeling was getting stronger.
At this point she wouldn’t get out of there alive.
The growing increase of endless slimes surrounding her was replacing the little oxygen she needed to breath and with every second that passed by, the weakest she felt. The lack of air made her lungs burnt for a drag, but not even this unhuman feeling, not even the sight of death was able to kept her from thinking about the freedom she so longed for.
I just wanted to get out of here.
Suddenly, the viscosity that surrounded her disappeared and was replaced by something harder than rock itself. The absence of slime got her the chance to breath but came with an expensive price; an excessive amount of pain. Those sorts of rocks were crashing into her body and they were probably marking her as she moved in an unknown direction; the pain was unbearable.
A lot of time has happened since she felt this amount of physical pain.
But the psychological damage that came with it wasn’t anything new.
It’s just a way to remember where she really was and how she got there.
A lot has been said about Tartarus, she wasn’t clueless of the rumours surrounding the most famous prison known. She knew what everyone knew; “Tartarus, home of the worst people in Japan”, “That place in the middle of the sea which had the better security that existed”, but nothing could have prepared her from what really was Tartarus to an inmate.
The truth was that, she didn’t remember a lot about her arrival. The last thing she remember about the incident was being kidnapped arrested and tased, then the next thing that crossed her mind was the image of a place that had been in her life for too much time; she remembered waking up at “her little white cell”. There weren’t any explanations neither instruction, the only thing she has as a proof of where she could be was the orange inmate uniform that she was wearing.
What happened to her school uniform? Who put these clothes on her?
She had some notions of where she might have ended up, as she remembered what happened before being kidnapped, he was dead, but she couldn’t admit it, she wasn’t capable to think about being locked up in there, not after what they said to her. She wasn’t ready to accept what would be her new life, so she did the only thing that could comfort her.
She tried to scream seek for a hero, someone who could rescue her answers.
But none of her screams calls were taken seriously heard.
It wasn't until her unknown but scheduled time had passed, that she received an “answer”.
«Click» The sound of a key unlocking what she thought could be a deadbolt filled her mind and stopped the unceasing calls the prisoner had been shouting out loud. Her feline yellow eyes focused on the only non-white element in her cell, a metallic door that was the only thing between the sound and the girl that was trapped in there.
The sound came from afar, so being her able to do so, she ran to the door aiming to hear that peculiar sound better than she did before. The fourteen-year-old desperately tried to get something anything from the noise that had cleared the alarming silence which accompanied her pleas, but neither with that she was able to hear any human like noises.
There wasn’t a noise that could recall her from the hero she heard before.
But even with that, she had to believe that someone was there, that her supposes were wronged, that they were going to keep their promises. She wanted to believe in their words, she wanted them to be true, she wanted to be wrong because if she was then she would be free again. So, she asked again.
—Please! What’s happening! Where am I!? What’s this?! —She screamed at the door when suddenly a compartment opened; It was too little for her to fit under, only her hands could fit in it, so as she didn’t have an answer, she tried to grab whatever she could hoping it had an answer. After all, she was desperate to know where she was and what was happening.
But the only thing she got for crossing an unknown limit was a «stomp» that was followed by a «kick» that threw her wounded hands into her cell.
—This is food, eat it or die. There’s no place in Tartarus for whiners. —A harsh deep voice replied to her while pushing a tray full of mush inside her cage. His reply wasn’t a proper answer, she was still confused at the situationship, but soon enough she would learn that in Tartarus you are always confused but it resolved her doubts.
She was imprisoned in Tartarus, the worse place in earth.
She was a villain that was caught by heroes.
Heroes who were liars.
That cruel guard, might have hurt her directly by crushing her stupid’s hopes kicking and stomping her right hand, but that pain wasn’t comparable with the one caused by those heroes lies. No physical pain could ever be worse than being left alone inside of four walls, with the ability of doing whatever she wanted but with nothing to do.
No beating, no torturing could be worse than seeing time pass without knowing how much time had passed.
No stabbing, no kidnapping could be worse than knowing how she was slowly fading away because they weren’t feeding her right enough. Nothing couldn’t be worse than the tasteless mush she was eating.
No killing, no remorse was enough to stop the pain of knowing how close she was to live life as she wanted.
She could have had it all, but they took her dreams away.
