Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shoto yawned as he stood up from his desk; the day had been long. He had been working long hours. He lived alone now, so he didn’t exactly have anything else to do. And as the number three hero, he didn’t want to fall behind.

He couldn’t wait to get home to Mika, the little white cat that he got two years ago to keep him company in his downtime. She loves to cause mischief, it was nothing to come home to the house being a mess after she had been running around.

He wondered what it was like to be a cat, to have little responsibility, to not have to worry about keeping itself alive and earning love.

He didn’t ponder it on his way home, he didn’t need to go down that rabbit hole tonight.

It had been dark when he left, the city was peaceful at this time. It was easy to lose yourself in the chaos.

His job was a challenge, of course, but it was rewarding to be able to walk through safe streets.

This is what he was made for, to make people feel safe. And to make sure they are well.

His time at UA only made it clearer that this job is what he was made for.

The cool air felt good on his skin, the peacefulness was calming. It was odd for nothing to be happening. It was something he didn’t experience very often.

He decided to stop at the park near his house to enjoy some of the night. Mika wouldn’t mind; she had everything that she needed at home.

So as he sat on the bench watching the stars and moon his body relaxed. He wasn’t under any pressure right now, he didn’t need to worry, this was time for him, he deserves this.

His peace is quickly interrupted by a shrill scream ringing through the park that has him on his feet running in seconds. His hero instincts are in hyperdrive.

He sprints to an alley across from the park scanning the area, he does the same with the next several alleys until he hears the scream again, he’s closer.

He’s running again getting closer and closer. He had to get to whoever it was fast, that scream was one of terror, a sound he’d only heard when someone was being assulted.

He rounds the corner of one of the alleys and finds the culprit of the voice. A man by the looks of it, but he looks unharmed.

“Are you okay, sir? Why were you screaming?” he asks.

“I needed to get someone’s attention.”

“Yes, but why?” he says again.

“I got stuck under something but was able to free myself,” the man says.

“Do you need medical aid?”

“I think so, My leg is hurt; you’re a hero, right? Shoto?” the man says as Shoto approaches.

“Yes, I'm off duty right now, just on my way home.”

“I’m sorry for this then,” the man says.

“Sorry for what?” he asks, confused.

He doesn’t even get to look at the mans leg before theres several sets off feet running at him.

He whirls around, ready for a fight, then sees that there are seven of them, excluding the man behind him.

He reached for his quirk, but nothing happened. One of them had a canceling quirk that could cause some problems. his hand-to-hand was good but not good enough to go up against seven others.

They come at him, and he’s quickly overpowered. Pinned to the ground and something is placed against his face, he holds his breath for as long as possible, but it’s a losing game, he’s sucked into the darkness.

His last thought was how he needed someone to go check on Mika.

(Later)

He wakes up in a dark room, he can feel metal restraints wrapped around his wrists, ankles, calves, thighs, waist, chest, neck, and head. There's needles piercing in more places than not. His head had a dull ache. There's something in his mouth forcing his mouth shut, like wires keeping his jaw clamped down, unable to open without agony. He quickly learned that speaking or talking only caused more pain.

He wonders where he is. Why is he here? What do they want from him?

He doesn’t worry too much, he knows that one of his co-workers will find him eventually.

But as hours and poaaibly days passed and he got more and more confused and disoriented, forgetting things he most certainly should remember.

Who are his family? What are their names? What’s his name? His brain feels like mush.

Some moments have more clarity where he can remember his name, but his will is quickly deteriorating. A large part of him wants to give up, to let the drugs pushed into his system take over, to let these people win.

The other smaller part screams at him to not give up. he’s been through eighteen years of abuse and trauma, he’s been a hero for five years, he’s been through worse, and he’s never given up.

But he’s so tired, and thinking is getting harder and harder. If he let himself be mindless, maybe the pain would stop.

The darkness, the overwhelming loneliness, it was making him crazy. He knows that, he can’t think straight.

But what else is he supposed to do? He can’t escape this, this is his new reality.

He wonders how long he’s been here. Unmoving, unhearing, unseeing, voice locked behind chains.

He had to remember who he was, the voice said, the voice that was getting smaller and smaller. The voice that is starting to give in, to give into the hopelessness of his situation.

He knows that there are people out there; perhaps they’d never even noticed his absence. Maybe this was the only thing that was real, maybe everyone was here; maybe this wasn’t real; maybe he wasn’t real; maybe this was all just a bad dream.

He needs to remember who he is.

He’s Shoto, Shoto Todoroki, he’s a pro hero.

He's, he’s, who is he again?

He's forgetting, he’s forgotten, he’s no one, he’s a body, a vessel, he’s not a real person.

Chapter Text

When Shoto was a no show for work on Monday Izuku had been worried to say the least, Shotos been a hero for years and never missed a day, he usually worked late and came in early.

Maybe he was sick? That wasn’t good if so, with his quirk he was out for the count for days last time he was sick, his quirk went haywire.

He'd called the younger man several times with no response, maybe his phone was dead? He'd been known to let that happen.

He'd go check on him after work or on his break. He'd been given a key to his apartment for a reason.

His fondness for Shoto had only grown once out of UA watching as he rose up through the ranks, regardless of if he wanted to or not. But Shoto didn’t seem to reciprocate the feelings.

He knows he’s not working as well as he can through the day, mind too focused on his friends.

When his shift is over he makes his way to Shoto's apartment, it’s smaller and on the bad side of town, even though he could easily afford a better place to live, but Shoto liked it, he didn’t want or need a lot of space, he didn’t like things, most of the clutter in the apartment was Mika’s toys and cat trees which Shoto had purchased at least four by now.

He walks up the stairs and down the hall knocking on the mans door.

“Sho?” he calls when he gets no response from the other side of the door.

He knocks again and he gets no response.

He unlocks the door and hears Mika’s high pitched meow fill his ears as she trots over to him.

“Hello?” he calls, the apartment unusally quiet. Even for Shoto’s standard, he usually had some sort of music playing, it was never dead silent, he hated it being dead silent.

He walks into the house, slipping off his shoes.

He looks in the kitchen, nothing, Mika’s food dish is empty, he’s starting to get nervous now, that was unheard of he made sure that Mika always had plenty of food to eat.

He moves more quickly through the house.

Soon he realizes that the house is completely empty.

His heart is hammering, where is he?

He feeds Mika while calling Sero, maybe he knows where he is, it wasn’t a secret that the boys liked each other but both were to clueless to realize the other liked them.

“What’s up?” Sero says in his usual pep.

“Is Shoto with you?”

“No, why?”

“He didn’t come to work today, he’s not at his place either and Mika’s food dish was completely empty when I got here.”

The lines dead for a second.

“That’s strange, I’m on my way over there now, call Aizawa Sensei” he says.

They hang up after that and he places the phone to his ear after clicking their old senseis phone number.

“What do you want problem child,” the man says in his usual tone.

“Shoto’s missing,”

“What do you mean?” he says with some panic.

“He didn’t come to work today so I went to his house after work and he wasn’t here and Mika’s food dish is empty so I called Sero to see if he was with him and he wasn’t and his phones going straight to voicemail,” he says in one breath, very quickly.

“Woah, slow down, that doesn’t mean his missing, maybe he had something come up?”

“He didn’t call the agency to tell us.”

He can almost hear aizawas frown.

“Well I'll come over and we can regroup, you’re sure there’s no where else he would’ve gone? What about his siblings?”

“He would’ve called us to tell us, and it’s not like him to skip work,”

“Okay you stay there I'm driving over to you and we can work this out.”

He does so pacing the small apartment.

There's a knock on the door that breaks both occupants of the home attention.

Izuku nearly runs to the door, that may be Shoto.

When he opens the door he’s meet by Sero who looks as frazzled as Deku feels.

“Aizawa sensei is on the Way,” izuku says.

Mika is rubbing herself against seros legs.

“How’d you get here so fast,”

“Legally,” the man says a little too quickly.

Aizawa is there next.

He doesn’t bother knocking just lets himself in.

They spend the next hour making calls and trying to figure out who saw him last, and it was one of his co workers before they left.

So Shoto’s been unheard of for about eighteen hours.

They split up after that trying to hunt down the boy, Sero finds his phone in an alley blood litered the ground below.

The police were called in and his phone was taken in as evidence.

There was no CCTV cameras in this area but they seen him in the park nearby on the cameras that were in there.

They spent weeks trying to find the dual quirked boys, nearing two months before they had to call it a cold case, they were losing there number one heros to this case and were losing too many resources, and he’d been gone for so long.

They pronounced him dead.

Izuku and Sero continued their search in their free time, spending so much time together that they started growing fond of each other, Hanta had many good qualities, he was handsome and determined.

They moved in together six months into their search. Getting together two months later, Mika had already been with Izuku, and she loved Sero too.

Izuku's on patrol one night when he see’s red flash in the corner of his eye.

It's just red that he sees.

He brushes it off at first as his mind playing tricks on him.

Then the next day they catch word of pro hero Snipe being murdered by an unknown villain.

Izuku begins seeing the red more often, like it’s following him.

They learn of the person, they wear all dark, is lethal, he has a water based quirk by the looks of it.

They can climb well, is incredibly strong.

They emerged over night, and he was killing hero’s or injuring them.

His mind has to be focused on taking this person, before more people are hurt, or killed.

Chapter Text

The lights were so bright, they stung his too sensitive eyes.

Being in the dark then exposed to the bright lights without warning left him disoriented.

He was still tied to the table, hair in his eyes.

Someone with a mask on comes in, they have something in hand.

They don’t speak to him, but they grab his head shoving it forward so fast it leaves him dazed.

He hears buzzing and something touch the back of his neck, then going up his head.

They were shaving his head, he pulled in the straps keeping him held down.

The person didn’t look at him and he moved in front of him shaving off his bangs.

They didn’t exchange words, he grunted at the person when the clippers came too close.

The person roughly grabs his jaw forcing him still, all he can do it take it, and once done the person leaves Shoto works his jaw trying to get the pain out.

The doors are opened again and two people enter the room, undoing the straps ripping out needles.

They haul him up like he weighs nothing.

He tries to stand but his legs give, when was he walking last? He wonders.

They bring him to a random room stripping him of his clothes, they throw him to the ground taking a hose and cranking the water, the water is freezing and it’s like a jet hitting his body.

It doesn’t hurt but its enough to move him back at the force.

He’s left coughing up liquid gagging and panting by the end.

He’s not done when they haul him up again, they shove a shirt and pants on while he’s still trying to recover.

Pretty soon they’re dragging him out again bringing him to a random place different then the one before, and throwing him to the ground.

The impact his head makes with the floor is heard through the room.

He flips over placing his hand to his head, it comes away bloody.

He doesn’t care, he pushes himself into the farthest corner of the room, making himself as small as possible.

He stays that way for some time. He can’t remember anything, and words won’t happen.

At some point another person walks in, a woman, she’s holding food.

She’s much nicer than the others placing in front of him gently smiling weakly.

“Eat, you’re going to need it,” she whispers pushing the tray forward.

He doesn’t know what’s in the bowl, but he’s not sure if he wants to take anything from it.

“Please eat,” she says again, softly.

He does so uncurling a little and grabbing the bowl and spoon awkwardly.

The stuff doesn’t taste like anything just cold slop for lack of better words.

He eats then curls back up the woman nods and leaves.

He rests his head on his knees, starting to doze off.

Then the doors open and the men from before come in.

They don’t see him for a moment as he pushes himself farther into the corner.

But they eventually see him and march over hauling him up by the collar of his shirt.

He whimpers when the shirt pulls tight against his neck.

They shove him forward on weak legs that barely know how to walk.

They’re basically holding him up at this point as he can’t walk on his own.

They take him to another room, this one bigger.

It has equipment in it, lots of the stuff.

They toss him to the floor again but he’s able to catch himself a little more gracefully this time so he doesn’t hit his head.

They stand guard as another man walks in with a sneer plastered on his face.

“Stand up,” he barks.

He tries to getting his legs under him, they give out again.

“I said get up idiot, when I tell you to do something I expect you to,” the man growls stepping forward and hauling him up on shaking legs.

He manages to stay standing, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to properly walk.

“Turn,” the man says.

He blinked, he wasn’t sure what he meant.

“I said turn,” the man repeated, using a hand to motion to what he wanted.

He turns around.

“You boys cleaned it right?” the man says turning to them.

They both nod.

“Good, it's going to need another one after.” The man says, he can hear the smile in it.

The men nod and leave the room.

The person from before walks circles around him for a moment, looking him up and down.

“You need to learn to listen, or you’re not going to last, you’re not human, not here, you’re a tool at our disposal, it’ll do you well to remember that, you need us to survive.” The man growls into his ear.

He doesn’t understand some of the words but he can insinuate the meanings.

“This is going to be your home for the foreseeable future, we need you healthy and ready,” the man says.

He looks around.

“Your training will be hard. And there will be no room for failure, if you do fail you’ll be punished,” the man says circling him.

He watches him, heart pounding in his chest.

He wasn’t expecting it when he got shoved from behind so he lost of footing.

He falls face first onto the ground, he felt blood coming from his nose but didn’t feel any pain.

