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You ever rot long enough that the smell starts to feel like home?
Tartarus' solitude was Tomura Shigaraki-No-Tenma Shimura's answer to that question; a name he had scraped from the ruins of his past. His 'world' for the past 2 years had been a four-meter by four-meter cube cell of poured concrete and reinforced steel. And of course, how could he forget the damn awful smell of bleach combined with the flat coppery tang of regrets that had long since seeped into this cramped place.
Tenma sat on the edge of his cot, the thin mattress offering no comfort. His elbows were on his knees, his hands; those instruments of absolute ruin; dangled limp between his legs. He wasn't scratching his neck. The frantic, anxious habit had been sanded down over time into this: a hollowed-out stillness. He was contemplating the arithmetic of his life, the sum total of every choice and every choice made for him. Running from one master only to end up a fucking caged animal for another.
The grand design that man; the bane of his existence; had for him had curdled into this… this nothing. A number in a system, rotting in the dark.
'This is what it comes down to huh?' he thought, the words formless in the silence of his mind. 'Not a happy ending. Not a legacy of ruin… Just a locked door and the smell of your own decay.'
Before Tenma could wallow in his thoughts, a sound shattered the stasis. Not a gentle knock, but the heavy, mechanical clunk-whirr of the electronic lock disengaging. The thick steel door swung outward with a groan of protest.
A guard stood silhouetted in the brighter light of the corridor, his features obscured, his posture radiating bored authority. He didn't even look fully at Shigaraki, his gaze was instead fixed on some middle distance.
"Prisoner 731, rec time," the guard announced, his voice flat and devoid of any inflection. It was a statement of fact, a command woven into the fabric of the daily schedule.
For a single, suspended second, Shimura didn't move. The number hung in the air—731. It wasn't a name. It wasn't Tomura, or Tenko, or Shigaraki- Or whatever the fuck he is really. It was a designation. A barcode for a human being. It was the final, perfect erasure.
That number was heavier than any chain honestly. Then, a sigh escaped him. It was a quiet, almost imperceptible sound, not of frustration, but of profound, bone-deep resignation. It was the sound of a man acknowledging gravity.
Not like he had a choice in the first place. He never really did.
Tenma slowly pushed himself to his feet, the motion weary and automatic. He shuffled forward, crossing the threshold from his personal cage into the slightly larger, communal one, not looking at the guard, not looking at anything at all. The door stood open behind him, a mocking promise of a temporary, limited freedom that was just another form of his sentence.
'Just what I needed, could use some stretching while I'm at it.'
__________________
Cafeteria
Tenma sat in the far corner of the cafeteria, where he liked his peace. His back was a firm line against the cold, unforgiving concrete, his standard-issue tray balanced on his knees not for comfort, but like a discarded prayer from a faith he'd abandoned a lifetime ago. The fluorescent light above the crowded inmates flickered in a lazy, arrhythmic pulse; a pathetic imitation of daylight, an even poorer imitation of mercy. Not like anybody got to see actual daylight since they have been sentenced here.
This is what they call order…
The adolescence's red eyes; dulled by routine but never harmless; tracked the room without moving his head. The alpha types held court at the center tables, their laughter too loud, very grating. The scavengers orbited the edges, looking for scraps of favor or food. And the guards outside the reinforced glass paced their prescribed routes, clockwork sentinels for the damned. They all paced, they all postured, they all clung to the pathetic delusion that they still owned some piece of the world beyond these walls. In truth, they were all just waiting for someone to tell them what they were.
…An ecosystem of caged predators.
He listened to the low hum of baritone jokes and crushed hopes the way a wolf listens to the forest; not for the beauty of the song, but for the subtle snap of a twig that signaled prey, or danger. He had learned to eat silence before he learned to eat actual food. It wasn't that he wanted peace. Peace was surrender. Survival had taught him something far more valuable: the ability to sit perfectly still, to become a void, unreadable and patient, until the moment an opening shivered into being.
That stillness was a weapon. And today, it was about to be drawn.
The atmosphere in the cafeteria shifted a moment before Tenma saw them. A ripple of attention, a subtle straightening of postures from the inmates who knew what was coming, many avoiding the incoming gang's gaze. Then he came, cutting through the room with the swagger of a man who believed the world was his by divine right.
