Darkest Before Dawn - 111

Chapter 111

“All Might!” Kazuki called immediately while almost every hero in the room broke their restraints. They hadn’t been that strong, evidently. He couldn’t break them himself, but he suspected a half decent Grimm arm would be enough. As it was though, he had something that needed to be taken care of immediately. “I know where they are!” he added when the hero froze.

In less than a second, the Number One hero of Japan had been free and ready to jump through the roof, by the looks of it. Which was all well and good, but Kazuki imagined it’d be better if he knew where to go. So, as he called for the attention and delivered his reasoning, he immediately started making a Nevermore. Channeling his nodes for a Grimm wasn’t a great feeling, especially after he’d just gotten done dealing with more fear than he knew what to do with, but needs must.

This one Grimm needed to fly fucking fast if he didn’t want to end up slowing down All Might while trying to help.

“Young Endo,” All Might said, somewhat leadingly but he never followed that up with anything. Kazuki didn’t have it in him to process his pity and try to come up with reasons for it. He had a job to do and he needed to get to it. Things weren’t looking good on that tower.

“Make a hole, it’ll guide you,” Kazuki explained, gesturing  to his newly formed Nevermore. The man didn’t hesitate at all, jumping through the roof as he’d intended to and the creature was hurriedly sent after him, flying towards the tower. There were sounds around him, but he felt like the room fell silent once All Might was gone, his focus pulled towards his Grimm, which he’d left half on autopilot.

Not a great idea, but the situation had been kind of… extreme for a second there.

Good thing he’d been able to let the creatures that were with his friend group vanish once the robots returned to normal. That’d helped plenty too, admittedly. The Nevermores at the tower though? Kazuki was very grateful none of those had decided that attacking Midoriya was a good idea. That’d have been bad… and very awkward.

“Kazuki,” he heard Hina call and he absently nodded, his focus on those Nevermore and the one guiding All Might. The villain was getting Shield on a helicopter and that couldn’t be good. “Kazuki.”

“Yeah?” he asked, turning – more like twitching, really – towards his mentor. Was something going on around them? Had the villains put up a fight? Or maybe more of them had come or-

Except, nothing was happening.

“Are you ok?” Hina asked him, concern clear on her face and her emotions. Why was she asking that? He was fine. The villains were basically dealt with already. There was only the big bad evil guy trying to steal tech and kidnap a scientist. That was the only thing left to deal with and then it’d all be fine.

“Yeah,” he answered, but as he said it, he felt… weak. It was like a switch had been flipped and suddenly he felt his legs almost give from under him. He wasn’t sure if he would have remained standing if Hina hadn’t caught him in her arms. His mind felt foggy and exhausted. “I… maybe not,” he admitted distractedly.

He still needed to control those Grimm though. Especially because the villain leader was getting away. Midoriya and his Nevermore had caught up to him, but a gun pointed towards Shield was all it took. What were they supposed to do there? Risk the scientist? No way. So, they stopped. Not that they remained that way for long. Once the helicopter took off, both Midoriya and his Nevermore went after it, stopping it from getting far.

All Might was almost there.

“Kazuki, you can rest now. It’ll be on us now,” Hina told him, and he realized that she was hugging him. It was… soft, warm. The embrace, her presence, they relaxed his mind, soothed it, but they also made his exhaustion more pronounced.

When had he even gotten that tired? Where had that come from?

“I… Just a bit more… All Might is almost there and they are taking Shield and something else. I’m helping buy time, guide All Might, make sure nobody's in trouble with the villains that are still around,” he blurted out, the words coming out of him like a river as his mind processed all those things and tried to balance the plates. Multitasking had always been his thing, but as it was…

Maybe it was the overwhelming emotions from before, or maybe it was how much he’d pushed his Quirk in ways he wasn’t used to, or maybe it was how much he’d micromanaged every Grimm he’d made so far… Hell, it could even be a combination of all of those things that left him drained and like he could sleep for a week. He wasn’t quite in a state to ponder that while doing other things though.