“That’s the kind of thing you’ll need to expect, no one here is going easy on you, stand up,” the man says.

He stands, it’s easier this time, like his muscles are already stronger.

“Good, you’ll be spending 14-16 hours here a day, the rest of the time you’ll he either eating or sleeping, there will be no breaks here. You’ll have to adapt quickly, it's what you’re made for.” The man says still circling him like he’s pray.

He doesn’t move, just follows him with his eyes.

“Stand up straight, don’t slouch, arms straight by your sides, legs together, eyes forward,” the man says.

He does his best to follow the instructions.

“Straighten your back,” the man says hitting the back of his head with something.

He straightens up again.

“This is how you’ll stand when in presence of anyone here, if you’re caught standing in another manner besides this you will be punished, understood?” he says.

He nods.

“Good, let’s get started,” the man says.

Chapter Text

The training was brutal.

He’d barely figured out walking when the man had him running.

He’d run for hours at a time, if he stopped then he’d be hit.

It was rough, but he managed.

Sometimes he had to take the punishment head on when his body simply couldn’t keep going.

He thinks the worst punishment they’ve doled out was the electricity.

They’d beat him with electrified sticks, it made his body jolt, and his heart feel funny.

As far as the punishment went, the standing at attention one was easiest, he’d just stand at attention for several hours, and while it wasn’t easy it was better then the alternative.

Running for several hours straight right after being unable to walk also wasn’t easy, he was slow, and the person training him wasn’t having slow, if he slowed down even to breathe he’d be hit.

The hitting wasn’t gentle either, it had put stars in his vision on more then on occasion.

He was littered with bruises, ones that he couldn’t feel, part of him knew it should hurt, that the hits should hurt more.

But they just didn’t, they hit him and it hurt at the time, a little, but not too bad, it was bareable.

Then he’d be thrown in his room and left for the night.

They threw him some food sometimes, just a bottle of protein shake. It was chalky, and thick, but it was all he had to eat.

He’d sleep a few hours then they’d come and drag him back to training.

The training only got more brutal over time.

They started him lifting weights, but not how one would expect, they had him lifting almost his own weight immediately.

On several occasions he’d drop the bar onto himself, on one occasion he felt something inside his chest crack, it hurt, but only for a moment.

They set him back up, they kept at this for hours, three hours of weights, three hours of running, everyday, push ups, pull ups, rinse and repeat for a total of fourteen hours a day.

By the time the day came to an end he was exhausted, barely able to hold himself up, then they’d take him to the shower and hose him down taking glee as they sprayed his face leaving him chocking and shivering with the icy water.

They dragged him back to his room then tossing him to the ground. Closing and locking the door.

He slept under the metal ‘bed’ they provided.

The next day was the same, and the one after that.

It went this way for who knows how long until he was running fast, lifting three or four times his own weight with relative ease.

Then they brought him to a different room.

This one was smaller, with lines on the ground.

He stood at the center trying to figure out what was happening.

Then he feels a shove, from behind forcing him to the ground.

The persons on top of him now, slamming his head forward.

Before he can even get his bearings his hit with a kick to the stomach, forcing the air from his lungs.

“Get up,” the person yells.

He struggles to his feet only to be tackled to the floor again, he’d slamming backwards into the floor.

He didn’t know what to do, he was getting beaten and he didn’t know how to defend himself.

“You’ll never defend yourself if you can’t hold your own for a simple fight, get up,” his instructor yells.

The person lets him up, he stumbles to his feet, wobbling as he gets upright.

He grits his teeth watching the person getting into a fighting stance, he tries to match their stance.

The person lunges forward making an attempt to rush him, he manages to dodge the attack, but leaves his back exposed, he gets a swift kick to the back.

He growls lowly, getting frustrated with the beating.

The person straddles his back, wrapping an arm around his neck, forcing him into a chokehold.

It restricts his breathing until the edges of his vision gets dark.

“Let it up,” his instructor says.

He lays there for a moment only to be hauled up by his instuctor.

The world spins and his legs buckle, blood rushing to his head.

“Stand the fuck up,” the man yells in his face.

He tries to get his feet under him.

The world tilting and turning.

The man let’s go and he hits the ground again.

“You’re so weak, get the fuck up,” the man says.

Finally the world stops spinning enough for him to get on his feet.

His instructor sighs.

“That’s enough for today, first thing tomorrow we’ll be back here again. I expect a better performance next time.” The man says.

True to his word the next morning he is back in this room.

Getting beaten.

Day after day this happens followed by hours of training with running and weights.

It takes days for him to get good enough to pin his opponent for the first time, and even longer for him to beat them.

His instructor is angry with him.

After his hose down his instructor meets him in his room.

He grabs Shotos shirt slamming him into the wall, teeth grit face red.

“I expected better from you, but you’re fucking useless, can’t even beat someone after weeks of fucking work.” He says slamming him into the wall every couple words.

He throws him to the ground.

“I fucking own you, do better, because If you don’t I’ll fucking destroy you. Understand?” He says.

Shoto nods from the floor.

“Good, I expect you up and ready tomorrow, two on one, if you don’t beat them, you’ll be facing the consequences, I promise you that.” He says.

Shoto nods again.

Despair settles into his body, fear flowing through his veins like poison.

How was he supposed to hold his own against two people when he could barely do it against one.

Needless to say, he doesn’t impress his instructor.

He ends up getting a new punishment.

They bring him to a different room one with a post in the middle, they restrain him in the middle taking his shirt from him.

He can’t see anything but certainly feels it when something rips into his back. He almost makes a noise, but bites it back.

The thing hits him about twenty more times.

He decides after that, that he never wants to experience it again.

Chapter Text

The training lessons never changed, it was the same thing day in day out. He'd get up be hauled off to get beaten to a pulp, then be punished for being unable to fight.

It tooks four days for him to be able to hold his own in a fight against one of their trained men, his back was still open and raw from the hits after training ended and he was brought to the post.

Most days even if he didn’t get any punishment he still left with blood pooring down his back due to the poorly healing injury being torn back open.

This was also part of the punishment, if he could learn to defeat them with blood loss and open wounds then he would do it when he was in full health.

At the end of the day, he was still stronger then them, so it shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, he learned that if he could get a hold of them that he could lift them up and slam them onto the ground to immobilize them, it was a rather useful trick.

He'd made it impossible for one of them to breathe and ultimately won the match, he hadn’t meant to do that though.

His instructor seemed happy enough, and he didn’t get hit, so he counted it as a win.

He was able to consistently win after he learned that, being able to throw people around made it much easier. He learned other ways to win as well, sweeping the legs is effective, if he can get behind the person and hit them in the back to knock them over usually lead to his victory as well.

He wasn’t allowed to go after anyone outside of training, he had to let them have their way with him if they weren't training, because they were special apparently. It's why the gaurds that took him around places were allowed to do what they want, push him around, burn him while hosing him down, nearly drowning him in the process.

But he got to win when he was in training, that's what mattered, training he meant, if he could win his training he could rest.

It was a difficult thing to understand sometimes, but he obeyed of course, he always obeyed.

It didn’t hurt as bad when he obeyed them.

Then he was brought into the room again, the training one, but lead to a different area, with sharp items.

His instructor leads him to the middle of the room, he’s holding something in his hands, it doesn’t look like a weapon, it’s got a handle though, but also a strap.

“Today were going to start training, this is a sword, it straps to your back so you can use it and it not get in the way when you aren’t.” his instructor says.

He nods, standing with his back straight, just like he’s been taught.

He tells him to turn before slipping the strap over his head and shoulder, it’s on an angle on his back, it’s heavy as well.

The weapon should hurt his back, but thankfully it doesn't.

“What were going to do today is practice on combat with weapons, this won’t be the regular sword you’ll use, this is rather dull, so don’t get ideas about hurting someone, these are sharp enough to dent styrofoam, but won’t do much against a human,” he says.

He nods. The man lies though, he’s well aware that blunt force can do as much damage as a slice, why he knows that he’s not sure, but he knows it, he also knows to listen though, if this sword wasn’t meant to slice, then he would listen.

His instructor, leads him forward, taking another sword from nearby, he shows him how to swing, it takes him a number of tries the man in front of him getting more frustrated by the second.

He eventually gets the hang of swinging, and then his instructor aims at him, expecting him to defend himself, to put the sword up, anything, but he only receives a hit to the head that send him to the ground.

He blinks, confused, he hadn’t been expecting the sudden attack, he stays on the ground for too long apparently.

“You should’ve seen that coming, get up,” his instructor says.

He gets to his feet picking up the sword.

They start fighting again, he tries to prepare for the attack again, but isn’t and doesn’t defend, only gets hit to the leg.

They keep this up for days, he practices on the dummies, in a simulator, he practiced defending himself.

They spent hours and days at it, then they’d go run for more hours, and lift weights, then he’d go and get hosed down, and get his food.

It was just a cycle, every day, every single day.

The sword is heavy, his instructor is too good, there’s no strategy to his attacks, just attack after attack, no patterns for him to be able to predict.

Then his body is tired after spending so many hours after sword training doing the rest of his training.

He doesn’t want to complain, he has it good, he hasn’t been punished too badly for his poor performance, his back has healed a little, and he is improving, he’s getting to defend himself a little, every swing doesn’t land on him, he’s even gotten a few on his instructor.

Those moments are few though, it’s still mainly him getting beaten. But he can count on one hand how many times he’d managed to lay a hand, or sword on his instructor, and it was those few times were the same times he seen a small smile on his instructors face.

Now and then he’d even knock over his instructor during training, thats not until days in, and just fluke events.

For some reason he doesn’t want anyone to train with him when he’s using his weapons, maybe it was too dangerous, maybe it was a trust thing, he didn’t know, he didn’t really care, all he cared about was getting through his days. No matter what was thrown, or swung, at him.

Chapter Text

Eventually he’d gotten used to using his sword, he got used to the intense training.

Then he’d gotten to the training room and his instructor was standing there holding something, it was a device with what looked like hooks, strapped to something he didn’t recognize, it had a line on it as well.

“This is a grappling hook, you’ll use this with your sword, it allows you to lower down buildings as well as up them, they can be used to attack people as well.” the man says.

He steps closer to him, grabbing his arm roughly.

“Now point it at the railing up there, then press this button to eject the hook.” he says.

He nods pointing his arm at the rail and pressing the button, the hook fires and sends him backwards with the force of it.

He hits the mat while the hook hits the wall, it returns to him then.

“Get up,” his instructor says as he blinks, confused.

“Try again.” he says firmly.

He stands and points his arm to the railing, this time he’s ready for the recoil, the hook still misses though, he thought he was better at this.

The hook retracting startles him and nearly sends him to the ground again, it was too fast.

He looks to his instructor, face blank.

He makes a motion with his hand to continue.

He points again, this time the hook wraps around the pole, then he starts to pull him forward, jerking his arm and pulling him, he fights it for a moment but eventually lets it drag him up.

His foot slips on the way up the wall, and sends him swinging into it, he ends up being dragged by one arm up the the end of the hook where it manages to unravel itself, it drops him to the floor.

He grunts when he hits the ground, head ramming into the floor after, seeing stars for a moment.

“Get up,” his instructor says, hes standing above him, he looks angry.

He gets to his feet.

“This should be easy at this point you’re strong enough, use your brain.” the man says.

He nodded.

He pointed his arm at something again, hitting the target, he walks with it before using the wall to walk up, he jumps the rail in time with the hook coming back to him.
Once he was up he loooked to his instructor.

“Now get back down, there’s a button on it allow you to repel.” he calls.

he looks around for something to hook to.

He sees the rail above him, shooting up at it.

He quickly realizes the repeling is not easy, he loses his footing several times, by the time he gets the hang of it his nose is bleeding.

His instructor watches, face pinched in annoyance at his faliure.

Once he gets it he can repel easily, and climb the walls.

“Finally, now, you see that bar in the ceiling, swing off it. Go up the wall, then swing to the other balcony.”

He nods, he sees the button that auto retracts the hook.

He shoots the hook at the bar where he’d started, then up the wall.

Swinging is suprsingly easy, using all his prior experience to swing, he only misses twice before getting the hand of it.

It takes two days for him to become more effective at it.

They train like this for days, he learns to use the hook for attacks, using the test dummies to destroy using the hook to shoot through the chest.

Slowly they introduce more gear theres gloves on his hand one with claws, he uses it to rip through skin, drawing massive amounts of blood when hitting certain areas.

He gets boots the have spikes on good for grip, and for kicking.

He never wears these all at once.

He spends days learning each of the weapons inside and out.

He learns each of them, his sword, the claws, the hook, boots.

The last thing he’s exposed to his his sheild, used on the opposite side of his grapple hook, it looks like a small box in his arm.

“Press your palm, it has a button on it to eject it.” his instructor says.

When he does he hears a loud whirring noise as it ejects, its sharp, and light blue.

“It’s also an electromagnetic field, it can be used to electrocute, cut, and protect.”

Before he has time to react his instructor swings something at him, hitting him square in the chest, it sends him backwards.

He knows not to strike him with his shield, he can protect himself, but he can’t strike him.

He stands up, preparing to protect himself before being hit again.

