Darkest Before Dawn - 138

Chapter 138

‘Situation just got even more complicated,’ Kazuki thought warily.

All the previous glee and confidence that he got from the interview to Aizawa and Nezu had gone out the window. The shock from the reveal that no, Shigaraki wasn’t the leader of the villain group, was enough to snap him out of it. Back to square one, Kazuki was left cautious and afraid, because this was an entirely unknown villain to him and he was leading the villain group, so he was no nobody, that was for sure.

“The outside, leave that to me. But here… Are you giving up, Tomura?” the new “arrival”, as it were, asked and Shigaraki stiffened where he stood. “I can take over if so,” the man on the other side of the screen said. He didn’t speak particularly menacingly or deeply or anything, but there was something in his voice that unnerved Kazuki deeply. Maybe it was what little could be seen on the other side of the screen, or maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t read anything from him, since he wasn’t in the room, but the fact was that he wished he could turn that TV off so badly…

“No, Sensei,” Shigaraki mumbled, his previously chaotic and overwhelming emotions being reigned in. Visibly at that, so Kazuki didn’t even need to use his sense to pick up on it. “I’ll handle this,” he added, straightening up, determined.

“Good,” was the simple response from the newly revealed leader of the villains. Then there was a slight shift in the man’s posture, revealing some kind of helmet on his head. “Kazuki Endo,” the man said then and everyone’s attention seemed to snap towards him. Shigaraki in particular didn’t seem very happy with their leader acknowledging Kazuki’s existence.

‘Not like I want the attention, you crazy bastard,’ he thought to himself bitterly.

“Long time no see,” the new villain finished with and Kazuki was forced to pause and blink. What did he mean by that? He was pretty sure he’d remember such a sight. Was he someone he knew? Someone he’d come across? He could have been anyone under that helmet, Kazuki supposed, but still…

Or maybe he was someone related to the Black Rampage? He doubted it though, but crazier things had happened. Suddenly, he was a lot less sure about things truly being about recruiting him though. Surely not though… right?

“The last time I saw you, you were so small yet so powerful,” the man said and Kazuki immediately figured that he was talking about the Black Rampage, for sure. That was worrying, very worrying, indeed. He wasn’t responsible for creating this villain overlord, right? Because that’d suck. “And now…” he continued, disgust easily distinguishable in his voice, which surprised Kazuki. “Now look at what they’ve done to you. What they’ve turned you into.”

“... Do I know you?” he asked, because he didn’t think he could address the rest of what had been said. Did he remember him from back at the Black Rampage and he’d hoped Kazuki would turn into a villain? Was that what was going on?

He really wanted to be able to make sense of the situation, but no such luck, he supposed.

“No, no you don’t,” was the answer he got, followed by a slow chuckle that made him want to step back. “But I know you. I had my eyes on you, back then, but… so did everyone else. And afterwards…”  the villain continued. Although, Kazuki was getting the impression that he was talking like an old man reminiscing about times past rather than actually telling him something. “We can just say it was not to be,” the man finished, before shifting again. “Just like it’s not to be now, it would seem.”

Immediately, the entire room shifted, emotionally speaking and physically speaking. Kazuki froze where he stood, catching how Shigaraki in particular seemed ready to lunge at him at a moment’s notice. Several of the other villains around weren’t too far behind though. The Lizard-Man already had a hand on the handle of one of his blades.

“They threw you in a hole and forgot about you until one of them found a use for you, Kazuki Endo,” the villain commented, and he sounded more amused than anything as he said that. “Does that not anger you? You were a child, barely in control of yourself, let alone your volatile Quirk, yet they cared not for any of that. Don’t you want to show them the same courtesy they did you?”

Kazuki had thought he’d been between a rock and a hard place before, but that was nothing compared to the spot he’d been put on right there. This new villain seemed more intent in getting an actual answer out of him. He had a very strong feeling that he wouldn’t take his carefully crafted non-answers like Shigaraki had. So… how to answer? What was the best thing he could say without setting himself on fire in front of the cameras at the bar.

The answer was that there was no answer.

So, he picked the lesser evil.

“I do,” he said, his voice dropping almost to a growl as his face twisted into an angry scowl. A concoction full of anger and bitterness coursed through him as he regarded the new villain, annoyance directed equal parts at him as it was at what he’d said. He didn’t even have to fake it too hard, considering how much he hated what the man had done to him, by kidnapping him as much as by making him say what he was saying. “And I will,” he said, his angry expression soon replaced by a cold smirk. “They will regret it.”

“Oh?” That was, apparently, not the response anyone at the bar had been expecting.

“I don’t need you for that though,” he added, directing that as much at the new villain as he did towards the rest of those gathered at the bar. “I can make do on my own. Was making do on my own.”

The place fell into silence for a long, drawn out few seconds…

And then the villain burst into laughter.