They took it from her; her dreams, her life and her future. But that wasn’t enough; they hadn’t taken everything. She still had something left: the same fury that had awoken her from a dream that had lasted more than ten years. She was still the young girl who had defied the mask of someone she was not. They had taken so much from her, but not her perseverance.
The next time he came to feed her, the villain didn’t react to the sound of that little key opening the compartment in which the mush was given to her— no, she waited, cautious and prepared, because she knew he wouldn’t be able to anticipate her plan. And so it was, it wasn’t until his calloused hands placed the mush that she began her outburst.
As if it were a cat, she pounced on her prey. Her hands, whose nails were so sharp they looked like claws, craved into that haughty guard bare skin— he probably thought he didn’t need protection to feed her, not after that warning he gave her the first time she tried something. But he was wrong, because this would be only the first glance of who would be remembered among all the guards at her plant as the crazy-one.
They all got to remember her first desperate movement, one of those childish and rebellious movements that wouldn’t give her a chance to escape, for being uncomprehensible— why would someone risk everything for just a scratch?
Why? When her attempts only made things worse.
…
When she woke up, the villain couldn’t remember how she fell sleep, the last thing she remember was her attack, but this time, she didn’t need to remember to knew what had happen when she was in time-out. She could see the consequences of her acts without having to think about it, because they were there: a pair of chains are covering her wrist and keeping her restricted enough to not reach the metallic door in which the heroes passed her food.
So, they took her mobility too. Now she was sentenced to walk through her “freely movement” space.
And?
She was dangerous enough for them to restrict her, they needed to take things from her to keep her trapped, they needed to lower her chances of success.
They feared her for still wanting to be free.
She writhed against the chains non-stop, indirectly creating the only visible scars that Tartarus would leave on her— ones made of her attempts of reaching out of her “freely movement” space. Her skin reddened and marked after the constant friction of a metal that went from being tense to being relaxed in a matter of seconds causing her pain and something else.
The smell of blood mixing with metal filled his nostrils.
She wanted blood.
So, she took it.
She might have been chained to the wall, but that didn’t stop her from moving her arms to her mouth to try and lick the blood that was under the tied chains. She tried to lick the zone, but the chain’s grip was too tight so she couldn’t try her own dripping blood. Desperate by the captivating smell, the villain bit her skin near the chains and drank her own blood.
…
When she woke up, the villain still couldn’t remember how she fell sleep, the last thing she remember was her self-harming, but the thing she could see was how the arm that she just bit was completely wounded and she also could see how where she used to see her nose, now she saw the metal outline of a small cage that prevented her from putting anything in his mouth.
They muzzled her.
Firstly, they put an inmate uniform on her.
Then they chained her.
And now a ridiculing muzzle.
Prisoner
Cautive
And beast.
Nothing remained of the young woman from his memories outside her cell. The woman surrounded by white was a villain like any other within the terrible prison of Tartarus. What could be more painful than that? What could be worse than being relegated to be nothing more than a beast? With nothing to do because she was not allowed to do anything, because if she did, she could get too far away.
Well, she could do some things.
Hear their conversations, sometimes… Just when her body wasn’t desperately asking for a basic nutrient that she needed on her diet but they would never give her. Normally she just acted following her primal instincts, she could recognize blood smell and the usual sounds that her enemies, people that didn’t do anything for her, that were meant to save her, her guards made while passing by her cell.
What were those days if not torture.
Maybe this was all a trial.
Maybe this trap was part of the real trap, maybe this was just another way of torturing her, they were trying to evaluate what she would do if she got the “chance” to escape. If that’s true then she failed but, who can blame her? Who wouldn’t like to escape her prison? Who would want to live the way she did? No punishment ever would be enough to dissuade her from her reward she got if she made it out.
Freedom, being out of Tartarus, the chance of living her life as she wanted.
She didn’t felt regret, but she also couldn’t stop asking herself; how did I ended out here?
Then she fell down.
—Auch! Wait, am I alive? —The villainess inspected herself in search of any proof that could tell her that the pain she just felt in such desperate way, and she herself, was real. Something that could prove that she really went out of that, mass? Which had trapped her, when she realised that yes, she could watch herself, she could see. The light was back and it was really different to that radioactive white that had brighten most of her life.
But light wasn’t the only thing that was different from all she had ever known.