“You’re slow, sloppy, you should see this coming, heros wont back down, they wont go easy, you need to expect this, expect the hits, protect all your angles,” his instructor says, swinging with every few words.

He can barely get a moment to protect himself.

He suddenly realizes there a pattern to the attack, chest, back, legs, head, in that order.

Its at this point that he’s able to use the shield, raising it up to his chest, the strike is hard, sending him reeling, but he gets the hand of it, and is able to protect himself.

His punishment for being unable to protect himself is the injuries the cover his body.

Slowly he gets to the point that he can protect himself using speed, seeing the area that he swings, he protects himself, then he learns to attack with it, it’s suprisingly easy to take the dummies heads clean off with the shield.

He spends time again at this his instructor doesn’t seem happy with the slow speed.

He's trying his best to get better, the long days of training, and very little sleep dont help.

“Now that you’re finally able to use your tools there’s one more this i want to show you, but that will be tomorrow.” his instructor says before handing him off to the gaurds again, and turning away from him, he barely sleeps that night, wondering what the new punishment will be for when he fails.

Chapter Text

When running on very little sleep with the intense training he was forced to do, it made for a very rough day.

So when he was hauled from sleep and out of his room he knew it was going to be a bad day.

But what could he do? It wasn’t like there was any escape for him.

So he sucked it up and tried to at least look awake, maybe then the man that enforced this struggle would let him rest he had to succeed.

He was brought to another different area, this one looked very different than his usual training room.

And of course, there was the only man he came into contact with outside of the gaurds that dragged him around.

He was always there.

“This new trick is something that will only be used if absolutely necessary, if it comes to a matter of using it or being taken, you’ll use it, understood?” he says.

He nods.

“Good, you have the ability to create water, using your hands.”

He blinks.

“You can manipulate temperature, heat with your left, cold with your right.”

He nods.

“Put your hands together like this,” the man says, putting his hands together, palms together, fingers straight.

He does the same.

“Good, now heat up your hand, and cool the other, using the condensation in the air youll cool it enough to make it condense, it’ll allow you to shoot either freezing or boiling water, you can use it as a trick, and a protection tactic.”

He tries to make his hands cool down while warming the other to do as his instructor says, but nothing appears to happen.

He tries again, heeding the same result.

“You’re not trying hard enough, you have to push yourself,” his instructor growls.

He tries, all he can make happen is steam.

It's a step in his opinion, but the smack he gets to the back of his head tells him otherwise.

“Again,”

He tries again, this time icicles apear, he has to shake them off his hand.

Couldnt he use the ice as a weapon?

“Again,” he’s yelled at.

He tries, and tries, and tries, but it all heeds the same results, either steam, or ice. It doesn’t make sense, he’s supposed to be able to create water, but it doesn’t work.

He growls in frustration only to be struck hard in the back, it sends him forward.

He's pinned to the ground.

“I’m giving you one more chance to get this right, and if you don’t, then you’re going to find out.” he says.

He allows him back up, he places his hands together, focusing all his energy on making water happen.

Nothing happens, the steam rises.

His stomach plummets, the back of his shirt is grabbed, theres a growling sound beside him.

His instructor punches numbers into a keypad and doors slide open to a sterile smelling area, theres a chair in the center of the room, it his straps and devices next to it, there are other people in the room, they all look his way.

He's thrown into the chair, the straps automatically tightening, two around his ankles, at his knees and waist, his chest, wrists, elbows, and biceps.

He's held completely still as the people approach him, he squirms in his bonds, trying to slip his wrists out of the straps.

His instructor leaves him. The door sliding shut as the strange people close in on him.

They don’t say anything as they twist his arm to get access to his elbow, they having something sharp.

They position it in his arm.

They press a button at the end of it, he feels something cold enter his body.

Then it gets warmer, like it’s burning him from the inside out.

Sweat prickles along his neck, his veins feel like they're disintegrating. His jaw is clenched, his teeth feel like they’re getting crushed.

He lets out a scream, yanking the straps, they’re made of something unbreakable, no matter how hard he pulls nothing happens.

Tears flood his eyes, fingers digging into the armrest of the chair.

Eventually he feels his conciousness leave him.

When he wakes up again he’s still in the chair, his insides feel like they’re unfire.

The people in the white coats are still there, writing notes.

They have another one of the sharp objects.

They push it into his arm, something warm fills his veins.

He feels the world spinning, his stomach twisting.

His stomach heaves, stomach acid burning it’s way up his throat, spilling onto his chest, his limbs feel fuzzy, his brain feels heavy with fog, he’s so tired, his body heavy.

The door slides open, his instructor is standing in the door, disgusted at the state of him.

“It’s had enough,” he sighs.

They let the straps go, but he cant move.

“It’s not going to fit to train for a few hours I'd like you to know, but we got some good notes.” someone says.

“He’ll be fine.” his instructor says, he’s covered in vomit and sweat, perhaps urine.

“Get up,”

He tries, his limbs are heavy, too heavy to move.

His instructor stomps forward, grabbing the back of his shirt.

He drags him out of the seat, to his feet, his knees give out, he hits the floor.

He doesn’t realize until hes being hauled up until he’s mid motion, the change sends his stomach doing flips, he gags, more stomach acid ripping his throat to shreds.

“Get it cleaned up and back to his room.” his instructor says.

He's dragged away, head hanging, trying to not vomit again.

They lay him down to wash him.

It’s the longest wash he’s had yet.

They drag him back to his room throwing him to the ground.

He stays like that, slowly regaining feeling in his limbs, enough to drag himself to the corner, he curls into himself, breathing shakily.

He closes his eyes, trying to sleep.

He decides that night, that this was his least favorite form of punishment.

Chapter Text

It took him three more days to learn to make water happen, three days of creating the wrong thing and being dragged off to the room with the chair.

They injected him with things that made his insides burn, made him so unbearably dizzy, made it feel like almost every touch was too much, three days of them running these experiments on him.

Then he made water happen and he breathed a sigh of relief, finally.

“About fucking time, this shouldn’t have taken as long as it has.” His instructor says giving him a shove, it hurts, his body still recovering from the last injection that made it feel like his muscles were being ripped apart.

He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even make a sound, he didn’t want his instructor to think he is weak, it leads to more punishment.

But he’s finally got it he can make water happen, can use it like a jet, he can freeze things using icy water and make water got enough to melt skin.

He knows that this is for limited use, for only drastic measures.

But now that he knows how to do it, he doesnt have to go back there.

It's only then that he goes back to the old training room, in front of him stood all the gear he’d learned to use, along with a pair of baggy pants, and a long sleeved black shirt with what looked like armour for his torso.

“Get changed.” his instructor says.

He nods and does as he’s told, the pants first, then his boots, tied tightly so they hug his ankles, the shirt and armor next, after that comes the sheath for his sword, his grapple hook and sheild, then his gloves.

He turns to his instructor, back straight, eyes straight forward.

“Good, this is when real training begins, as you can likely tell, this equipment is quite heavy, in comparison to your normal dress, you’ll continue normal training, but with this gear, that includes, running, hand to hand, weights, agility, and obstacles, running, agility, and obstacles will be trained all together now.” his instructor says.

He nods, ready for whatever the man in front of him throws at him.

The gear is heavy, but he gets used to running with it, he’s fast still, faster than most.

It gets easier, running with his gear on, then they start with the obstacles, it’s significantly harder, jumping with what must be twenty to thirty pounds of gear weighing him down.

He trips and gets knocked over constantly, the ground keeps moving with him on it, he gets hit with objects.

Its not until his tenth time getting knocked over that he sees the poles above him.

Mid run he launches his hook, it wraps around the pole and he swings himself up and over the wall that was mere inches away from taking him down for the eleventh time.

Suddenly it all makes sense, he needs to use everything on his person to perfect this, he is able to roll, jump, swing, he uses his shield to knock things out of the way.

Eventually he got the hang of it, can do it with ease.

Then the hand to hand with both the dummies and people, he can hit and scratch, use his shield to protect himself, but he’s not allowed to intentionally maim or kill his opponent.

He won of course, he swept the legs out from under many of the people he was up against, hits to the head using his shield.

It wasn’t hard, most of the time that is, there were some occasions when he’d get caught off gaurd and gets pulled down by the sword.

This happens very few times, but his instructor makes sure he knows what happens if he loses.

When he’d messed up too many times he’d been dragged away, arms tied behind his back and thrown into a dark room, no food, no hose down, nothing, he’d been left in there for two days at one point because he messed up two times, each time he messed up meant the amounts of time he was to spend in that room.

Once he's to the point that he consistently beats everyone he’s up against he starts training for a meeting with a group of people that are supposed to be evaluating his skills.

They start a intense regimine, in another room, this one filled with chairs, there's balcony's, and poles, in the middle theres a single dummy, when he looks around theres more, one on either side of the balcony, and one to the side, in the far corner.

“I want you to use this area, using every one of your tools to take it out, I don’t care how you do it, but I'll be watching, and if you don’t use on of the tools, then there’ll be consequences.

He nods, preparing for the fight.

Something buzzes, and he snaps into motion, rushing forward, tackling it to the ground, claws ripping clean through the dummy, he using his hook to launch himself into the next one, using his shield to roll as well as slice into the next one, swinging around again running against the wall, and unsheathing his sword, he poises it to attack, slicing it to decapitate the thing.

He uses his hook to throw himself into the ground, rolling so he lands on his feet.

He breathes out, looking to his instructor, who simply nods.

“Again,” he says, then the ground opens and more dummies slide into place.

He does it again, and again, as he does with all his other training, spending days upon days honing his skills.

Eventually they get to a method that works best, one that he perfects easily thankfully.

It means he spends less time being hit with the whip, or locked in the room, getting injected with random things, doing it right made everything hurt less.

Then one day he walks into that very same room, and there sitting beside his usual gear is a helmet.

Chapter Text

He quickly realized the helmet was the worst part of his gear.

It was heavy, it felt too tight, breathing was hard, it made it hard to see.

There were little screens in the red lenses.

The antenna made it awkward to distribute the weight, even though it had two.

And he could barely see anything.

“You better get used to wearing that now, because it’s going to be on constantly now, Every time we train you’ll wear it. I’m the only one with the key to take it off as well.” His instructor says.

He heaves a breath, it was so hard to breath in the thing.

It made training one hundred times harder, again he couldnt see, it was all blindspot.

“Stay still,” his instructor says.

He stills himself. He knows his instructor is moving, but his hearing is muffled.

He tries to look around, using just his eyes.

He jumps when he feels hands on his neck, then the neck of the helmet tightens it’s almost choking. The task of breathing gets easier though.

“This helmet can only be unlocked by me, understood? Good, that means that you have to come back to me to get it off, it also means that if something were to happen to you they wouldn’t be able to get it off.”

He nods, he didn’t have plans on leaving.

“I’m aware that your senses are dampened right now due to the helmet, we’ve tested it thoroughly though, theres things to help it.” he says, he sounds like he’s on his left.

Something clicks in his ear and his instructors voice booms in his ear.

“This is so you can hear me when working.”

He nearly covers his ears at the volume of it.

“Good to see it works. This should help too.”

Theres a high pitched static in his ears, the lights brighten, he can hear electricity buzzing in his ears, when his instructor walks his footsteps ricochet in his ears.

He screws his eyes shut, trying to block out the stimulation.

“Look at me,” a voice bellows, it slams into his ears and feels like a bullet going through his brain.

The high pitched noise gets louder, the electricity is louder, everything is too loud.

A hand lands on his shoulder and he feels his nerve endings buzzing under his suit, he can feel every piece of clothing and weaponry that touches him.

His knees give way, a weak scream ripping from his throat, now on the ground, everything was too much his hands go to his ears, but only meet the metal of the helmet.

He reaches for the edge to the helmet, his hands shake too much to get a good grip on it.

Then it stops, the sounds get drowned out again.

“Get up,” someone says, he gets to his feet again, albeit shakily.

“You’re going to get used to this helmet weather you like it or not.” his instructor says, he barely hears it, barely hears anything until the static starts again.

It takes everything in him not to go completely weak at the stimulation.

It takes him days to get used to the damn thing, he cant see so he cant predict movement, the helmet helps him see in the dark though. Makes everything brighter.

“You’ll work mainly at night, so it was a requirement of the helmet, use the helmet as a tool it amplifies sounds to help you, everything is darker, and quiter at night, you need to be able to hear everything around you, every footstep, every whisper, every, single, noise, if not, it could be life or death,” his instructor says one day prior to starting training.

He uses those words literally it makes his training easier, the antenna picks up every noise, down to a pin drop, and even though it’s extremely overwhelming and takes a long time to get used to, he’s getting there, getting used to his tools and training with it, running had been harder, not due to the weight, but being unable to see the treadmill.

Eventually he got used to it though.

It was days of extra training but he was getting used to it.

He would also get used to his name, the one his instructor had given him the same day he got his helmet.

Heatwave.

(Instructors POV)

Marco heaved a sigh, this training was taking too fucking long.

It had been months wiping the stubborn mans memory, months of training, and it was bordering a year of his capture.

“We need results marco,” his manager says, he’s been breathing down his neck for months now.