“So you say,” came from the TV once the man got a hold of himself again. “And you mean that too, which is most interesting,” he added and Kazuki was starting to get whiplash from how the atmosphere in the room kept shifting. It felt like floating in the middle of the ocean, with waves and currents pulling and pushing at him. “Then… I’ll leave things to Tomura. I have… things to look into, evidently.”

And just like that, the TV flickered back to the channel it’d been on before. Kazuki could almost fool himself into thinking none of that had happened. Alas, it had, no two ways about it. ‘How do I deal with this now?’ he wondered, keeping his act up by turning and giving Shigaraki a raised eyebrow. Inside though, he was all but panicking, because he really didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

“Regret it, huh?” someone asked, but it wasn’t Shigaraki, or even Muscular. No, it was Blood-Girl. She sounded curious though, rather than that crazy-happy voice he was coming to associate with her. She almost sounded like a child asking an innocent question. “What will they regret? How will you make them regret it?” she further asked, approaching him.

The worst part was that she wasn’t trying to poke holes in his act. No, she was asking genuine questions. She was excited to know the answers, he could tell. And the madness that he knew to dwell in that mind of hers seemed to be shining through once again with every second that passed.

“Stain isn’t wrong,” he said, his mind working a mile a minute trying to come up with something good. He needed to get them on his side. If he won the audience, no matter how much Shigaraki distrusted him or hated his guts, he wouldn’t be able to get rid of Kazuki. And the audience in question? Most of them were there because of Stain, because they somehow thought Shigaraki was with Stain… and he could use that. “There are so many heroes that are not worthy… But I, I will be worthy… and I’ll also help him cleanse the entire thing. I’ve been waiting for him to approach me, so that I can do so. I can spot liars, after all,” he explained, glancing towards Shigaraki rather meaningfully. “Amongst other things. So… you say you’re working with Stain and you want me to join you? Then get Stain here, because I don’t believe you, at all.”

And just like that, the ball was on Shigaraki’s side of the court. Maybe Kazuki had been trapped, forced to make a shitty move… But it’d also allowed him to be petty. Because if Shigaraki wanted to drag him down and screw him over, then Kazuki would make the piece of shit sink with him.

‘Let’s see how you like it,’ he thought, not even having to hold back the vindictive grin on his face.

“I… see,” Shigaraki mumbled, as if he were considering what he’d said. Kazuki knew better though. He could feel a touch of fear. It was mostly tension and nerves, insecurity, but the fear was still so sweet to sense at that moment, with all that was going on. Kazuki almost wanted to poke at that wound further, but he couldn’t risk it…

And he had to focus on something else in the meantime. With everyone distracted, it was his moment, his one chance. He needed to do the most with it before the tide turned on him again. By then, Kazuki knew that could happen at the drop of a hat, so it was better to not waste a single second.

“As I said, Stain prefers to work alone,” Shigaraki said and Kazuki raised an unimpressed eyebrow. Really, that was what he was going to go with? That was so weak. Even the audience around them could tell as much, from what he picked up. “It’ll take time to reach him,” the villain continued, standing up from the stool at the bar and moving to leave. “Please wait here,” he added, grabbing Kazuki’s injured shoulder and giving it a casual squeeze.

It was a good thing he’d seen something of the sort coming, because it meant he managed to channel enough boredom to ignore the pain.

“Looking forward to it,” Kazuki shot at the guy’s back, making him pause by the door. He didn’t turn around though, nor did he say anything else. He just left and Kazuki wondered if he’d won that argument as much as he thought he had. He knew he wasn’t wrong, but there was only so much he could do and the villains, the villains had all the cards they could possibly want.

‘I do have some cards to play though,’ he thought to himself, taking a deep breath in.

“Any chance I could get something to eat?” he asked Kurogiri – he was pretty sure that was Mist-Warp’s name – with a raised eyebrow. Everyone else came and went, so he imagined those that hadn’t eaten at the bar did so somewhere else. Kazuki hadn’t been afforded the same courtesy so far. Not that he minded, but he could only go so long without eating. Especially in the state he was in.

“Not afraid we’ll poison it?” Dabi asked from further down the counter and he chuckled.

“I’m more afraid of starving right now,” he answered, which was the truth. If anything happened, he couldn’t afford to be at less than his best. Fortunately for him… “Besides, I have my ways to check,” he commented, summoning a Nevermore by his hand.

Several of the villains stiffened, but the fact that the Grimm was barely bigger than a hand reassured them plenty.

“Smart,” Dabi commented with a snort.

‘You’ve got no idea how much,’ Kazuki thought, biding his time. He ate the basic meal Kurogiri gave him after having his Nevermore eat about half of it just to be on the safe side. He watched the villains come and go, have conversations, and watch TV. Until finally, finally he found the opening he was looking for.

