33: ▓▒░Whys and Wherefores of the Past░▒▓

▓▒░Whys and Wherefores of the Past░▒▓

"And to think that the guys didn't believe me… I did well to believe in this feeling of alerts created by my alertness itself generated by my alerting instinct." articulated a voice that came from the two eyes and the figure that began to emerge distinctly through the black veil.

After a few moments, a tall man, probably 6.5 feet tall, looked at him, staring at his every move with a look of curiosity and inner conflict. His crazy white hair, half short and half long, stopped just before his shoulders, his tired grey eyes showed long years of exhausting work, and two black scars crossed his face from side to side, passing through his left eye. As for his clothes, Felix simply imagined that he was wearing his hero's costume; it is unlikely that someone would wear such a costume in everyday life.

Still confused, the ex-convict scratched his head, a little flustered, and while his hand was towards the person in front of him. Against all odds, the tall man agreed to shake his hand after he paused to see if Felix would try anything else.

"To think that an intruder would succeed in infiltrating this place despite our will, it's unthinkable," he muttered while narrowing his eyes. "Do you still know your name?"

"...I guess so," Felix responded with a grunt, realizing that talking was hurting his jaw and neck, right where the black smoke was sticking to him. "Do you already know me, or do I need to introduce myself?"

"I already know who you are, like the others. That said, you must know that you're not welcome here, but since we can't do anything about it, nor you can, we all need to bear with it for a while."

"What exactly just happened? I was just trying to help someone, and then, everything went foggy."

"It's needless to say that you're not in the 'real' world. You tried to copy Toshinori's quirk, and it brought you here for some reason. Now… we're all taken aback, the only other person who can enter this world is AFO, you know who he is, right?"

"Yeah, I've heard enough about him in the last few weeks to get a rough picture of the dude."

"In that case, I hope you won't mind us trying to get you to admit stuff. We can't just believe a word you say out the bat, especially when we all know that the president and Tsukauchi himself hide things about you. The facts All Might knows about you are almost inexistent when we take time to think about it, and your past isn't something to take lightly; you're the type of person he likes to send to do the work for him."

"Huh?" Felix mumbled just before he had time to dodge a sort of black rope that was coming at him from above, in front of, and below him as well. "You can just ask questions, for fuck sake… In this country, everyone tries to solve their fucking problem by force-" One of these ropes hit him right in the face and made him stagger to the side. "The fuck is wrong with you?!"

—This guy isn't alone. At least two or three are here.

Knowing that attacking would only exacerbate their suspicions, he simply decided to run and dodge the whips, but with the black smoke still stuck to him, his movement was significantly obstructed, preventing him from running correctly or even using his quirk efficiently. His hormones weren't functioning at normal levels, and he felt like most of his power was going into someone else's body, as if he wasn't in total command of himself but rather part of a grouping of people that he was boosting all at once, which only weakened him even more.

Running here was strange; it was like struggling in a dream, a kind of lucid dream where he felt pain in all form. The goofiness of what was going on made him feels like it was all a joke; now that his mind was clear, he knew that it may be All Might quirk, but this was way more bizarre than any other one he tried to copy. This shit was like a pocket dimension with no sky or floor; their voices seemed to have an echo that faded only a second after they spoke, and that black smoke slowly faded with time.

However, as soon as this smoke appeared, a white one spread all around him to replace the one around him.

—White smoke…? So they can't control the black one, huh. Otherwise, they would have just manipulated it. That means that the one stuck to me is out of their control. That said, I don't even know why I'm running… My "fight & flight" hormones act oddly here, a bit like when you bring a compass back into the nether-

Without him being able to realize it, a black rope came to grab him by the foot from the ground, as if it had dug into the non-existent ground like a mole to make its way. The black thing pulled him down to push his leg into the floor and block him, but he managed to put up some resistance, whereupon he forcefully managed to loosen the whip's grip on his calf just before a second whip struggling to make its way towards him as if also blinded by the dense veil.

Felix thought he saw something flying through the smoke as he looked up, but he preferred to stay calm and continue what his demented hormones were telling him to do: run.

After only a few meters, he hit something hard and soft at once; the bounce sent him reeling backward as whatever he had hit on his way was likewise pushed back while floating above the ground.

He was a little stunned, as if his body had hit the concrete, but he knew that must be because his body wasn't complete here. He looked up at what he had just hit as the white smoke dissipated slightly. A woman in her thirties dressed in a tight navy blue hero costume with a red skirt-belt, yellow gloves, and a long white cape. She was rather tall than most of the other women he had met; she looked at Felix as if trying to gauge him with her soulful grey eyes.

She sighed and then leaned forward a bit before reaching out to Felix to help him up, as he grasped her hand, then he took a glimpse of the woman's muscularity while he used his second hand to grab her forearm to help himself stand since one of his legs was still obstructed by smoke. If she wasn't as muscular as Rumi, she was somehow close to the bunny girl, and her body was more than trained enough to smash villains with ease.

"I can't know what you're thinking as we all can do with Toshinori, but I'm not a fool, pal. Roll up your eyes; my face is a little higher." she sighed amusingly with a grin. "I said my face is higher." she continued by raising an eyebrow.