“I know, I can only go as fast as progress will allow.” he growls out.

“You estimated two months of training, you’re on your fifth month,”

“I know Aika, I know okay, I promise this time it’s almost done,”

“Good, because my bosses are scheduled to see it in a week, and it needs to be ready, they’re the ones funding this keep in mind, you told me that this would be done and they’re getting impatient.” his boss says again.

He sighs.

“Look this should all be done soon. Within the week.” he says.

“Why has this taken as long as it has.”

“Because it’s stubborn, it’s been hard to break, hard to rebuild, hard to teach, it doesn’t listen, I've tried every punisment that hasn’t cause disfigurement, and none of it seems to be effective.” he says tiredly.

“Try harder,”

“I’m doing the best that I can, keep in mind that this was a pro hero at one point. Not anymore of course, but it takes time to break that kind of will, and it’s something breed in most of the time.” he tries to reason.

“I don’t care, you have another week, and if this falls through because it’s not ready then you’ll be out of a job, I promise you that.” his boss says, standing to his full height, about six foot eight.”

“Understood sir,”

Chapter Text

He stood stock still as his helmet was placed over his head, sword strapped to his back, and shield and grapple hook strapped to his arms.

“We’ve talked about this heatwave, I swear to fucking good if you mess this up, you’re dead, and that’s not a threat, it’s a promise.” Whoever was getting him prepared growled into his ear.

He nodded his understanding.

“Good, here’s what’s going to happen: there’s going to be many major people here to see you, so you need to behave, they will want to touch you, they will want to assess your skills, so there will be a demonstration against a dummy, of course. I expect the highest results.”

He nods again.

He stands still as the taller man circles him like he’s prey.

“Stand up straight,” the man barks.

He does so standing as straight as he can.

“Legs apart, we’ve been over this a thousand times.” He says, shoving him and sending him to his knees.

“Stand up, if you can’t take one, messily push you won’t survive one mission.”

He growls lowly, moving quickly to his feet and turning.

He pulls his fist back only to be grabbed by the shirt and slammed to the floor. The air is getting knocked from his lungs.

“Wanna try that again?” the man says.

He shakes his head no.

“That’s what I thought, now get up.” The man says, getting off him and allowing him to stand.

“You're on in five, remember, best behavior, if I have anything but the best, they’ll never find your body.”

He nods his understanding, frowning behind his helmet.

Once he steps onto the stage, he stands at attention; there are a lot of people watching.

All eyes are on him.

The person from before stands beside him, connecting a wire to a microphone next to his ear.

“Attention!” he says loudly. Heatwave winces at the volume behind the mask.

The room falls silent, and eyes land on him.

His arms at his side, back straight, legs parted.

“This is what you came here to see, the work that you funded and supported for the past six months.” He says, gesturing to Heatwave.

“It doesn’t look like much.” Someone in the audience says.

“It’s not the look that matters; it is its abilities.”

“And what are those?”

“It can lift almost four times its weight, it is trained for stealth, so it can run in silence, and its hand-to-hand combat skills are off the charts. His pain tolerance is higher than any other creature, and with its costume, it can withstand a bullet and barely feel a thing.”

“Is that not dangerous?”

“No, due to the fact that if it is a success, it will be reproduced, their quirks make next to no difference in terms of quality, it actually has very little use of quirks. If something happens to it, it’ll be replaced.”

“What about his costume? What does that entail?”

“Well, its quirk is temperature-based and very flashy, we’ve made it so it won’t need it. On one hand, it’s equipped with a shield and claws, on the other, a grapple hook for swinging, its boots have spikes on them for damage when kicking, and if in a scenario has to use its quirk, its sword is razor sharp, can cut through human flesh and even bone with little resistance. Its helmet has a transmitter, which allows us to speak to it. The eyes are for night vision, it also can’t come off without a special key, unless a tremendous amount of force is put on it. Its entire costume is also padded for any falls or hits it takes.”

“So it's a ninja?”

“For lack of a better word, yes, but it's closer to a better nomu, it has its own thoughts and desires, burns through training along with discipline, it learns to simply obey. It's loyal to us and us alone. Also, we’re using a special form of trigger that will enhance all its current abilities, but will make it so wound up that if not used, it will get more and more aggressive.”

“What happens if it runs? Or is it captured? Does it not have information that could bring down the organization?”

“It won’t run. We give him everything he needs to survive. If it's captured, it won’t be able to leek anything because it can’t speak, likely can’t even comprehend what we’re saying. All it knows is it needs to obey. Due to its lowered thought process, it will be reliant on its handler.”

The audience hums.

“Also, through its helmet, we can amplify his senses to one hundred times; only the person with the key card has control. Basically, it will send it into severe sensory overload, leading to aggression. It will do anything to have it reduced.”

“Can we see a demonstration of its abilities?” Someone from the crowd asks.

“Of course, it was planned.”

Heatwave's heart hammers against his chest as he’s led to a glass room. There are four dummies in different spots. He knows this setup.

He’s done this before.

The clock starts, and he rushes forward, tackling the dummy to the ground, snapping its neck. The next one is up higher, he launches his grapple up at it, hitting it and dragging it down the floor.

He searched for a second for the third one, which was with his sword. He removed it as he ran, and as he approached it, his sword moved on an angle that took its head and left arm clean off.

It’s not until the last one that he screws up, it’s up higher, and he used his hook to get there, he was supposed to use it to swing around and kick the dummy,y let go and land on his feet.

He got the dummy but got hooked on the railing, so he ended up back-first on the ground fifteen feet below. It didn’t hurt, but there was suddenly no air in his lungs.

He's back on his feet in a second.

Shit.

He stares hard at the floor.

As soon as they walk off stage, he’s grabbed and thrown to the floor, followed quickly by a swift kick to the stomach.

“How could you mess up like that?! In front of all those people!” the man yelled.

He whimpers quietly, trying to cover himself.

“You’re damn lucky that we spent too much time and money on you to let your useless ass go.” The man sneers.

He doesn’t feel overly lucky.

Chapter Text

“This is your first mission,” his instructor says, shoving a picture in front of his face. There's a person on it. They're carrying guns, have a red cape, and what looks like a gas mask for a face.

“This is Snipe, he’s a pro hero, your aim is to take him out,” he says.

He understands, he can do that.

“He’s on patrol in the rough part of the city. We have your location at all times. So don’t get ideas,” his instructor says as he straps the last of his equipment on.

He knows all of this; they’ve been preparing for what must have been a week.

“This won’t be a hard mission, a good starter if you will, he’s an older hero now, bordering on retirement,”

He nods, he understands.

“Good, I won’t turn on your coms until we arrive, but you’ll have the helmet on,”

Another nod.

This is the first time he’ll have been outside the building since becoming aware.

His instructor is aware of this as he grips his upper arm and forces him through unknown halls.

He feels the air on his arms when they leave the compound through the roof. The wind is high.

His instructor tosses him into a helicopter, not allowing him to get his footing, before he’s able to sit. The area below him starts shaking, then lifting.

Panic fills his body.

“Sit,” his instructor says firmly.

He obeys, gripping the seat hard enough to break the leather beneath him.

The flight is quick, but it feels like an eternity to heatwave.

Eventually, they come to a halt on a rooftop.

“He’s somewhere in the vicinity, track him down, take him out.” His instructor says that before cranking the button in his helmet, everything roars to life, and he had to fight to not rip the helmet off.

“The helmet will get turned down when you return. Remember, I’m the only one with the key.” His instructor says, pushing him out the doors of the vehicle.

He was left standing alone on the roof watching the aircraft disappear into the night.

He looked around, every footstep, every breeze screaming in his ears.

The dark streets look more like daylight to him. The night vision helps, but it stings his eyes.

He crouched low, looking to the edge of the building, looking for something to hook to, perhaps swing to the next building. He knows what his target looks like.

Eventually, he comes to the conclusion that remaining atop the buildings would be better.

It doesn’t take too long; he basically jumps between buildings, scanning the ground below. Sometimes, using his grappling hook, he swings across when able, or swings across streets.

Then, he caught a glimpse of red, a cape.

He screeches to a halt above the target. He’s leisurely walking the streets. Unaware of the danger he’s in.

He puts his grapple out, ready to shoot, one eye closed, determination set on his face.

He watches, waiting for the hero to get in his crosshairs.

There’s a convenient pole between two buildings, which will allow him to swing into the hero.

He’s silent as he shoots his hook, leaping from the building into a fast swing, legs colliding with the hero, knocking them both into the alley across the street, exactly where he wanted the hero.

He unsheathed his sword, slashing the hero. They don’t have time to scream for help before their life is cut off. He watches as the blood seeps from the body; it had been easy, so easy.

It almost felt good to draw blood rather than have his drawn, to watch someone else’s blood drop onto the cold ground below. Watching the life seep out of the warm body, imagining the eyes go dull.

He almost feels the satisfaction, but part of him knows what he did was wrong, that he shouldn’t feel any satisfaction at this, that the feelings are sick.

He hears distant footsteps and approaching helicopter blades.

He looked up, watching as the aircraft landed on the roof above him.

He shoots his hook to the building, propelling himself up.

He stumbles into the aircraft, the sounds dull, and he almost hits his knees.

“That took too long, Heatwave,” his instructor growls. Hauling him up and into a seat.

He looks to the ground; he shouldn’t have taken as long as he had.

“Next time, I won’t be so patient,” his instructor says.

He nods.

Their flight back is quiet; he’s wide awake, body wired from adrenaline from the kill.

By the time they get back to the lab, he’s antsy in his seat.

He’s not used to this much adrenaline flowing through his veins.

This instructor strips him of his gear.

He hands him over to the guards.

“Get him cleaned, and bring him to the lab; the doctors want to test trigger on him.”

The guards nod, escorting him away.

He knows the routine by now, can walk himself to the shower room.

But he’s not allowed to wander the building on his own.

He almost sighs; he’s got so much energy.

Just the thought of having to go to the lab, only to be strapped down and injected with something, makes him antsy.

Once in the shower, they strip him as they usually do and crank the heat.

It hurts, but not as much as usual.

He knows his skin will be raw, but if he can’t feel it, then it doesn’t matter.

His ears are still ringing from the helmet, and when the water hits his face, it’s a shock; he’s left choking on the scalding water.

Once he can breathe, he realizes that the waters have been shut off.

They toss him a towel and clothes, and he’s quick to switch into them.

They lead him out of the room and he realizes what he’s being led to; he realizes that he doesn’t want to go. For the first time, he fights back against the guards, he’s stronger than them.

Chapter Text

He’s stronger than the guards, that’s clear, that’s been made clear, he’s made to be stronger than them, and he's known that for a long time.

So as he tackles the guards, even though he knows better, he’s able to knock them around.

“Stop!” his instructor says. He screeches to a halt.

The guards stand up again.

“Here.” His instructor says, anger written on his face.

He steps towards him slowly.

“Did I fucking stutter?” he says.

He picks up the pace.

He’s within arm’s reach when his grabbed and thrown into the wall behind him.

“You know better than this, this behaviour will be punished.” His instructor says.

He nods.

His instructor growls, gripping his arm, hauling him off.

He knows better than to fight him; it’s not worth it.

He only realized where they were going once they were in front of the lab doors.

They slide open, and he starts to fight him. He remembers the last time he was here. His veins hurt from the phantom memories of the injections.

Before he thinks, he opens his mouth

“No!” he yells.

It startles him; he’s never done that before, never even knew he could. Was that even him?

He’s breathing heavily, his instructor looks at him, he's got a look in his eye, shock, his instructor didn't think he could do that either.

“What did you just say?”

“No,” he repeats, quieter this time.

“That’s what I thought you said,”

He swallows thickly.

They pivot, and he’s marched out of the room.

He was shocked, and his instructor listened.

He’s relieved not to have to go back there.

But they aren’t going towards any rooms that he knows.

The guards flank him, smirking.

They grip his arms; they clearly know something.

They turn into a room, this one is different then the lab chair, but similarly designed, the straps are still there, but metal, then he thinks and he knows where he is.

It’s the same room he woke up in.

“No, please, no!” he says, tears stinging his eyes.

His instructor whirls on him, gripping his face.

“You can’t speak, shouldn’t even be able to, something went wrong. So we have to try again.”

He’s thrown into the chair, the guards holding his arms down.

Straps are being placed down.

He struggles in the restraints.

“Open up,” his instructor says, and something comes down in front of his face.

He refuses until his face is grabbed again, pressing on his face, forcing his jaw to relax.

His mouth opens involuntarily, and something is squeezed into his mouth down his throat. It solidifies almost immediately, and he can’t even open his mouth; breathing is a challenge, trying not to gag. He almost wishes it were whatever was holding his mouth shut before.

He feels needles piercing his skin, in his arms, legs, chest, everywhere.

“Enjoy,” his instructor says, turning something on, it forces something into him.

The lights are turned on.

He's held still, needles stinging, his body sensitive.

He feels drowsy.

He closes his eyes, tears trailing down his face.

He fights occasionally against the restraints holding him down.

It’s a losing game.

His mind's fuzzy.

He’s losing something; he can’t remember anything.

His name, what’s his name?

Where is he?

