….
After parting ways with Rumi at the base of the mountain, Dabi started the walk home.
His place was a decent distance away - far enough that most people would take the train. But Dabi had never been like most people, and the idea of sitting still on public transport when he could be training seemed like a waste.
He broke into a jog.
It wasn't a sprint, just a steady pace that let him maintain 'Total Concentration Breathing' without strain.
His body had adapted well over the years - what used to leave him gasping and bleeding now felt almost natural.
….
The streets were relatively empty this early in the morning.
A few shopkeepers are opening their stores, and some early commuters are heading to work. Nobody paid much attention to a fully covered kid jogging past in training clothes with a wooden sword strapped to his back.
He had made it about halfway home when he noticed the commotion.
Shoutings, screams, and more importantly the sound of something heavy hitting concrete.
A woman?
Dabi's steps slowed, his eyes tracked the source of the noise - an alley between two buildings, maybe twenty meters ahead.
He should keep running, graduation was in a few hours. And his homeroom teacher would probably chew him alive if he was late today too.
Whatever was happening in that alley wasn't his problem.
Yet–
His feet carried him toward it anyway.
….
The scene was just like any random villain attack.
A dozen civilians were clustered at the edge of the combat zone, pressed against storefronts and hiding behind vehicles. Some were trying to evacuate down side streets, few were frozen in panic, unable to move and others were on their phones, probably calling for help.
And in the middle of the street, two Heroes: A man and a woman, both wearing water-themed costumes that were now torn and burned.
The villain standing over them was massive.
Easily over two meters tall, built like a walking tank with muscles that looked like they had been carved from stone.
Just then a name and image stuck in his mind.
Muscular? So does that mean these two are water heroes…
Is this really happening now?Are they the same husband and wife Hero duo he knows about from the show?
That means they are supposed to die today leaving their kid behind–
Dabi looked at the villain again.
His left eye was a ruined mess - fresh blood streaming down his face from where something had torn into it.
But he was grinning despite the injury, teeth bared in a feral expression of pure joy.
"Is that all?!
"The great Water Hose, brought down by Muscular! They are gonna remember this day!"
That explained everything.
Dabi's gaze shifted past the monster, toward the chaos behind him.
Civilians were in complete panic now, some were running, stumbling over each other as they tried to get farther away, others stayed where they were due to shock, voices breaking as they begged the fallen Heroes to get up.
That was when he noticed the child.
Maybe three or four years old.
Black hair, red eyes streaming with tears, he was struggling in the grip of two civilians - an elderly man and a middle-aged woman, both of them holding him back as he tried desperately to run toward the fallen heroes.
"Mommy! Daddy!" the kid's voice was raw from screaming. "Let me go! MOMMY!"
"Don't look, sweetie!" the woman was saying, trying to turn the kid's face away. "Please don't look—"
But the boy wasn't listening.
His eyes were locked on the two heroes lying motionless on the ground.
…His parents? What was a kid doing here?
He couldn't remember the kids name… But this wasn't how it was supposed to go, the kid shouldn't be present here.
"Someone stop him!" another civilian shouted. "Where are the other Heroes?!"
"I called them!" someone else yelled back. "They said they're on the way!"
"They won't make it in time!"
The crowd was in complete disarray, and that's when someone noticed Dabi–
"Hey! You!" A man in a business suit pointed at him. "Kid, get back! Don't go over there!"
"The Heroes called for backup!" a woman added, waving frantically at Dabi. "Just stay back and wait!"
"It's too dangerous!" another voice called out. "You will just get yourself killed!"
Dabi stood there at the edge of the scene, his eyes tracking everything.
The villain's raised fist already swollen with additional muscle fibers wrapping around it like armor - preparing to bring it down on the male Hero's head.
The Heroes are too injured to move.
The kid is screaming for his parents and the civilians were too terrified to do anything but watch.
Time seemed to slow, his mind calculated angles.
Distance to Muscular: twenty-five meters.
Distance to the Heroes: twenty meters.
The villain's fist was already coming down, and the Heroes were too injured to dodge.
If that hit connected, at least one of them was dead.
Something in Dabi's chest tightened. A feeling he couldn't quite name. It wasn't anger or fear. Maybe it was just the realization that he couldn't walk away from this.
"Hey! Kid!" the businessman shouted again. "I am serious! Get out of here before–"
Dabi moved.
[Total Concentration Breathing] kicked into overdrive.
His lungs expanded, oxygen flooding his system. His muscles tensed, ready to explode into motion.
Blue flames erupted from his hands.
And they are not the controlled, careful flames he had been using for training.
They are hot… enough that the air around him shimmered, and even slightly burned his palm and forearms.
He could feel his reconstructed tissue beginning to burn.
He didn't care.
Sun Breathing, First Form: Dance Form of Sun Breathing.
He launched himself forward, dropping the wooden sword, and leaving the wind behind his place.
