It wasn't worth it, I decided.
I should have fucked Mirko before having her get me blood.
Now, she was who-the-fuck-knows-where.
They had rushed to convict me of my crimes; I, of course, pled guilty to each and every count with a smile on my face.
Well, I gave a small nod when they asked me if I pleaded guilty, and then asked again for confirmation. I think people didn't like such happiness, based on the scowls and grim looks I got from the judge and... basically everyone whose face I saw. If I had to guess, they thought I was smiling at the fact that I had caused the deaths of so many people, but little did they know the grin that lit my face was simple anticipation born from the knowledge that I would inevitably get away scot-free.
Confidence radiated from my paralyzed form so much that a man they brought up to the stand, to give a statement, started shouting at me after going on and on about his daughter for several minutes.
"She was only thirteen! She had her whole life ahead of her! But you FORCED that hero to cut her in-" He choked off a sob, his face contorting in pain to a degree I couldn't quite comprehend, as fresh tears marred his long-stained cheeks. Spittle flied out of his mouth as he said in a low, angry voice, each syllable forced out like a verbal bullet, "You are the one who should be cut in half."
And then he stared at me, trying to set me on fire with his eyes alone.
Before his hand shot out in an arcing motion, and a wave of bright white light, thin as a piece of paper, shot forward. It rushed at me in the blink of an eye, but just as fast a small blur of red flew past my ear and split the light in two, causing it to fizzle out into nothingness.
The moment ended as soon as it began.
My grin widened and stretched my cheeks taut; if I could have turned, I would have spun around and gave Hawks a double thumbs up.
The father shut his eyes and kept them closed, even as he was escorted out of the room.
I wondered if they would let him go with only a warning, considering the decision the court came to an hour later.
Death by lethal injection.
Even with such a grave conviction, my smile persisted for two reasons: One, my 42x resistance capability meant that not only would they require much higher doses than normal to kill me, but I would probably also appear dead before I actually was; I'm pretty sure the shit they gave me would stop my heart first, and a normal human could survive at least a few minutes without their heart pumping, so I should be able to survive an hour or so in such a state. I'd just hold my breath, and resist moving a muscle, then wait for them to move me to a less secure area where I would, eh, I don't know.
Doesn't really matter what I would do because of the second reason: My portal would be recharged way before they finally killed me...
Unless they speedran the whole thing to put me six feet under as quick as possible.
I kept my grin up as they wheeled me outside; a wall of reporters were cordoned off, snapping pictures and filming my approach towards a big armored transport vehicle that would take me straight to Tartarus.
I had thought Tartarus was saved for the ultra-baddies who had super lethal powers or some shit, but they considered me "too dangerous" for a normal prison without explaining why. Maybe the quirk-stealing thing? Or maybe they wanted to interrogate me in a less-than-legal manner about who I was and where I came from? I'm pretty sure Tartarus was the right place for that sort of thing.
But then there was a flash of light to my left that persisted a second longer than a camera-flash should have, and by the time I realized it was that same light I saw in the courtroom...
My head was already falling to the ground.
...
FUCK.
The grin on my face finally slipped off it and morphed into an angry scowl.
First, I got paralyzed in my own body, and now I get fucking decapitated?
Pain radiated from my open neck hole, but it was easily resisted; I wasn't sure if there was a level of pain I couldn't resist at this point. Blood seeped out of the wound, away from my brain, and the anger I felt was replaced with a cold sense of fear; I resisted such a feeling of course, but that only made it easier for me to face the fact that I was a severed head.
For the first time, as shouting erupted from somewhere around me, with my face planted in the cold concrete ground, I felt something akin to regret. Or maybe it was just the lack of blood in my brain?
Hawks's words echoed back to me.
"Was it worth it?"
I didn't regret leaving my life behind, or killing my neighbor; my life wasn't worth living, and my neighbor shouldn't have been so nice (plus I really needed a drink back then, and he was the closest blood-bag I could think of). But, at the very least, if I had played things a bit safer, a bit slower, I wouldn't be a bodiless head kissing concrete while a dozen or two reporters collected clear evidence of my pathetic little downfall.