His brain feels like mush; that can’t be right.

He closes his eyes, letting the fog take over.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been when the lights are on, stinging his eyes.

He recognizes his instructor.

He doesn’t say anything as the needles are removed, just glares at him.

Then he removes the thing from his mouth.

His jaw hurts, his throat hurts.

He closes his mouth with an audible click.

The restraints are removed, and he’s hauled out of his seat and into a standing position; his head swims at the sudden movement.

He’s hauled out of the room, stumbling.

He walks the halls, brought to the training room.

“Let's make sure you remember everything.”

He nods, and they go through the same training regimen as he’s been following for however long he’s been here.

He wonders what the point of this all is; whatever they did to him clearly worked, his brain still felt mushy.

He was tired and sore from all the needles in his skin. But it’s still easy to do all his training, which is good; he doesn’t train with his gear on this time, so he feels lighter and faster on his feet.

After a while, his instructor seemed satisfied, and he was carted off by the guards, three now instead of the usual two; one of them seemed young, probably not more than a few years of practice at the job.

The person had softer eyes than the other two. Blonde hair, relatively tall, and muscular.

He's still confident he could take him.

But unlike the others, he’s more gentle; he doesn’t really shove him around, he doesn’t speak to him just like the others, but he doesn’t rough him around.

When they shave his hair again, it’s not as rough they do it every other week, keeping it short.

They escort him back to his room, where his instructor gives him his supper, which consists of the usual gray shake.

He still doesn’t enjoy whatevers in it, it leaves a film in his mouth, and is chalky.

He eats it regardless because he doesn’t have much of another choice.

“Tomorrow you’re going to the lab, the doctors want to try something, it’ll make you faster and stronger again, it’s still in the testing phase, but it's an older drug really, just enhanced.” His instructor says.

He nods; he doesn’t want to go.

“Don’t even think about trying to fight the guards, remember, in training is the only time you lay hands on one of them, understood?” the man says.

He nods.

“Good, now get some rest, you have an early rise tomorrow.” He says

He nods as his instructor leaves the heavy metal door closing and the locks sliding shut.

He stares at the door for a moment, blinking, then spins and makes his way to the bed.

He lays down and allows sleep to drag him under.

Chapter Text

Waking up came sooner than he wished, the sounds of the metal locks sliding open has him up and on his feet in just seconds, his brain more alert and aware than the night before.

His instructor stood in the door, arms crossed behind his back.

“Ready?” he asks.

Confusion laces Shoto’s face usually; he was at least allowed to eat.

He nods, though, stepping through the door and into the hall.

The walk is short, but as he approaches, he remembers the talk last night; he’s not training, he’s getting the test done.

His heart hammers away in his chest, as if it’s trying to break through.

He considers fighting again, but the ordeal he just went through is more than enough to not act in it.

He sits in the chair, the restraints locked around his limbs.

“This is just a low dose of trigger, it’ll last about two hours before coming out of its system on its own, but it’ll only last an hour if it’s moving around and being active,” one of the people says to his instructor, who just nods in understanding.

“The higher the dose, the longer the effects will last, but it also brings more dangers; if too much is in its system and it can't move around, then it could kill him.”

“What's the most it can have without being fatal?”

“It really depends on the person, that's why it's still in testing. The prior version of the drug made the person nearly mindless if handled wrong, or just made the person overpowered, hard to manage. If we've done this correctly, it should be controllable, just makes it more desperate to be active, it enhances its senses as well, so with your device and trigger, it'll want to come back sooner.”

His instructor nods,

“Well, I'll retrieve it after the test is done; there will be a guard nearby,” his instructor says as he makes his way to the sliding doors,

He struggles in his restraints, realizing it was a fruitless struggle; the restraints wouldn’t budge.

The doctor approaches him, needle in hand.

He doesn’t say anything as he injects the liquid.

He can feel his sight sharpen; he feels so much more, feels the needle leave his arms.

He feels his muscles tighten, like a spring ready to burst.

He hauls hard against the restraints, and surprisingly, they snap, simply breaking. It makes him pause; that was a new development.

He uses the chance to spring out of the chair, ready to jump at the first person who tries to grab him.

He's done letting them have their way.

He can hear everything, without his helmet on, every breath of the people in the room, the buzz of electricity whirring away, it’s overwhelming but at the same to exhilarating.

He stands for a moment, no one approaches him, he’s dangerous, and they know it, good, he has control now.

Something hits his back and sends shocks through him, but it does nothing, like a mere static shock, then anything, certainly not enough to take him out.

He whirls around and jumps at the person,

Then he realizes what he’s doing, he can’t help, he won't, he’ll end up back in that cold dark room, that's the last thing he wants.

He stands there, muscles bound tightly in his body, too much energy, and he can feel himself twitch.

“Take it to the training room, take notes, see what we need to improve,” the doctor says. The two guards and the second doctor nod and lead him away, into the hall.

He feels sick, and everything is so bright.

He’s thankful for the quick walk, but he wants to run, wants to not be stuck walking like he is, he can feel his muscles twitching, it’s like his body is itching to move.

When the doors open, his instructor is already waiting for him.

He walks to the center of the room, ready to train.

“I want to test the drug, so just do your usual routine, and I'll time you.”

He nods, his instructor putting his gear on.

He hears the click of the timer and takes off like a spring.

His body is faster, freer than he’s ever felt it, like a bound string finally bursting.

As soon as he hits the wall, he’s jumping off, and swinging across the bar, his body reacting even before his brain registers it.

His brain feels electric with stimulation, his vision like an eagle's.

He lands on the floor next to his instructor, who clicks the stopwatch with a subtle nod. He did well.

They do it again, and again, and he doesn’t get tired for a long time, but once he does, it’s like a wall, and his legs go weak; he physically can’t hold himself up.

“Take it back to the lab, tell them that it was a success, and we'll give it a higher dose tomorrow and see how long it lasts.”

The guards nod and lift him up by putting their arms under his shoulders, allowing his instructor to remove his gear.

He's dragged away into the hall, head hanging down low, too tired to hold it up.

They don’t bother with the restraints in the lab, seeing he’s weak from the drug.

His instructor is there as well, looking at him; he almost looks proud, a foreign look for the man.

“The tiredness is normal for the drug; it heightens all its senses and makes it faster and stronger. It means that it burns more energy, like I said, the higher the dose, the longer the effects last.”

“Okay, so that was the lowest dose, and it lasted for an hour, and what happens if we give him the highest dose?”

“For its body weight and size, it would depend, I think it could take maybe four times the amount he had today and be okay, so about four hours, but that would have to be injected right before the mission, or it could have serious consequences.”

His instructor nods in understanding.

“We’ll test it on the next mission,” he says.

“Take it back to its room, hose it down first, make sure it eats,” his instructor says as the guards both haul him up.

Chapter Text

Two days after the training with the drug, he was woken early, or late, he’s never sure, by his instructor.

“New mission, there's a pro spotted nearby, a good target for you, especially with the new drug,” he says as he drags him out of the room.

He follows him, listening to him ramble about the hero.

Once they get to the prep room, he stands in the middle, allowing his instructor to do most of the work for him, putting all the pads and weapons on, but he leaves one of the sleeves rolled up, exposing his skin.

It confuses him for a second until he spots the syringe; it must be filled with that stuff they gave him the other day.

He's almost excited to have it again; it makes thinking hard, he won't hesitate this time, he’ll be faster.

There's a picture placed in front of him, he looks down at it, which has a picture of a man with a wooden helmet, blue suit, wooden boots, kneepads, and belt, overall it looks like an uncomfortable suit.

“This is Kamui Woods, the current number ten hero. He’s stronger than the last target, so you have to be careful; you’ll be released on a roof in the area he’s patrolling. I'll give you the shot when we get to the landing zone,” he says as they walk onto the plane.

He makes his way to his seat, clipping in, he doesn’t panic when the plane starts vibrating this time, it’s still unnerving to say the least, but at the same time, he’s getting more used to it.

When the vehicle lands, he unclips and stands as his instructor slips his helmet on, locking it.

The lights come on in the helmet and allow him to see clearly.

He feels the needle penetrate his sensitive skin, and the liquid gets pushed into his veins.

Everything roars to life, between the helmet and the drugs, his knees almost go weak.

Then all at once his muscles pull taut and he feels ready to burst.

This is so much stronger than the first dose.

The door to the plane opens, he takes one last glance at the picture, and marches out of the plane, which starts to lift, flying away and out of his sight.

He rushes forward, jumping quickly between buildings, scanning the ground looking for the hero.

He spots him, and before he can even think to be sneaky, he is jumping from the building down almost on top of him.

The man moves, whirling on him, shooting wood at him.

He dodges, crouching low.

“Who are you?” the hero says, his mouth remains shut.

He lunges forward again, knocking them both into the alley behind them.

He uses his clawed hand to hook the helmet off his face.

He feels something hit him in the shoulder, tearing through the suit, he can feel something leaking from his arm.

He managed to stab him through the shoulder with his powers. He doesn’t feel it, though, like it was merely a pressure in his shoulder.

He takes the moment to pull out his sword, swinging it hard and slicing through his throat horizontally. The hero doesn’t have the chance to scream as his head is sliced clean off.

He uses his grappling hook to move onto the rooftop, leaving no evidence that he’d even been there.

The planes are already ready for him. He stumbles in, still full of energy.

His instructors on him in seconds, ripping his gear off to take a look at his wound, the helmet gone.

“God fucking damn it, I knew this would happen, why did I think anything else would’ve happened, with that much trigger in your fucking system,” he says, and he puts pressure on the wound. He just blinks at him. Is it that bad? He can’t even feel it.

The flight back to the base is taken faster than ever. They don’t even bother to strap in. The gear was just thrown to the side.

“If anything happens to you, it looks bad on me, so don’t you fucking dare do that again, you understand, the last thing I fucking need is you going and getting caught or killed,” he says angrily from the seat next to him.

Red liquid is pouring down his arm, and he nods in understanding, even if he’s suddenly feeling sick and tired.

The injury still doesn’t really hurt; he doesn’t see what the big deal is, it’s just a scratch.

As soon as the plane lands, his instructor is leading him to a different part of the base, one he’s never been in.

“Doc! Get in here now, it got itself hurt,” his instructor says. He’s never heard the man more frantic, worried even, no, worried wasn’t the right word, his instructor didn’t really care about him, cared enough to keep him alive, but he was just a tool beyond that.

Someone in a white coat walks in quickly, and he almost panics, but realizes there isn’t even a chair with the straps in here.

“What happened?”

“The fucking moron gave me too much trigger, clearly it got trigger happy, jumped a pro hero, and got itself impaled,” his instructor says as they take his shirt from him. It made him a little uncomfortable to have them staring and poking him, but soon enough, they cleaned the wound and wrapped it.

“I’ll give you something to speed up the recovery, but it’ll need some time to recover from this before it can start again, id recommend at least a week without training, while it heals with the accelorator, then you can go back to normal, the stitches will come out on their own, it’s shoulder should be fine with time.” the doctor says.

“So that means that he’ll be spending some time in the lab, can’t have him getting no use, can we?” his instructor says, smirking.

“Exactly, just make sure it doesn’t use the shoulder, let it rest, okay?”

“Will do doc, I will make sure that it’ll make a full recovery, or it’s my ass on the line,” his instructor says.

Chapter Text

After his hose down, he’s brought back to his room, arm wrapped and forced into a sling; he doesn’t really understand the point of it, the injury doesn’t even hurt.

But the guards were a little gentler with him; he didn’t mind that.

He was brought back to his room briefly; it was unusual, usually he went for training now. He wasn’t allowed to stay in his room during the day.

He wondered if his instructor would be here to take him somewhere.

He paced his quarters for some time, not sure what to do. He couldn’t use his arm, he was under orders not to, and he didn’t want to know the consequences of breaking the rules.

But he was bored; he wasn’t used to being idle for so long.

He needed to do something.

It's then that the doors slide open and two guards walk in, neither of them seems familiar to him, they’re new, and that in itself is odd. No one new is allowed near him, not without his normal guards nearby. These two have looks of pure anger all over their faces.

He stands there staring for a moment, not sure what to do. They move forward, each grabbing him.

Next thing he knows, he’s slammed into the wall behind him, hard, his lungs spasm, and his shoulders dull ache turns into a red-hot pain.

Something collides with the side of his face, his neck jerking to the left.

His mouth fills with metal, tasting of pennies.

They hit him in the stomach; he can’t curl into himself, and he knows better than to defend himself.

He’s dropped to the floor, legs like jelly.

There’s another kick to his stomach, then one to his face, and his nose shifts to the side.

There’s so much blood in his mouth, he spits it out, red coating the floor.

His back spasms painfully as he’s kicked in the back with what must be full force. There’s another kick, and another, agony flooding his system.

They push him onto his back, taking turns stomping on him, and his chest shifts. Broken ribs, breathing hurts so badly.

He’s flipped again, more stomping, on his back this time. It hurts his ribs, his stomach, everything.

There are several bangs, and everything halts. He hears the bodies falling around him. He heaves a sigh of relief, no more pain, everything fading into a dull ache.

He lies there trying to get his breath.

