The steel chains coiled around his arms, his waist, and his legs were buried cruelly into his skin, and every attempted movement sent sharp pain through his exhausted muscles.
He breathed with difficulty.
His broad chest with its large scar rose and fell violently, while his eyes remained half open amid the exhaustion and blood that covered his face.
Damn. Even lifting his head had become heavy.
He tried pulling his right arm slightly.
Clank.
The chain only shook, then the pain returned to crush his injured shoulder like a hammer.
Zoro pressed his teeth together violently. "Don't. Move."
His voice came out rough and broken, as if he were speaking to his own rebellious body.
His fingertips were barely responding. His entire body screamed with fatigue. The constant bleeding, the spiritual pressure All For One had crushed him with, and the blood loss, all of it was slowly pushing him toward the darkness of unconsciousness.
But he refused.
He moved his eyes with difficulty toward the far corner of the shattered concrete floor.
There. Lying on the cold ground, Wado Ichimonji was reflecting a faint white glow in the dreary darkness of the factory.
He fixed his gaze on it for long moments. Then he began to crawl.
Scrape.
The heavy chains scraped against the concrete floor as he moved with painful slowness. Every centimeter forward tore at his muscles more. His trembling hand collapsed beneath him once, and his face hit the ground hard. Blood ran from his lips.
But his eyes stayed fixed on the white blade.
"Just a little more."
He crawled again, dragging a lethal iron weight behind him.
And amid that pain, old memories began seeping through the fog inside his mind.
A quiet forest. The wooden sound of swords clashing. And the calm voice of an old man sitting in the dojo's corridor.
A real sword doesn't cut everything.
Zoro's pupil trembled slightly. Kenji's voice returned, clear despite the years, echoing through the cavities of his feverish mind.
If you want to become a great swordsman, first learn the meaning of control.
He finally reached the sword.
He stopped for a moment gasping, his forehead pressed against the cold floor, and blood tracing a line behind him. Then very slowly, he opened his mouth and gripped the handle of Wado Ichimonji between his teeth.
In the moment his lips touched the white handle, something changed inside his gaze. His breath calmed slightly. Not because he had recovered his physical strength, but because he had recovered himself.
He closed his eyes. He focused.
The chains were wrapped tightly near his shoulder and neck. Any small mistake, any slight deviation of the blade, could tear his flesh and sever his own artery.
The muscles of his neck trembled as he tried to lift the blade. Heavy. Heavier than he remembered.
He felt the taste of blood filling his mouth more as the sword began rising slowly toward the chain binding his shoulder.
Then he stopped.
His eyes froze suddenly. Something was wrong. If he struck now with this uncontrolled force, he would hit himself. His chest. His neck. His shoulder.
He closed his eyes for one more moment.
Amid the pain and the blood and the suffocation, his teacher's voice returned again, whispering to him from the depth of the past.
The weak swordsman strikes the steel.
But the true swordsman chooses what he wants to cut.
Zoro's body settled gradually. Even his gasping breaths began to calm and regulate in a terrifying way. The sound of the factory's bubbles disappeared from around him. No Nomu creatures. No All For One. No chains. No pain.
Only the blade. And the steel.
He heard the breath of the iron coiled around him.
He opened his eyes slowly.
And in that moment his gaze became sharp, burning, and cold in a diabolical way. His neck moved suddenly in a swift motion that was barely visible.
Shhhk!
Wado Ichimonji passed at a terrifying speed near his shoulder and neck and chest, close enough that a strand of his green hair snapped and fell slowly through the air.
Then:
Clang!
The thick steel chain exploded into two equal halves as if it were a piece of silk cut by sharp scissors.
Zoro's eyes widened slightly.
He felt no new pain. No wound. No cut in his skin. Just the chain splitting and falling.
He breathed slowly as the heavy iron pieces collapsed around him with a ringing metallic echo. And from amid the blood and the exhaustion, a faint, very tired smile formed on his lips.
"Hah." He whispered from between his teeth still clamped on the sword. "I still remember."
Far from the words of Aizawa that had shaken public opinion, and in the moment the press conference ended, the six students launched forward at lightning speed following the location signal, driven by mixed emotions of determination and anger.
They stopped to catch their breath inside one of the dark, narrow alleys.
Yaoyorozu emerged from beneath her disguise cloak holding the receiver in her hand with the red light blinking reflected across her worried face. She raised her head and pointed forward. "This is the location the receiver is showing."
Kirishima stepped forward and looked around the corner of the alley with surprise. "So this is their hideout? It really looks like one."
