?[Hospital Room — Right After the Paranormal Liberation War]

  The air was thick, heavy with the stench of antiseptic and blood. On the white hospital bed, Mirko, her red eyes flashing with a mix of resolve and rage, was using her remaining right hand and her teeth to tightly bind the straps of her left prosthetic arm. Her mangled right leg was bound to a cold metal brace, barely maintaining its shape. Despite the bandages wrapped around her head, the cleanly severed stump of her right ear—brutally torn off during the Jaku Hospital raid—was a cruel testament that the price she paid didn't end with merely her limbs.

  The heavy door groaned open, breaking the stifling silence. Best Jeanist and Edgeshot entered, both covered in the grim scars left by the Paranormal Liberation War. Though they too were battered, wrapped in bandages and stained with unwashed blood, the gazes they fixed on Mirko were heavy and resolute.

  Jeanist stood by the bed, his voice stiffer than usual as he spoke. "I heard from Dr. Yoshida." His eyes lingered briefly on her mangled leg and torn ear. "Amputation is out of the question, Mirko. You've already lost your left arm. Are you planning to give up that leg too?"

  Mirko didn't stop tying the strap. Jeanist's voice tightened.

  "The nerve damage is severe, but if you endure the grueling rehab starting now, you can fully recover. But you want to cut it off now and attach a prosthetic? That means throwing away a piece of your body, your very future, just to speed up your return to the frontlines by a fraction. As your comrades, we cannot allow that."

  Mirko looked up at the ceiling. The beast-like heat in her red eyes hadn't faded in the slightest; it was blazing fiercely. "Rehab...? Recover?" A self-deprecating yet sharp laugh burst through her dry lips. "While you guys are out there fighting tooth and nail against Shigaraki and All For One, you want me to just lie back in this sterile bed and nurse a broken leg?"

  Jeanist and Edgeshot's expressions hardened. Mirko bit down hard on the strap of her prosthetic, pulling it tight as she continued.

  "With that bastard Dabi's explosive reveal, you two should know better than anyone what it's like out there. Thanks to Endeavor's atrocities and Hawks killing Twice, trust in heroes is already in the gutter. Hell, even the likes of old man Yoroi Musha and Death Arms have tucked tail and run."

  Her gaze pierced straight through Jeanist. An unbreakable fighting spirit utterly dominated the air in the room.

  "In a situation like this, where heroes are jumping ship like cowards, the Number 5 Hero can't be stuck in a bed just trying to mend bones. I have to be at the front, tearing them apart and showing the world that we are still fighting!"

  Her desperate, near-screaming voice echoed through the ward. Yet, even in the face of that fierce aura, Edgeshot didn't waver. He stared quietly at Mirko with sharp eyes tinged with profound sorrow. "...Is this because of your guilt over the Jaku Hospital battle?"

  Mirko's jaw locked around the strap. Her seething red eyes trembled for a fraction of a second. Edgeshot took a step closer, calling her by her real name instead of her hero moniker.

  "Rumi." His voice was low and firm. "In that isolated underground chamber, you risked your life against multiple High-Ends and gave it everything you had. Because you never gave up and dealt that damage, Present Mic was able to shatter the capsule. Shigaraki Tomura's awakening... was simply the worst-case scenario that no one could have predicted. It wasn't your fault."

  Mirko's lips quivered. She parted her dry lips to argue back, but only ragged breaths hitched in her throat; no voice came out. Edgeshot continued without giving her room to make excuses.

  "At Jaku Hospital and Gunga Mountain Villa... we've already lost countless comrades and spilled oceans of blood. And now, you want us to stand by and watch a surviving comrade willingly destroy her own body?"

  A heavy silence descended upon the hospital room. Mirko's ferocious fighting spirit wavered slightly against Edgeshot's heartbreaking plea. Just then, Best Jeanist slowly reached out. He firmly grasped Mirko's scarred right hand, which had been stubbornly tying the prosthetic strap with her teeth. His sharp eyes met hers without a hint of hesitation.

  "We will fight in your stead." His voice was quiet, but heavier and more solid than any oath. "And we will bring you victory. For you... and for our comrades who will never return."

  Faced with that overwhelming sincerity, the tension left Mirko's taut shoulders. She let out a small sigh and slowly closed her red eyes.