“Someone get a stretcher!” he hears someone say, barely able to identify the voice over the ringing in his ears.

Someone’s kneeling beside him, and the face of his instructor fills his vision.

He looks almost concerned; it’s a new look.

He needs to get up his instructor will he angry if he doesn’t.

He moves his arms, trying to push himself up.

“No, no, don’t move,” he says.

He breaths out, going limp.

He doesn’t know how long he lies like that; his instructor says things, but it’s hard to hear or comprehend when his brain feels full of cotton.

He’s tired, just wants to rest. He allows his eyes to slip shut; he’d just rest for a moment, then he’d get back up.

His body was already starting to feel better.

“Hey, open your eyes,” his instructor says, snapping in his face.

He peels his eyes open, but doesn’t move, head resting on the cold, hard floor.

There’s movement besides him.

“Be gentle, the last thing I need is him getting a neck injury, then all that money's down the fucking drain.” His instructor says.

Something’s wrapped around his neck, and he’s rolled gently over so he’s staring at the ceiling.

There’s something hard under him, and he’s lifted easily onto the stretcher.

It's then that the world starts moving, his instructor beside him for the journey.

He doesn’t know how long it is until he’s in the medical unit, but he knows when they get there due to the antiseptic scent burning his nostrils.

The nurse is leaning over him shining lights in his eyes.

“Pupils equal and reactive, so no brain damage, broken nose, four broken ribs, broken collarbone, dislocated shoulder, abdominal trauma, but it doesn’t appear to be any internal bleeding, broken wrist, bruising all over the place, his back is bruised pretty bad, minor whiplash, but from what my quirk is telling me, nothing permanent. What the hell even happened?” The nurse says, he’s leaned back, they injected him with something to make him tired, and he can’t feel half the injuries now.

“A couple of new guys wanted to take out a bad mission on it, it was under strict orders never to attack a guard, which it obeyed. Guess I’m going to have to reevaluate that rule.” His instructor says.

“Absolutely.”

“How long do you think it’ll be out of commission?”

“With the fast healing injections, a week or two, I know I didn’t give it to him the first time, but with injuries like this, it’d be out of commission for too long.”

His instructor nods.

“I'd like to keep it here for now, to do some observations. Just in case it reacts to the medication, wouldn’t want all this work to go to waste, would we?”

“Of course not, just restrain it in the night, don’t want it making a run for it.” His instructor says.

“Of course, come back tomorrow morning, and I’ll release it to you again, make sure it has someone watching or guarding its door at all times. I don’t want the same thing to happen.”

His instructor nods before leaving the room.

“Get some rest.” The nurse says before walking away.

He lies awake for some time before the nurse comes into his field of vision with a cup of the paste he drinks.

He’s allowed to eat before his wrists and ankles are restrained, and he’s given something to force sleep. He fights it for some time, but he knows it’s a losing battle; his vision fades, and he is sucked into sleep.

Chapter Text

When he wakes again, it’s early, and the lights are still dimmed.

He takes the time to relax.

When the nurse comes in again, she injects him with the same medicine as the night before, the one that is supposed to make him heal faster.

His instructor comes to get him later, with his breakfast, and he’s allowed to eat, and then they begin the journey back to his unit.

“You’ll be brought back there every evening for your injection. Then, back to your room, a guard is standing outside all day and night, so you’re safe. You’ll return to your training once cleared by the nurse.”

Once the instructor leaves again, he looks around, and the blood is gone now. No signs of the attack the day before.

His arm is still in its sling, but he walks around, his brain replaying the events the day before, watching the doors slide open, the two stepping in, but he watches from third person, like he’s watching the beating.

It looks worse than it felt. It looks like it should’ve caused worse injuries. He watches the men fall, two gunshot wounds to the head, and they drop immediately.

He wonders what their life was like prior; did they have families? Children? Children who would now grow up without a father. He knows he deserves the beating, for what he’s done; he deserved every hit, because it's wrong to kill people, he’s done bad things to avoid punishments, to avoid getting himself hurt; he knows this.

But what was he supposed to do? If he didn’t obey, would they kill him? The drug they inject him with likely would, just short times without being able to do anything physically hurts on the drug, and that’s only with small doses.

He sighs; he can’t go through that again. He can’t be put in that chair, not again. He won’t be. Hell, he'll do whatever he needs to, kill whoever he needs to.

He looks away from the wall to the floor, to his bed. Everything is the same, but so different now. He expects the heroes to attack back, not his own allies, not the people watching him.

This room is tainted; it was tainted to begin with. This is wrong, all of this is wrong.

Something was itching at his brain, like the beating he took had knocked something loose; there was something before this building.

He screws his eyes shut, he sees green eyes, green hair, curly, smaller then him, but strong, there’s someone else, black hair, long, red eyes, gray scarf, there’s someone else, two different eyes, taller then the green haired boy, two different hair colors, scar covering part of his face, his whole body, like his, that was him, he was that man, he had a life, he was a hero, what was his name?

What was it? This is important, he needs to remember.

He opens his mouth, muttering, like the memories released the chains around his vocal chords.

“What’s my name? What’s my name? Come on, remember,” he says over and over to himself.

S, he thinks, it starts with S.

He scratches his now-short hair, shaking his head as if trying to shake the memory into focus.

Shoto, his mind pops up, that’s his name, it has to be. It’s too important not to be.

He has to get out of this room, has to get back to his friends, out of here, has to find the green-haired boy and black haired man, what we’re their names again?

He's a hero; he needs to remember, they’ll believe him, they’re heroes as well, they’ll help, they’ll rescue him.

He needs to get the door open, his quirk, he needs to use his quirk, he’s a hero, what’s his quirk? Not what his instructor showed, not the water, his hands, they’re two different temperatures, hot and cold.

He concentrates, focuses the heat into his palm, a flame appears, he focuses harder, it grows.

He pushes it into the cracks in the door, where it slides. If he can melt the mechanism, perhaps he could get out.

Soon enough, with the heat, the door slides open, he peeks out, the door that’s supposed to be guarded at all times is empty, scratch that, everything is empty, he must have come to during a shift change, he sneaks out the door, checking halls and doors.

He knows the way to the roof. If he can get up there, maybe he can find a way down to the ground, make his way back to the city, it was the only hope he had.

He's silent on his feet, turning and looking before every movement, making sure he doesn’t run into anyone; he doesn’t want to take any chances of being caught.

He makes it to the hall when the lights start flashing red, and alarms sound.

“Shit,” he mutters, making for the door at a dead sprint.

This was his only chance; if they found him now, they’d either kill him or rewipe his memory, and a third time, he didn’t know if he’d ever remember again.

He bursts through the door into the open air. It’s night, and he can barely make out the lights of the city on the horizon. It would take days to get there, but it was his only chance; he had to look for an escape ladder, something.

He looked out over the edge, a straight drop, into what looked like a forest.

He walks the perimeter, looking for an escape. There doesn’t seem to be anything. He’s getting desperate, he’s wasting time, they’re going to find him.

His brain's getting fuzzy. What’s he looking for? Something over the edge, something to get to the ground, what was it, who was he looking for, green, something green, and red, green and red, he repeats, trying desperately to latch onto his only lifeline.

Shoto, he has to remember his name, Shoto.

The door swings open, and his instructor is there.

“Heatwave, come here,” he orders.

“What did you do to me?” he spits, voice sounds odd in his own ears.

He doesn’t get an answer before something sharp hits him, and the world goes dark.

Chapter Text

That room, he always wakes up in that room, in that chair, with the needles, with the dark, and the loneliness, what had he done this time to deserve it?

He doesn’t remember anything, theres nothing beyond his training, just space for a memory.

Something is wrong about the whole thing, like he should remember something, maybe he did poorly on his last mission, they had to wipe it so he didn’t screw up again, because if there was one thing he was sure he was good at, it was screwing up.

When the doors slide open it’s his instructor, he looks furious, he doesn’t even know why he would look at him like that, he can’t remember what he did.

“You’ve caused quite a bit of trouble for us lately, but you’re back to normal now, so youll resume your training, it’ll be harder now, longer hours, we have to make sure you’re fit for duty, and you’ve been out of use for some time. Are you ready to behave?” his instructor asks, he nods quickly, of course he is, theres nothing more he wants then to be out of this damn chair.

They quickly remove what must be hundreds of needles from his body.

He stands when allowed.

“You’ll train for nineteen hours a day, sleep the other five, you’ll eat within training time, but you’ll get three minutes, we have no time to waste, you’re training should’ve been done many months ago but you’ve been very difficult to train.

He looks at the ground, he had not meant to cause an issue.

He follows his trainer to the door, through to the training room, the original one, with the treadmills and weights.

“Lets refresh your memory shall we?” he says, as if he doesn’t have all the memories from his time here.

The training is worse than before, so, so much worse, he’s convinced that his instructor wants him dead, he collapses and his instructor drags him back up and forces more out of him, his few minutes to eat is typically cut short, and it carries on for days and days, the heavily restricted diet, the long hours and days.

a recent development is the addition of restraints in his room, on his bed, when he’s not in use he’s restrained there to avoid any escape attempts, the restraints are pulled harshly tight, making it impossible for him to move, it makes breathing, let alone sleeping a challenge.

His bed was always just a platform of concrete off the ground, but now, with the restraints, it’s like a whole new room.

He almost cries one night, from the pain of the restraints, that was the first night, by the third he’d grown semi accustomed to it, yes it made sleeping a challenge, but it protected him, he deserved this, for disobedience, his instructor knew what was good for him, he did wrong by him, his instructor wasn’t a monster, he was, he was a monster because he couldn’t listen, he was a monster because he disobeyed.

That thought almost hurts more then the punishment, knowing that he’s a monster, that he couldn’t follow a simple order, his instructor is being gentle, generous even for not doing worse, there’s so many worse things a person could do to him if they wanted, he was told all about them by his instructor.

His instructor is a merciful man, one who was doing what was best for him, because he could always be better.

He just wanted him to be better, to do better, and he could, he would.

He decides that one night, before falling asleep,

And he does, he trains harder, fights harder, does what he’s told, when he’s told.

His instructor doesn’t seem impressed just used that cold indifferent stare on him, he’s still not good enough, he has to do better.

The days are long, they run for hours and hours and hours, but he doesn’t collapse, for a few nights he wasn’t even allowed to sleep, to test his stamina apparently, because he was still too slow to be helpful, he needed to be helpful.

Days bleed into weeks, until his instructor finally decides that he’s ready for his weapons training, he has to do better here, he remembers everything, he needs to be faster, with trigger, he has to, there isn’t another option. If he disappoints his instructor again then who knows what will happen.

He prepares himself, jogging in place, then waits for his instructor to place his gear where it’s needed.

He is patient, he can be patient.

He hears the buzzer go and he’s off like a rocket, taking off full bore into the mannequins, ripping them to shreds, he bounces from one area to the next destroying and causing havoc everywhere he lands, in a desperate attempt to impress his instructor again, to regain his favor.

It has to work, all this extra training has to be worth something, there’s no way he’d have to go through all of this and make no progress, he can’t remember the specifics of his last mess up, but he knows he can’t make it again, he has to obey.

He does, he practices for hours on hours, for days at a time, if he doesn’t improve they go again, and again, and again, until his time is better, then they do it again, he’s told to be ruthless, if it means getting the job done, than who cares what the remains look like.

He follows that for the dummies, shredded and barely recognizable as to what they are, the clock ticks down the seconds until the buzzer goes for his time to beat, theres only five left as he plunges his sword into the chest of the dummy, still enough to get back to the floor in time.

He rolls to a hault in front of his instructor, waiting for the next task.

His instructor nods his approval.

“Finally, you’re ready.”

Chapter Text

“Finally, you’re ready.” His instructor says as he smiles for the first time since he woke up in that room for the third time.

He almost sighs in relief; he’d finally done well.

He doesn’t know what he did to go into that room again, but he would be sure not to do it again; that room was something of nightmares.

He is finally allowed to rest for a short time, given some food, and hosed down.

It’s nice after how long of the long, laborious days, he knows the peace won’t last for long; it never does here.

It’s inevitable that he’ll he dragged out and put to work again.

He’s glad to be of use, of course, he’d rather than being idle, not that he gets much idle time, usually just the nights.

But regardless, it was nice to just relax and recover, his muscles sore from the constant use. It isn’t long before the peace ends, just as he expects.

It's late, he can tell from the look on the guard's faces and the dark bags under the guard's eyes; he almost feels bad for them, almost, he can’t bring himself to truly feel bad, and maybe that makes him bad, but after everything, he thinks he’s earned the right to be a little bitter.

He's dragged out of his room, taken down the familiar halls of his isolated life, will this be forever? Stuck in a constant loop of training and missions, will he have to live in this hell forever? Does he deserve to be saved after everything he’s done?

He can’t linger on that thought; he already knows the answer: if he deserved to be rescued, someone would have done so.

He arrives at the preparation room, his instructor is standing where he normally is, his gear sitting on the stand nearby, ready to be equipped, a needle full of that drug that makes him feel like the world's too much in his instructor's hand.

He wants to run, even considers it for a moment, just taking off, but he doubts that many people here would be able to run as fast as he can.

