Chapter Text
The first night was the worst. She was still so small, too small to put up much of a fight. She used to like dogs. They were always so nice, much nicer than people. But the dog in the ring was different, she’d already seen it tear the throat out of its canine opponent. This dog was their champion. And now it was her turn to “fight” it.
It wasn’t much of a fight.
She tried desperately to run, to plead with the men and women who were surrounding the ring, tried to talk to the dog, anything to survive. The people laughed as the dog was released and she went down. It ripped at her arms as she tried to protect her face. She began losing blood quickly. When her throat was crushed between its jaws, she couldn’t even scream before the darkness took over.
The darkness was nice. The void left her feeling peaceful, whole.
It didn’t last long.
She came to just as they were about to throw her body into a hole. She breathed in the smoky air and her throat immediately filled with blood. She began coughing, spitting up the blood and rubbing at her sore throat. When she sat up and looked around, she saw wide eyes and blank stares. She tried to speak up, scream for help, something, but nothing came out. Just air and a deep rasping sound. She held her throat and tried again, but it still didn’t work.
“Well boys, it looks like we’ve got a live one!” The man who had thrown her in with the dog stepped forward, looking right at her with a terrifying smile. “You’re not as quirkless as your whore of a mother said. Money well spent.” He turned to his lackeys. “Get her up and take her to the cages. I’ve got plans for this one.”
She cried as the closest man to her picked her up and carried her back into the warehouse. She was taken down a set of stairs, into a basement level where they kept their dogs. She was thrown into one of the bigger crates and the door was locked behind her. The dogs all barked loudly, even as the burly man yelled at them to shut up. She just curled up in her little crate and cried herself to sleep.
—
After that night, they had her fighting a different dog almost every weekend. During the week she was left alone in her crate, slowly starving until someone would have pity on her and give her some leftover scraps. But the moment Saturday night rolled around, she was back in the ring with another monster of a dog. They were always massive and always won.
Until they didn’t.
After about two years of being thrown into the ring and being killed almost immediately, she started really watching how the dog fights went before she was thrown in with the winner. She watched the way they fought and how they won. She started fighting back. It was hard at first. She was weak from the lack of nutrient-rich food, and she really didn’t want to hurt the dogs. But after being killed over a hundred times, she lost her pity for them. She watched the way their bodies moved and aimed at their weak points. She would hit them in their wounded shoulders, punch them in the nose, scratch at their eyes. Eventually, she figured out how to snap their necks. That’s when things really changed.
After she killed three of their prized champion dogs, they realized she was gonna keep winning, so they changed things up. They started throwing her into the ring with grown men. They would use their quirks on her, beating her down until she stopped breathing. She was cut, burned, and broken, earning her handlers tons of money. They began throwing her into the ring on Friday nights too. Letting anyone who wanted to beat her down. But she figured out these guys too. She started fighting back.
Within another three years she was winning at least half of her fights. By four and a half, she was winning two-thirds of them. She became impossible to beat without a quirk. She still died pretty often, most people who came to fight had strong quirks that they happily used on her, but a lot of the time she died from her injuries after knocking her opponent out.
Eight years since she'd been sold to these people and she actually started looking forward to her time in the ring. She didn’t enjoy the pain or the fighting all that much, but the freedom to move and the sweet release of death became addictive. When she died, she was able to breathe. When she died, she was at peace. At least until she woke up again in her crate.
But with winning came an increase in privileges. After her first fight with a human, she was finally given real food. After another six months she was allowed to wander the cages, only returning to her crate to sleep. This was an especially helpful privilege as it allowed her to begin training to win. By the time she had finally won her first match against a human, she'd created quite the workout plan for herself, doing push-ups against the concrete, pull-ups on the exposed pipe, and any manner of strength training she could manage in the limited space. The dogs would bark and snarl at her, but as long as they stayed in their own crates, she wasn’t bothered by them.
Life wasn’t good by any means, but it was hers and she was living it the best she could.
—
She hears a crack as his metallic fist connects with her face. She spits blood from her mouth and pushes back in to get a jab at his kidney. The fight’s been going on for a while now and the people around them are getting antsy. Cheers and jeers alike can be heard over the sound of her own rapid heartbeat in her ears. She smiles at the metal man, blood in her teeth, and dodges his next shot. He’s slowing down. The silvery metal that once covered his whole body has since receded to just his hands. If she can stay alive for just a few more minutes, he’ll go down. The man sways a little in his stance. Oh yeah, he’s going down. She runs around him, keeping out of reach of his fist, and gives him a good kick at the base of his spine, forcing him to jolt forward. Back to facing him, he goes for a left hook and she dodges, using the momentum to elbow him in the side. He bends over and she punches him in the face, hard. He doesn’t go down quite yet, but he’s swaying harder.
“Hurry up!”
“Take her down!”
“Kill her!”
“What’s taking so long?!’
She cracks her neck and runs in for the last set of shots. He gets a second wind and uses his hardened fist to crack what feels like three of her ribs. She stumbles back, trying to ignore the flair of pain and still stay in the fight. He comes at her and she barely escapes a shot to her head. She runs to the side of the ring, someone throwing their cheap sake on her as she passes them. She needs to get some space and figure out her next shot. The man laughs, but it’s weak. He’s tired. Running straight at him, she sidesteps and kicks out the back of his left knee. He falls forward and she takes no time to grab him around the neck and choke him. He flips her over him and stands as the wind is knocked out of her. He kicks her in the ribs, breaking more of them. She tries to get back up, but he kicks her in the gut to knock the wind back out of her again. She lays there for a moment, letting him think he’s won. The crowd cheers.