Goro was the name, but the inmates called him 'Steeljaw'; a name for men who needed a story to tell themselves in the dark about how 'tough' they were. He was a mountain of scar tissue and grafted muscle, his lower jaw a permanent, metallic snarl of cybernetic reinforcement. He moved with the heavy grace of a boulder, two of his usual sycophants trailing in his wake like pilot fish. A grin, too wide and full of sharp, metallic teeth, was already plastered on his face as he led his small procession toward his usual table, the one in the corner that offered the best sightlines. His table.
But the grin faltered. It didn't just fade; it was wiped clean, replaced by a slow, boiling confusion that quickly curdled into anger. His steps slowed, his heavy brow furrowing.
There was someone in his spot.
A lanky frame with messy white hair, tinged with streaks of black like ashes. The kid; and to Goro, anyone who wasn't a walking brick shithouse was a kid; was just sitting there, back to the wall, staring at his damn tray as if it held the secrets of the universe. He looked small. He looked weak. He looked like he hadn't eaten a decent meal in a year.
'Who the hell is that little fucker?' The thought was a hot spike in Goro's brain. This wasn't just a breach of etiquette; it was an insult. A challenge. His territory had been marked, and this scrawny ghost had just desecrated it.
The swagger of the bulky prisoner returned, now laced with a predatory intent. He loomed into the periphery of the white-haired inmate's vision, his shadow falling over the tray. The two men with him fanned out slightly, their presence a silent announcement of consequence. The grin returned, but now it was all sharp edges and promised violence. He smelled of cheap tobacco and the old, sour sweat of countless fights.
"You blind, freak?" Steeljaw's voice was a gravelly thing, meant to intimidate. The room seemed to grow quieter, the ambient smell of cabbage and despair momentarily overpowered by the scent of him.
"That seat's got my initials carved in it. Move."
From his vantage point, Shimura didn't even flinch.
Initials…How quaint.
He continued to chew a piece of bland, boiled potato with a deliberate, maddening slowness. It was a performance of absolute indifference. Why look hungry when you could look untouchable? In this place, indifference was a currency. It bought time. Time bought options. Options bought another day of breathing.
Appearing weak only bought you demise and a weak target for many to pick on.
The man didn't like his pace. The silence was an answer he hadn't expected, and it infuriated him. The performance wasn't for him; he was being used as a prop in this scrawny kid's act of defiance. With a growl of irritation, a large, calloused hand shot out, bypassing all warning, and grabbed a fistful of Shigaraki's prison jumpsuit, right at the shoulder, yanking him forward.
The contact was a jolt. A physical spark.
But it didn't just travel through muscle and bone. For Tenma, it was a trigger, a synaptic short-circuit that hurled him back through time. The sterile cafeteria vanished, replaced by the memory of a rain-slicked alley, the cold seeping through his clothes, and a different, far larger hand on his shoulder; a grip that didn't promise a beating, but a destiny of servitude and ruin. The hand of the man he had run from.
The memory lasted only a fraction of a second. But it was long enough.
The rain was a freezing curtain, soaking through his thin clothes. Twelve years old, and his throat was raw from screaming, from the truths he'd just read in a file he was never meant to see. The name 'Shimura'. A family photo. A lie, so meticulously constructed.
"You were always meant to be my masterpiece, Tomura," All For One's voice crooned from the mansion's entrance, smooth as oil. "Your hatred is the clay I will shape into a new world."
But he'd seen the other files. The ones about failed 'masterpieces'. Broken tools, discarded in the dark. He wasn't a successor. He was a project. A weapon to be polished until its own edge consumed it.
He was NOBODY'S to control!
He ran. Bare feet slapping against the wet pavement, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He didn't look back. Looking back was consent.
The streets were a different kind of cage. Hunger was a sharper teacher than All For One. He slept behind dumpsters, his Decay quirk making him dangerous, but his empty stomach making him stupid. He learned to steal, to hurt, to run faster when the flashing lights of heroes appeared. Not because he feared jail, but because he knew they'd just send him back to him. Back to the gilded cage and the loving hands that were slowly sculpting him into a monster of another's design.
He learned a brutal calculus: a day of muscle for a warm corner, a whispered secret for a coat, a 'favor' for a stale sandwich. That's how he'd ended up with Ryu, in the shadowy backdoors of the Neon Veil district. That's where he met…
…HIM.
Ryu, who saw him not as a broken child or a future demon lord, but as utility. Ryu taught him the real lesson: nobody survives on ideals. You survive on trade. And he taught him the pinprick; how to make his Decay a surgical tool, a single point of failure, instead of an all-consuming wave. It was a trick of focus; you wielded apocalyptic power by choosing, with cold precision, where not to use it.
