Chapter 25: Nothing Else Matters
Music: Monolith – Twin Tribes
-Bring the dropper! - was heard through the weakening consciousness. There was an incomprehensible commotion around, everyone was scurrying back and forth, and the bright hospital light was constantly running on the ceiling.
-He has internal bleeding due to broken ribs... - the words reached him fragmentarily. The only thing he understood was that this was not the Jaku hospital.
All he could hear around was multiple cries, hubbub and screams.
-Just like then... - Taiko whispered. His black eyes, tired from tears and pain, were unfocused and only counted the number of hospital lights. Memories about Kuin flooded him, his unstable emotional state made him stand up with a furious roar and push the doctor away with considerable force.
-Sedative! - before his hands rushed to break someone's neck, one of the doctors pounced on him from behind, as if holding not a patient, but an enraged bull. They injected him with a strong sedative in the neck. He lost consciousness, then laid him on the operating table.
During the operation, there were not many doctors in the operating room. Only an assistant and one doctor, the rest were too busy with many other victims. The assistant silently did his job, trying to understand how even a strong guy, not only managed to get up, but also by his powerful hands you could feel the outgoing thirst for blood and danger.
The doctor was just trying to finish the operation as quickly as possible, even though he was also slightly in shock, but he attributed it to adrenaline and emotional shock from the tragedy.
- This is not normal ... - the assistant interrupted the silence. - No matter how much I think, it is impossible to ignore the pain and move as if there are no injuries at all.
- We don't know, most likely he has a quirk designed for the body's resilience. Besides... - he put the bloody scalpel in a metal vessel. -... everyone is now on edge from such a tragedy... - sighed the man in a medical mask and gown. They continued to operate in silence until the very end of the operation.
***
- Today, many victims of the villain's atrocities in the suburbs of Jaku were admitted to the hospital, but despite the damage caused, people do not lose their enthusiasm. Thanks to the courage shown by All Might, the villain was dealt a crushing defeat, which he will remember for a long time. - was heard from the TV in the ward.
It was already morning. There were many patients in the bright room, some quietly grieving over the lost property, but most were walking around with abrasions, trying to cheer up those around them. The children who had ended up in the hospital were also walking between the wards and looking for acquaintances. There was only one bed, fenced off with a white sheet, where a dark-haired boy, whose hands were suspiciously tied, was recovering for the second day in a row.
- He's not much older than us, - whispered the boy, watching the sleeping boy through the crack. His physique seemed very strong and resilient, which inspired a dual feeling of anxiety. However, the metal shackles holding his hands gave the impression of a not entirely calm disposition. In general, he had a rather criminal and threatening appearance.
- Yes? Let me see...
- It's not nice to spy, - a doctor with a mustache entered the room. The children didn't run far. Doctor Kyudai sat down opposite Taiko, quickly hiding behind the screen. He was allowed to personally examine Taiko, because he himself was a doctor, even though this was a completely different hospital, and now medical care was needed literally everywhere.
-You've been beaten up, Taiko... - he took off the bandages that hid his wounds, abrasions and scars all over his body. He replaced the bandages with new ones.
-I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm sorry it happened this way. He's completely lost his mind because of you.
Taiko opened his tired black eyes, with heavy bags under them. He didn't want to say anything, but only looked reproachfully and contemptuously.
The doctor stood up and said one last thing. -With such complex wounds, he'll definitely be recovering for a couple of months. He lost his sight because of All Might, and was also crippled. -Kyudai whispered. -You don't have to rush, you have time. And...Forgive me...Forgive me for everything. -Kyudai left, leaving the last note. It seems he really felt guilty, because everyone was for or against, but All For One helped him by giving him Nomu.
Taiko kept his eyes half-closed and tiredly stared at one point. The whole world became gray. So gray that his head was spinning. Taiko lay in bed for another week, sadly staring at the cloudy sky, while in the background someone was optimistically communicating, laughing, and someone was crying, this was noticed and they were supported.
Taiko no longer had tears, as if the whole world had taken away his very ability to feel, he no longer had the strength to cry or fight. All the food that was brought to him was bland, although he liked all the food, because when you live in a deficit, you stop being picky.
The children were frightened by his empty gaze and they never approached him. People stayed away, afraid that Taiko had a criminal past. - "That's right."