His speed multiplied, the breathing technique pushing his body past its normal limits.
Twenty meters covered in less than a second.
The villain's head started to turn, sensing movement, but it was too slow–
Dabi's flaming sword caught Muscular in the side of the head.
The impact sent the massive villain stumbling sideways, his killing blow missing the male Hero by inches and landed on the concrete instead.
Muscular crashed into the alley wall hard enough to crack the bricks.
Dabi landed between the villain and the heroes, a flaming sword still wreathing his hands.
His breathing was already ragged.
That single technique had cost him - he could feel blood pooling in his mouth, taste copper on his tongue.
But he stayed standing.
Behind Dabi, the female Hero, barely conscious, tried to speak. "Run... he is... too strong..."
The civilians were dead silent now staring.
Then all at once, the chaos resumed.
"Oh my god, is that a student?!"
"Someone stop him!"
"He is going to get killed!"
The kid had stopped struggling, his tear-filled eyes were locked on Dabi's back, on the blue flames, on the burned figure standing between his parents and the villain.
Muscular pushed himself out of the ruined storefront, glass falling from his shoulders. He rubbed his jaw, and his grin somehow got wider.
"Tsk? Another Hero wannabe?" He rolled his shoulders, muscle fibers writhing under his skin like living things. "This day keeps getting better! Come on, kid! Show me what you got!"
But Dabi wasn't listening to him; his eyes were locked on Muscular, mind racing through options.
The villain was A-rank for a reason.
Those muscle augmentations weren't just for show either - they dramatically increased his strength and durability.
A straight fight would be suicide.
But he didn't need to win.
He just needed to buy time until other Heroes arrived.
Muscular charged at him faster than something that size had any right to be.
His fist came at Dabi like a freight train, muscle fibers wrapping around it to form a massive, armored battering ram.
Sun Breathing, Third Form: Raging Sun.
Dabi twisted, his body moving in a circular motion that turned his dodge into a counter-attack.
His flaming sword swept upward, catching Muscular's extended arm and sending a wave of blue fire up toward the villain's face.
Muscular jerked back, the flames singeing his skin and beard. "Ha! You got bite, kid! I like that!"
They clashed again, and again.
Each impact sent tiny hot shockwaves through the street, and the floor beneath them crackled.
Every time Muscular's fist came close, Dabi would use a [Sun Breathing] form to evade and counter.
If he landed a hit, his blue flames would burn a little deeper into the villain's enhanced muscles.
The civilians watched in stunned silence their hands over their mouths, while some were still filming.
The kid was completely still now, watching every movement.
"He's actually holding him off!"
"But look…! he's bleeding from his nose!"
"Oh my god! Where the hell is the backup?!"
And they were right.
Within three minutes into the battle, Dabi was bleeding: the incinerating heat of his blue flames was burning him from outside, while the high-pressure oxygen of the [Sun Breathing] pushed his failing organs to a breaking point they were never meant to reach.
His vision was starting to blur at the edges.
Each exchange cost him more than it cost Muscular.
The villain's muscle fibers were protecting him from the worst of the fire damage. Meanwhile, Dabi's inexperience in real time battle is holding him back to give his usual best.
I am not going to make it, he realized with strange clarity–
…I am going to die here.
Muscular's next punch caught him in the ribs, and even though Dabi blocked, the force sent him flying backward into a parked car, crunching metal.
"Mr. Hero!" the shout came from the crowd - he didn't know who.
"Get up!" someone else yelled. "Please get up!"
The kid was screaming again. "Don't die! Don't die like–"
He couldn't listen after that.
But the words stayed with him.
Hero?
Which Hero?
What Hero?
Who was that kid talking about….
His parents?
…Or me?
Wait.
Me?
A Hero?
I wasn't a he–!
His thoughts cut off abruptly.
….Indeed: He wasn't a Hero.
So what was he even doing here?
All he wanted was to lead a normal life… and a healthy life.
That was it.
So why was he standing in the middle of this, risking his life to save people?
Was it because of the kid?
Because he had seen him crying on the show?
Was that really all it took?
Toshinori's voice surfaced in his mind again, quiet but relentless.
Why do you want to become a hero?
He didn't.
He never had.
So again: what the hell was he doing here?
Questions spiraled through his head, one after another.
Then, for a split second, he forced them all away.
Doesn't matter.
Damn it!! I just… I just want to save these two people.
That's it.
Hero or not.
Dabi pushed himself out of the ruined car.
Everything hurt, his ribs were probably cracked, his lungs burned.
If Dabi went down now, the villain would finish off the Heroes, and that kid would lose his parents.
And somehow, that mattered more than his graduation, more than his life.
More than anything.
No. Not yet.
He drew in one massive breath.
Deeper than he had ever managed and physically possible before.
Obviously it hurt like hell.
But he pulled in more air anyway, forcing oxygen into every cell of his battered body.
Sun Breathing, Thirteenth Form—
.
….
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
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