  ...It was right at that moment.

  From the corner of the room, a forgotten, old TV screen began replaying footage of the gruesome battlefield from a few days ago, the news anchor's somber voice slicing through the room's silence.

  [...At the center of the catastrophic damage caused during this subjugation operation was Shigaraki Tomura's 'Decay,' which reduced the entire city to ash. Looking at the recorded footage from the scene...]

  The world on the screen was a living hell. Buildings crumbled like sandcastles, and heroes, caught in the wave emanating from Shigaraki's outstretched fingertips, turned into gray dust and scattered without even a chance to scream. Then, the footage cut to a close-up of Shigaraki, standing alone like a sovereign over the ruins of the ashen city.

  "...!"

  Mirko's eyes snapped open, her breath catching in her throat. Her red eyes were glued to the screen as if nailed there. Her pupils dilated so drastically they practically consumed her irises.

  It wasn't just Mirko. Jeanist's grip around her right hand went rigid, and the breathing of Edgeshot, who had been standing silently, hitched. The eyes of all three immediately snapped to Shigaraki's shoulders on the screen. Even these seasoned top heroes froze in sheer horror.

  A red cape, tattered and soaked in dirt and blood. It belonged to their comrade, 'X-Less,' who had been the very first to be reduced to ash in the Jaku Hospital underground facility.

  Grind.

  Tearing through the heavy silence, the sickening sound of teeth grinding hard enough to crack echoed in the room. Mirko's jaw muscles bulged sharply. Her perked ear, her right hand still held by Jeanist, and her leg bound to the metal brace all began to tremble violently with uncontrollable rage.

  "Cut it."

  The air in the room froze instantly. Edgeshot hastily took a step forward. "Rumi...!"

  "If you don't cut it, I'll tear it off myself!!"

  Mirko roared like a beast. There was no longer any room for compromise in her red eyes. Only a maddened, boiling bloodlust to rip the throat out of the monster parading her comrade's cape like a trophy remained.

  "Rather than rotting in this bed nursing this dead lump of meat... I'd rather sever it with my own hands and crawl if I have to, just to rip his throat out!!!"

  Her blood-raw scream slammed against the white walls and settled heavily. In the face of that overwhelming fury and desperate resolve, further persuasion was meaningless. Edgeshot couldn't bear to face that agonizing rage and deeply bowed his head. Jeanist, too, slowly released Mirko's bloodless hand, turning his gaze away as he let out a quiet sigh.

  They both realized, all too painfully, that they could no longer stop her.

  [Jaku Hospital Ruins]

  "Gwaaah—!!!"

  Pierced through the leg by a tendril, Mirko was violently hurled into the air. As she slammed hard against the ground, a white flash erupted in her vision. Blood splattered; a ringing echoed in her ears. The ruined air clung to her, damp and freezing. Every breath felt like her throat was burning, and the debris beneath her combat boots trembled as if it would collapse at any second.

  Just as she struggled to push herself up, she met a pair of murky red eyes piercing through the dust cloud. Shigaraki stood perfectly calm in the dead center of that nightmare. He raised his arm, flaunting the edge of X-Less's red cape draped over his back like a trophy.

  "It's a nice coat. My back was feeling a little bare." A slow, mocking smile spread across his torn lips.

  Snap.

  The final thread holding Mirko's sanity together broke.

  "Guoooooh—!!!"

  A primal, beastly roar tore from her throat. Her bloodlust-consumed eyes rolled back into her head, baring her teeth savagely over raw, engorged gums like a wild animal. With a deafening boom, she dropped to all fours, her round, fluffy tail trembling into a blur. The muscles across her entire body coiled taut as springs.

  Bang!!

  The concrete exploded beneath her as she vaulted forward, becoming a blinding afterimage of pure wrath. The distance vanished in an instant. She lunged straight for his exposed neck, her jaws clamping down ruthlessly.

  Crack!!

  Her teeth braced for the sickening crunch of a shattered windpipe—

  But there was no blood. No warmth. The flesh she chewed gave way like cold, peeling ash. Shigaraki's head tilted at an impossible, grotesque angle, his smile ripping wider still. Suddenly, the 'neck' she had bitten into split wide open.

