Chương 241: Chapter 238 - Prison Break
Shoto couldn't possibly evade Jin Woo long enough – nor quickly enough - to reach the surface.
They'd been wrong.
At first, Shoto drew nonsense.
Bloody flowers and animals lit up the dusty ground like ritual paintings of a Satanist cult. Misdirecting was a skill – as much as paranoia, despite what his shrink said about it - and Shoto was making good use of it.
They all believed him insane, anyway, a rabid dog that would've snapped one day or another, so he'd decided to play their game.
The soundless, isolated cell was them pushing their luck, the naked showering a way for them to assert dominance.
They wanted him to snap, and they hoped that either the ticking time bomb or Jin Woo would do the job : having him dead was so much more convenient than having to worry about how to keep him locked in.
If he snapped and attacked, they would have the perfect excuse to end him.
Or maybe – maybe– it would've been the perfect excuse for them to imprison him far, far away from anyone else.
Shoto hadn't believed for a second that their reluctance to push for execution was just because of 'services rendered to the nation'.
If it had been true then Keigo would've been in an asylum, not a few blocks away from him.
No, a life sentence had two purposes : one, it would still give him hope that his father would find a legal way of getting him out, thus would subdue both him and anyone who would want to get him out.
Two – after he'd snap - they'd feel rightful enough to snatch him from the 'public' eye and thoroughly investigate what was up with his Quirk.
If he'd been alone, with no hope of escaping except by himself, Shoto would've given them the snap they wanted and so, so much more.
But as it was, Shoto wasn't alone.
That's when he'd felt it.
The hair on the back of his neck rose, goosebumps rising in a wave from his toes to his shoulders. He momentarily stopped drawing, sore fingers covered in his own blood.
Miles under him the soil was heating up quickly, rock turning liquid.
It was faint, barely strong enough for only one person with the right Quirk to notice what was going on.
Shoto's eyes had snapped to the camera in the left corner of his room.
There was a vicious gleam in his eyes, a frightening stillness to his body.
Forgotten were the senseless patterns: this time, Shoto's fingers drew a seal he knew by heart, one he'd drawn at least fifty thousand times.
It was a larger, bolder drawing than the previous ones.
They wouldn't understand.
He stood up and slowly unbuttoned his orange jacket that he threw at the other end of the room.
He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders, warming up his sore muscles, eyes closed and senses stretched.
There was a spike of heat - stronger than the previous ones - somewhere far away from Shoto's cell, close to ground level.
He felt Jin Woo rise and pictured him looking in the direction where the floor's temperature was getting dangerously high.
Jin Woo disappeared.
Shoto's eyes snapped open, perverse excitement in his gaze.
His eyes focused on the red dot of the camera facing him.
As if taunting them, he pronounced the words out loud :
"Kawarimi"
His orange jacket exploded, shreds of burnt clothes falling in the cell like rain.
Shoto was standing where he'd launched his jacket previously, unscathed, sharingan twirling lazily in his eyes.
His eyes went back to the camera as if he were in a sitcom, sharing a private joke that only those who were watching would understand.
He'd been faster.
His eyes lowered to the bloody seal drawn in the dirt.
He pictured them scurrying around like headless chickens, calling their superior officers with tears in their eyes, pissing their pants while they wondered what to do.
Shoto crossed his fingers.
He would break out of this shit hole with a firework.
"Katon"
Everything exploded.
*
This was pure, utmost treason.
Yet Enji was far from the time when he'd have cared.
Lava swirling around him, he raised his hands and hurled the waves at the building.
They hit the cement wall and melted it. Pools of grayish, molted wall, were puddling on the floor like liquefied candles, bubbles rising and bursting at its surface.
Above, the sun was high, shining mightily on Enji's shoulders and neck.
Hitting in the middle of the day would've been utter foolishness in any other situation but not this one.
"Enji Todoroki"
A shadow hid Enji's face from the sun.