The first thing was her body, in which there were expected to be marks of rubbing, some wounds or any bruises because all the pain she just had suffer, but there wasn’t anything at all. Her skin, even though being stained in dry blood from the things that happened while running out, was completely exactly as before, there wasn’t a thing that could prove her experience.
The second thing was the place she was stepping on; her logic was telling her that she was still trapped in her prison, but her reality wasn’t matching her thoughts. The place she was brought into by the mass was extremely different from Tartarus. The villainess was stepping in a pink walled cavern.
The third thing was the smell; even if there weren’t any trace of vegetation, a nostalgic and intense smell of grass was filling the room, the smell seemed to came from the same place at the light.
—Oh shit, where am I? — She spoke to herself while she was getting out of the ground, she tried to rememorise what had happened; Deku, the number one hero, tried to convince her from moving, probably to capture her easily or to be the good one, but while trying to escape from him resist him she ended crashing into whatever that mass was and she was bring into this.
Anyone could say that while trying to be free she had trapped herself.
Again.
—Agh, damn it!!
No! She wasn’t about to accept her new reality, so she ran over the closer wall, the one she supposed she came from, and she tried everything she could to break her; she tried to kick, scratch and even bite it, but nothing of that sliminess surface was left. What had been rubbery was now as hard as diamond, it was so tough that none of her trials marked the wall.
She was completely trapped.
It’s over, isn’t it?
Frustrated and tired from such and incredible and strange experience. the villainess fell down to the floor again, her back resting over the wall she tried to punch just a minute ago, but her mind was far away of there. She was staring at the source of light, the only one that brighten all the cavern, a light that came from far away that was lost in the distance.
Maybe it was as lost as her.
She really wanted to escape and maybe she did, she isn’t in the same Tartarus as before, but she was still trapped and with nothing to eat or do, she was certainly about to die.
Wasn’t that something that she once wished for.
A way out, dying is another way to escape after all.
Once upon a time, playing and taking care of her hair was a way to feel better, to escape.
As she tried to forget her thoughts, she began untangling her hair, but the only thing she could think now was hating how she looked, how they made her look, first straight then uneven… her hair had always been a mess. She remembered talking to herself in the cell, admitting that it was the less of her problems, but she knew that deep inside of her, it hurt, it hurt like the stone or the slime did, but she never had time to repair it.
And when she did, she wasn’t aware of that kind of wishes.
As she brushed her hair, her hands got dirtier— her hair was also full of dry blood, but at least she could make it look a little better. Well, at least she got to die without regrets; she had blood for the last time, she doesn’t remember how it tasted like though, but at least everything was clear again. Sadly, it won’t last, if she wanted to die out of natural reasons she’d have to wait until fainting because of hunger.
She could kill her—
I can’t give up just now.
No.
This was not the end.
She knew that.
There was one thing left to do, explore the cave.
Maybe there was something deep inside, maybe there’s hope, maybe—
The light.
It had to come from somewhere; it had to be the solution. If it’s a trap they won’t let her die, they never do, it’s not too late.
There were hope in her thoughts, there were strength in her knees when she got up, and there was determination in her eyes when she began walking to the light’s source. The cave was huge, but after all it was like any other room— they all have four walls, and if there’s a light there’s a possible hole to dig. That’s something that has to be true it needed to be true.
Walking couldn’t be a problem. After all, the bruises she felt down on her skin were nothing but a memory, something she could never prove. After all she wasn’t injured and she had eaten recently, so theoretically, she had to be energetic, but she wasn’t. Every step was harder than the last one and when she finally reached out the light, she felt breathless.
And also, hopeless.
Right in front of her it wasn’t anything remotely similar to an exit, the light which enlighten all the cavern didn’t come from elsewhere than the own cavern. More precisely, it came from the centre of the cavern; far away from any of its walls, and connected to the floor by some sort of pink bar there was the weirdest lamp she had ever seen in her life.
It didn’t look like a lamp at all. If it wasn’t for the light that came out of it, she could never guess that was a lamp. It was a cubical lilac sort of cage-thing that vibrated and shined non-stop. Even the light it cast was weird; strong enough to let her see all the place but not too strong to dazzle her, so she could watch directly to the strange cage she walked into.