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  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  The underground twisted, and the earth fractured. From his torn neck and the fissures in the ground, fleshy shapes squirmed and erupted upwards. Hands. Tens, hundreds of them. Parched skin, peeled nails, dried bloodstains. Grasping, crushing, reaching hands scratched at the floor, pressing over one another, multiplying like a plague.

  "...!"

  Mirko's crimson eyes flashed. Without a second of hesitation, she smashed, trampled, and tore them apart. The dull sensation of shattering bone traveled up her arms time and time again.

  But more hands surged up. A dozen, then fifty, then hundreds—the countless, multiplying hands morphed into a writhing sea of flesh, swallowing the cavern whole. Her breathing broke, sharp and ragged. "Damn it...!" Slipping on blood, her hands shook uncontrollably.

  A sneer tore through the darkness. Ha... Ha ha ha ha ha ha... Mockery. A vast, scraping, merciless sound. The echo thinly tore through space, warping the boundaries of reality. "Is that the best speed you can muster...? Pretty pathetic for a beast."

  The moment his voice struck, hands of all sizes rushed her at once in an explosive wave. One snatched her ankle, its freezing grip digging into her flesh. Another climbed her calf, instantly constricting her thigh until she couldn't breathe. "Let go—!" Mirko thrashed, but the fissures only tore wider.

  More hands spewed forth like vomit. They were shadow-chains woven in the dark. Clinging to her arms, waist, and shoulders, they acted like parasitic vines, draining her body heat. Under the crushing pressure on her nerves and the agonizing twisting of her muscles, a beast-like scream erupted. "Ugh— Aaaaagh!"

  Hoisted upward, her body hung in the air like bait. Her chest tightened, her breath shattering. Blood rushed to her head. Her rabbit ears drooped heavy and numb, and her crimson eyes, blind with fury, violently wavered in a horrifying déjà vu.

  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha—! The familiar, rotting laughter, soaked in blood and ash, shattered the space and echoed once more. "Look at you, poor battle rabbit." "Hanging there again. Uselessly." "Exactly the same as before."

  Shigaraki's mockery drove into her brain like rusted nails. Mirko's pupils shook. Anger, terror, and a sickening humiliation exploded all at once. "Shut—!" She let out a piercing scream that sounded like tearing steel, but the sound was completely swallowed by the tidal wave of hands, vanishing without a trace.

  [Small Cafe, 2nd Floor Private Room]

  "The final battle... during the fight in the skies over U.A." Nejire's voice trembled slightly at the edge before sinking. "Mirko fought desperately, burning out her left prosthetic arm and right prosthetic leg over and over again."

  Her next breath caught in her throat. "And..." Her Royal Blue gaze drifted into the empty air. "When Shigaraki's mouth—the one that grew out of that horrific mass of flesh—bit into Mirko's right arm..." Nejire squeezed her eyes shut. Her lips quivered. "...Mirko tore that arm off herself."

  The air froze at those words. A dead silence hung in the cafe. Komori was trembling, covering her mouth with both hands. Pony nearly dropped her teacup. Even Kendo silently turned her head away. None of them dared to even imagine that gruesome scene.

  Komori whispered in a cracked voice. "Her own arm... how could she— just... how could she do that?!"

  Kendo slowly exhaled. "That's how desperately..." Her voice shook. Kendo set her teacup down and lowered her gaze. "...She wanted to destroy Shigaraki." Her eyes darkened with sorrow. "Even if it meant tearing herself to shreds..."

  Nejire inhaled nervously, clenching her hands tightly, her knuckles turning stark white. "At that time, I..." Her head dropped, her eyelids falling heavy. "...I froze when I saw Bakugo die. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything."

  Her voice dropped to a frail whisper. "By the time I barely came to my senses... and returned to the battlefield... Shigaraki had already transformed into his final defensive form." Her gaze grew distant. "...There wasn't even a single inch of an opening to counterattack. The heroes fell. One by one." The air in the cafe felt as though it had stopped. "If Deku hadn't come to us..." She let out a shallow breath and paused. "...We all would have died."

  A heavy silence descended. Kendo slowly let out a breath. "Rewind... might have resurrected those memories even more sharply." She picked each word carefully. Her voice was soft. "The wounds she buried deep down... might be tearing open again right now."