The hand on his shoulder tightened, dragging him back to the Tartarus cafeteria. An amusement ripple ran through the onlookers. The cafeteria's law was simple: a man who takes what he wants gets to keep it until someone stronger says otherwise.
"Hands off," Tenma said; the words short, quiet and measured. A final warning etched in ice.
Goro's grip only tightened, a challenge accepted.
The thing about Tenma Shimura's that nobody here wanted to remember was that he was no longer the frightened, scratching child from the files. He was a man whose appetite had been sharpened on the whetstone of the streets, cold and precise. Survival had taught him patience. And it had taught him that the smallest contact could be the instrument to unmake a world, or just one arrogant man.
His hand moved, not with a flourish, but with the efficiency of a key turning in a lock. Four fingers and a thumb closed around Steeljaw's wrist.
There was a sound, a wet, granular crackle that was horrifyingly quiet. Muscle stuttered and tendon went slack. The color drained from the man's skin, leaving behind a gray, crumbling texture, like ancient parchment. The air filled with the startled, terrible sound of a man realizing his body was no longer a reliable friend; a choked gasp came out of his throat in half-confusion, half-agony. One moment it was a fist of flesh and grafted metal, the next, it was a crumbling, gray ruin, disintegrating from the wrist down in a silent, horrifying cascade.
"Argh-The fuck?!"
Steeljaw jerked back, his face a contorted mask of animal panic. He clutched his wrist, his eyes wide with the incomprehension of a thing unmade. The men who had been laughing were silent now, their bravado evaporating like mist.
Goro's scream was a high, animal thing of pure, uncomprehending agony.
The reaction from the guards was instantaneous and brutal. There was no warning shout, no command to stand down. This was Tartarus. Protocol for a Quirk like his was absolute; or any inmate in Tartarus for that matter.
A high-pitched whine cut through the cafeteria's stunned silence, and a moment later, the black collar around Shigaraki's neck erupted in a crackling web of blue-white electricity. His entire body went rigid; a silent scream trapped in his throat as his muscles seized beyond his control. The smell of ozone and singed hair cut through the air. His red eyes, wide with a feral triumph a second before, rolled back into his skull as his legs gave way.
He was still twitching on the floor when the first guard was on him, baton raised. There was no attempt to subdue. This was punishment. The polished carbon-fiber rod came down with a sickening thwack against the side of his head. His body jerked once, gave a final, spasmodic shudder, then laid still, a marionette with its strings cut.
The only sound was Goro's ragged, sobbing breaths as he clutched the stump of his arm.
Two guards hauled Shigaraki's limp form up by the arms, his head lolling grotesquely, a trickle of blood already weaving a dark path from his temple down his pale cheek. His boots dragged twin trails through a spilled puddle of gruel as they unceremoniously hauled him towards the doors.
"SHOW'S OVER!" a guard bellowed, his voice echoing in the dead silence. "Eyes forward! Get back to your damn business!"
Slowly, reluctantly, the inmates turned back to their trays, the low murmur of conversation returning, now laced with a new, electric undercurrent of fear and excitement.
From a table near the center of the room, two figures hadn't looked away.
Dabi watched, one elbow propped on the table, his chin resting on his hand. His turquoise eyes, cold and calculating, tracked the guards as they dragged the unconscious white-haired kid away. He didn't look at the victim, at Goro's suffering. He looked at the cause. His gaze then flicked to Steeljaw, now being attended to by a med-bot, his face a mask of pain and humiliation. A slow, small smirk tugged at the corner of Dabi's stapled mouth.
"Well, what do you know… Not bad" Dabi muttered.
"Suicidal," a low, weary voice stated beside him countered.
Kaina Tsutsumi; best known as Lady Nagant; sat with perfect posture, picking dispassionately at her food. She hadn't even flinched during the violence. She'd seen state-sanctioned brutality that would make these guards blush.
"All that power, and he uses it over a cafeteria seat. The kid's got a death wish…Or no brain at all."
Dabi's smirk didn't fade. Instead, he turned his head to her, the staples pulling faintly at his skin. "Let something interesting happen in this shithole for once," he retorted, his voice a low, raspy drawl. His eyes drifted back toward the door through which Shimura had vanished.
