Ok so im turning this story a little darker from here on out and stuff please let me know if yall want this or if you would prefer a more true to the original content fanfic. You have till Saturday to vote.
Light
Dark
Also did I push the quirk awakening too soon and was it at least handled well?
Also should i make a discord server for yall to give ideas and interact with me?
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Chapter 12: The Weight of Loss
The hulking silhouette stepped fully into view, brain exposed and pulsing under a transparent dome, muscles rippling with unnatural power. It was built like a tank crossed with a nightmare, arms ending in massive claws that still dripped with Cid's blood. Behind it, more figures emerged from the mist—all the villains that had been attacking him and supporting the assault. They moved in coordinated packs, closing the circle.
Cid's left eye snapped open.
The world slowed.
Not dramatically, not like some comic-book freeze-frame. It simply… clarified. Every twitch of muscle, every shift of weight, every tiny adjustment in stance became crystal clear. The villains that had been darting blurs earlier now looked like they were wading through molasses. Their speed Quirks still worked, but to Cid they were sluggish, predictable, almost comical. The mist itself hung in the air like thick, lazy curtains instead of an impenetrable wall. He could see the exact paths the shadows would take before they even moved.
*So this is what it looks like when I actually try. It's been a while.*
He didn't smile. There was no satisfaction in it. Only cold, focused intent.
The first villain lunged from his left, knife raised. To Cid it looked like slow-motion footage. With a single thought the attacker's arms shrank inward at the elbows, collapsing into useless stumps before the blade could even descend. The villain stumbled, eyes widening in shock as his limbs shortened to half their length in the space of a heartbeat. From the villain's perspective it happened instantly—his arms simply vanished to the elbow with a soft *pop*, weapons clattering to the ground.
Cid didn't stop. Another blur came from the right. He shrank the legs this time, the attacker dropping face-first into the concrete with a startled yell. One by one he picked them off, each mental command clean and precise. Shoulders, knees, wrists—limbs folding inward without blood, without pain, just sudden, humiliating collapse. The villains screamed and cursed, voices overlapping in panic, but their words sounded distant and slow to Cid's enhanced senses. He looked at the monster and shrank all its limbs to the point it looked malformed and left it on the ground, squirming and confused.
He turned to walk away, then paused for half a second, looking at the writhing group. Part of him considered ending it. They had tried to kill him. They had planned this trap, studied his Quirk, sent a claw through his chest. Killing them would be easy. One thought and he could shrink their heads, their hearts, their entire bodies down to nothing. It would be over.
But the thought felt… pointless. They weren't worth the effort. They were tools, pawns sent by someone smarter. Killing them wouldn't change anything. It wouldn't bring back the blood he had already lost or undo the mistake that had nearly cost him his life. A morbid chuckle left his lips. *Maybe I should thank them. I'm finally taking things seriously.*
He turned away without another word, cloak swaying as he started walking toward the edge of the ruin zone. Behind him the villains yelled, voices raw with rage and fear.
"Turn us back, you bastard!"
"Come back here!"
"You think you can just leave us like this?!"
Cid didn't look back. His steps were steady at first, but the blood loss was catching up, causing him to stagger. Each stride sent a fresh wave of dizziness through him. His fix to his chest wound would hold for a couple of hours at most—maybe less if he pushed too hard—but for now it was enough to keep him moving.
He stumbled once more as he crossed the boundary between zones, the mist thinning enough for him to see the next area ahead. The landslide zone. Jagged cliffs of rubble and broken earth stretched out like a broken spine, massive piles of debris ready to shift at the slightest disturbance.
Cid froze the moment he entered the landslide zone.
A girl lay in the open space below, blood pooled beneath her naked form, a knife buried to the hilt in her heart and multiple cuts spread around her body. Four villains stood around her, laughing low and cruel, hands already reaching, clearly about to do something he didn't want to think about.
But she wasn't fully naked.
Cid's eyes tracked down slowly, almost against his will, tracing her body all the way to her hands. Her hands and boots were still clad in the all-too-familiar white gloves and hero boots.
Toru's gloves.
His heart skipped a beat, then slammed against his ribs like a hammer. The world narrowed to a single point. The gloves. The invisible girl who had dragged him into every group activity, who had made sure he never felt alone, who had laughed and teased and pulled him into the light when he wanted nothing more than to fade into the background.
Toru.
The image burned into his mind forever—her body pale and still, blood streaking her skin, the terrified expression frozen on her face even in death.
The villains above her didn't notice him at first.
Cid didn't give them a second.
His hand went to the dark sword strapped across his back. He drew it in one smooth motion, the blade singing as it cleared the sheath. With a single, vicious thought he swung and expanded it—mass and length exploding outward in an instant, carried by the swinging motion already. The sword grew to the size of a large building, the edge gleaming like a guillotine as it swept across the landslide zone.
The villains didn't even have time to scream.
The blade cut through them like paper, their upper halves vanishing in clean, instant slashes. They collapsed like puppets with their strings cut, bodies crumpling to the ground in four separate heaps. The massive sword left a giant scar across the entire landslide zone, a deep, straight gash carved into the earth and rock that sent tons of debris tumbling down to fill the void. The noise was deafening—stone cracking, rubble crashing, the ground itself groaning under the sudden violence.
Cid stood there for a long moment, sword shrunk back to normal, his hand trembling, chest heaving.