  No one answered. In the quiet room, only the faint clinking of ice in a glass echoed.

  "Ugh—!!"

  Mirko gritted her teeth. Her muscles knotted, the tendons in her limbs pulled so taut they felt ready to snap. Under the overwhelming grip of the fingers constricting her entire body, she writhed. Her skin was peeling away, but squeezing out the absolute last drop of strength in her flesh, she violently pushed off the bony cage of hands.

  Clang—!

  Her body plummeted to the cold floor, an eerie metallic screech ringing through the ruins as she hit the debris. Panting heavily, she hurriedly tried to push herself up, her gaze dropping downward. There, instead of whole flesh, a blunt left prosthetic arm patched with inorganic steel was scraping against the ground. Her trembling gaze slid further down. Instead of her right leg extending below the knee, a cold, sharply curved chunk of metal was planted deeply into the floor.

  "—!" Before she even had a second to register the shock, a horrifying jolt of agony ripped through her right arm. Frantically turning her head, she saw the gruesome, severed stump of her right arm, torn off below the elbow and tightly bound by a blood-soaked rope, flickering before her eyes.

  "No... This— this isn't real...!" She shook her head madly, gasping for air, but her heart violently dragged up every memory she had tried so desperately to bury.

  The spear-like tendril piercing through her shin. The sickening crunch of her arm being torn away. The burning sensation of frantically tying off her stump with her own white hair to stem the bleeding. Phantom pains and merciless memories consumed her entirely.

  "Hah... Haaah—" Breath tore from her throat. A boiling heat scratched its way up from deep inside her chest. Her vision pulsed crimson. The metallic, coppery stench of blood crawled up her nose, choking off her windpipe.

  Just then, Shigaraki's languid voice echoed through the ruins from the darkness. "What are you doing? Shouldn't you be avenging your comrades?" A grotesque sneer broke across his torn lips once more. "Didn't you say you'd bite me even if all your limbs were torn off and only your neck remained?"

  That provocation lit a furious fire under Mirko's trampled pride. Though her body was a battered wreck, she gritted her teeth once more, using her rope-bound right stump and blunt left prosthetic to powerfully kick off the floor.

  Clang. Clang. Clang.

  The cold, bizarre metallic screech of her sprinter prosthetic and artificial arm grinding against the floor rang out continuously through the ruins.

  "Shigarakiiiiii!!!!!"

  With a blood-curdling scream, using those fragmented body parts as support, she squeezed out every last drop of strength and launched herself into the air.

  "—Luna Rush!!!"

  Dozens—no, hundreds—of devastating consecutive kicks rained down on Shigaraki's entire body like a meteor shower. The overwhelming impact sent gray dust exploding upward, and Shigaraki's body seemed to crumble and collapse.

  But in that exact moment— His falling body grotesquely warped like clay, changing shape until a massive fist formed from clumps of flesh flew straight at her.

  Smash!!

  Mirko's body flew through the air like a broken ragdoll, crashing violently into the concrete wall.

  By the window of the 2nd-floor cafe, sunlight pale as cold glass fell onto the table. Nejire clasped her hands together, dropping her gaze. Her eyes trembled finely, quickly welling up with tears.

  "We... didn't understand Mirko—no, Rumi—at all."

  She tried to force a smile, but the voice slipping past her trembling lips, half-hidden by her Periwinkle blue hair, was tragically cracked. "When the final war ended... and she woke up in her hospital bed, calling it a light warm-up as she strapped weapons to her body to travel the world—we just thought she was amazing. We called her 'Bunny the Weapon' out of heroic admiration."

  Her fingertips trembled violently. "But we never once tried to see. How horribly injured she was—in body, and in mind."

  Pony lowered her gaze, bowing her head. Komori bit her lip hard, and Kendo closed her eyes before slowly opening them again. Deep remorse and devastation shadowed the faces of all three. Under the pale sunlight, a single tear traced silently down Nejire's cheek.

  "Me too." Kendo's voice was low and calm, but something inside her had clearly broken. "I always thought she was so strong... someone unwavering. Someone we could always lean on."

  From her deep Teal eyes, large teardrops fell unconsciously, splashing softly against her lap.

  "We only looked at Mirko's strength." Her voice quivered thinly. "How she’d fall and get back up... how she’d keep fighting with a smile even after losing her arms and legs. We never once looked at the scars beneath that."