So, he leaned on Hina and tried to keep himself together long enough. Once everything was dealt with, he could rest. For the moment though, I-Island needed Beacon, so he wouldn’t let them down.

Distantly, as Midoriya clung to the helicopter, his Nevermore dived in. The villain was distracted, so he tried to grab Shield and fly off with him. No such luck though, the creature got shot right in its bony face. Unfortunately – or fortunately, probably both – the bullet didn’t bounce in such a way that it hit anything. A second monster bird was more successful though, knocking off the suitcase and making the villain reach for it.

That was all the opening they needed.

His Nevermore grabbed Shield as best he could and Midoriya soon followed as they got the man off the thing. The villain shouted something behind them, but Kazuki wasn’t paying attention to that. Instead, he was focusing on soft whispers that Hina spoke by his ear as she continued holding him.

All Might was right there now and they had Shield, so…

He could stop now, right?

All Might would deal with the rest.

[}-o-{]

[Hina Maeda]

She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or more concerned when she felt Kazuki let himself drop like a puppet with its strings cut in her arms.

She’d noticed him being quiet and withdrawn through the whole incident, but she’d thought it was just him having to focus and dealing with the emotions. However, as soon as the island’s security system came back online the proper way, she’d seen him unravel like he’d been a piece of cloth stretched from all directions and the threads had finally given in. In the span of a few seconds, Hina saw Kazuki go from normal if quiet to halfway insane.

His eyes had turned desperate, darting around, wide and more bloodshot than usual. His already pale face seemed even more so, the dark veins under his skin becoming even more noticeable. He’d also twitched at any sound in the room, especially so when she’d called for him. Evidently, he’d gone from barely holding himself together to not at all.

“It’s all fine now, Kazuki,” she reassured, even though she had no way of knowing if that was the case. He’d relaxed though, so she imagined things were getting better. Besides, now that All Might was on the case and the rest of the heroes were free to act, things were under control once more. She wasn’t well equipped for the situation, but that was fine. They didn’t need to struggle anymore.

“Fight got complicated,” she heard Kazuki mumble and there was fear, uncertainty in his voice. “The bad guy, he powered up somehow, I don’t… All Might’s struggling,” he said and she felt her heart freeze in her chest.

Because if the Number One was having trouble then…

“Maybe I can…” Kazuki went to say, pulling his body up even though Hina could tell that was the last thing he wanted to do. She felt and heard him take a deep breath in and prepare to do something. Probably summon a Grimm wherever All Might was, even though he was just a student and that was quite literally the greatest Hero in their country, maybe even the world. “Nevermind… Didn’t power up fast enough,” the boy mumbled, a grin on his face.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” she asked.

“Sorry,” Kazuki replied, his voice so very small that it hurt to hear. As he let his forehead fall forward onto her shoulder though, Hina had something else to focus on and that was the fact that, at some point, he’d started hugging her back. For some reason, it really took her aback, especially how hard he was gripping her.

It took her but a moment to understand why and that was because Kazuki was never one for physical shows of affection. He accepted them alright, sometimes even eagerly, but he seemed reluctant to give them, or maybe a better word was hesitant. Like he was afraid of doing something wrong when approaching someone else, of scaring them off.

And Hina imagined it had everything to do with an awful person that she really wished would get some jail time and another that wasn’t around anymore. She so wanted to get her hands on the former, at times like that, when she could see the invisible scars they’d both left on a boy that had loved them. Because Kazuki had loved them, she knew from several things he’d said in regards to his parents.

Yet, the both of them had spit on that, poisoning his mind until it had twisted and changed.

It was a wonder he was as good as he was.

“I’ve got you, Kazuki,” she told him, because at some point between when he’d appeared in front of her and then, the boy had firmly pulled her into his corner. He’d been fighting by himself long enough. The least she could do was be by his side, help him. He deserved that much.