Before them stood a dark building, old, with crumbling walls and windows covered by rotting wooden boards, and rust coating its gate. A place that reeked of crime and death.
"Since the signal has been stable and unchanged since I built this device, it means one thing." Yaoyorozu's tone was firm and very serious. "Zoro-san is inside here with one hundred percent certainty. The villains haven't noticed the small tracking device attached to his shirt yet. We have to exploit this opportunity immediately."
Iida adjusted his glasses and spoke in a decisive tone that left no room for argument. "We don't have anyone skilled in stealth like Jirou or Hagakure. If I sense even a little danger, I won't hesitate to call the police and report our location."
Bakugo turned sharply, his eyes burning beneath his disguise hat. "Are you serious? We call the police and just watch? We didn't travel all this way to turn back like idiots at the first obstacle."
Iida ignored the provocation, while Midoriya placed his hand on his chin with his eyes scanning the dark building with intense focus. "I need to think about what we have available right now."
And quickly Midoriya fell into his old habit. He began murmuring in an audible, very rapid voice. "If we assume Zoro is inside, the villains will have heavy surveillance. The front face is exposed, there might be a back exit. But are there cameras? An old building like this might not have a modern security system, but they have instant spatial transfer. If we attack directly they'll move him again. We need to find a blind spot..."
Everyone was looking at him in silence.
Iida looked at him from the side and said to himself with quiet pride: that focus in the hardest situations. That's what I respect about him as a friend and a true rival.
But in the same moment, Bakugo's patience ran completely dry.
He snapped in a muffled shout, waving his fist in front of Midoriya's face. "Shut up, Deku! Your stupid mumbling isn't going to help us with anything! Let's get closer and scout the place first!"
At the same time, the atmosphere inside the dark bar was suffocating.
Click.
With a press of the remote control button, Shigaraki turned off the television screen that had been broadcasting the press conference. The room sank into a heavy silence broken only by the sound of the villains' breathing and the sound of ice dissolving in Kurogiri's glass.
Shigaraki began scratching his neck slowly, his reddened eyes widening with deep thought from behind the hand covering his face.
"This is very strange." He muttered in a hoarse, muffled voice. "It seems that swordsman is hiding something very big. Something big enough that a pro hero like Eraserhead fights desperately to defend him in front of the entire world."
He stopped scratching and a malicious, twisted smile appeared on his cracked lips. "My curiosity about him has grown even more. That's exactly why the teacher asked for him by name. It seems my teacher knows something too, something deeper than just a combat ability."
Dabi rose from his seat in the dark corner, small blue sparks drifting from between his fingers with complete indifference. "Hero or killer, it doesn't matter. In the end he's just a stubborn kid who resisted with difficulty. But the press conference was entertaining. Watching those heroes bowing and apologizing to the press like dogs proves how fragile this society really is."
Himiko Toga smiled with her disturbing glow, her cheeks flushed red as she waved her small knife with glee. "But Aizawa was absolutely wonderful! The way he defended Zoro-kun! Ah, Zoro-kun. Those cold, terrifying eyes. How many liters of blood does this wonderful boy have? I want to watch him bleed. I want to taste him!"
But Toga's words, rather than easing the atmosphere, were the spark that ignited Shigaraki's fury.
Shigaraki's scratching of his neck grew more violent and rapid, to the point where his nails nearly drew blood from his skin. The composed look he had been trying to maintain suddenly transformed into a black, blazing rage.
"That wretch." Shigaraki whispered in a voice trembling from the force of his resentment, his reddened eyes widening with something close to madness. "Everyone is talking about him. The heroes on television, the annoying press, all of you, and even the teacher. Why does the teacher personally care about trash like him and demands he be sent to him immediately instead of letting me kill him?"
He stopped scratching suddenly, and swelling veins appeared on his ravaged neck. He remembered the moment when Zoro had been bound and surrounded before them in this very bar. Despite all his wounds and the steel chains restraining him, he hadn't shown a single trace of fear. He had looked at them with that condescending gaze and spat his poisonous words in their faces, calling them obedient dogs that had no will except to pant after their master's orders.
"He calls us dogs." Shigaraki suddenly lunged with his hand at the edge of the wooden bar. "He acts like he looks down at us from the top and he's just a broken prisoner begging for death."
In a single second the wood began cracking and disintegrating under his five fingers into scattered dust. He turned toward the rest of the villains, his eyes radiating pure hatred and spite. "Let him enjoy the teacher's attention for now. Because the moment the teacher finishes extracting what he wants from his body, I'll handle him personally. I'll crush him with these two hands until nothing remains of his damned pride but ashes."
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