"Guy comes in, doesn't say a word, and in five seconds, permanently redecorates the top dog. Doesn't beg, doesn't explain. Just… erases the problem."
The fire quirk user picked up his plastic spoon, his smirk settling into something more thoughtful, more devilish.
"I like him," Dabi murmured, more to himself than to Nagant. "Maybe I should hang out with him."
_________________
Consciousness returned to Tenma not as a gentle dawn, but as a series of brutal, percussive impacts that rattled the very bones of his skull.
Bang. Bang. BANG.
Each strike against the reinforced steel of his cell door was a hammer blow to his temples, syncing with the throbbing ache where the guard's baton had found its mark some time ago. Disorientation swam thick in his mind, a murky soup of pain and fractured memory. The crumble of bone-dust. The searing agony of the shock collar. The floor rushing up to meet him.
Bang. BANG.
"Wake the fuck up, 731!" a voice barked from the other side of the door, tinny and distorted through the intercom. "You breathing in there? If you're awake, sound off!"
Shimura groaned, the sound a dry rasp in his throat. He pushed himself up on an elbow, the world tilting nauseatingly. He could feel the crusted blood on his temple. Every movement sent a fresh spike of pain through his neck and skull.
"I'm up," he croaked, the words tasting like blood and defeat.
The response was immediate. The heavy clunk-whirr of the lock disengaging echoed like a death knell in the small space. The door groaned open, and instead of the usual single escort, two guards stood framed in the harsh corridor light. Their expressions were flat, professional, and utterly devoid of humanity. They entered his cell with a purpose that made the fine hairs on his arms stand up.
"On your feet."
He complied, slowly, his body protesting every inch of the way. As he stood, he rolled his shoulders, a series of pops and cracks echoing in the tense silence. He wasn't given a moment to find his balance before they were on him, spinning him around and forcing his hands behind his back. The cold, familiar weight of Quirk-suppression cuffs clicked into place around his wrists. A redundant measure, given the collar already humming against his neck, but a potent symbol of their total control.
…Lovely.
"What's the charge this time?" Tenma muttered, his voice laced with a weary bitterness. "Breathing too loud?"
One of the guards, a man with a jaw like granite, leaned close, his breath hot against Shimura's ear.
"You've got more pressing matters to attend to than that," he said, his tone ominously quiet.
They marched him out of the cell block, their grip firm on his arms. The journey was different this time. They took routes usually reserved for transport, past holding cells and intake areas. Other inmates watched from behind their own doors, their eyes wide with a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity. They saw the famous decay-user, the one who'd broken Steeljaw, being led away like a prized animal to slaughter, extra guards flanking him, their hands on their stun batons. The silence that followed their procession was heavier than any noise.
He was led to a room he'd never seen before. It was colder than interrogation, more sterile. It looked like a corporate boardroom had been surgically implanted into the heart of the prison. A polished metal table, a few chairs, and a large, blank screen dominated one wall. And waiting for him were two people who did not belong.
Too clean, too professional…too dangerous.
A woman sat at the head of the table, her posture ramrod straight. She wore a severe, dark suit, and her gaze was like being scanned by a predator that had already calculated your nutritional value. Authority was not just her clothing; it was her skin. Beside her stood a man Shimura recognized from wanted posters and news briefings; Madam President as they call her, the President of the Hero Public Safety Commission. Her face was a carefully neutral mask, but her eyes held the finality of a judge who had already passed sentence.
The woman didn't wait for him to be seated.
"Tomura Shigaraki," she began, her voice a clinical, dispassionate instrument that cut through the room's silence. "Orphaned. Street rat. Former protégé of the demon lord who holds Japan in his grip and whose shadow now threatens to consume all of Asia, piece by piece." She tapped a file on the table in front of her. "We know your life. We know the man who made you. And we know you are rotting in here while he wins."
Said individual said nothing, his red eyes glinting from behind his messy white bangs.
Of course someone in the higher up would know who he is. Not surprising really. They've got tabs of everyone locked in Tartarus.
Nothing was kept hidden.
"I am Amanda Waller," she stated, as if the name itself was a threat. "And I am offering you the only chance at freedom you will ever get. You work for me. You do exactly as I say. You become a scalpel for the world's problems, and you get to walk under the sun again. A tool…but a living one."
"And if I don't want to be your tool?" Shimura rasped, the ghost of a sneer on his lips.
Waller didn't even blink. "Then you can spend the rest of your very, very long life in this concrete hell. Your choice."
