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“Mr Todoroki, you need to answer my question,” the police officer says. Or maybe she’s a psychiatrist, possibly even a lawyer. He isn’t sure. “What were you doing with the League of Villains? And don’t tell me you were kidnapped. The pros found you playing Mario Kart.”
A moment of silence, a silence so thick a sword would shatter before making a slice in it.
“Tell me, have you ever been so in love,” Natsuo asks, “that you’d be willing to risk everything?”
He keeps his words slow, his tone even.
“I know firsthand what it’s like to dance with the devil,” he continues. “He takes and he takes and he takes until he can’t take anymore. Until there’s nothing left to take.”
“Mr Todoroki, you’re not making any sense,” the woman across from him tries. “You were— no, you still are— a medical student on track to become a doctor. Why would you throw that away?”
“I suppose it’s my fault.” Natsuo ignores her entirely, as if her words are just background noise to his inane babbling. “I kept giving. Whatever he tried to take, I would give more. I would give and give and give until there was nothing left to give.”
“I am trying to help you out here,” the woman says. “You could potentially be facing prison time for acts of treason. The sooner you answer me, the sooner we can come up with a case for you.”
“And you know what?” Natsuo asks, still seemingly in his own little world. “I would do it all over again.”
“Do what over again?” The woman realizes that her best bet is to play along with whatever this is. Perhaps, should this carry out long enough, they could plead insanity. He would be confined to a mental hospital for some time, but at least it wouldn’t be Tartarus.
“Dance with the devil.” His eyes flick over to her, finally deciding to acknowledge her presence once more. “It’s quite a pleasant experience, really.”
“Can you explain what you mean by ‘dancing with the devil?’” She hopes he can’t. The longer this drags on, the less there he seems, the more their odds of avoiding prison time entirely go up.
“Not everyone knows how to love him.” He continues with whatever he’s talking about, once again ignoring her questioning. Ignoring her help. “He’s difficult. Dangerous. Volatile.”
“Who is?”
“I wouldn’t trade the time we spent together for anything.” A wistful look crosses Natsuo’s face. “I would give anything to get more time with him.”
“Who is the devil, Mr Todoroki?” The woman tries to wring any information out of him, anything that may benefit him and his case. She gets what she assumes to be gibberish.
“Red is such a lovely color.”
‘It’s like having a conversation with my 6 year old,’ she thinks, both celebrating this fact and becoming increasingly concerned by it.
“I think red is cold, evil, merciless. He’s no exception.” He smiles, ever so slightly.
“Red…” she notes. This has to mean something, right?
“Most people think of the devil as someone covered in red from head to to, but the truth is there’s not much red in him. What little there is, though, is cold and evil and merciless. It’s beautiful. It’s breathtaking. I could look into those perfect red eyes for hours.”
Okay, so this devil has red eyes. One such set runs though her mind, ones she’d only seen in the news, cold and evil and merciless. She prays they’re the wrong eyes.
“And this dancing…” She tries to keep a lightheartedness in her voice, an innocent interest rather than an interrogation. “What does that entail?”
Another silence.
“I don’t think that’s something I should be giving you details about,” Natsuo says at last. “I don’t think that’s something you should be asking details about. I don’t think he would like me telling you.”
“You said not everyone knows how to love him. Why is that?” Getting anything out of him is like pulling teeth. This whole experience is unpleasant, though it’s becoming more and more clear with every word that getting his charges dropped due to insanity would be a piece of cake. The identity of this illusive “He” might be the final nail in the coffin.
“He could kill you with a touch of his hand.” Natsuo still uses the same tone he’s been using the whole time. “Anyone else would be scared. They should be.”
‘There is no denying the truth anymore,’ she admits. Not after what Natsuo has just said. She had hoped she was wrong about the eyes, cold and evil and merciless. Oh how she hates being right.
Natsuo was farther gone than she had originally realized. He has to be, to be so enamored with Shigaraki Tomura, who could kill you with a touch of his hand, whose red eyes were cold and evil and merciless, as is the rest of him, who is entirely the type to take and take and take until there’s nothing left to take.
“You know,” Natsuo continues, “while everyone else might cower in terror of him, I haven’t got the slightest bit of fear. Do you want to know what that is?”
“Why?” She asks, her blood running cold in tense anticipation of whatever answer Natsuo would concoct.
“Because I have him wrapped around my little finger.” He smiles for real now, a wicked, gleeful grin. It’s no longer just her blood running cold, it’s the whole room.
“Y-you do?” She can’t help the stutter that breaks her voice. After the years of being a lawyer for Endeavor, she had thought nothing could scare her more than the flame hero himself. She no longer knows which she hates more, being right or being wrong.
“I can send him running to me with a single text. I can make him change entire plans just from a look. If I wanted, I could have him level whole cities simply by saying ‘please.’ He would do anything for me. Anything I ask of him.” Natsuo smirks, eyes half lidded, face devoid of all emotion. There is a certain calmness about him, especially given his situation, that further unsettles her. “I’m the one they should all be scared of.”
She takes a moment to process this information. Only a moment, for that’s all she gets before the wall behind him crumbles, reduced to dust before her.
She pushes herself out of her chair, backing up, looking every bit like a deer in headlights, knowing its time in this world is not long but helpless to do anything.
“Th-this was all an escape attempt?” She asks, already knowing the answer.
“Of course it was,” Natsuo responds cooly, wrapping his arms around the waist of the skinny man who had just stepped through the missing wall. “You think I’m just going to let myself rot somewhere, locked away from the world? You think he’ll allow me to?”
A hand is placed on Natsuo’s face, long fingers cupping his cheek, pinkie extended, drawing him in for a kiss with tenderness such that she had been sure villains were incapable of.
“I’m sorry for leaving you back at the base,” Shigaraki says, hand still on Natsuo’s cheek, forehead pressed against that of the taller man’s. “We all thought you were with us when we escaped.”
“You’re here for me now. That’s all that matters.”
“The others are waiting outside,” Shigaraki informs Natsuo, not frantically as you would think he would be at this moment, but as though they have all the time in the world to make casual conversation.
And with that, the two walk outside together, making the easiest “prison break” in history, the lawyer being incapacitated to stop them, having finally succumbed to the shock from the whole affair.