Back in the cafe, instead of waiting for cops to come, or at least instead of taking their car, I could have walked out of there and snuck around, hiding in the shadows, gathering intel about the juiciest quirks and targets. Then, one by one, I could have collected the right powers and capabilities, allowing me to gain even greater quirks...
I could have also snuck out of the hospital instead of making Mirko kill a floor's worth of people just so I could lick every inch of her perfect body... And get thirty stacks of resistance, of course. I'm sure that was my main reason for making her do all that...
Ok, that one was a bit harder to regret, but it did invite Hawks, because why the fuck not, and he paralyzed me, because why the fuck not, and captured me only for me to get my head cut off several hours later because why the fuck not?
So, yeah, I felt some regret.
Even then, deep in my heart, which was several feet away from me and completely disconnected from my brain, I felt that it was still worth it.
I had never felt so alive, so much so I may as well have been a walking corpse before. Being able to act without restraint, without worry or concern, was something just as addicting as those first hits of pleasure from the blood I drank. It was a sense of freedom I had never tasted before, that I didn't even know enough about it to really want it in the first place.
But, being just a head, still on the ground even a few minutes later, really dampened that freedom.
Maybe there was a balance to be struck?
What's the fucking point, though, if I still have to constrain and regulate myself? It felt even worse than being a normal human; being something special, and still being a fucking coward.
I didn't want to hide.
I didn't want to not do shit just because I was too weak to handle the consequences.
I wanted freedom that couldn't be taken from me, even if my head was pulled from my body, even if my brain was pulled from my head.
I needed that freedom, just like I needed an infusion of oxygen directly into my neurons.
Power was the way to get both of those things, and I thought I had it, but maybe I didn't.
No, there's no maybe, I definitely didn't have that power. Just the potential for it.
If I did already have it, I wouldn't be lying here for several minutes as people made all sorts of noises around me, probably fucking with my body against my will and hopefully arresting that awful man who illegally decapitated me way before my proper execution.
With nothing left to do, I could only direct my desires towards that power; I didn't know how to get it, but I felt in my bones that it was possible: ultimate freedom, free from death, free from life, free from everything else that I didn't want. I would do everything I could to get it, and not rest until that moment...
A hand gripped the back of my skull and dragged me up, spinning me around to face--
Ah, of course.
His cold face stared at me for a moment, before his eyes widened and he leaned in close, peering into my eyes.
I blinked, and his eyes narrowed.
"He's still alive." Hawks said, his voice sounding almost disappointed.
The reporters, who had all quieted down at some point that I hadn't been paying attention for, roared back to life with shouted questions and snapping cameras.
Two times too many, Hawks had saved my life. I chuckled out loud, imagining him to be especially displeased with that fact. Or maybe he wasn't, maybe he had better things to do...
I certainly didn't.
Hawks had seen that I was fine and tried to attach me back to my body for a couple minutes, until I passed out. Obviously, I didn't know what happened after that, but I assumed it involved proper, quirk-powered medical intervention because I woke up inside a white room, on a bed that was far too reminiscent of my last hospital bed. My head was back on my shoulders, and I could wiggle my toes and fingers; I was happy, even with a another metal device wrapped around my mouth once more. This one was bigger, extending down to wrap securely around my neck; even if my head was separated from my body in a divorce more bloody than your parents', it seemed like it would stay put.
I was tempted to try opening a portal, to see if it had recharged, but I realized two issues: I didn't know if I could open it directly under me, and I didn't know where exactly I wanted to go.
I guess I was also still paralyzed in all my body's major muscles, so that meant there were three issues.
That did make me consider a destination: somewhere I could get healed.
I stared at the ceiling for several seconds, maybe even several minutes, but my head remained empty. There were a dozen healing capabilities I could think of, but those would require me to get blood from those they belonged too; a difficult task when I couldn't even make a fist. I needed a person who could heal me, but the problem here was that I never paid attention to healers. I was more of a DPS person, myself; healing others was so boring and cucky.
A vague vision of some anime healer came into my mind, but it wasn't anyone specific, just an amalgamation of every female healer I'd ever seen in an anime. Useless.
Half a dozen minutes must have ticked by before I let out a sharp, "Oh!", which reached my ears with a robotic tint to it.
Finally, after years-worth of thinking, I recalled someone who could heal me.