"My bad, I guess… That said, even if I dunno who the fuck you are, the first thing I saw of you was your tits before they ended up smashing into my skull. I can't be helped."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to be inappropriate, but if you had quit running around like a maniac, this wouldn't have happened," she said before analyzing the ex-con even more. "I'm Shimura Nana; you can call me whatever you want; I don't mind nicknames either. It's nice to see another face than the other chaps who accompany me."

"So... Why did you intervene?"

"To keep the others from jumping in and paralyzing you. It's better if I step in for them in this kind of case."

"This kind of case?"

"We're all heroes inside here; you're the only one with a darker background, although two others were pretty good at doing things in the shadows. I'm going to pretend that I don't know anything about your past because it taught me to give people a chance. I've already talked to the others; they've agreed to at least listen to you."

Before any of them could add a word, three whips came to wrap themselves with force around Felix's arms and then plastered them along his body, preventing him from moving. The whips tightened enough to make it difficult for him to breathe before the white smoke disappeared completely and Felix could see his surroundings.

A large empty room where most of the walls were destroyed, revealing a horizon, a sky, a floor of dark fog illuminated with stars of 8 different colors as if this place was floating in a torrent of abyssal water mixed with a dark night. On the concrete floor were set eight large-backed armchairs similar to those of the kings of France or England during the Middle Ages, thin but tall, with an oval stone of a different color inlaid in each backrest. Only two men were sitting on them while looking at Felix from afar, while the other was either busy trying to locate the intruder. The white-haired man stood firm next to a bald man, the one who manipulated the whips. He used his quirk even more violently to drag Felix towards him, even if it would hurt him. After making Felix fall on the ground, then pulling him at full speed for fifty meters like a potatoes' sack so that the ex-con ends up in front of them, the bald man loosened his grip around Felix's ribs, which made him cough immediately.

"Banjou, I asked you to bring him back; there was no need to break his ribs in the process." said the tall white-haired man.

"At least he can't run anymore. That's what ya wanted, right?"

"Not what I was asking for. I made clear that I wasn't detecting any malevolent intention inside him. He's crystal clear, at least for now."

"I told you to wait until I went to talk to him…" growled Nana as she moved closer to them before helping Felix to his feet.

"Shimura, you already know it. Talking doesn't solve most of our problems." explained a man with an explosive hairstyle. "We can't afford to have an intruder here, even if he doesn't work with him; if any of his goons learn that fact, he might try to take a hold on this dude's body and quirk to come here and steal our powers."

"You talk about All For One, right? If I understand correctly… did he ever tried to steal 'that' power from you? And since this power belongs to All Might, I guess you are some kind of network of people who share his quirk. That said, my quirk can detect several types of super-hormones emanating from y'all, although I can't distinguish any."

"Stealing super-hormones to copy the powers of your victims. Are you proud of what you've done in the past?" said the same man after a silence.

"I've already been to court; I don't need a second trial." Felix snarled, hearing once again a sanctimonious discourse.

"Listen, you entered here only because the descendant of our will permitted it to you. I don't have anything against you, nor the third, we pretty much like people like you as long as you stay on the right track, but you don't really have a choice to answer us. It's one will against seven; it's going to be hard for you to resist."

"Well, he managed to free himself from the grip of my whips, so his willpower and emotional strength must be quite intense." muttered the bald man, Banjou, as he scratched his head.

The man with the explosive hairstyle stepped forward to watch Felix, a scar across his face as if he had fought a swordsman or suffered shrapnel damage from a bomb. His gaze was cold and analytical, but from that moment on, he slipped away to the other end of the room to join a guy with a bandana who was sitting in one of the rightmost chairs.

Felix didn't exactly understand what this guy was getting at, but from the way the others were looking at him, he was very likely an introvert and therefore didn't talk much.

—If he pays attention to me, it means that I must not be that bad from his point of view.

Still half blocked by the people around him, Felix listened to them introducing themselves, seven people stuck in some sort of pocket dimension, but they didn't explain much more than that. Nevertheless, even if they didn't want to say anything more, the man with the explosive hairstyle had said that All Might was the descendant of their will, so they are either the ancestors of the Symbol of Peace or, as Felix thinks, people who could pass on their powers. If this wasn't the case, he wouldn't be able to sense several different sources of super-hormones, but all mixed together.

They talked longer about Felix coming here and its weirdness because it implied either that Felix had greater willpower than seven or even eight people put together or that he had found a way to exploit OFA, and therefore probably all the quirks on this planet.

Felix started to speak in a more scientific way, but since none of them except Hikage, the white-haired man knew anything about biology, he stopped and preferred to change the discussion. As he knew already, they all had access to the information that All Might had read, so they knew his past, but since it was Nana this time trying to understand, the discussion was way more tempered.

"...So may I know why you've done this?"

"Jesus… I feel like I already answered this question hundred times." Felix sighed, simultaneously aware that lying wouldn't do anything good for him. "I think I rejected that part of myself for a long time, but I probably did it to not be alone and attract attention. My quirk allowed me to do all this, and after all the backstabbing that was done to me, I saw this as my only solution."