The words hung in the air, cold and absolute. There was no threat of immediate execution, no raised voice. Just the simple, horrifying promise of an eternity in the four-meter-by-four-meter cube. It was a more terrifying prospect than any bomb.
_________________
Some Time Later
I am either stupid, or suicidal…maybe I'm both.
Shimura found himself in a different, larger briefing room, the humming collar a constant reminder of his new lease on life. He wasn't alone. They were a motley crew of Tartarus's worst, all sporting identical black bands around their necks.
There was Dabi, leaning against a wall with an air of detached amusement, his turquoise eyes cataloging every detail. Himiko Toga was practically vibrating in her seat, giggling as she traced the edge of a plastic spork. Twice was arguing with himself in a low mutter, while the stoic, massive form of Magne stood with her arms crossed, and Mr. Compress maintained an air of theatrical calm, though his fingers nervously toyed with a hidden object.
Amanda Waller stood before them, a remote in her hand.
"Your assignment," she announced, a holographic map springing to life behind her, "is to dismantle a nascent syndicate, 'Kurogiri's Shade,' before it establishes a bridgehead that will trigger a cascade of similar organizations across every continent. You are deniable assets."
Her eyes swept over them, cold and unforgiving. "To ensure you understand the stakes of 'deniable'…"
She clicked the remote. The main screen split. On one side were mission files for a different team; Task Force X established in America. On the other, a live feed showed a chaotic street battle. A man with metallic skin was ripping through soldiers, screaming about freedom.
"This is Slipknot" (I am not sorry) Waller said, her voice devoid of all emotion. "He believes his durability Quirk makes him immune to consequences. He has been informed of his error."
The man on the screen suddenly clutched his head, his roars of rage turning into desperate, staticky pleas over the comms. "No, wait! I'll comply! Waller, I beg you, I'll do anything! Don't—!"
Waller pressed a button on her remote.
There was a wet, percussive POP that silenced the feed. The metallic man's body went limp, his head a ruined, bloody flower.
"That was his head," Waller said flatly. "Oh." She placed the remote down. "The rest is in Madam President's hands." With that, she turned and walked out, her heels clicking a final, chilling rhythm on the floor.
Madam President stepped forward, her face grim. "Your work will not be celebrated. It will be buried. But it is necessary." She brought up another image on the holo-board; grainy footage of Muscular, Moonfish, and two other brutal-looking inmates on a separate mission. "This is Task Force S; the first wave sent to this target. They have… underperformed. You are the second. The final option. You are Task Force V."
There was a beat of silence before Twice tentatively raised a hand. "Uh, ma'am? What happened to the other letters? Did they—?"
"Those designations are not important," She cut him off, her tone leaving no room for inquiry. "Your field commander and monitor will be this man."
A side door opened, and Hawks walked in. But he was different. The usual easy-going smile was replaced by a look of grim duty. And his famous red wings were gone, replaced by sleek, articulated constructs of polished steel that gleamed under the lights, their edges looking razor-sharp.
Dabi let out a low, rasping chuckle. "Well, well. Looks like this little songbird got himself a new set of clipped wings. What's the matter, Hawks? Get too close to the fire?"
Hawks's gaze swept over Dabi, then the rest of them, a calm, dangerous smile gracing his lips. It didn't reach his eyes.
"I control the detonators for the nanite explosives in your necks," he said, his voice pleasant, almost conversational. "So, let's all try to get along. Right?"
The room went dead silent.
"…Wonderful." That was all Dabi said as he slumped to his seat.
"Your transport is ready," Madam president said, breaking the tension. "Gear up. You leave immediately."
__________________
The journey to the roof was a blur of steel corridors and armed escorts. Then a heavy door hissed open, and the six inmates were hit by the biting cold of the open air and the deafening whump-whump-whump of rotor blades. A heavy-duty military helicopter, its sides emblazoned with a non-descript logo, was settling onto the Tartarus landing pad, its searchlight cutting a swath through the night.
The wind whipped at Shimura's hair as he stood at the precipice, the city's neon glow a distant, mocking promise of a world he was being allowed to re-enter only as a weapon. The miniature implanted bomb buzzed slightly against his neck, a vile kiss.
Hawks gestured toward the open bay door of the chopper.
Here we go then, Tenma Shimura thought, his crimson eyes narrowing as he took the first step forward into the roaring dark.
Chapter 1 (End of a symbol) is already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom for as low as $1 (Power up tier).