Amy Dallon, better known as Panacea.
...
Fuck. That.
There was no way in hell I was going to deal with Worm; unless I had an anti-precog capability, I would stay way the fuck away from there, and especially Amy Dallon.
Well, she wouldn't be that bad if I went to an earlier point in the story, but she would still turn me over to the PRT... But she'd probably still heal me right? And then I could take her power... And all the rest...
Or, could I? Parahuman powers were more the capability of the respective shard than the parahuman, so I suppose I could only take the capability for connecting to the power? Now that was some cuckoldry.
It didn't matter though. I wasn't going to the Worm universe anytime soon, and that was final...
Which left me back at square one.
Many, many more minutes had passed, and I had made little progress when the vault-like door to my room/cell opened and a man walked in.
A familiar man.
"Hawks!" I greeted from my bed, my voice digitized by the device sealing my mouth. "So good to see you, buddy!"
He said nothing as he approached; I wasn't sure why he was here, when he looked like he would rather be anywhere else than in the same room as me. Maybe I just assumed that, considering he projected the same invariance as usual--
"You're going to die." He spoke with casual certainty.
Maybe it wasn't just an assumption...
He opened his mouth to continue, but I interrupted with a, "Nah, I'm good."
"...Then cooperate, answer our questions, and your sentence may be reduced to life, instead of death."
I gave him a genuine laugh that appeared to have no effect on his emotionless visage, but I suspected every sign of happiness I showed irked his hidden heart. "All I have to do is answer questions, and I can live?" I chuckle. "Gee, I'll have to think about that." He turned around at my words and took two strides towards the door before I hastened to speak up. "Only joking! I'll answer them, of course. Obviously I will..."
His back remained my view of him for a handful of breaths before he turned back. "Who are you?"
I wanted to raise an eyebrow, but I resisted the urge as I remembered that, duh, there were no records of me in this world. I considered making something up, but... Nah. No need. "Alan Walz. Who are you?"
Hawks ignored my question, instead asking another of his own. "Where are you from?"
This all started to feel uncomfortably close to awkward small talk, which encouraged me to get it over with, without any fanfare. "America."
"Do you have any association with All For One?"
"Nah."
"Do you have any association with any criminal organizations?"
"Nah."
"How long have you lived here?"
"Well, how long have I been in this room?"
"I meant Japan."
I sighed and closed my eyes. "How many questions are you going to ask me?"
"As many as are needed." He answered. I cracked an eye open to look at him.
"Needed for what, exactly?"
Hawks wasn't forthcoming with an answer for that, instead pushing forward with a rephrasing of his last question. "How long have you lived in Japan?"
"I don't live here. I've only been in the country for..." I had no clue how long, considering I hadn't exactly counted, but I had also been unconscious for however many hours... "Well, how many hours has it been since you crippled me?"
His eyes bored into mine as quiet seconds creeped by. I held eye contact, not blinking; I could probably go hours without blinking, if I had to. "It's been about a day."
If I wasn't so resistant, I'd groan with minor annoyance. "Like, a full 24 hours?"
He shrugged. "More or less."
So frustratingly vague. What did I do to deserve this cold treatment?
No matter.
From what I recalled, Rumi said I was in the hospital for a couple hours, plus I had been dragged through the legal system at breakneck speeds, which must have been at least seven hours, so there was a decent chance my portal was ready to be used...
But where the fuck would I go?
Hawks waited patiently for my answer. After at least a minute had passed, he reiterated, "How long have you been in Japan?"
Japan...
It tickled my mind, my memory; there was an association there, between Japan and a healer who wasn't what you would normally consider a healer to be...
That was all that was needed to connect my brain cells and summon forth a distinct memory.
It would work, but there was a bit of risk involved. Perhaps a lot of risk involved.
What would I do there after I was healed, and took his capability?
"We have other ways to get answers out of you, you know. This is the nice way." Hawks stared at me for a moment before turning around and walking away. "We'll try again tomorrow, but if you don't comply..."
"Wait, Hawks!" He kept walking, ignoring me, "Want to see a magic trick?"
His steps came to a stop, and he glanced back, a single eyebrow raised.
And then I was falling through a portal.