"...When you came back here, we were able to… how can I put it… access some of your thoughts, snippets of events that shaped you."

"Yeah?"

"Does this have anything to do with your parents and your former girlfriend? I don't mean to be pushy, but... What I mean is that we saw what they did to you, both physically and mentally."

"That doesn't make up for what you did, though, kid," exclaimed Banjou as he sat on his chair.

"Of course it does; why else would judges take into account a criminal's past to determine his punishment?" Seeing that Banjou wasn't ready to answer, she shifted her attention back to Felix, patiently waiting to see what she was getting. "Your father didn't even didn't go to jail because he was a former lawyer before he was a hero. Despite the beatings, bruises, and cigarettes he put out on your arms when you were a kid, all with proofs and several complaints, but nothing was done, even after he became an alcoholic. Your mother preferred to leave you alone with him rather than stay longer with her violent and toxic husband while she took advantage of her quirk to get everything she wanted and exacerbate your father's hatred that later fell on you… We were able to experience this overwhelming feeling of injustice that has plagued you for years."

"Just snippets, huh," Felix mumbled, seeing once again as a reminiscence of his past, his father coming home from work, beating him, eating, sleeping. "...How much did you see?"

"As I said, the event that changes you… So where the strongest feelings were born. That's one thing that happens to everyone who comes in here; it seems that you aren't unaffected by it either. We don't know why this pocket dimension does this, but it's like it's acting independently. Now… could you find out what it was that made you feel so hurt by your former friends and girlfriend that made you change...? We could all see that she left you, but judging by the situation you were in, it must have been... much worse..."

"I didn't think I had an appointment with a therapist." sneered Felix with a grin.

"He was your best friend, wasn't he?" Nana asked, ignoring Felix's ironizing humor. "You were interested in the same girl, and you hooked up with his childhood crush, but at the time, you didn't know that. If I understood correctly, your girlfriend made you gradually move away from this friend to show you to her buddies and have you only for her, right?"

"I guess it's pretty much what happened. I was trying to man up at the time. I wasn't really someone strong or confident, but I saw high school as a new beginning, my best friend too since we were both bullied in the past. For me, at that time, whether I was at home or at school, nothing changed. It was the right time to hope and try for a new and healthy relationship with someone…"

"I see… When your best friend saw this, he experienced it as a second betrayal."

"....Goddamn… I feel like I've been spied on, but at this point, I guess there's no point in trying to hide anything," Felix admitted as he sat on one of the chairs left unoccupied. "I trusted my best friend with the secret of my quirk, even how I could help him get the girl he wanted if he was really desperate, but we promised not to use my power to flirt and just do it the old-fashioned way, kind of ironic now that I think about it since he was always using his quirk to show off."

"Did he sell ya out?" asked Banjou by raising an eyebrow.2

"Sort of. He simply explained to a girl in our class interested in me that I had used my power on her before explaining how my quirk worked. And one thing led to another, and the rumor spread all over the school; when my girlfriend found out, she complained that I had 'forced' her, even though she knew I hadn't, all to keep her reputation clean and make money. I was kicked out of my high school soon after, and my father and I had to pay a large sum of money to the Canadian justice system and to the family of this ho."

"How much exactly...? 'Cause judging by yer apartment back then, you didn't seem to have a lot of cash."

"About 40.000 dollars for each. I tried to find odd jobs here and there because all this was reported on the internet, and since we were too poor to have smartphones, I found out too late, and the whole thing was publicized, so…

"So no school wanted ya, huh."

"And so this memory is…" continued Nana, putting a hand in front of her mouth, visibly affected by a realization.

"Yes, my dad took advantage of his quirk to send me to the hospital before threatening me that if I didn't use mine to earn money and help him pay back the cash I owed, I wouldn't fare so well next time."

"..."

"At the time, I wasn't especially muscular or high-level, so I just obeyed. And I got caught up in this loop of my father's over-indebtedness and money that I owe to the legal system."

"And your mother during this time, she...?"

"She was back in Russia, I received money from her, but it was mostly her tutorials on how to use my quirk that helped me the most. I saw her again much later when I was in prison. It didn't bother me anymore back then, as the saying goes, it's better to be alone than badly accompanied."

"And so... your father, how did he end up?"

"The judge and the justice system knew very well that he had exploited me, but in order not to tarnish their reputations, rather than send a former judge and hero who had become an alcoholic and violent towards his family, they preferred to send the 'horrible' son of this perfect man and a Russian woman who had made a fortune in adaptive clothing for people with transformation quirks. Neither the heroes who knew about it, nor the neighbors who saw it, nor the justice system or the prison itself, my parents, my friends, my family did anything for me or to simply make things right, not even for the sake of justice. People are only interested in themselves, their semblance, and their comfort. The truth hurts them, it requires them to think, and thinking brings responsibility. Nobody wants that today. I have the opportunity to change something; I'm not going to waste it because a bunch of clowns in costumes thinks I'm an evil, manipulative villain. No thank."

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