Chapter 7: The Fabricated Beast
The night following their reconnaissance mission was heavy and still. The encounter on the sunlit street had left an invisible residue in the air of the bar, a subtle change in the psychic landscape that only Gaara seemed to feel. He sat in his corner, the memory of the clumsy, apologetic boy a persistent, ghostlike image in his mind. It was a single, anomalous piece of data that did not fit the grim equation of his life. It was a loose thread in the tapestry, and he found himself pulling at it in the silence of his thoughts.
Shigaraki, meanwhile, was a taut wire of anticipation. The proximity to his goal had made him more volatile, his boredom replaced with a manic, vibrating energy. He paced, he muttered, he scratched at his neck, his single red eye darting around the room as if expecting the final battle to begin at any moment.
It was close to midnight when Kurogiri stopped his methodical polishing of the bar. He turned, his glowing yellow eyes fixing on Shigaraki, and then on Gaara.
"It is time," he announced, his voice cutting through the tension. "He is ready for the final viewing."
Shigaraki stopped pacing instantly, a wide, predatory grin spreading across his face. "Excellent," he hissed. "I want to see my new party member before we start the raid." He jerked his chin at Gaara. "Shield. You're coming too. You need to see the 'power-up' I've acquired."
Gaara rose without a word. He felt a faint, inexplicable sense of dread, a cold premonition that he was about to witness something that would irrevocably alter his understanding of this path he had chosen.
Kurogiri's warp gate opened, not into a grimy city alley, but into a place of profound darkness and cold. As they stepped through, the familiar, musty smell of the bar was replaced by the sharp, sterile scent of antiseptic and the low, electrical hum of powerful machinery.
They were in a vast, subterranean laboratory. The floor was polished concrete, and the walls were lined with banks of humming servers and large, stainless-steel workstations. Thick cables snaked across the ceiling like metallic vines. It was a place of cold function and brutalist design, a tomb where science had become a dark art.
An elderly, unassuming man in a lab coat and large, round spectacles approached them. He had a bushy white mustache and a deceptively gentle, grandfatherly demeanor.
"Ah, Tomura-kun," the old man said, his voice a soft, reedy hum. "Right on schedule. Everything is nominal."
"Doctor," Shigaraki replied, his voice filled with a rare tone of respect. "Show him to me."
The Doctor's gaze shifted to Gaara, his eyes, magnified by his thick lenses, filled with a spark of keen, analytical curiosity. "And this must be the specimen Giran procured. A Quirk of absolute, autonomous defense. Fascinating. A truly organic and elegant manifestation of power."
Gaara's sand stirred uneasily at his feet. The Doctor was looking at him not as a person, but as a marvel of biological engineering, an object to be studied and understood. It was a gaze he knew all too well.
"He's not a specimen, he's my shield," Shigaraki corrected impatiently. "Now, where is it?"
"Of course, of course," the Doctor chuckled, turning to lead them deeper into the facility. "Patience, my boy. A masterpiece cannot be rushed."
He led them to the center of the lab, where a colossal cylindrical tank stood, reaching from floor to ceiling. It was filled with a murky, green-tinged liquid, through which thick tubes and wires snaked, all connected to a humanoid figure floating motionlessly within. Bubbles drifted slowly up from the base, distorting the shape of the creature inside.
Shigaraki pressed his hands against the thick, cold glass, his face alight with a look of pure, unholy adoration. "There he is," he whispered. "Isn't he a work of art?"
Gaara stepped closer, his teal eyes narrowing as he peered through the murky fluid. And he saw.
It was not a man. It was a grotesque parody of one. Its skin was a dark, purplish-black, stretched taut over a grotesque landscape of hyper-developed muscle that seemed too large and dense for its skeletal frame. Its most horrifying feature was its head. It had no lips, only a permanent, bird-like beak, and its eyes were large, round, and completely vacant, like the eyes of a taxidermied animal. Its brain was exposed, a pulsating, pinkish-grey mass protected by a clear, dome-like casing on its skull. It was a thing of stitches and staples, of muscle grafted onto bone, a nightmare given flesh.
But it was the feeling it gave off that truly disturbed Gaara. He could sense power, a vast and screaming abyss of it. But it was hollow. There was no will, no consciousness, no spirit behind it. It was a weapon, nothing more. A corpse animated by stolen lightning.
"We call him 'Nomu'," the Doctor explained, his voice filled with the quiet pride of a creator. "A simple vessel, designed from a lesser thug's body, but made to be so much more. It has been… challenging, to stabilize multiple, forcibly integrated Quirks within a single host, but we have succeeded."
"He has Super-Regeneration and Shock Absorption," Shigaraki added gleefully, tapping on the glass. "You could punch him all day and he'd just stand there, smiling—if he had lips. We made him specifically to counter a simple-minded brawler. Someone who just hits things really, really hard."
The unspoken name of All Might hung in the air.
"His physical strength is, of course, the main event," the Doctor continued calmly. "Augmented to a level that, theoretically, should be more than a match for the Symbol of Peace. He feels no pain. He has no thoughts of his own. He is a perfectly programmed puppet, and he will obey only you, Tomura-kun."
Gaara stood there, frozen, as he processed the information. He looked from the monstrous, floating Nomu to his own hands, where a few grains of sand danced in an invisible current.
His power was a part of him. It was born of his loneliness, his fear, his very blood. It was a living, breathing extension of his soul. It protected him, isolated him, defined him. It was natural. It was his.
This… this thing in the tank was the antithesis of all that. Its power was a collection of stolen parts, ripped from others and crudely stitched together. It was a violation. A perversion of what it meant to have a Quirk, to have a life. It was a fabricated beast built from the ruins of other people's souls.
For the first time in his life, Gaara felt a sensation that was sharp and clear and burned like acid in his gut. It was disgust.
It was not a moral outrage for the unknown people whose Quirks had been stolen. He did not possess the empathy for that. It was a deeper, more instinctual revulsion. It was the visceral offense of a true artist witnessing a crude and ugly forgery. It was a rejection of the unnatural.
He finally understood. The League of Villains didn't just want to tear down the world of heroes. They wanted to replace it with a world of their own making, a world populated by fabricated monsters like this. Giran's promise of a place for those who had been rejected was a lie. This wasn't about finding a place for the outcasts. It was about creating abominations to enforce their will.
The Nomu inside the tank shifted, its massive body turning slowly in the fluid. For a moment, its dead, vacant eyes seemed to stare directly into Gaara's. There was nothing there. No life, no soul. Only a great and terrible emptiness, waiting for a command.
Shigaraki began to laugh, a high, unhinged cackle that echoed off the cold metal and concrete of the laboratory. The Doctor watched Gaara, a small, knowing smile on his face, his eyes gleaming with clinical interest.
Gaara stared at his own faint reflection in the glass of the tank. His pale, still face was superimposed over the monstrous form of the Nomu. A silent boy and a hollow beast, a natural power and a fabricated one, bound together by a dark purpose.
He was the shield. And this… this was the weapon he was meant to protect. And in that moment, he felt a coldness that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. The path he had chosen had led him here, to a monster's nursery. And he knew, with chilling certainty, that the coming storm would be even uglier than he had ever imagined.