Chapter 5: Gathering the Pawns
In the aftermath of the alleyway execution, a heavy, stagnant silence once again claimed the bar. It was thicker than before, weighted with the memory of dust and decay. Gaara remained in his corner, a statue carved from stillness. The act of pointless violence had left a residue in his mind, a question without an answer. He did not feel guilt—that emotion was as foreign to him as affection—but he felt the unsettling friction of chaos grinding against the cold logic of his world. Purpose was everything. What he had witnessed was the utter absence of it.
Shigaraki, for his part, seemed to have already forgotten the incident. He was hunched over a newly acquired tablet, the data chip they had taken from the informant displayed as a series of maps and timetables. His visible red eye was wide with manic concentration, his fingers tracing routes and highlighting vulnerabilities. He was a child planning the ultimate play-through, the lives of others nothing more than pixels on a screen.
This tense quiet, this fragile new status quo, was shattered on the second day.
The door to the bar swung open not with the controlled entry of Giran or the misty arrival of Kurogiri, but with a loud, jarring bang. Giran stepped in, a wide, salesman's smile on his face. And behind him, the darkness of the entrance was filled with a flood of bodies.
They poured into the bar like water from a burst dam—a noisy, grimy, chaotic tide of humanity.
For Gaara, whose senses were attuned to the slightest shift in the empty spaces around him, it was a visceral assault. The silence was annihilated by a cacophony of rough laughter, boastful shouts, and the shuffling of dozens of feet. The musty but stable air of the bar was instantly fouled with the smells of cheap cigarettes, sweat, and the metallic tang of unpolished weaponry. The dim, predictable shadows were thrown into chaos by the constant, jarring motion of new arrivals jostling for space.
His sand reacted before he did. What had been a soft, passive carpet around him instantly rose, coalescing into a shimmering, waist-high barrier that solidified the perimeter of his corner. It was a silent, unmistakable declaration: Do not cross.
He watched the newcomers from behind his wall. They were a motley collection of society's cast-offs, the very people Giran had spoken of. There was a hulking man whose skin was a patchwork of tough, grey lizard scales. A woman with a feral grin whose fingernails were long, curved talons of glittering black keratin. A wiry man whose eyes darted around the room with unsettling speed, his head twitching from side to side. They were not masterminds or ideologues. They were thugs, delinquents, and malcontents, drawn to the promise of destruction like moths to a flame.
They noticed him, of course. It was impossible not to. Giran had surely seeded the underworld with tales of the League's new, untouchable powerhouse. They saw the boy in the corner, silent and unblinking, encased in a personal fortress of swirling sand. Their loud boasts faltered when their eyes met his. They began to whisper amongst themselves, their voices dropping.
"Is that him? The 'Sand Demon'?"
"They say you can't even get near him…"
"Looks like just a kid. A creepy one, though."
They gave his corner a wide berth, a bubble of enforced solitude forming around him in the middle of the crowded room. It was a familiar feeling, a scene replayed countless times throughout his life in playgrounds and clinics. He was among others, yet utterly separate. A monster to be observed from a safe distance. He was not one of them. He was their caged beast.
The noise level rose again until Shigaraki finally lost his patience. Without looking up from his tablet, he reached out and placed four fingers on the edge of the bar counter.
"Be quiet," he said, his voice a low hiss.
When no one immediately complied, he pressed his fifth finger down. A spiderweb of grey cracks spread from his touch, and with a dry, crumbling sound, a large chunk of the wooden counter disintegrated into dust.
Instant silence.
Every eye was now on Shigaraki. He looked up slowly, a tired, irritable expression on his face. "Now that I have your attention, you worthless NPCs," he began, his voice dripping with condescension, "we can start the mission briefing."
Kurogiri moved to the wall behind the bar. His misty form swirled, and a section of the fog detached, projecting a hazy, shimmering image onto the grimy brick. It was a rudimentary map, showing a large domed building surrounded by several distinct environmental zones.
"This," Kurogiri announced, his voice cutting through the tense air, "is the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, or USJ. A state-of-the-art training facility owned and operated by U.A. High School."
A murmur went through the crowd. U.A. The name itself was a symbol, the pinnacle of the hero world they all despised.
"According to our intelligence," Kurogiri continued, "the first-year hero course, Class 1-A, is scheduled for a rescue training exercise at this facility in three days' time. They will be accompanied by two, possibly three, pro heroes, including their homeroom teacher, Eraser Head, and…" he paused for effect, "the Symbol of Peace, All Might."
The name hung in the air, electric. All Might. The final boss. The one unbeatable hero. The crowd grew restless, a mixture of fear and excited bloodlust.
Shigaraki finally stood up, letting his tablet clatter to the table. He paced in front of them, his movements jerky and agitated, like a caged animal.
"All Might," he repeated, the name tasting like poison in his mouth. "He is the pillar holding up this entire, broken society. He's the smiling face on the box that tells everyone that if they just follow the rules, everything will be okay. He is a lie."
He stopped and turned to face the crowd, his single eye burning with a fanatical light.
"We are going to go to that facility. We are going to tear through their precious next generation of 'heroes'. And we," he said, his voice dropping to a gleeful, conspiratorial whisper, "are going to kill All Might. In front of his students. In front of the world."
He spread his arms wide. "We're not just going to beat him. We're going to show everyone the 'Game Over' screen. We're going to show them that their Symbol of Peace can bleed, and break, and turn to dust just like everyone else!"
A roar of approval erupted from the assembled villains. The air became thick with manic energy, a symphony of bloodlust and anarchic joy.
Gaara watched it all, a point of absolute stillness in the center of the storm. He heard the words, "Kill All Might," but they did not register with the same emotional impact they had on the others. To them, it was an act of supreme rebellion, of vengeance.
To Gaara, it was a fascinating, abstract hypothesis.
He had no feelings for All Might. The hero was a concept, a two-dimensional figure of overwhelming power and blinding cheerfulness that he had only ever seen on a screen. He was a symbol. And Gaara, who had been made into a symbol of fear himself, understood their power. Symbols gave the world shape. They gave people hope, a sense of order, a belief that things had meaning.
His mind, cold and analytical, began to churn. What happens when a symbol of absolute hope is publicly extinguished? Does the hope itself die? Or does it fester, curdling into fear and chaos? What rushes in to fill the vacuum left behind?
He was not for this plan, nor was he against it. He was a scientist on the verge of a momentous, terrible experiment. His reason for being here, for agreeing to participate, was not a shared ideology with these broken, angry people. It was a profound, hollow curiosity. For the first time in his empty, silent life, something was happening that promised to change the very shape of the world. He simply wanted to be there to see it.
The villains cheered, their faces alight with destructive purpose. Gaara remained in his corner, his expression unreadable. He looked at the hazy map of the USJ, his teal eyes unblinking, already calculating angles and distances. He had accepted his role as the shield. Now, he would watch the chaos unfold from the best seat in the house.