More things could be said about the cage appearance— How it moved, like it was a liquid, some sort of little ocean which had his own little waves and alterations. How strange looked, like a box that had something in it that were the real light. And how it was the only non-pink thing inside the cavern, but that wasn’t what got her interest from it.
The key was how the light’s source was a cage and not a way out.
It was all ove-
—¡DIE! —
«BOOM»
An unexpected rumble shook the cavern and everything within. The walls shook, the beginning of some cracks formed marking slightly the previously smooth surface and the ground trembled, shaking all that was inside it, even the villain herself: it was an earthquake. An earthquake so strong that the impenetrable walls that made the cavern, those that seemed to be made of diamond, tore.
«Crack, crack, crack» The cracks rapidly increased, growing to be huge separations of pink terrain, that were tearing apart a wall that had been stood so proudly and shattering it. With each passing second, each crack grew larger, to the point of converging one with each other and to the point of painting every single corner of the wall within view.
«BOOM»
Another rumble, even louder and stronger than the first, was the final blow to the cavern. The unpleasant sound was accompanied by the final collapse of the cavern walls, which plummeted to the ground, transforming from impenetrable walls into mere rubble and dust. The dust momentarily blinded a terrified villain, who wished the cloud of smoke had lasted a bit longer.
For, although it was the first time she could see it, what it concealed was stickily familiar.
If the rumble had been able to detonate such a powerful wall, how couldn’t it affect to a material as malleable as that mass was? A wave of pink goo shot out from where the walls had once been and headed toward her position. There was no way out, no solution. Everything around her was crumbling, the ground was shaking more and more, and the appearance of the mass only distracted her from her desperate attempt to stay on her feet.
So, she felt into the cage while the mass trapped her again.
The last thing she saw was a violet like pink sort of mass, fading into her. She had been trapped inside the weirdest cavern, one that was inside of the deathliest prison ever made. She had been trying to find a way out, but nothing worked. When everything fell apart, a massive earthquake took over the cave and destroyed the walls that kept her trapped.
But when she thought that she might have the chance to escape, the mass appeared again.
This time, she wasn’t screaming.
She tried to get out of it, as she was trying to escape from her prison, but she couldn’t. The familiar sliminess form of the mass was rooted onto her body; she tried to kick, scratch and even bite it, but nothing seemed to work: it only got worse. Every movement that she did just make her feel more trapped, so she stopped.
Like the first time, she lacked of vision and hearing, so the only thing she could do was feel the touch of that viscosity that was pressing her no stop. A pressure that was keeping her from breathing. It was the same experience all over again; she felt how the lack of air was debilitating her, she felt how the viscosity moved with desperation and she knew she was going to die.
And now for real.
She watched her life past in front of her eyes.
She watched herself growing up— All those suppression’s days, she watched how therapist told her how she had to change, she watch herself trying to do so and loosing herself in the process.
She watched herself falling into her wishes— Killing her crush, drinking his blood until he died, until she was satisfied.
She watched herself being trapped by heroes after killing him.
She watched herself being sent to Tartarus for his murder.
And, after all those small memories, what she watched was her routine as a prisoner, the one she was force to follow, over and over again for all of those years.
All of her memories where unpleasant, but that was something she knew beforehand.
What sadden her was how few memories she had.
I just want to live.
The only evidence that he was the cause after the catastrophe that everyone in the observation zone had witnessed was his body position. Deku, the number one hero, was in a guard position, his green eyes glowing in a bright emerald tone, and his right arm was fully extended, clearly revealing his clenched fist.
In an attack that had required all of his strength, Deku was the only person who had come in contact with the thing and lived to tell the tale. The mass was no match for the energy of his quirk; the movement alone of his arm's charge had caused an explosion that had staggered it. The blow was merely the fulfillment of a sentence that had been proclaimed at the moment that thing had taken a villain's life.
How did it react?
It didn't, as soon as Deku made his smash the constant movement that the creature had shown ceased and lifeless chunks of the creature splattered in all directions, if before the thing was able to cover more than half of the surface of its cell now there was nothing left. His smash had been so powerful that the cell itself was affected by the hero's rage.
Every alarm and emergency light went on, letting everyone clearly see the hero’s figure and even the workers who had already taken its parameters into account to make some predictions were surprised to find they hadn't been able to predict the power they had witnessed. The right hook was so powerful that it caused a gust of wind and the resulting cloud of smoke.