Floating in the middle of the sky, a swirling mass of shadows jutting from his back, black tentacles dancing like the thousands hands of Shiva was Jin Woo, frowning.
He looked like a god who'd inhabited a mortal vessel, a calamity tasked with punishing mankind.
"I did not expect you to turn your back on our country"
Enji's skin turned translucent, his organs visible to the naked eye.
He clasped his hands and lava bolted from the contact of his palms with a hissing sound.
Teka liked to say that no one had ever had such mastery over God Mode as Enji did.
It was time he showed this little prick that there were far, far greater monsters than him out here.
"Our country turned its back to me"
"You more than anyone should know that this is nothing personal"
Enji snorted.
They'd put his eldest in a shoe box and his youngest in an underground coffin.
Fire burst all over Enji's skin, starting from his hair, going down his neck, wrapping like shoes around his feet.
He was a living creature of light, a terrestrial incarnation of the sun.
He was not wearing his Heroic costume ; this was a relic of the past.
"Do not misunderstand me", said Enji flatly
Lava geysers burst from the floor all around him.
"This is deeply personal"
*
Katsuki had to hold onto a wall to avoid falling.
Dust fell from the ceiling while the whole building was shaking so much he feared the corridor would turn upside down.
"Is that an earthquake ?", some warden shouted.
It wasn't.
Katsuki knew exactly what was going on.
They heard a loud boom, as if a part of the prison had collapsed on itself.
They all ducked, trying to find cover.
First pebbles then larger blocks of the cracked ceiling started falling on them.
Katsuki covered his head with his forearm, heart pounding in his throat.
For a brief, terrifying moment, it felt as if the earth would split open beneath their feet and swallow them whole.
That's when all of their radios beeped wildly before a simultaneous message was transmitted, the sound amplified by their proximity to each other :
"There was an explosion in section C" Shoto's section "Half of the cells there collapsed on themselves. It's unclear who's been buried alive or not"
One of the warden next to Katsuki perked up.
"Should we-"
"Verify that no one used the chaos to flee. If you walk past one of them, make sure that there is no way for anyone to get out"
Katsuki clenched his teeth.
They may have been prisoners but fuck, did it mean they had to treat them like less than dogs ?
If they left them there, they'd die.
"Use corridor two to get there"
Katsuki frowned, clicking on his radio to speak despite knowing that he should wait for the end of the transmission before doing so.
"We're closer to the entrance, it would be quicker if we-"
"Endeavor is trying to break in"
Katsuki's blood turned to ice.
All of the warden were ashen white.
Endeavor had come.
Katsuki had seen, like every other Japanese with a TV that night, when Endeavor had brought a fucking volcano in the middle of Tokyo.
Katsuki had been in awe of All Might's Quirk.
This had been the first time in his life that he'd been truly terrified of the power that someone could wield.
Knowing that Endeavor – fucking God of Fire and Hell Endeavor - was there was enough to give him cold sweat, and he knew that it did everyone else.
"Endeavor is what ?"
One of them had to sit on the floor, unable to stand on his legs anymore.
"We're done. That's the end. We'll die here"
Someone grabbed their head between their hands as though they would go mad. One of them started sobbing.
Katsuki swallowed heavily as he saw grown men crumpling at the mere mention of Endeavor's name.
"We'll send you reinforcements. Get down there as soon as possible before the prisoners start rioting"
The order was like an ice-cold bucket of water thrown on a sleepy Katsuki : he was the first to spring to action.
He went through corridor two – using the longest route – and jumped stairs to get down there faster, sweat like a second skin, heart so loud he heard it pulse in his ears.
He heard people shouting, and something akin to a fight.
Shit, it was really happening – and it was happening now.
He'd not even conceived the idea that Endeavor would be the one to get Shoto out.
Shit shit shit.
Katsuki turned left at the fork between Block B and Block C : a few more stairs and he'd get to-
Katsuki came to an abrupt stop, the soles of his shoes screeching loudly as he did so.