He doesn’t, of course, he knows they’d find him, it would only make it worse for him.

“This is your next target, Powerloader. He should be an easy kill,” his instructor says, handing the picture to him, a person with a giant yellow helmet on, abnormally large hands and long arms, white pants with a black belt, no shirt, gray hair, gray fingerless gloves, and black boots.

He memorizes all the man's features; he has to do this quickly.

He allows his instructor to inject the drugs into his arm, the world buzzing to life. It’s odd they don’t normally give him the drugs until later, before the mission.

“We want to try something new, higher dose, and leave it longer, to see how it affects your abilities,”

He nods in understanding.

They quickly get him ready, the weight of his gear comforting.

His instructor holds his helmet, but doesn’t make him put it on yet, though.

He's glad for that; the helmet with the drugs makes it so hard to focus.

Once on the plane, he gets comfortable. He doesn’t know how long this flight will be, and he hasn’t gotten much rest the past little while; he needs to be rested.

Once landed on the roof, his helmet placed on, the buzzing cranked up.

He growls lowly at the extra stimulation.

“Go,” is all his instructor says, and it’s all he needs to hear as he shoots out of the plane.

He is fast, swinging between buildings looking for the yellow or white, something that would give the hero's location away.

The amount of the drug in him makes the world feel hot; he can feel himself shaking a little, something in his stomach wants to be rejected, but he can’t throw up in his helmet.

He swings around for longer than he likes; the longer he is, the worse he feels. Pretty soon, he sees the yellow, and he knows that this could be his only chance.

He swings down slamming into the unsuspecting person, they roll around a bit before he gets on top of the man, using the chance to shoot his grapple hook into his chest, it kills him instantly, the blood seeping out of his body, he knows it’s a pretty blatent area, but having done this makes the twisting and churning in his stomach go away a little.

He makes his way back to the plane and stumbles in, dizzy and hot and nauseous.

He heaves into his helmet, he feels it being removed, and he spews what little he had to eat onto the floor of the plane; he feels heat rush to his face and ears.

He's never had this problem before; shame floods him.

“Well, I guess we know that you can't handle the drug that long,” his instructor deadpans.

He nods, trying to apologize. He doesn’t want his instructor to be angry at him; he just wants to be happy with him, happy hurts less.

“It’s fine, it’s to be expected, it’s still experimental, it’s hardly your fault,” his instructor says. He curls into himself, shivering, weak; it’s an odd feeling.

Once back to the lab, he’s taken to be hosed down; he’s too weak to try and keep the water out of his face, so he just lets it happen.

He stumbles back to his room, barely able to see straight. He’s not strapped down tonight, just in case he gets sick again; he truly hopes he doesn’t.

He curls up on the hard surface, curling into himself, sweat running down his neck; he’s never had this kind of reaction to anything. Yes, he had the really bad reactions to the other stuff they gave him as punishment, but never like this.

He's never felt this bad, and not for so long.

His eyes water a little; he just wants it to stop, he doesn’t want to do this, he wants someone to help him.

Chapter Text

Marco knew he’d have to answer for why the training took as long as it had, and while he wasn’t looking forward to it, he was aware it could’ve been worse.

The problem was that if this didn’t go well, he’d be out of a job. And he didn’t want to lose this job; he actually rather enjoyed it.

But rebuilding a person from the ground up, it wasn’t exactly easy; having to rewire and basically start from scratch took time.

It was time his bosses hadn’t wanted to give him.

Though he hadn’t been expecting the difficulties of it all.

The person required had to have some type of neurodiversity, preferably autism, as people with the disorder tended to be more set in their moral values. But being that autism is a spectrum, it made it harder to find the right fit.

They got lucky with Shoto; he’d walked into the trap. He didn’t feel bad for what happened; he was doing his job, that was it.

He had seen the news, seen how everyone gave up and presumed he was dead.

He remembers watching the news as the stubborn man lost himself. It filled him with a type of sick joy to see someone so strong crumble, to lose their mind due to sensory deprivation, loneliness, pain; it all made him happy.

Then, when he was finally ready, after months of being locked in that room, slowly chipping away at the memories, taking each away until there was nothing of his old life.

It was then that it was important to make sure he didn’t feel human, taking away any comforts, any decisions, anything that could develop a sense of self; the last thing they wanted was to develop something with feelings. They needed a weapon.

And Heatwave was just that, he was one hundred percent lethal, and ready to be sold off to the highest bidder, in his opinion at least.

And of course there were some hiccups, such as when he was beaten, regaining some of his memory, forcing the third wiping, it was something he hadn’t thought possible, he’d thought he’d taken away those memories, but apparently neuroplasticity had a factor in it, but the new chemical targeted and destroyed brain cells while allowing new ones to grow, without the peaky memories getting in the way.

But he did it regardless; they’d found a way to make a fully conscious nomu, one that could take orders and be loyal, unlike previous attempts where they made brainless beasts.

Now with Heatwave resting, he made his way to the meeting room. This was a big moment; he had to prove that the man was ready and that he was capable of doing it again.

His heart raced, this would be a turning point in his career either way, he’d get a massive pay raise if he could get his boss's approval, or he could lose his job.

The door slides open and he meets with the faces of the people funding his research.

“Hello Marco, we have much to discuss,” his main boss, Aik,o says.

“That we do,” he says with a nod.

“First things first, how close is this to being completed?” Aiko asks.

“It’s completed on my end, the weapon is fully trained, and ready for combat.” He explains.

“Good, there were some concerns, as you know, this took quite a while longer than expected, and many of the funders want an explanation for the drawn-out nature of this experiment.”

“I assumed as such, there were some hiccups. This is an experimental project; there was never any guarantee of this even working, but what mainly took the longest was the first wiping, erasing so many years of memories isn’t something done overnight.”

“But the original wiping was done months ago. Why has it taken so long to train?”

“Well, being that the subject is human and still has freewill, we have had to rewipe him several times, mainly due to speaking. The main problem occurred a few weeks ago, it suffered a head injury that brought back its memories, it managed to get out of its cell but didn’t get far.”

“How can you guarantee that this won’t be the case a second time?”

“We used a new experimental drug that completely destroys the neuroplasticity of the brain, destroying memories in the process,” he says.

His boss nods.

“Have you taken any videos of its work?”

“Very few, especially in the field, would require a camera would could interfere with the signal to its helmet.”

“I want a video before the auction. I want you to impress me, Marco. This has to be perfect, or I promise you that you’ll be out of a job.”

“Do you have a target?”

“Of course, it shouldn’t be too hard, the man's retired, but with heightened hero presence, it could pose some issues,” Aiko says.

“It’ll utilize his patience, his strength, his capabilities.”

“These targets should be fast to kill; if triggers is in his system for too long, then it could kill it.”

“I'm aware, but I need this pro taken out asap,” Aiko says.

Marco nods, getting ready to leave the room, suppressing a groan. Why did he have to do this?

He’d have to go to the lab to get a camera and find a place to hook it up that wouldn’t also interfere with the helmet.

It’s not a hard thing to find, just annoying, and then to have to get it to work with the damn suit, it wasn’t designed to hold any technology, just be thrown on and go.

Soon enough, he’s standing in front of his creation strapping everything, he checks the camera, then checks it again, just to be positive that it’s on, but he doesn’t tell the other man.

Soon enough, they’re in the air heading towards the abandoned part of the city where mainly only criminals and the homeless stay.

He turns to look at Heatwave, pulling out the picture.

“This is your target,” is all he says.

Chapter Text

His usual trainer stood in front of him, helmet in hand.

“This is a real test now, the prior ones have been easy, Child's play really, but this one's a real pro, you’ll have to do this differently. You know that recent technique with the grappling hook? Good, you need to use that, don’t let yourself be seen.” The man says before Heatwave feels something rush through his veins, trigger a higher dose.

Then the stimulation, the screech in his ears, the lights get brighter even though it’s night.

It takes everything in him not to just collapse at that. How long had it been since they used this amount of trigger?

It made his muscles tense, his heart race, his palms sweat in his gloves, and they latched his weapons onto him, sword strapped to his back, its weight comfortable on his shoulder, familiar.

His teeth grit in his mask, breathing heavily as the effects set in.

“Go,” his instructor says after showing him a picture of his target.

He nods, stepping off the plane and onto a roof.

The screeching in his ears grows, and his skin feels impossibly tight.

He knows the only way to stop it is to kill his target and get back to the plane.

The hero in question can be seen patrolling around a rough area.

He wouldn’t be able to see him.

He points his grappling hook towards the man, intending to shoot it through his chest.

He shot it, but just as the man moved, it alerted the man to his presence. As he scanned the area, he wasn’t too worried; once again, the man wouldn’t be able to see him.

He'd get another chance; he’d just have to get closer.

He slowly rappels down the building, landing silently on the ground, crouching low as the man walks past.

He puts his arm out, aiming the weapon.

He shoots in only for the man to be shoved out of the way, and someone flashing green pushed him.

Someone lands on his back, and something sticky wraps around him.

He throws them off him, whirling around, ripping out his sword, and expanding his shield on his arm.

The person lunges at him, and he dodges easily; they’re slow.

He makes a slash at him, not intending to kill; he wasn’t the target, just had him out of the way, not to worry about them.

His sword is pulled out of his hand with something cloth.

He lifts his foot to kick away the person who landed on him, only to be grabbed again by the leg, sending him to the ground.

Something hits the side of his helmet, he feels something give, and some kind of shock makes contact with his brain, all too familiar to the shocks during wiping, and his vision goes dark.

(Izukus POV)

Heatwave hit the ground like a rock. One second, standing straight up to fight them turned his back to him, and he threw a punch. It landed as he dodged Sero, and his fist collided with the person’s head, hard. It wasn’t his intention to hit him that hard, but he didn’t regret it after everything he’s done.

Then there were sparks of electricity, and he dropped.

“Shit!” he shouted, bending down to remove the helmet before permanent damage was caused.

The thing didn’t budge, connected to the rest of the suit.

He flips them up, trying to see if there was a latch or something, only to be met with some kind of scanner.

This kind of thing was usually used when someone wasn’t supposed to remove it without the help of another.

He summoned one for all, concentrated on not using too much and hurting the person more than necessary.

It took a lot of force, but eventually the metal caved, and he pulled the device off.

He gasped and shot back onto his butt. His hands flew to his mouth.

Sero is the next to look over and has a similar reaction.

It’s not until Aizawa gets closer and realizes who it is that he scoops the man into a one-sided hug.

It’s at this point that Shoto snaps awake, but instead of recognition, they see the eyes of a deranged animal.

Then he latches onto Aizawa's neck with his razor-like claws, drawing blood from the man’s neck.

Deku and Sero lunge into action, trying to get him to let go.

His teeth were gritting, holding Aizawa still, digging into soft flesh.

That’s when, once again, Izuku is forced to take extreme measures and tries to knock him unconscious again.

It only serves to enrage him further, but it makes him let go.

He scrambles to his feet, extending his shield with a blade around the edge and swiping it towards the boy.

They hear a pop, and Shotos' struggles cease, dropping him to the ground.

Someone with a tranquilizer quirk shot him.

“That should work for an hour. I already called the authorities.” The man says with a frown, approaching the group.

Aizawa gives a thumbs up, blood seeping out of the holes in his neck.

The police arrived first, cuffing Shoto's arms in front of him. There were two ambulances at the scene, one taking each of the injured away.

Sero followed in Shotos' ambulance; he looked so different, hair nearly non-existent, bruises littered his face, but the scar and those mismatched eyes gave him away.

They’re taking off his weapons while he’s unconscious.

“What did they do to you?” he says quietly.

He, of course, doesn’t answer.

The paramedics are flashing lights in his eyes, taking vitals.

It’s not until they try to give an IV that he sees all the scars; they’re all over his arm, scars from needles, from what could only be knives or swords.

He grabs Shoto’s hands, working around the cuffs. He’s lost weight, a lot of it too; his hands have lost their muscle.

He could see the muscles in the suit, but they weren’t nearly as pronounced as they had been.

He can’t help but wonder what happened, because this wasn’t his Shoto, this was someone else.

“What did they do?” he repeats to himself.

Chapter Text

Sero was forced to leave when they took Shoto away for a few tests, with only the officers following.

He went to meet up with Izuku, who was in Aizawa's room.

He has bandages around his neck.

“How bad?” He asks.

“Twenty stitches be I’ll be fine. How is Shoto?” Aizawa asks.

“Still unconscious, he’s getting some tests done, then we’ll be allowed to talk to him. He looks rough, though, he’s lost a lot of muscle mass, like they weren’t feeding him right,”

“How is that even possible? You’ve seen what he does to his victims, how could he possibly not be getting fed enough and still be able to do things like that?”

“I don’t know, but you see the look in his eyes, he didn’t even recognize us,” Sero says sadly.

Izuku nods, biting his lip.

“They’re releasing me pretty soon. The doctor just left, so we can wait for him in the waiting room if you want,” Aizawa says.

Both men nod.

Once discharged, they make their way to the waiting room, asking the receptionist if there’s been any word.