Her heart broke when he gripped her harder and his body started to shake.

“I’ve got you,” she repeated, running her fingers through his white hair. As she did so, she noticed with her snakes that several of the people around the room had noticed them. Hina hated that her first thought when she saw them was to consider how that might impact their reputations, how they saw the two of them. Her brain was hardwired like that, she supposed.

However, she was pleased to see that nobody was looking down on Kazuki. There were some concerned looks, some pitying looks, and she appreciated both of those things. However, what she was the most happy to see were the respectful ones. Because Kazuki deserved that, the recognition. He’d pulled through in a situation that nobody would have blamed him if he didn’t.

Hina didn’t know everything he worked on and could do, but he talked about training a lot – he trained a concerning amount, in her opinion, but that was something to address some other time – and she knew roughly what he could do. None of that included shadow messages or creating Grimm out of sight, she was also pretty sure that he probably had created more of those at some point, which meant he’d either created them at range once more or from his existing Grimm, both were things she didn’t remember hearing about either.

So, that meant Kazuki had improvised, which made everything he’d done all the more impressive.

At that moment though, none of that mattered. What mattered was helping him get his feet under him. The priority was to make sure he was alright after having to deal with all those emotions and the shitshow of having to help deal with the whole thing. Her boy had done spectacularly, so he deserved to feel good after the whole thing.

It was at times like that one that Hina realized that she was in way too deep at that point to pull back from… whatever was becoming of her relationship with Kazuki.

So, she wasn’t even going to try, she decided.

Instead, she continued hugging him.

[}-o-{]

“Sorry about that,” Kazuki mumbled some time later while the people of I-Island worked to round everything up. There was a lot to deal with, but Hina was just glad that she wasn’t part of that mess. She imagined it’d be a headache for a lot of people. Thankfully, all they had to worry about was interviews sooner or later. “I don’t know why I…” the boy next to her continued, very clearly… distressed. He wasn’t embarrassed, or at least it wasn’t solely that. He was spooked.

She held back her pity and her anger, even though he probably could sense them all the same. Instead, she plastered her most reassuring smile on her face and reached to squeeze his arm. Her smile became all the more honest when she felt him relax the smallest bit.

“Don’t worry about it, Kazuki. It was a rough night, especially for you,” she told him and she meant it. Just dealing with an island’s worth of panic would probably be enough to break most people and he’d pushed through and done a whole lot of things to help. If someone was to be cut some slack, that was her boy. “Far as I’m concerned, you did amazing.”

“... Thanks,” he said, almost whispering, with a shy smile on his face. She was so very tempted to pull him into another hug. Fortunately – for him, that is, since it had probably been a whole lot of physical affection for him that night already – someone approached them, interrupting the thought before she could go through with it. Both of them turned to look at the hero and Hina took a moment to remember who he was.

‘Mr. Plastic, Andrew… something,’ she thought. She’d met him during the party, so she thought she could be excused for forgetting his name considering the whole mess that had followed. Besides, he hadn’t been too receptive to their attempts to get connections, so there was that too.

“Are you any good with English?” the man asked, looking directly at Kazuki.

“I’m decent,” the boy answered hesitantly, as if unsure what the hero could possibly want with him, which was hilarious. Hina had an idea or three of what was about to happen, so she just sat back and watched. It was always nice to witness her boy being appreciated.

“You did spectacularly back there, kid,” Mr. Plastic told him, standing straight and smiling appreciatively. “Most of us were useless, but you? You pulled through. Are you her sidekick?” the man asked and Hina could have laughed at that. As if Kazuki would ever be a sidekick. If he didn’t start off his career with sidekicks himself she’d eat her dress.

“Student, first year at UA,” Kazuki answered and maybe the overwhelming emotions had kind of ruined his ability to speak a little, but he pulled through all the same. And what he said seemed to catch the man in front of them off guard as he looked between them.