Blood was splattered all over the walls of the corridor.
From either side of Katsuki there were splashes of blood so large it looked as if someone had painted the walls : speckles littered the ceiling, red strokes running on the walls until they disappeared at the other end of the 'L' shaped corridor.
There was an inmate in a sitting position right next to Katsuki, his bloodied head lolling on his shoulder as if he'd fallen asleep, his bulging eyes wide open.
There was a star-shaped splash of blood behind his head as if someone had bashed his head in repeatedly until he died.
Judging from the perfectly fine wall, it hadn't been done thanks to a Quirk : it took a lot to kill a man that way.
Right in the middle of the corridor there was a warden whose head was barely connected to his neck, a bloody knife protruding from it, as though he'd been repeatedly stabbed in the neck before someone endeavored to slice it clean from his body.
It was eerily silent.
Katsuki's breath had caught in his throat.
It felt as if the world had stopped spinning, as if time had stopped running.
The smell of blood was so potent he could taste it on his tongue.
His knees were weak, and he thought they would buckle and he'd fall on the floor.
A terrifying creaking sound jolted him up.
The cell's door on his left opened slowly, as though pushed by a small breeze, and Katsuki's gaze automatically went to the nameplate.
His soul left his body.
Drum-like footsteps echoed like a death sentence.
Katsuki's instincts screamed for him to move, everything in him telling him to spin on his heels and run, yet he was barely able to breathe.
Terror was rooting him to the spot, coiling his muscles, making his eyes bulge. The capillaries inside were burst.
Red hair and golden eyes came into view.
There was blood splattered on his cheek, and a couple of keys were dangling from his left hand. He carelessly threw them to the ground, dull eyes raising to meet Katsuki's.
Almost languidly, Kai Chisaki slowly walked the distance that separated them.
Cold sweat was running down Katsuki's back. He felt so dizzy he could taste puke in the back of his mouth. His stomach was contracting painfully, knotting in a way that made Katsuki see black spots.
Each step Chisaki took echoed with the might of a thunderclap.
This man was a killer, a true killer, someone who'd purposefully murdered people and who slept soundly at night.
He would break Katsuki like a twig without a passing thought.
Pee trickled down Katsuki's thigh.
It wet his socks and pooled next to his shoe.
Chisaki quirked a brow and stopped, gaze going from the yellow liquid to Katsuki's terrified face.
Dead eyes never leaving Katsuki's, he bent down over the nearly decapitated body and tore a clean part of the shirt.
He slowly and thoroughly cleaned his cheek with it.
"I am not against killing kids"
Katsuki begged his heart to stop beating.
Chisaki rose, uncoiling like a snake ready to strike.
"Run"
He did.
*
BONUS :
There was one universal truth about him that he acknowledged : for all of his talk about becoming a better person, he was still one hell of a vindictive son of a bitch.
He kicked the door to the cell open.
There was a loud creak before it broke from its hinges, sliding down the floor until it hit the back wall.
Inside, with a small delay – as though his brain had trouble functioning - the inmate rose.
Sweating like a pig, wet, grayish hair stuck to a wrinkled forehead, the corpse-like man looked like one wrong breeze would kill him.
Hot mist – from the destroyed water pipes - was flooding the corridor, making it impossible to see beyond the threshold of the cell, white tendrils slowly creeping in.
There was a snort of disbelief.
"What the hell do they do to their prisoners ?"
The inmate was slack-jawed, as though even holding his mouth close was too hard for him. What was left of his muscles were taut and strained under paper-thin skin.
A click of a tongue then two red, malevolent eyes, appeared right in the middle of the whitish smoke.
"Let's hope you'll make a good enough canon fodder"
*
A/N :
Wednesday's chapter.
Am six chapters away from finishing this fic. God I'm so excited.
Hope you like this arc, it's the true beginning of the end.
See you in the next update everyone !
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