Shoto doesn’t have much family; his mother passed during his capture, his brother moved out of Japan to get away from everything, and Fuyumi was really all he had left in Japan.

They were the closest thing he had.

They waited for a little over half an hour before Shoto was roughly brought out the door, hands cuffed behind his back, a cop on each arm.

“Wow, wait, what happened?”

“Taking him down to the station, you’ll get a call when we need you,” one of the officers says, dragging Shoto along. He looks angry, fighting them.

They can’t help but stare, then tear their eyes away, towards each other.

They asked to see the doctor who had treated Shoto, but were turned away due to not being blood.

At that point, they realized they had no choice but to wait.

(Shoto’s Pov)

Waking in the new environment was a shock to his system. He’d expected his instructor to swoop down and get him after he’d fallen unconscious; he still doesn’t know what hit him.

But he barely gets a chance to wake up before he’s hauled off, his weapons are gone, dressed in loose clothing.

He can barely keep up, that drug still running rampant through his body.

He is dragged past the men who put him here; they look sad, coming up to the people dragging him around like a rag doll.

He doesn’t hear the words over the high-pitched screaming in his ears.

He’s brought outside the building, it's still night, and he couldn’t have been out for long.

He’s thrown into the back of a vehicle, one like he’s seen going around during his missions, it’s closed in with metal bars on the windows, and the access to the front portion of the vehicle

They take off down the road, and he steadily feels worse and worse throughout the ride. Closing his eyes doesn’t help; he can’t get out of the cuffs, keeping his arms behind his back so he can’t cover his ears against the ringing.

His stomach does that thing where it feels like it’s going to reject itself.

He wonders how long he’ll be stuck like this, unable to do anything to help the feeling go away.

He wonders how high a dose he was given, and how long it would take to kill him.

Soon, he’s in a new building getting hauled out of the car, vision swimming, knees getting weak for a moment before he stands again.

He walks and keeps pace with the men this time.

He’s brought to a room with a chair that’s too familiar to the one he’s been in before that sickening treatment.

Not again, his instructor didn’t say anything about not hurting people who aren’t the guards.

He concentrates and pulls hard on the cuffs; they snap easily, his wrist now free. He can fight back.

One of the men takes a step back, drawing a gun, pointing it at his head, but he’s faster, charging him, knocking him into the wall behind him, and knocking the wind out of him.

He can’t keep his eyes on both men, though; it gives the man enough time to hit him in the head with a stick. His head, already being sore from the punch he received, makes him go limp, dazed.

“Get the metal restraints; he broke his damn cuffs.” One of the men yells out in the hall.

They’re quick to it, hauling him up and into the car, restraining his wrists and ankles.

He’s still dazed for a few moments before everything comes back into focus.

They’re asking him questions that he can’t make out.

They keep this up for hours and hours, and he feels himself getting sicker and sicker as time passes.

Eventually, they leave, but he doesn’t sleep, though, not with how hot he is, or cold, it shifts a lot, or the profuse shaking.

He only gets worse through the night, getting sick all over himself halfway through the night.

No one comes to check on him, and he tries to squirm free, but he’s so weak from whatever they inject him with.

They keep asking him questions, but he can’t ever hear them.

At some point, what must be two days after he was captured, they give up, leaving him alone, covered in his own vomit, sweating and shaking.

He thinks it’s a blessing, giving him a chance to really try and slip out of the restraints. He may be able to break the metal if he tries hard enough; he’s strong enough. This is a different metal than at the base.

He pulls on it with everything in him, but just shakes.

He doesn’t understand why, though normally this would be easy.

Maybe it was because he was so tired, and everything hurts, his head and stomach area especially.

His heart feels like it’s hammering in his chest, chest in agony, he screws his eyes shut against it, trying to breathe, barely anything comes out.

It's at that moment that the black haired man and green-haired man, who weren't his target, walked in, both wearing surprised looks at him.

Chapter Text

Izuku and Hanta had been home watching a movie when they received the call from the police that they needed them to come down.

They both knew what it was about; they’d been semi patiently waiting for two days, waiting for a call that they could come see Shoto, try and figure out what the hell happened.

What they hadn’t been expecting was the state Shoto was in when they found him, clearly beyond sick, sweating, shaking, pale.

And the police didn’t even let them in right away, told them the man wouldn’t speak, barely even acknowledged them, how they’d been unable to get even a single word from him.

It concerned them because even at his worst, Shoto still never went completely mute.

They allowed them entrance, then Shoto didn’t even look at them.

He was so out of it.

He looked so different, lost so much weight, face sunken in, hair buzzed off.

If it weren’t for the distinctive mismatched eyes and the scar, they wouldn’t have known it was him.

“Hey, Sho,” Hanta says. Shoto looks at them, but it’s a look of confusion, like he doesn’t even remember his best friends.

“Do you recognize us? We’re your friends,” Izuku asks, stepping closer.

Shoto pulls weakly on the restraints holding him in place.

“We’re going to try and get you out of here, okay?” Izuku says.

It’s only then that they notice the dried vomit covering his shirt.

“We need to get him some fresh clothes, probably a cool shower too, he’s got a fever,” Izuku says, getting close enough to lay the back of his hand on his forehead.

In his delirium, he leans into the touch a little, closing his eyes, and he's shaking badly.

Izuku's heart aches for him.

“They really did a number on you, didn’t they? We’re going to find whoever did this, I promise. We aren’t going to let anyone hurt you like that again,” Izuku whispers. Hanta agrees.

“Go try and get something light for him to eat. I’m going to try and convince the chiefs to let us take him back to UA for monitoring; he’ll be safe there, and we can watch him more.” Izuku says.

Hanta nods, walking out of the room,

It doesn’t seem that Shoto even hears them too out of it to understand their words of attempted comfort.

They both leave the room, Hanta in search of fresh clothes and some food, while Izuku goes to find the chief of police.

It doesn’t take long; finding him was the easier part.

“I want to take him back to UA with us.”

“Absolutely not,” the man says.

“Why not?”

“He’s a wanted criminal,”

“You know as well as I do that's not Shoto; whoever took him did something to him,” Izuku says firmly.

The chief doesn’t seem to believe him, just raises an eyebrow at him.

“If you take him back to UA and he goes after someone, what do you expect to do? Do you have a way to control him, to keep him locked up, for everyone else's protection? For his own?” the chief asks, which he makes a good point, but Izuku knows that it would be better.

UA has special facilities for this. He would be getting the proper care, treated as a human being instead of what you guys are doing; he’s already been through enough, don’t you agree?”

“I do, but I also believe in justice, if I allow you to do this, and he starts to talk, I need any information, anything that would tell me that he did this in sound mind, give cause, anything that would point to him having a hand in this, I need to arrest him, but this is non-negotiable.” the man says.

Izuku nods in understanding.

“He’s very sick right now, do you know that? Has he received any care at all?”

“We treat interrogation as a get what you give kind of thing, he hasn’t told us anything, so he doesn’t get anything until he answers the questions.” the chief says.

“And what if he’s physically incapable of speech?” Izuku fires back.

It causes the man to hesitate, to think, that's the point.

He gets up and leaves at that point. The chief doesn’t say anything, just hands him a set of keys to the restraints and a quirk-cancelling cuff, just slips over his wrist like a bracelet with a tiny lock. It's meant to go skin tight, so they can’t get fingers under it to break it.

He nods and quickly walks back to the interrogation room. Sero is already in the room, a set of clothes set on a chair, he’s trying to get Shoto to drink some water, but he refuses, keeping his mouth shut.

“Don't force him,” Izuku says, slipping on the quirk-cancelling cuff before taking the restraints off.

“He hasn’t eaten or drunk anything since he got here, apparently,” Hanta says.

“That’s because they didn’t even offer him anything,” Izuku says.

He can’t conceal the anger flooding through him at the thought of it. No one deserves this treatment.

As soon as he was free, Shoto scrambled off the chair, into the corner of the room.

They’re surprised by the speed, given his current condition.

They wonder what they gave him to have this reaction.

They didn’t want to corner him, so they sat towards the middle of the room, watching him curl into himself as if trying to make himself smaller.

“It’s okay, we aren’t here to hurt you, we want to help, actually,” Hanta says, sliding the bowl of nuts and fruit to him.

“Please eat something,” he says with a small smile.

Shoto doesn’t even look at the food.

“Look, we're going to take you somewhere safer than here, but we need you to eat and have some water first, just a little, please,” Izuku says.

They can tell that he understands. He takes the plastic cup with a shaky hand, taking a small sip, as if testing for poison.

He deems it safe and takes another mouthful, placing it silently on the ground again, but he doesn’t touch the food.

They wait for another half hour, and he doesn’t touch anything, curled into himself, leaning against the brick wall.

Izuku sighs gently, catching Shoto’s attention.

“That's alright, Sho, let's go,” he says with a smile.

At the command, Shoto uncurls and stands to his full height.

“Let's go somewhere better than here.”

Chapter Text

They don’t cuff him when they move him this time, but each has an arm like he’ll make a run for it; he doesn’t, of course. He can barely stand, let alone run.

Everything is just so much. Everything is so loud and bright.

He wants to put his head in his hands and close his eyes against the lights, but knows better.

He's loaded into another vehicle, someone is sitting next to him, putting a restraint around him, and clipping him in.

“Just to be safe,” the man says with a small smile.

Do they think he’s stupid enough to jump out of a moving vehicle?

The drive is relatively short, and they’re bringing him to a huge group of buildings, all made of glass and stone.

He scans the area, taking note of the gates sliding shut behind the vehicle.

He was trapped.

It should make him nervous, but he feels so bad that he just can’t.

“I’m going to take him to the nurse; he’s not well, this isn’t normal. She may be able to tell us what's wrong,” the green-haired man says, taking him out of the vehicle.

And just as he says, they end up in front of a sterile room.

He doesn’t want to go in; he pushes against the man, trying to fight him, but he’s too weak.

“She’s not going to hurt you, not while I’m here,” the green-haired boy says. He shakes his head, planting his weight.

The man is strong, incredibly so; he can feel his feet slipping on the floor.

Sweat forms along his neck, and his strength leaves him.

His brain is too foggy to remember the person or the sterile room, but she gives the green-haired man something, saying something about taking his blood, just a sample to see what’s flowing through him.

She does just that, he doesn’t feel the prick, he allows it to happen.

Soon enough, he’s being led out of the room. The windows are something foreign to him; the base didn’t have them, neither did the plane he travelled on, the vehicle he was in with the new men had them, and this building was full of them; he could see out for what seemed like forever.

It was surreal.

He walks in pace with the green-haired man, who still has his upper arm in a grip.

The grip doesn’t hurt; it’s almost warm, not what he’s used to.

His head spinning at the constant contact, waiting for a hit, for a command.

He doesn’t have to follow their orders; his instructor will come get him soon.

He knows not to go after them without his gear, especially with someone as strong as the green-haired boy.

He'll be calm for now, but at the first sign of his plane out of here, he’ll cause hell, and if where they’re bringing him is anything like the rest of this building, there will be windows.

He can watch the sky.

And sure enough, they arrive in the room, he’s expecting something similar to his area in the base, or the interrogation room, but this was something unlike anything he’d seen before, with a big white blanket over a bed, he assumed that's what it was, but it didn’t look like the beds he was used to.

The black haired man is already in the room, setting white objects on the top of the bed; they look soft.

There’s also a box with handles, and another one with four legs and a chair.

There’s something with a black screen hanging on the wall, he’d never seen anything like it before.

He notices the space under the bed, which is pushed against the wall, the perfect hiding place; no one could easily grab him under there.

The black haired man beckons him over.

They keep calling him Shoto, that’s not his name, his name is Heatwave, that’s what his instructor calls him.

He goes to the man, he pats on the bed, he doesn’t know what that means, he tilts his head to the side, the only way he knows how to convey his confusion. His instructor told him he looks stupid when he does it, though.

“Sit down,” The black haired man says.

He does as he’s told, sitting in the spot the man patted.

He didn’t like this bed; it was too soft.

He was used to the one in the base; it was just the table.

He felt like he was sitting on nothing; he didn’t like it, and it wasn’t comfortable.

“This is your room. You will be alone in here most of the time, but if you need anything, there's a little red button by the door. If you need anything then just hit that button. There’s a bathroom over there as well, just behind the main door. The door will lock behind us, okay, we have key cards, as do the main staff here, but we’ll be the main ones taking care of you.”

He nods along.

He understands that he’ll be alone most of the time; he’s not mad about it or anything. He spends all his free time alone.

He notices the room getting dark, and they show him the light switch.

They show him the bathroom, and he interprets it as he’s allowed to go now.

He leaves the door cracked like he’d been taught; his instructor liked to make sure he wasn’t trying to do anything.

They leave then, and he stands in the middle of the room.

He lies on the bed for about five minutes before standing up and scooting himself under the bed. It’s the perfect size and safe.

He peers out from under the bed, listens for the sounds of a plane.

He drifts, he doesn’t really sleep, he’s not safe to, not here, he can’t trust these people, it’s too dangerous, plus he never really sleeps.

This spot feels safer, though; no one can reach him, which makes it safe.

He knows there are cameras; he doesn’t care that much, as long as someone doesn’t grab him again.