[}-o-{]

[Nezu]

“There was no one else, I swear!” Yuga Aoyama exclaimed, and he could read it all over the boy’s face, the urgency, the desperation for them to believe him. “I thought, I think I was the only one, at least. I didn’t know about anyone else,” he added, a plea in his voice that had Nezu humming.

He wasn’t lying, far as he could tell.

Tsukauchi was confirming it too, apparently, if the nod was anything to go by. That had them back to square one though, because much as they were trying not to think about it, the fact was that there’d been a traitor in their midst before and there seemed to be another one now. ‘How did this happen?’ Nezu couldn’t help but wonder. How did UA go from no incidents in years to absolute chaos in a matter of months?

“They didn’t make any weird comments that come to mind? Even if you don’t think they’re related to this, anything that seemed odd could help,” Aizawa pressed, in the meantime. Because Aoyama was their only lead as far as figuring out how the attack had even been orchestrated went.

Their security measures hadn’t been few. They had been doing all they could for a while and it hadn’t been enough. So Nezu was determined to find all the holes in their defense and fix it all. He was going to make sure those students were safe, if it was the last thing he did. He already had plenty of ideas in the works, even before the attack happened, but now it was even more urgent.

The operation to recover Kazuki was underway. They were confirming sources, closing in on the locations that were suspect. Everything was in motion, just a matter of time… and luck. Because there was no telling what could happen on the side of the villains, where Kazuki was, but they couldn’t do anything about that…

Nezu had to keep telling himself that, and focusing on work, on what he could do.

Like making sure no other attacks happened.

“... That’s… that’s all I can think of,” Aoyama answered and Nezu considered the boy. It was a bit of a shame, what had happened with him. It wasn’t his fault that his parents had made terrible choices, but alas, that didn’t spare him a fair bit of grief. Largely, he was fine, considering much of what he’d done could be waved away by the threat of death by the villains that had set him up… but not all of it, which was why he’d had to be expelled from UA.

That was all a mess in itself, but Nezu’s thoughts on the matter started and ended on the fact that it was a shame.

It was also not the matter at hand though.

Figuring out how the attack had happened was, and they were no closer than before, it seemed. Nothing Aoyama had to share was even remotely useful, at a glance. Nezu was pretty sure that even a deep analysis of what he had to give them wouldn’t yield much, if anything at all. That begged the question that plagued his mind: How had they done it?

Their security measures had been in place. Without a traitor, nobody should have been able to figure out where the students were. Yet, they’d been attacked on the way back, right when it was all about to be over and they’d be back. To add salt to injury, the Wild Wild Pussycats had been attacked too, on the opposite side of the forest, on their way back to their own place too.

The when wasn’t much of a mystery. It was easier to attack them when they were all in one place, an inconvenient one at that, such as inside a vehicle. They’d been ambushed, surprised and overwhelmed right from the start. The villains had coordinated the attack well, if nothing else, and used the moment to the fullest.

It couldn’t have been more perfect, really.

‘Maybe it was too perfect though,’ Nezu thought, blinking and tuning out the ongoing questioning that Aizawa was carrying out with Aoyama, trying to get every single drop of information the boy could give them. ‘Because… even if they found where the training camp would be held, how did they manage to catch the transport?’ Nezu wondered.

The answer to that was easy though. They could have waited. They could have found out the students had left and even maybe a general direction and they’d set up watch over the road… But that didn’t make sense. ‘Endo would have sensed them,’ Nezu mused, bringing his cup of coffee to his lips and thinking that through. The report from the USJ attack clearly stated that Endo could sense the villains, sense their malice, in a way, for the most part.

Surely he’d have noticed something. Aizawa had said the boy tried to warn them, but another student had reported that Endo hadn’t seemed particularly concerned with anything, or even like he was sensing something. He’d been using his phone, which made Nezu think that it might have been the boy’s “friend” from the apartment complex that had sent the warning.

If so, however, how had Endo not sensed the hypothetical watch? Either they had some kind of counter to the emotion sensing, the person on watch had somehow managed not to feel bad at all, or they hadn’t been there at all. The last was the most plausible, what with the warp villain, but that circled back to a point… how had the villains timed the attack as they had? They would have needed the schedule for the bus, and that was only known by-

“Aizawa, I’ll leave you to this,” he said, bluntly and curtly, standing up and leaving the room without anything else. He heard some voices calling for him from behind, but he ignored those. He needed to check something and he needed to do so quickly.

“Principal?” Yamada greeted, seemingly surprised. “Are you done with-?”

“I need you to get in contact with the police,” he interrupted and the man, to his credit, straightened immediately. “I need you to get them to question the bus driver. Everything, from when he got the schedule up to the attack.”

“... The man barely survived, Principal. That’s a mess all on its own,” Hizashi said, apparently confused. “Why-?”