“So, is she like, your mother or something?” the man asked and both Hina and Kazuki flinched a little, likely for different reasons. She imagined he didn’t appreciate being reminded of his mother, for one. As for her… Well, the M-word was one she tried not to think about too much.

Yet, despite her best efforts…

“... My mentor. I did my first internship with her,” Kazuki mumbled, running a hand through his hair. Hina tried not to let that answer sting and failed miserably.

She really needed to get her act together, because that was ridiculous. She was just his mentor, as he said. They’d barely known each other for, what? A few months? She had no business getting as attached as she was getting and Kazuki’s life was enough of a mess without her making it all worse by being stupid.

“Huh, well,” Mr. Plastic started replying, evidently thrown off his game a little by those answers. Hina silently prayed that the conversation would move in a different direction. And, as it turned out, the gods hadn’t completely forsaken her. “Either way, I just wanted to tell you that I’m impressed. If you are ever in the US near my city, feel free to drop by. And,” the man continued, before glancing her way and smirking. “Whatever it is that you need help with, just ring me up. I think a favor is the least I can do for you after tonight.”

“I, I appreciate that, but-”

“Kid, it’s fine,” the hero interrupted Kazuki before he could spiral too much. He was rattled still, it seemed, because he was usually much better at dealing with awkwardness and praise. “Besides, I imagine you’ll get plenty of similar offers,” he added, glancing over his shoulder.

“... It was a group effort,” the boy managed after visibly getting his mind on track. “People gave me a lot of information, and you and others helped distract the villains so that I could do what I had to. So, everyone deserves the same credit, as far as I’m concerned.”

Hina almost wanted to clap. It was a shame that there wasn’t a camera around to record that answer, because it had been masterful. She could see the effects of it all over not only Mr. Plastic’s face, but also on several people that were nearby. Yeah, Kazuki had just earned himself plenty of favor.

He was just too good without even trying sometimes.

He was the best.

“... I think I might wanna hitch my wagon to your star while I still can,” Mr. Plastic said, probably without even meaning to.

All the same, in Hina’s completely unbiased opinion, he sounded like a very smart man.

[}-o-{]

[Chikuchi Togeike]

“Question for Miss Togeike!” someone called and she stiffened.

After all was said and done, after the entire issue was dealt with and they were checked by medical staff from the island, they had been let out. Just in time for the reporters to pounce on them, evidently. They had literally been waiting right out the doors of the hospital as they stepped out the morning after the whole mess.

Not a single one of them, 1-A students or Neito or Chikuchi herself, had known what to do. They answered questions and all, but it was stiff, awkward, uncomfortable. Every other answer left her unsure for whoever it was that gave them and every other one she winced, convinced that they’d messed up. It was twice as bad whenever she was the one addressed.

“Is it true that you’re not from UA’s hero course?” the reporter asked and maybe it was her nerves speaking, but Chikuchi could have sworn the man looked like a shark smelling blood. It might have been her imagination, but every single reporter smiled like they were about to eat them whole, their eyes shining in anticipation. Yet, there was no escape from them.

What did it say about her that she was more scared then and there than she’d been standing up to the villains?

The question remained in the air as Chikuchi’s mouth dried and her tongue seemed to refuse to work. She’d answered questions already, but every one seemed to take a piece of her and smash it against the ground. At that point, she was too nervous, too overwhelmed. She had half a mind to run away and she would have if she hadn’t known that’d make things worse.

“She is,” a voice replied and everyone, reporters and students, turned to the side to see Kazuki standing there, calm smile on his face as he stood straight, firm. The tension on Chikuchi’s shoulders eased. “Although, she’s been working all year to earn her spot in the Hero course. I do believe she’s a shoe in, she gives us a run for our money whenever we train together.”