One day, despite the weather, as soon as he could walk, he went outside. Now he wanted to run as far away from all these mugs as possible, somewhere in the mountains. However, everything that now even slightly reminded him of the past became an object of hatred and sadness. The forest is connected to the hive, the bees are connected to Kuin, the laboratory and Nomu are connected to the betrayal of Kyudai and All For One.
The nurse suddenly approached him and handed him only one drawing from a pack. It looked like these were drawings drawn by elementary school students as support for the victims of the incident.
- So that you don't get discouraged, - she left.
The drawing depicts All Might defeating the villain and saving someone from the rubble. Everything is drawn in a childishly inept manner and enough to consider the author a child or a middle school student. The author of the drawing was...
- Izuku Midoriya... How stupid and naive. -he tore up the drawing and threw it in the trash. As soon as he remembered Kuin, the remaining tears came by themselves, and in his head there was only one scene with her bloody body. Sadness and tears were replaced by rage and a grin.
-I hate you.- But he felt hatred less for others than for himself, and he was smart enough to admit it. Taiko took out Kyudai's note and almost tore it apart, when his eye noticed an important detail. The note reads the following:
"I don't know who killed her, but I know someone who might know. Find Giran, I think he knows. As far as I know, he never left Musutafu."
Taiko knew who killed her - All For One, but he had already received his share of pain and bloody justice. Too little for such a nonentity, while the indirect killer is still unknown and wanders around somewhere with impunity.
He regretted surviving that ill-fated fire and now his soul will not rest until he tears apart the one who did it: All For One and Kuin's killers. A crowd of people attacked an unarmed girl and stabbed her multiple times, her slashed body still lies before his eyes.
- I still thought that I was a monster... In vain did you leave me alive, bastards.
Taiko will slowly and inevitably catch up with everyone, dealing with each one.
***
- Please, have a minute's attention! - the curator gathered all the victims who were still able to stand. An old man in a formal suit, and next to him stood several heroes who attracted much more attention than the curator himself. These were unknown to Taiko heroes from Musutafu. - With the support of the HPSC1 and local governments, the victims will be placed in temporary housing to free up the hospital. At the moment, it is heavily overloaded, and many doctors work 16 hours a day, please be understanding.
The destitute souls were ready to break down on the curator because many people lost their homes, but they were interrupted by the heroine, who was supposed to calm the crowd with her charming appearance.
-We understand that you have lost a lot, but now we need to worry about each other and what we have left, and not about the ruins. Please, respect each other ... - her words cooled the ardor of the crowd a little.
-But what should we do? We have no clothes, no roof over our heads ...
All Might himself suddenly flew in.
-Waaa!!! It's All Might! - someone screamed from the buzzing crowd. Everyone began to applaud.
-You don't need to be afraid ...
-Because you are here !!! - the crowd continued after All Might.
- "What a bunch of freaks." - Taiko thought. He stared exhaustedly straight into the eyes of All Might, expressing his contempt for him. Their gazes finally crossed. The eternal smile of the strongest hero trembled imperceptibly, only Taiko could notice it. All Might looked into the hopeless, exhausted and embittered eyes of this young man, for a moment he glanced at the enthusiastic crowd, but when he returned, he did not see the young man standing alone under the tree in the same place.
Those eyes dug into his mind like steel and red-hot pincers into his heart, which was further proof of All For One's terror. He simply had to continue fighting for these people despite the injury, which turned out to be much more serious.
- Don't worry! - His loud and bass voice covered the entire area. - My fund will help everyone! - then he flew away, looking back at that tree. His eternal smile disappeared from his face completely when the crowd stopped seeing him. The excited crowd stopped buzzing and after a couple of minutes their minds cleared up. They started asking questions again.
-As we already said, the state will provide you with everything, including the Almighty Foundation.
-And when will they provide it to us? We have already been discharged and have nowhere to return!
-In an hour, everyone who was discharged will be picked up by buses, and in the meantime, you will be given suitable clothes. -There were about a couple of hundred people standing on the street in front of the hospital.
-"It's amazing how the hospital accepted so many people in a couple of days." - Taiko also listened with everyone, realizing that the doctors and nurses were much bigger heroes than the upstarts from the top heroes who imagined themselves to be the center of the universe without doing anything.
He assessed his condition and could say that the power of the half-nomu and the partial transformation into the king of hornets gave him a strong and resilient body. Taiko has almost recovered and is ready to act. Now he went to the doctor to ask him to discharge him, and then he needs to pick up some things, then he will be taken to a new home.