MANIA - Katsuki Bakugou

━ beaten

chapter 64

The white haired girl weaved through the fallen heroes, stepping over twitching limbs and crying heads. Her gaze remained dead set on the top of the mound where Kimiko and the other Seijin presently stood. Somehow, someway, her quirk still remained active although she didn't have her hands against her temples anymore. Like the Seijin with the earthquake quirk had said, the quirk enhancer packed a serious punch.

She had just crossed the fallen metal building that bridged the gap of the deep crater when a hand suddenly latched onto her purple boot. She halted and looked down at the hand in disgust, unblinking.

The green-covered hand was connected to a male hero. His spiky blond hair and crimson eyes were unmistakable to Shimamura. She recognized him the second he touched her, as if she could sense it was him in such a dramatically low state of mind. Her white eyes narrowed at him.

"Let go, Bakugou," she directed in a low tone.

Bakugou groaned as he tried to activate his quirk against her leg, but only a few sparks spouted from his gloved fists. He was still trapped in the nightmare that was her quirk. It was like he couldn't think for himself anymore. He knew only pain. It was all he could remember.

Her quirk somehow brought back memories of his own terrors and experiences from the past... the pain of being All-Might's downfall, the pain of always being second to Deku, the pain of having to let go of Shimamura. There had to be a light at the end of the tunnel to draw him out of her quirk's effects, but he couldn't find it. She was too strong in such a low mental state.

They were all powerless to the effects of the drowning mind.

"S-Shima..." Bakugou croaked. He didn't recognize his own voice.

Shimamura glanced down at his sorry excuse of an attempt at using his quirk and rolled her eyes, a smirk drawing at the corners of her mouth. She kicked his hand off her ankle easily, and kicked him across the cheek, sending him back. However, she didn't knock him unconscious.

The girl knelt down, hovering above Bakugou with her forearms against her thighs as she stared at his pitiful form. Unlike most of the other heroes, he seemed to be doing a better job fighting it. He knew how to combat her quirk before, but now was different. This wasn't her anymore. This was the quirk enhancer.

She reached forward and pressed her fingers to the sides of his head, feeling his heartbeat against her fingertips by his ears. He scowled at her momentarily before her quirk struck him like a bolt of lightning.

Her raw emotions coursed through him instantly, shocking his system and forcing his eyes to flare open. Tears brimmed at the corners of his eyes, his pupils darting around in every direction as he struggled to focus on anything. He couldn't breathe. The pain was overwhelming. Her thumbs pressed against his cheek bones, but he couldn't even feel her touch anymore. All he could feel was the hurt, the sadness, the sheer despair muffling his own emotions with hers.

The pain seemed to increase at every second until, finally, Bakugou collapsed. His head hit the dirt ground and he lay still. Unconscious.

Shimamura's smirk grew as she stood up again, taking her hands away from his face. But she stumbled.

She fell forward a bit, a sudden pain in her chest. She blinked repeatedly, confused and startled for a second. The whites of her irises began to fade, revealing the blue tint that was hidden just underneath. She reached for her chest and gripped at the tight black fabric, taking a shaky deep breath to try to ground herself.

It was like coming down from a high very, very abruptly. The quirk enhancer only had so much life to give to her until it seemingly disappeared from her system. The Seijin had made improvements to the medication, but Shimamura's immune system was good at fighting off any sort of medication that was made to combat or affect her bipolar symptoms in any way. That was one thing Kimiko had missed. That was the reason Shimamura had to get the specific meds from Twice and nowhere else. They were her only fix.

Shimamura took another deep breath as her thoughts returned to her. Her own thoughts, this time. Her eyes glanced around at her surroundings. She was confused for a moment or two, but it all came back to her.

Heroes groaned as the few that were still conscious struggled to stand up. The majority were still on the ground either knocked out or trying to move their limbs to any capacity. So much destruction and catastrophe in such a short time... and this was her own doing.

She stumbled once more as the earth began to tremble and quake again, at a much greater intensity than the last that had ripped through the city. The rocks and dirt bounced up from the ground, skimming heroes' motionless bodies or even luring some heroes closer to the gap in the ground. Shimamura spread her stance, trying to stay upright.

Shimamura glanced around her, seeing all the fallen heroes and the pain that she had dealt to them. I did this? she questioned. I did this...

"So, Sensori—what's your motivations for continuing to be a hero?"

Shimamura looked to her left, as if startled, seeing a sort of hallucination of a fizzling TV screen. There was a reporter on the screen, but the image quickly shifted to a different person. Shimamura thought she was losing her mind, but it was probably just her brain adjusting to the fall from the quirk enhancer. But she recognized the screen and she recognized the figure in the image.

It was her mother.

It was one of the VHS tapes that she had watched when she was growing up in her aunt's house. It was all she had to remember her mother by. It was one of the tapes that was an interview with Sensori rather than one of the fights they had recorded.

Her mother was nothing but a fizzing image on the distorted screen. Her long black braid strewn along her shoulder, her navy blue mask across her forehead and cheeks... and her bright blue eyes that used to match Shimamura's perfectly.

Sensori shrugged in the televised memory.

"I suppose my reason is much like many other heroes, but it's to protect the ones I care about. I wasn't always a hero and there were pros that lived protecting mine and countless others lives—it's my job now to pay it forward. Then there will be heroes in the next generations that will do the same. It's an endless cycle, but it's a cycle that's worth being repeated."

Sensori looked straight into the camera and almost seemed to make eye contact with Shimamura through the screen. Shimamura looked below the screen and saw a little girl with blinding white hair sitting beneath the television, staring at it with a wide smile as she felt like her mother was looking at her. Looking at her and no one else. Not the camera. Not the public. No, that little girl thought this video was made especially for her. 

Shimamura looked back up at the screen with a dim expression, seeing her mother's blue eyes lock with hers through the blurry TV. She narrowed her eyes as her mother smiled. She said in unison with the film:

"I protect my daughter so that she can grow up to protect the ones she will learn to care for."

What a silly turn of events Shimamura's life had turned out to be... the one piece of advice her mother had given her through a tape recording was to protect the ones she cared about. And here they are, standing above the wreckage of Shimamura's attack against her friends and her once allies.

The right thing...

The voice ringing in Shimamura's head was no longer Kimiko's insistent voice telling her that what the Seijin were doing was the right thing for the world. The voice was quieter, softer. The voice in Shimamura's head was a mix of her own and her mother's. A voice telling her to trust in herself rather than rely on Kimiko. Family was important, of course, but no one was more important to Shimamura than her mother. When all hope was lost... the voice she had to listen to was her mother's.

Shimamura made a mistake.

She looked up towards the dirt mound, her eyes a faint gray as the blue struggled to come to light again. Kimiko and the others were standing at the top of the makeshift mountain, staring out at their progress. The heroes were beaten and broken. The Seijin had already won and they knew it.

Current bipolar level: 3... but slowly rising.

Shimamura turned and started towards the top of the dirt mountain, on her way to confront the last bit of family she had left. She couldn't help the heroes on the ground... but maybe she could stop Kimiko before it was too late.

Shimamura now knew what the right thing was.