Chapter 15: Aftermath and Cages
The roar of battle had been replaced by a deafening, ringing silence. The only sounds in the wrecked plaza were the distant, approaching wail of sirens, the groans of the defeated, and the heavy, ragged breathing of the Symbol of Peace.
All Might stood triumphant, a colossus silhouetted against the broken dome, but steam was now pouring from his body in thick, furious clouds. His time was up. His borrowed power was fading fast.
Izuku Midoriya, watching from the shore, felt a new wave of panic, wholly different from the fear of the villains. He's going to revert! Here, in front of everyone!
Just as All Might's form began to flicker, a massive wall of concrete erupted from the ground, strategically shielding him from the line of sight of the other students. Midoriya looked to the side and saw the Pro Hero Cementoss, who had just arrived with the cavalry, giving him a subtle, knowing nod. They had protected his secret.
The arrival of the other teachers and the police force was a sudden, overwhelming wave of order imposed upon chaos. The atmosphere shifted instantly from a desperate struggle for survival to a methodical, grim clean-up operation. Paramedics rushed to the crumpled forms of Aizawa and Thirteen, their voices calm and professional as they assessed the grievous injuries. Officers began cuffing the dazed and broken low-level villains, their brief, violent rebellion ending in a quiet, pathetic shuffle towards armored transports.
The students of Class 1-A were gathered together, a huddled mass of shock, relief, and adrenaline-fueled tremors. Tsuyu Asui was comforting a still-sobbing Minoru Mineta. Iida was giving a precise, formal report to the newly arrived heroes, his hands chopping the air despite his exhaustion. Uraraka was pale, her wide eyes staring at the spot where the Nomu had stood, the true, terrifying reality of the hero world finally sinking in.
Katsuki Bakugo stood apart from the group, kicking at a piece of rubble. He wasn't relieved. He was furious. A deep, burning frustration churned in his gut. He had been a non-factor. He, who was destined for the number one spot, had been swallowed by sand, helpless, and then saved by All Might like some damsel in distress. The humiliation was a bitter taste in his mouth. He looked at the unconscious boy being circled by the pros, and his rage was mixed with a grudging, hateful respect for the sheer, catastrophic power he had wielded.
Shoto Todoroki was also silent, observing. He looked down at his left hand, from which a faint wisp of steam still rose, then across the plaza to where Gaara lay. He was a boy defined by the overwhelming power he had inherited, a power he despised. Today, for the first time, he had witnessed a power that was just as overwhelming, but far more chaotic and tragic. It was not the arrogant fire of his father; it was the desperate, screaming agony of a lost child. The experience had planted a question in his mind, a complex new variable in his carefully ordered world.
Behind the concrete wall, All Might finally collapsed, his muscular form deflating like a punctured balloon, leaving the gaunt, skeletal Toshinori Yagi in his place, coughing up a spray of blood.
"You pushed yourself far too hard," came the gravelly voice of Detective Tsukauchi, who had arrived with the police.
"I had to," Toshinori rasped, wiping his mouth. "My students… they were incredible."
His gaze drifted across the plaza, past the defeated villains and the shaken students, and settled on the small, still form at the center of it all. The other Pro Heroes—Snipe, Present Mic, Cementoss—had formed a cautious perimeter around the unconscious Gaara. They weren't treating him like a normal villain. They were treating him like an unexploded bomb.
"What do we know about him?" Toshinori asked, his voice low.
"Nothing," Tsukauchi replied, his expression grim. "He's a ghost. No records, no Quirk registration, no school files. It's like he didn't exist until today. The villains we've managed to question are all terrified of him. They call him the 'Sand Demon'."
Snipe knelt, keeping a safe distance. "His power output was astronomical. Easily on par with a high-end Pro, maybe more. But look at him. He's just a kid. Malnourished, by the looks of it."
"That power…" Toshinori murmured, his eyes full of a strange, haunted light. "It didn't feel like just a Quirk, Tsukauchi. When it raged out of control… it felt older. Like a pure, ancient hatred given form. It was… unnatural."
They watched as a specialized medical unit approached. They didn't use a standard gurney. They brought out a reinforced transport platform, equipped with state-of-the-art, full-body Quirk-suppressing restraints. With extreme care, they lifted Gaara's small body, strapping him down, his pale, tear-streaked face a stark contrast to the heavy, high-tech metal that now encased him. He was not being arrested. He was being contained.
As he was carried away, a new enigma in a world already full of them, a fragile sense of peace began to settle over the USJ. The battle was over. The students were safe. The villains were defeated. But no one felt like they had truly won. They had simply survived. They had looked into the abyss, and the abyss had looked back with the golden, slitted eye of a broken child.
Darkness.
Then, a flicker of sensation. Cold. A hard surface beneath his back. A strange, restrictive stiffness in his limbs.
Gaara's consciousness returned not as a rush, but as a slow, trickling tide. He was floating in a deep, black ocean, and the distant shore of awareness was slowly drawing nearer. He remembered the scream. He remembered the blood. He remembered the rage. He remembered… falling.
His first instinct, an instinct as natural and unconscious as breathing, was to call upon the sand. He reached for it with his mind, for the familiar, comforting weight in his gourd, for the ever-present, whispering particles that were his armor and his only companion. He reached for that fundamental part of his soul.
And for the first time in his life, there was nothing.
No response. No whisper. No gentle stir of motion. The connection, the sense that had defined his entire existence, was gone. It was not just suppressed, as it had been with Aizawa. It felt… severed. Locked away behind a wall so thick and so absolute that he couldn't even feel its presence anymore. The silence in his soul was no longer a choice; it was a prison.
This new, deeper terror finally forced his eyes open.
He was met with absolute, impenetrable blackness. He could see nothing. He was in a place devoid of all light. He tried to move, but his arms and legs were held fast. He could feel heavy, cold metal clamped around his wrists, his ankles, his torso, pinning him to the surface he was lying on.
The terror was not hot and hysterical this time. It was a cold, creeping dread that filled the hollow space where his power used to be. The rage was gone. The pain was a dull ache. All that was left was a profound and terrifying emptiness. He was alone, powerless, and caged in the dark.
He spoke, and his voice was a dry, unused whisper, a tiny, insignificant sound that the oppressive silence swallowed instantly.
"Where… am I?"
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