“Kazuki Endo, right?” a reporter asked, and it seemed a fair bit of attention was now being directed at him and Chikuchi was so very relieved to see that. And she was also impressed, because Kazuki didn’t so much as react. He looked calmer than he normally would, if anything, like being in the spotlight was his natural habitat or something. “Several heroes mentioned you helping during the event, why is it that you didn’t get checked into the hospital?”

“Because I was trapped in the same room as most heroes were, in the party,” he answered calmly. “I didn’t directly participate in any fighting, so I didn’t need to get checked. My Quirk came in handy like that,” he explained, turning towards them. “Everything alright on your end, guys? I wanted to check on you, but it seems I was beaten to the punch,” he joked, glancing at the reporters as if they were just friends that had gotten there earlier than he had.

Chikuchi decided then and there that she was definitely going to ask him to teach her some lessons on how to deal with the press.

“We’ll try not to hold it against you, Boss,” Neito replied, visibly trying to act with the same ease that Kazuki did but not quite succeeding. Who knew though? He might have fooled others. Chikuchi just knew him a little better than most.

“So generous of you, Neito,” Kazuki replied drily.

“Boss?” one of the reporters said and suddenly they didn’t look predatory as much as they looked excited. Looking at them again, calmer, Chikuchi was reminded of the Management Team when they’d been discussing the draft that Nezu had presented them for the club or Mei when they presented a new idea to her.

“He led the two of us and a Support course student during the Sports Festival,” Chikuchi said, finding her voice at last. She took comfort in Kazuki’s presence, confident in the fact that he wasn’t interrupting or reacting at all to what she was saying. He just grinned at her, as if encouraging her to continue. So she did. “It kind of stuck. Especially now that he’s the president of our club.”

“What kind of club is this, if we can know?” one woman asked them playfully.

“We are simulating a hero agency,” Neito answered, looking smug as he ever was, like it was all on him. “Kazuki’s the president, then there’s the two of us,” he explained, gesturing towards Chikuchi and himself. She was half tempted to mention the second-in-command thing, but she wasn’t that mean. “The Support student Chikuchi mentioned and three Management students. We’re doing alright for ourselves.”

“... So, I heard you guys fought some villains on top of the security robots,” Kazuki commented then, after a moment of the reporters taking their notes. Chikuchi narrowed her eyes at his tone though, because it sounded to her like he was planning something. And sure enough, she kind of figured it out after a moment. Especially when he continued. “How’d that happen? And how much did you beat them up?” he asked leadingly, even though it sounded like a casual joking question.

He was trying to tell them what to say, Chikuchi realized, guide them to topics that they should talk about, probably for their benefit. Neito seemed to catch on, because he immediately started answering. And sure enough, they went on to explain what they’d done, why and several other things. Kazuki would chime in at times, trying to steer them away from certain things and towards others.

And Chikuchi found herself so grateful for that, because the difference between having Kazuki there and not was like night and day. She could also tell that she wasn’t the only one, even the 1-A students had relaxed quite a bit with the help. Maybe they could do something nice for Kazuki when it was all said and done.

‘Well, he does like his smoothies.’

Good enough spot to start with, she supposed.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Well, thing is over. I didn’t feel the need to go into that final battle too much. Wasn’t different enough from the movie one to matter and I think even if you don’t know how that goes because you haven’t seen the movie, it works all the same. I always dislike when stories take too much of their focus away from what they are about. For example, Darkest Before Dawn is about Kazuki and his journey, his story if you will. So, I don’t want to focus too much on things unrelated to him.

Such as a boss battle that has nothing to do with him.

Could I have handled that better? Probably, I guess, but this is how I decided to go with.

Hope you guys don’t hate it too much.

On a different note, we’re entering the aftermath phase for I-Island, not sure how long we’ll be here still, but probably not much. Then it’s back to regular MHA storyline. Which… Actually, I’ll leave that for the random question.

Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Are you looking forward to what comes next? Or are you looking forward to some other arc? Maybe the future of a DBD specific plotline instead of an MHA one?

See you.