Work Text:
Blow Out the Candles When It’s Over
Aizawa was surprised to see All Might at the interrogation, too. He frowned at the special police and asked: “Does the subject require the assistance of my quirk and All Might’s?”
As far as he knew, the subject – Arisu – had a very troublesome quirk, Faith Exertion. In a conversation, she could make people believe her opinions and win them over with considerable loyalty, sometimes for months after the event. Aizawa had thought they had called him over to ensure she wasn’t messing up the interrogation.
“No, sir, the quirk suppression devices are working without a problem. Uh, actually, she hadn’t even tried to activate her quirk since her capture.” The man in the navy uniform said. “We requested your presence because……well, I guess you’ll understand it better if you read her confession.”
So Arisu had given up enough information for it to be called a confession. Willingly, too.
Aizawa couldn’t help but wonder what this girl was up to.
After a quick scan of the file, even his calmness cracked. He fixed his gaze on the police, then All Might, and asked: “Is everything in this file verified?”
The police officer added. “We’ve been tracking down the rest of Shie Hassaikai ever since Overhaul’s capture……every single location, contact information, and villain name she gave is valid. We’re unravelling their drug distribution system as well.”
This was definitely unusual. All Might stood in front of the one-way mirror, thinking. Aizawa followed his gaze.
The girl was shackled to the metal table, in the middle of the interrogation room. She kept completely to herself, silent and exhausted, but Aizawa saw a familiar gleam in her eyes – the kind he saw in some of his students, the strong will to speak, to express something.
“So, why did you request our presence?” All Might asked. He sounded a bit tense. Understandable, as he hadn’t dealt with hands-on crimes since his official retirement.
“According to our past records, Eraser Head is very good at dealing with psychologically complex subjects, or those with a mental quirk.” The police explained. “And All Might, you’re known for communicating with traumatized victims and changing the stance of certain villains. We wondered if you two could get her to talk about herself—who she is, why is she telling us about this, her past actions—everything we need for the trials of Overhaul and his associates.”
All Might examined Arisu again, contemplating: “She wouldn’t tell you anything personal?”
“No.” The police officer said. “That’s why we’re suspecting she’s a victim, instead of an accomplice. Afterall, the other villains’ confessions said nothing about her partaking in missions. Overhaul might not have been using her quirk at all.”
Aizawa nodded. “I’ll go—”
“No, I think we should go in together.” All Might interrupted.
“Why?”
“Just trust me.” Yagi Toshinori insisted, remembering the countless, similar victims he had encountered as All Might. “Shota, I have a feeling about this.”
The girl looked up when Eraser Head and All Might entered the room. She knew about them, especially Eraser Head. His information was hard to come by, but God knows she admired this kind of hero. People who did their part in the world and defended other humans to the best of their abilities……Arisu had always longed for a simple life as such.
Yes, simple. Lives with clear choices were always simple. The complex ones contained struggling souls who wouldn’t give up even knew their choices had been taken away by fate, like her. Her conscience and emotions tortured her, day after day, becoming increasingly complicated and intertwined. Perhaps Overhaul’s collapse was a good thing. This way, even if all she would get was a life sentence in Tartarus, at least her mind would be put to rest.
Aizawa caught it immediately. Behind that urge to speak was a quiet pond of death. The police said Arisu was only nineteen. How young was she when it all started?
“So, tell us about yourself.” Aizawa tossed her the standard approach first, just to observe her reactions.
Surprisingly, instead of remaining silent, Arisu looked up and whispered: “It’s not an exciting story.”
“Well, we need to know if you’re a victim or an accomplice.” All Might said. “We need your identity for you to testify in court, put you in our files, and decide where you go next. Arisu, everybody deserves something.”
Aizawa examined her for a second, then asked: “What’s your relationship with Overhaul?”
With that kind of information, she must have been pretty high up in the hierarchy, possibly related to Overhaul himself.
The girl trembled, but she stopped herself before giving anything away. Arisu looked Aizawa in the eyes and said in a numb, matter-of-fact tone:
“I’m with him.”
All Might knotted his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I belong to him in exchange for things. He sleeps with me, tortures me, and does whatever he wants to me, except using my quirk.”
It was the way she said it. Calm, but desolate, like these words broke her bones, as if she expected them to break theirs, too. Aizawa just had to ask:
“Why?”
That was the match on the cinders.
“Because I needed money!” The girl raised her voice uncontrollably. “Because I needed a lot of money……because everything was fine. I was training to be a hero and enrolled in UA. I fought for everything I had ever wanted. My dreams were coming true, and then……”
Arisu paused, like a dying prisoner seeking final words, she continued with a feverish passion and regret.