There couldn’t been anything left of the monster, and yet Deku did not abandon his fighting stance.
His lack of vision didn't last long; the wind he'd created blew away the layer of smoke that was preventing him from being certain that he had accomplished his objective. When the smoke cleared, he could see lifeless pink stains accumulating on the surrounding walls and the floor itself. Everything seemed fine until he looked again at where most of his body should had been.
A little lump of pink mass was still moving, it was nothing compared to the beast he had just defeated, but it was at least the average height of a human being.
It was surprising that it was still alive, but Deku hadn't come to praise a human-killing monster.
Deku came to do his job as a hero.
Wasting no time, the green-haired young man added his left arm to the mix and fiercely launched a second punch of equal intensity into the air near the creature. His movement caused another crash, the air slashed in its wake and generated even more wind, but that didn't stop him. After the second punch came a third, and then a fourth.
And a fifth and a sixth.
One after another, his arms moved with indescribable harmony, while he demonstrated the power of his body.
The sounds of each smash overlapped each other and the succession of punches was creating a cloud of smoke even bigger than the one that had hidden the monster.
If there was anything left of that thing before, it was already dead.
The large room had been a charged place, the tension was palpable when Deku had first stepped into what was a makeshift cage, created in this room to contain the monster, but now none of that pressure remained. The place was strangely quiet, considering the alarms were still beeping, and peaceful, even though it was filled with pink chunks of the thing.
Even with that, Deku didn't get complacent. He's an experienced hero who has captured a large portion of the current population of Tartarus. Being complacent wasn't an option. If he had gotten complacent after the first smash, perhaps the monster could have counterattacked. That's why he continued throwing punches one after another, even though he knew that after the second, nothing could remain.
This time, it was also the wind that carried the smoke away.
And when he finally saw the area where the monster had once been, he could confirm exactly that: nothing remained of it.
Once his body processed what his eyes were seeing, the young man let his guard down. He knew he's done his job, but he also knew he's failed. His hesitation, his eagerness to help, has resulted in the loss of a life, and while the responsibility that comes with death is something that accompanies any hero's life, Deku can't let it go.
I’m sorry
So, he silently apologized in memory of the nameless villain and promised her that her sacrifice was not in vain.
Because the monster was dead.
Having done what any hero would do in his situation, Deku prepared to head toward the cell exit, but as he took a step, he felt something. Without letting his mind process what this strange sensation was or compare it to other times he's had this kind of intuition; the young hero returned to his guard position and looked toward the place he knew the problem were.
A silhouette.
A pink silhouette.
A pink silhouette hanging from the ceiling.
A pink silhouette hanging from the ceiling, upside down, with a clear human shape, it was not only the size of a human, but rather it presented what could be an attempt at a torso, head, arms and legs, but it moved and vibrates in the same way, if not more intensely, and in a more controlled manner, than the pink monster did.
It had no eyes.
It had no form beyond the odd limbs it displayed.
But somehow, Deku felt it’s looking at him.
And while everything pointed to it being a remnant of the pink monster that had somehow managed to survive the smashes, something didn’t add up, because it felt like it was a different entity.
It looked human.
In some sort of messy way.
But it did.
—What are you?
Deku asked, confused by what he was seeing, but also ready to attack and put an end to what for everyone else was screaming loudly that it was the pink monster, but that he didn’t feel it is. In response, the entity didn’t speak, but it did move more around the face till the point where two large ovals suddenly formed, seemingly shaped like a leaf or an almond that glowed with a radioactive yellow color.
The young man quickly realized that, judging by the position and shape of those ovals, they must be eyes.
The entity didn’t respond, nor did it move and the situation was getting more tense. Deku couldn’t communicate with the observation zone because all the nets mounted inside the cell broke after the smashes. So, he didn’t know if it's still the monster or another villain, or what to do. Then he remembered the young girl killed by the creature, who at first glance must be the entity itself.
So, he prepared to attack—
Suddenly, what must be the entity's head began to vibrate more, the yellow eyes disappeared from its face, and without any warning, pieces of mass peeled away from the head, revealing a real human face, from which chunks and chunks of mass peeled away until it was completely clean and visible. The person behind the mask was completely recognizable.
—Himiko Toga —She replied.