“Finish her!”
“Kill her!”
“Yeah, take her down!”
Before he can turn around and finish her off, she rolls over and makes her way back up. She’s not down yet. She sidesteps his next attack, but now she’s by the fence again and more sake is splashed over her head. She’s blinded for a moment but she’s used to the crowds getting involved so she listens for the guy’s approach. When he’s in range, she drops down and kicks his feet out from under him. He falls and she climbs on top of him. She punches him as hard as she can in the temple and he’s out.
The crowd doesn’t like that too much. They make their displeasure known, throwing bottles and garbage at her, but she doesn’t care. The light is fading around the edges and she knows she’s gonna fall into that blissful abyss any second. She sways, but before she can fall, she hears a voice shouting. The world goes quiet for a split second and then utter chaos breaks out. People are running in every direction and she’s grabbed by one of her handlers. They’re almost to the cages when she finally succumbs to the darkness, at peace at last.
—
“Heroes! Scatter!” One of the thugs in the warehouse shouts as they bust down the doors. The crowd of degenerates silences for all of a second before all hell breaks loose. People are running in all directions, but Shouta isn’t too concerned. They brought enough underground heroes to take down this fighting ring. The Mori Group started off as a popular dog fighting ring, but then rumor spread about them dipping their toes into human trafficking. Buying quirkless people of all ages and forcing them to fight for their entertainment. More than sixty bodies had been found. Then, six years ago, just as he and his team were closing in on them, the bodies stopped appearing. The group disappeared without a trace and they were thrown back to square one.
Shouta had been keeping his ears open, listening to any and every rumor surrounding the group. He eventually learned they’d found someone with some kind of intense healing quirk. No one would say what the actual quirk was, only that they used it to make the person fight over and over again. They’d finally tracked the group to the east end of Musutafu inside an abandoned warehouse district. An informant led them to the right warehouse and they planned their raid down to the second.
Now they’re finally enacting their plan and it’s going exactly as expected. Bad guys are going down left and right. As he makes his way closer to the center, where he can see a ring has been crudely created out of fence posting, he catches sight of one of the higher members of the group. He watches as he steps into the ring and picks up someone, throwing them over his shoulder. Shouta runs, doing his best to catch up to the man. As he gets closer, he can make out that the form being carried is small. Like a child. He pushes himself to run faster.
The man heads down a set of stairs at the back of the large room. Shouta follows him, the sounds of dogs barking reaching his ears. He makes it down just as the man he’s been following is about to enter another doorway.
“Stop right there!” The man spins around, arms turning to steel. He drops the body he’s been carrying without concern. The small body hits the ground with a thunk and the man kicks them to the side. Shouta grinds his teeth at the sight but focuses on taking down this man. He activates his quirk and the man’s arms return to their former state. He growls and charges Shouta.
The fight doesn’t last long. Shouta is a competent quirkless fighter and this man is clearly not. The back and forth only lasts maybe five minutes before the man is wrapped tightly in his capture weapon. Shouta takes one last look at the thug, making sure he isn’t gonna be able to go anywhere, before making his way over to the small form. Just as he’s able to see them over the crates, the child gasps and their eyes fly open. As he gets closer he realizes it’s a young girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen at most. She’s covered in bruises, cuts, dirt, and blood, a dog collar strapped to her neck. She tries to sit up, wincing as she does.
“Hey, Kid! Be careful.” He speaks up, clearly startling the girl. He expects her to cower or try to run, but instead, she stands up much faster than her injuries would suggest she is able, and gets into a fighting stance, swaying a bit. He puts his hands up in a placating gesture and walks slowly toward her. “Hey, I’m not gonna fight you. You’re safe now. I’m a hero. I’m here to help you.” She narrows her eyes at him, still swaying. “I promise, you don’t need to fight me. Do you want to leave this place? I can get you out of here. I’ll take you to a hospital, get those injuries taken care of. Would you like that?” Her face softens ever so slightly, eyes flitting around, searching for something. He’s almost to her, she’s practically in arms reach, and she takes a small step back, unsure. “I’m a hero. I can protect you.” He decides to pull out his hero license, making sure to keep his movements slow and exaggerated. He offers it to her and she looks between him and it quickly before her eyes focus on the card. The moment it seems to register with her what it says, she collapses. Luckily he’s close enough to catch her. She’s still conscious but must be in a lot of pain.
She begins crying silently as he carries her back up the stairs, making sure to call in the thug he tied up. Chaos still reigns, but he focuses on getting her to an ambulance outside. Heroes are loading all manner of bad guys into police vans as he reaches his destination. He sets her down on the stretcher, but she quickly grabs onto his hero costume, refusing to let him leave. “Hey, it’s okay. These nice people are going to take good care of you.” She looks between him and the paramedics and shakes her head, her eyes getting teary again as her knuckles turn white with the strain of how tightly she’s holding on. “Do you want me to come with you?’ She nods. “Okay.” He looks to the paramedics. “Take us to Musutafu General.” Then climbs inside the ambulance as they load the stretcher.