  Ignoring the tears streaming down her cheeks, Kendo continued in a bitterly suppressed voice. "Those hidden scars... we turned a blind eye to them. We didn't want to look closely at the agony she hid behind cold metal and fabric."

  Komori gave a small nod. Fidgeting with her fingertips under the table, she barely managed to squeeze out her voice. "We hid behind the name 'Battle Rabbit.' We just took it for granted that she'd always be strong. Maybe taking that for granted... pushed her into an even deeper isolation... shroom..."

  Pony clasped her hands together. The bright smile that usually hovered on her face was completely gone, leaving only her sorrowful Prussian Blue eyes. "Strong, brave, fearless... Every word we used to call her was like that."

  Pony slowly inhaled a shaky breath. "But she's human, too... Like us, she hurts, she suffers... She bleeds inside, just like us."

  In the gray dust, Mirko's body twitched in spasms against the concrete wall. With trembling hands, she grabbed at the floor, desperately trying to push herself up. Her two arms were perfectly whole, but her unfocused, crimson pupils seemed completely blind to the reality before her.

  Gasp.

  Suddenly, the very axis of her breathing collapsed entirely. Mirko reflexively reached up with both hands, clutching her own throat as if strangling herself. The air that should have rushed into her lungs felt completely blocked. Beneath her ribs, her heart beat madly, feeling ready to rupture as it crushed her chest—and then, the horrifying sensation of everything shattering into pieces slammed through her entire body.

  "Ugh—! Urgh—!" Losing her balance, she pitched forward, shoving her face near the cement floor and violently dry-heaving. Vile stomach acid burned her esophagus, boiling up from the inside. Her vision warped like a heat haze melting away, and a sharp, ear-splitting ringing dug into her brain. The axis of the world tilted mercilessly.

  "Hah... Haaah—" Ragged breaths, like a torn bellows, barely managed to seep out of her throat. Yet deep inside her chest, a burning heat continued to claw its way up her insides. Her vision pulsed a murky, blood-red. Beyond that crimson veil, the coppery stench of blood mixed with rusted iron crawled up her nose like a miasma, perfectly cutting off whatever breath she had left.

  The black shadow standing right above her head shattered the silence with a languid, dry voice. "Tsk, tsk... How pathetic."

  Mirko scraped at the floor with trembling hands, gasping. "It's a hallucination... It's not real..." Shigaraki tilted his head with utter apathy. "No, it's everything you went through."

  Mirko bit her lip so hard it bled. Swallowing her fragmented breaths, she forced strength into her staggering legs and dragged herself upright. In her blinking, red-tinted vision, she glared at Shigaraki with shaking pupils and squeezed out a cracked voice. "It's in the past... It's all in the past..."

  "Hah..." The corners of Shigaraki's mouth twisted into a grotesque grin. "Don't you remember Dabi's words?"

  His voice slithered through the ruined air like a cold snake.

  "The past never disappears."

  Mirko's breath caught as Shigaraki took another slow step closer.

  "Your body may have come back whole..." he murmured, "but your past never let you go."

  OLike an executioner delivering a sentence, he began to tear open the memories she most wanted buried.

  "Watched your comrades turn to ash and scatter..."

  His voice scraped low through the air, coiling itself by her ear.

  "Tore off your right arm and lunged at me only to be swatted aside by a single punch..."

  "And hanging from the tree with only one leg left..."

  His grin widened.

  "That past."

  That sentence pierced perfectly through Mirko's heart.

  Thud.

  In the surreal stillness, her knees hit the cold floor. Sharp stone fragments dug into her skin, drawing blood, but even that pain felt incredibly distant. Her lips parted weakly but not a single sound escaped her throat. Inside her red eyes, instead of a beastly fighting spirit, there lay only a bottomless, stagnant void.

  A massive shadow of death loomed over her. To her completely broken rabbit ears, Shigaraki's low, sticky laugh sounded like a hallucination.

  "Hah... So this is your true self." It was the quiet disdain of an apex predator looking down at an insect from a position of absolute superiority. The moment his red gaze—silently savoring the instant her hope crumbled—touched Mirko, even the very last ember remaining in the ruins froze and died out completely