Then he sheathed the blade almost automatically.
He walked forward slowly, steps deliberate but visibly hurried. Blood still seeped from smaller cuts across his body, but he ignored them. His cloak was heavy with his own blood, but he didn't care.
He stopped beside her.
Gently, as if she might break like glass, he took off his cloak and expanded it just enough to envelop and wrap around her naked form, covering her completely. The fabric settled softly, black with gold threading draping over her like a shroud. He lifted her off the ground with careful hands, cradling her to his chest. His fingers brushed her cheek, the blood there still warm.
He checked her pulse anyway. He knew there wouldn't be one. There wasn't.
A sharp, searing sting flared in his chest after the confirmation.
Cid buried his face into her hair, the familiar scent of her shampoo mixed with blood and dust, tainting the memory he had of her. His shoulders trembled. Silent tears slipped down his face, landing on her cheek and mixing with the blood already there.
She had been his first friend in a very long time.
He had closed himself off from people for so long after his parents' deaths. The house had been too quiet, the memories too sharp. So he did what he was good at and shrank everything down—his belongings, his expectations, his connections, his emotions, ambitions, his powers, everything he was—he shrank it until it could no longer be hurt, until nothing could hurt him again.
But Toru hadn't let him do the same with her.
She had bounced into his life with floating gloves and endless energy, dragging him into group chats and karaoke nights and ridiculous dorm games. She had made sure he wasn't alone, made sure he felt like he belonged even when he tried to slip away. Through her he had made even more friends—Mina's wild laughter, Jiro's quiet playlists, the others who had slowly started to feel like something more than background noise. She had introduced him to Yui, even if by accident, someone he felt truly got him in a way others just couldn't.
He had secretly felt blessed to have someone like her reach out and pull him into the light after all this time.
The tears came harder, still silent, but his whole body was trembling now. His breath shook against the top of her head as he held her close, the weight of her in his arms the only thing keeping him grounded.
"Toru… I promise you I will do better, be better, and be a hero you would look at and say is the coolest. I won't be lazy anymore. I'll try and make sure all that effort you put into me doesn't go to waste," he said to her as he gently closed her eyes.
He stayed like that for a long moment, the landslide zone silent except for the distant rumble of falling debris and the faint sounds of fighting somewhere else in the facility.
Then he lifted his head.
His eyes were dry now, but the rage remained—cold, focused, and pointed entirely at the villains who had done this.
But his left eye was wide open, sparking red as if trying to form something, sputtering as if needing something, a final spark to fully kick off a chain reaction.
He wasn't lazy anymore.
Not today.
Not for them.
Cid adjusted his grip on Toru, holding her carefully as he started walking toward the next zone.
He had classmates to save.
And a promise to keep.
The resolve settled deep in his chest, cold and absolute, that had been building since the claw punched through his lung. No more half-measures. No more shrinking everything down to make life easier. The laziness that had kept him safe for years cracked open under the weight of what it had cost—Toru's still form in his arms, the image of her terrified face overlapping with the now-peaceful expression he had given her.
That final thought was enough.
The faint sparking in his left eye steadied. The chaotic red glow evened out, lines etching themselves across the iris in perfect symmetry until both eyes matched exactly—the same intricate pattern of glowing white symbols arranged in a sharp, geometric star. A jolt of pain exploded through his chest, as if something deep inside had finally broken open. His knees buckled for half a second, but he refused to let go of Toru. He staggered, clutching her closer, breath catching in his throat as the world around him… changed.
The world opened up.
Countless shimmering lines popped into existence all around him, thin threads of light wiggling and shifting like living strands of reality itself. They connected everything—the broken concrete under his feet, the distant rubble piles, the mist still clinging to the edges of the zone, even the empty space between him and the far entrance of the USJ dome. He could see the distances themselves, the invisible fabric that held the world together, stretching and contracting in ways he had never noticed before.
And he could touch it.
The ability he had always known had expanded too. Now he could shrink or expand the *distance* between things. Space itself bent under his gaze, ready to be compressed or stretched at a thought. He had no clue how it worked, no idea where the lines came from or why they suddenly answered him, but the power felt instinctive, like breathing.
He looked toward the entrance of the USJ dome in the distance, the massive structure visible through the haze of the zones. The shimmering lines between him and that far archway pulled tight. He shrank the distance.
The world snapped.
One moment he was standing in the middle of the landslide zone with Toru in his arms. The next he was at the entrance, the terrain blurring past in a single, weightless step. He could feel how it happened—the lines between him and the entrance had simply folded, compressing the gap until the two points touched. If he had pushed harder he could have pulled the entire chunk of ground he had been looking at straight to him instead.
Cid stood there for a long second, the weight of Toru still warm and heavy in his arms. The power felt… right. Not overwhelming. Just more. Like a piece of him he never knew was there.
He looked down at her one last time, the blood on her cheek already drying, her peaceful face now overlapping with the terrified one burned into his memory. The image would never leave him. But the tears had stopped. The trembling in his shoulders had settled into something harder.
He adjusted his grip, wrapping his cloak tighter around her, then gently set her down in a sheltered spot near the entrance. "I'll be right back with the others and I'll get rid of all the villains. So just sit tight and I'll handle everything," he said quietly.
Then he turned.
He had people to save.