“The only people that knew the bus schedule were UA staff and the students. If there’s not another traitor in the class and we don’t believe there’s one in the teachers, then-”

“The bus driver was the only one that could have known it,” Yamada finished, even if he still looked a little skeptical.

“He might not be a traitor, but we need to find out what he knows. He could be the lead we need to find out how this happened,” Nezu said and Yamada nodded, leaving to do as he’d told him.

Nezu knew that not everyone was as determined to find the weaknesses in their security as he was. They weren’t indifferent, to be sure, but they were more focused on Endo than anything else. One thing at a time was how they were approaching things, and that was fine, but things would remain dangerous for the students, for the institution, if they didn’t fix things.

If his theory was right – and he was fairly certain it was –, there was still the issue of making sure history wouldn’t repeat itself. How to avoid the same thing happening again would be tricky, but more protocols, more checks… Bureaucracy was a nightmare, but it was there for a reason. It was just that more often than not the reasons weren’t respected, which ended up making the entire ordeal slow for no reason, basically.

Nezu wouldn’t let the security of his school be lax though, no way.

He needed to do more than fix already existing problems though. They needed to make sure that the villains wouldn’t find any other holes in their metaphorical – and also a little literal – walls. Nezu’s mind found itself occupied with such thoughts, such plans. There’d need to be changes to things going forward. The press might look at them oddly, even with all that had happened, but that was far from a concern.

Uwabami would help them deal with it, in the unlikely eventuality that PR became an issue. The woman would rally to their cause if it benefited Endo, so Nezu just had to make sure it did. Not difficult, considering Nezu himself had a soft spot for the boy. All the way back when he’d recruited him, after all, the boy had recognized his particular mix of emotions all too well.

That meant something.

Nezu paused, midway to serving himself another cup of coffee, and blinked. From the corridor, he could hear someone calling for him and it wasn’t Yamada. Which made sense, since it hadn’t been that long since he sent the man out… had it? ‘An hour already?’ he thought, slightly mystified by the passage of time.

He’d been thinking over security measures for a little too long, evidently.

“Principal Nezu,” a police officer called, almost shouting as he opened the door. “You… You have to see this,” he added, out of breath as if he’d run a fair distance all the way there. It was probably the case, Nezu imagined, but he was curious as to why?

Despite being UA’s principal, he was no hero, so why would someone come to get him so urgently?

All the same, he nodded and followed after the man. The officer was in a hurry, it seemed. So much so that Nezu had to struggle to keep up, but he refused to ask to slow down. There was urgency in the man’s voice, in his body language, even in his smell. Something was going on and they needed Nezu.

‘What happened now?’ he thought with some dread. Between dealing with the security issues of his school and Endo’s entire situation, Nezu really would rather not have to add something else to the list of things to deal with. Alas, life hardly ever was kind enough to spare one more struggles, so he tried not to be too hopeful on the matter.

“What happened?” he asked, unable to contain his curiosity until they go there, even though they seemed to be close already.

“It’s… we weren’t sure what to do, whether to trust it, after someone recognized it,” the officer said and he seemed fairly… perturbed, although that might not have been the correct word. He definitely seemed a little shaken though.

“... It?” Nezu mumbled with a slight, thoughtful frown.

Before the officer could explain properly though, they had already made their way through a corridor and two doors and Nezu stood face to face with the cause of his summon. He stared at it for a long, drawn out moment and he found that it was no wonder the police hadn’t known what to do or whether to trust it. Nezu found himself thinking much the same.

“I need someone to get Eraserhead, tell him to get someone else to finish what he’s doing if necessary but I need him here,” he said and the officer went to speak, but he continued before he could. “I need Uwabami too,” he added, reaching for his phone in the meantime. He needed to make a call and quickly. “Now,” he added before tapping on his phone three times.

“... Nezu?”

“I need you here, Inui, as soon as possible, and bring Kayama,” he said and he could almost hear the man on the other side shifting. “You might be able to help here.”

“We’ll be on our way. Anything else?” the man said across the phone.

“I think I can make do by myself until you get here, focus on that,” Nezu replied and the call was hung up shortly after. Then there was only Nezu and his little surprise. “You’re always finding ways to make me re-evaluate how high your potential is, aren’t you, Endo?” he asked, a grin spreading on his face.

The small Nevermore on the table simply cawed at him.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Kazuki is doing all he can and a little more to survive his archnemesis, a bar. Will it be enough? Will Shigaraki finally win an argument against our boy? Will Toga stop being crazy for five minutes? Will Potato-Head not be a creepy, scary fuck? Find out all these and more in future chapters of Dragon B- I mean, Dead by D- I mean, Darkest Before Dawn.

Teehee~

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter.

Also, I hope 2026 treats you better than 2025 did!

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Red, Blue or Green? I quite like all of those, but if I have to choose one without context whatsoever… Green.

See you.