Chapter Text
Prologue
(...)
The interrogation room was small and windowless. A single hanging lamp cast a circle of pale light. The hum of the fluorescent was the only sound besides Izuku Midoriya’s breathing. With his wrists cuffed to the steel table, his only company was his thoughts. The air smelled of metal, dried sweat, and something else he recognized at once: guilt.
Beyond the door, the murmur of footsteps, muffled voices, and the rustle of papers anchored him to reality. He knew he was being watched; he sensed the same officers who had arrested him behind the one-way glass, observing him, waiting for the crack.
But Izuku was already broken.
His fingers trembled against the steel, not from the cold. Anxiety cinched his chest. There was no way out, no comfort. His mind kept returning to the same instant.
The blood.
He kept seeing it on his hands even after washing them at the hospital. He felt it under his nails and in the creases of his palms, as if his skin had absorbed it. He squeezed his eyes shut. It was useless. The scene returned: the arrogant smile on that man before he fell, the satisfied look in his final seconds.
“She enjoyed it, didn’t she?” he had said.
And then Izuku acted. He didn’t know whether it was out of rage, fear, or a hard need for justice. But he did it.
He killed him.
The door remained closed. No one came in. They left him there, alone with memory and shame, with a weight heavier than the handcuffs. The air thickened, as if the room had been sealed to force him to breathe his emotions to the limit.
A bead of sweat rolled down his temple. He didn’t even notice.
Guilt left no room for the rest of the world.
Every time he tried to recall why he had committed that sin, he reached the same answer: rage. A mute, rough, relentless fury, aimed at himself, at others, and at the system that had betrayed him.
And with it, like an inevitable tide, came sadness. Because, in the end, there was a victim. A person who should not have paid the price for his incompetence, his frailty, his inability to protect her.
The clearest memory he kept was not the act itself, nor the blood, nor the screams of those who saw him do it. It was the image of himself, seated on the edge of a bed, clutching with both hands the fragile fingers of an intubated girl, her face almost unrecognizable beneath the bandages. Her brown hair still held traces of dried blood. And even so, he held her as if the warmth of his touch could return some life to her, as if his presence were enough to twist the course of events.
Now his beloved lay bedridden in a ward at Musutafu Regional Hospital, sunk in a sleep from which she might never wake.
And all he had left was remorse. A weight that didn’t lessen with the days spent at her side, but grew with each beat, like a second heart that pulsed only with guilt.
The monitor at her side emitted slow, steady beeps. The air smelled of disinfectant, sadness, and defeat. No one told him he had to leave, but he understood when the footsteps approached with a rhythm that wasn’t a nurse’s.
Three officers, uniformed and silent, not meeting his eyes. One produced the handcuffs; the other two pinned him against the wall of the hospital room while informing him of his rights.
Izuku barely managed one last look at his beloved before they took him away, with the only comfort of having avenged her. He didn’t cry. He couldn’t. He had spent those tears long ago.
Several days passed in isolation at a state prison before they summoned him back to the interrogation room, without explanation. He was a murderer now, and he knew it all too well. He had already crossed the line; there was no path back. All that remained was to await the sentence looming over him for having carried out his revenge, even at the cost of losing everything.
What happened next was a twist of fate he never would have imagined. It began with a dry click, the sound of the steel door unlocking. Even so, it didn’t open immediately.
Izuku lifted his head, feeling the pulses in his neck quicken. The footsteps that followed were not hurried, but measured, calculated. Three pairs, maybe four. One of them was lighter, almost inaudible.
When the door finally opened all the way, he saw the unthinkable. Principal Nezu crossed the threshold, flanked by men in dark suits—the same ones Izuku had seen prowling the hallway when they had escorted him there.
Nezu didn’t speak at first. He walked with the calm of someone who knew the terrain far too well. His small, round eyes gleamed under the scant light. He stopped in front of the table; the creak of his bodyguards’ leather and the buzz of the fluorescent filled the room.
“Good afternoon, Izuku,” he said in a polite, almost warm tone, as if visiting him in a school office rather than an interrogation room.
Izuku didn’t answer. He only looked at him. The cuffs bit into his wrists with every passing second.
“I’ve read your girlfriend’s medical report,” Nezu continued after a brief silence. “She’s alive...if that can be called life. Your mother, by the way, is alive as well. She’s stopped sleeping to scrape together funds. Do you know how much a competent lawyer costs in a case like this?”
Izuku swallowed. A finger trembled.
“In case you were wondering, the Academy is carrying on with its activities. Your classmates have asked about you. There are rumors. Some struggle to believe it; others not so much. Some understand; others don’t. It no longer matters.”
Nezu settled into the chair one of the men slid up to the table. He leaned forward slightly, without losing his courteous tone.
“The prosecutor’s office wants to charge you with third-degree homicide. They might succeed; they might not. But the justice system,” he said, with a slight curl of his lips that fell short of a smile, “rarely has room to understand noble motives when blood is involved.”
He lowered his gaze for a moment, then raised it again and held Izuku’s eyes.
“You’re a killer, Izuku. And no one will blame you for doing it. Not after what that bastard did to that girl. But to our system, you are still a killer.”
The silence that followed weighed more than any sentence.
“What’s done can’t be undone,” Nezu went on in a lower tone. “But there is a way to keep it from destroying what you have left. You won’t be a hero in the public eye. There will be no ovations or covers. But you will be on the right side of this endless war between heroes and villains.”
Izuku barely managed to lift his gaze. He felt the edge of a cliff beneath his feet.
“What… are you proposing?”
Nezu nodded, satisfied to have drawn him out of his muteness.
“A transfer. To a special class, outside the public curriculum. We call it Class S. They’re faceless agents who will train to carry out missions no one will see, though many will be grateful without knowing it. They’ll teach you to disappear, to hunt in the dark, to make decisions that storefront heroes couldn’t take without dirtying themselves.”
Izuku swallowed.
“A secret class? Of assassins?”
“Of soldiers,” Nezu corrected. “Of shadows. Of those who clean up the muck without expecting decorations. You fit. Not because you’re a monster, but because the world needs someone who crossed the line and still chooses not to be lost entirely.”
One of the men in suits placed a manila envelope on the table.
“There’s the contract. It’s your way out without dragging your mother down with you… and without staying chained to that hospital bed waiting for her to wake up.”
Izuku didn’t touch the envelope.
“And if I refuse?”
Nezu stood without raising his voice.
“Then the story ends here. You and your mother will shoulder a fate that will drag you both under. You’ll be another bad headline in the afternoon. You decide, Midoriya-san.”
Silence returned, sharp-edged.
Izuku closed his eyes. Her bandaged face returned to his memory. With a slight tremor, he stretched his fingers toward the envelope.
“I’ll sign.”
Nezu nodded, showing no triumph, only serene resignation.
“Then, Izuku Midoriya… welcome to the dark side of heroes.”
To be continued...