“And then suddenly my mom had this twin, these adorable, perfect little lives. My baby sister and brother.” She buried her face in her palms. “They were diagnosed with a rare, inherited disease. Spinal muscular atrophy. Most patients die before they reach the age of six. Best treatment time was immediately after birth and no later than two years old.
“There is a cure, Zolgensma. One shot, and children are permanently saved from this lethal disease. Costs 2.28 billion yens per dose. We needed two doses, five and a half billion.”
All the strengthen drained from her body. She collapsed into her shackles, sobbing and trembling.
“The pharmaceutical company was willing to offer the payment in parts, over the course of five years. But what did that matter? It was still over a billion each year. I could never get that kind of money. Not in two years, not in five, nor seven.
“And then came this man I met. He looked at me with these cold, golden eyes, wearing gloves, a mask, and a long coat in the middle of summer, and offered to pay for the medicine—under the condition that I left with him”
Something flashed through Aizawa’s mind. Arisu was nineteen, so she must have been accepted when she was fifteen. Almost four years ago……that was his last class.
The girl spoke quietly: “I didn’t know he was Overhaul. I didn’t know.”
“You’re Mirasol.” Aizawa suddenly said. “Mirasol Arisu. Ranked number 1 in the UA entrance exam, all three parts: written test, combat, and rescue. You withdrew your application a few weeks before school started. The principle looked for you, but your family insisted that you just disappeared and they knew nothing about where you were.”
Arisu didn’t even raise an eye. “They did. They knew. They were just happy to ignore it, so they could live on with a complete family, with their own children, without admitting that they sacrificed their adopted daughter.”
In his peripheral vision, Yagi Toshinori saw the police pass down this name for a legal check. A moment later, the girl started talking again.
“That was the year he took over Shie Hassaikai. He did something to their former leader, who adopted him and got him off the streets. He had gotten his hands on this Eri girl……and you know the rest.
“My guess is, with all the plans unfolding and pressure pushing against him from all directions, he just wanted a hero-type to torture and humiliate.” After thinking it through countless times, Arisu was able to say this without breaking down. “I stopped him from completely destroying the girl, but that’s it……he said if I interfered further, he’d doubtlessly kill me, and the girl would have no one else to protect her.
“What he spent on me years ago would go to waste, of course, but he had eyes on a much larger world……A couple billion yens is just the operating cost of a medium-large company nowadays, that’s all. When he started distributing the samples from Eri around the globe, the top dogs in each country paid mad prices for it. But he needed countless times more, to mass produce this formula and demobilize an entire super-human society with it.
“Although Yazukas had been forced to lie low in the super human society, they still had centuries of accumulation: even years ago, he could already spend portion of his wealth in exchange for me. Now, with the current drug cartel and all the bases that you guys found, he’s already richer than the top heroes added together. But that’s still not enough.
“Over seven billion humans on earth. Each bullet took about 15 thousand yen to synthesize. Plus transportation fees. Building these factories. Large-scale negotiations. Skilled teams to monitor and run the projects. High end security set up at each site. Guards, secrecy, formulation……
“Overhaul didn’t find Shigaraki for any sum of money. He needed a title that would draw in enough wealth to topple nations.” The girl smiled palely. “But that’s……been prevented now.”
The scale of the plan through everyone involved in the interrogation into silence. The officials moved numbly to duplicate the recordings and compile a document with this information.
One of them mumbled: “Well, that explains why Overhaul couldn’t just make a bunch of gems or cash. An unprecedented large influx of precious material would disrupt the market globally and ruin his plan, even if his quirk could keep up with that amount of production.”
Aizawa didn’t say anything. Yagi Toshinori fixed his eyes on Mirasol Arisu, and asked gently:
“What did he do to you?”
“Oh, I don’t remember—too many things, mostly just killing me and putting me back together with his quirk, dismantling my entire existence with his words, torturing me into giving up things like sympathy and any heroic traits.” She said as casually as possible, but the fear was rooted in her bones. “He saw me as a tangible symbolism of the hero society he hated. Something like that.”
A moment later, she broke down.
“I watched him—I watched him kill people with just one touch. Watched him torture Eri. Watched him in conferences, small meetings, drawing out plans or executing one. He wanted me to be there, and see everything—he wanted me to witness, to know, just so I can go mad and lose everything, like he expects heroes to, when he destroys this world we’ve given everything to protect. And I—I didn’t give in, but I—”
“It’s not your fault.” All Might said.
Arisu sobbed. “I know.”
“No, listen, it’s not your fault.”
Arisu just sobbed. Aizawa sat there, thinking what would happen if he had carried out the search for a student, if he had gone through with the investigation of this suspicious survival. We all think about that sometimes, but it is what it is.
Chisaki Kai looked up. His golden eyes, once cold and collected, was full of delusional madness. He was shrouded in a restriction suit without arms, exhausted, hives all over his skin. Overhaul was gone.
For once, his visitor wasn’t some kind of investigator. Mirasol Arisu stopped in front of the transparent screen. Beside her, Eri held her hand in renewed bravery. After a few months of recovery, the child had grown and changed completely. Midoriya and Mirio had erased the fear Chisaki engraved onto her soul.
Plus, Arisu had always protected her. Even when Chisaki was at his worst, Arisu could always stop him from permanently hurting her, or putting her into a coma, so she’d exist only as a specimen—like he did to her grandfather.
Eri knew better than anyone that in front of Overhaul, Arisu was the only one who could protect her. Not Lemillion, Deku, Sir Nighteye, or all of them teamed up together. Just Arisu. Her heart, personality, and entire existence……that was what held power over Chisaki Kai, the young leader of Shie Hassaikai.
Arisu squeezed Eri’s hand reassuringly: “Don’t worry, Eri. He won’t hurt you anymore.”
Chisaki barely paid attention the Eri. When he set eyes on Arisu, his hives began to disappear, and some consciousness returned to his eyes. His voice was muffled by the restrictive mask over his mouth, making his voice distorted, like a desperate hiss:
“You’re here, Arisu.”
He didn’t know whether or not he put up a smile. A delirious one, maybe.
Eri stared at him. The last fear in her throat disappeared. Finally, she breathed out, and said: “Arisu……I’m not afraid of him anymore.”
Arisu smiled. “Good, Eri.”
One of the guards came in and led Eri out. She suddenly looked like an ordinary, completely happy girl, skipping as the door closed behind her. But Arisu knew she still needed some time alone with this man.
Neither of them said anything. Chisaki was thinking. All his plans and regrets had faded from him, along with all his power and abilities. Whether he wanted or not, he had accepted reality. But when he saw Mirasol Arisu, when he spotted her pale, delicate expression, the one he had put on her, he could no longer remember anything else.
Suddenly, he let out a psychotic, airy laugh.
“I changed you, haven’t I? Completely, and forever—like you’ve changed me.”
And Arisu, she didn’t move or deny it because she knew. She knew it was true. Her life was torn apart, not just by her experience, but also by the everlasting effects of her experience, of what Overhaul did to her.
Like Chisaki Kai, Mirasol Arisu was done for. As he had wished. Even though he had lost everything else, he still had control over her, still changed her fundamentally. Even if he had lost the world.
“I testified in court.” Arisu said. “There were so many charges against you. You and your inferiors. They’ve all been captured, and Shigaraki Tomura is not far off. Soon they would get all of you, and this world would be a slightly better place. I hope.”
“What about you, then? Arisu—what are you going to do with yourself?”
“They’ve named me a victim instead of your accomplice. But Chisaki—you’re right. I can’t go back now. Remember that child you killed in front of me? You used your quirk on him until he went into shock from the pain. Then you fixed him and did it again. You didn’t kill him until he was a lifeless, breathing thing. And that’s—that’s what I think about every time I see children on the streets.
“I wake up in the middle of the night, afraid like hell that you’d be beside me. I zone out when I catch sight of a butter knife, noticing how similar they were to the scalpel you wielded on Eri. I walk past buildings and thought about that time you pushed me off a roof, because you liked how somebody's bone broke and blood splattered, how they would stare at you from below and how you'd fix them just before they die. Whenever I talk to people with even a hint of you in them, I want to turn around and run.
“Most days it's difficult to think about staying alive. It's a lot of effort. Maybe I’ll get over it. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life in a mental hospital. I’ll never see my family or try to get my life on track - I'll never be a hero - because you’re right, these things are impossible now.
“But I’m not going back to you, Chisaki Kai. I won’t. I’ll never give into your words.”
With that, Arisu stood up and got ready to leave, her eyes cold and smooth like glass. Chisaki watched her from his abyss, and when her hands were on the door, he shouted:
“Arisu, I’d be there your entire existence, even in the depth of hell!”
Without turning around, Arisu said calmly: “No, Overhaul. You burn alone. I’m going to heaven.”
It isn’t my fault, she thought, shutting the door behind her.