I heard them running, felt their energies suddenly surge and then fall back as all the points of light moved in a circle away from where the shooter had been.

Then, suddenly, there was no more shots.

I met Hawks' eyes.

He was lying on the ground with one hand on the shoulder of the two policemen closest to him, motioning for me to stand still.

The two pale men didn't seem to realise that Hawks had just saved their lives.

To my left, close to me, sitting against the wall, the policewoman in charge was panting, sweat trickling down her forehead, a hand on her shoulder, blood dripping from her fingers like air.

New hysterical screams.

Hawks let go of the two men and crawled towards me.

- Are you all right?

My eyes followed the trail of bullets in a wide parenthesis from the wall to the ceiling.

On the wall to the right of the bed was a spatter of rough, torn flesh and dark blood, and I didn't even have to smell it to know it was coming from the body.

- Yes

Around us, all the other officers were pressed to the floor, hands on their guns, jaws clenched, taut as the strings of a bow.

Hawks glanced briefly at the policewoman. One of the officers had crawled over to her and was compressing her wound.

- We'll get out one at a time, he murmured. The priority is to save the civilians, all right? I'll take care of the vilains. You take care of the civilians.

I nodded.

Hawks inhaled and got down on all fours, his wings flapping gently.

- Move away.

I stepped aside to let him do so.

As one, the men and women around us moved away.

- Three, two, one

His wings opened wide and with a flap of tremendous force, he was catapulted out of the room.

With a second's delay, a gust of wind picked up and whipped around the faces, forcing me to cover my eyes with my forearm to prevent a shard of glass from accidentally lodging in them.

I captured the image of Hawks, his arms outstretched at his sides, his wings glued to his arms, flying through the hole in the glass that was barely wide enough to let him through.

Such precision...

The curtains swelled like balloons about to be blown off the floor, a vase fell, a painting came loose.

Wind barely gone, lightning crackling and sizzling on my skin, I bent my legs and sprang out of the room, leaving a trail of light behind me.

Through the French window, I used the edge of the balcony to catapult myself into the building opposite.

Sharingan spinning at high speed, I took in the chaos that had become Nagano's central thoroughfare.

Where the epicentre of the crowd should have been, there was nothing to be seen.

People were fleeing in all directions, leaving behind banners and smoke bombs.

They were nothing more than a moving mass, a collection of black-clad bodies that I couldn't tell apart.

Even smelling them was difficult because there were so many of them: to my senses they were just masses of light, merging into each other and-

I dived, the wind whistling in my ears, my arms at my sides.

I landed heavily in the middle of the stampeding crowd, the ground crunching beneath my feet.

I read the panic on the faces that turned towards me, felt the fear in their frail, fragile bodies.

With a smooth gesture, I draped the arm of the man about to be crushed to death over my shoulder and then, legs bent, I jumped up again to another apartment overlooking the street.

Without thinking, I smashed the balcony window and threw the man onto the sofa, ready to go back downstairs.

The old woman with the dog whose house I had just entered didn't even have time to open her mouth.

In a flash I was back on the street, grabbing a woman who had twisted her wrist and hoisted her over my shoulder before going straight back up.

A teenager, a little girl, another young man.

Crouching against a wall, I was about to leap towards an old man huddled on the ground when one of the Hawks lifted the man by his rucksack and carried him to the makeshift camp I'd set up.

From then on, the crowd poured into the adjacent streets like a mass of water that nothing and no one could stop.

There was no murder weapon and no culprit.

A shop alarm went off.

The frenzy of the crowd turned to sheer panic as everyone started pushing and shouting to get away.

The police cordons had been torn open from the inside and the crowd was pouring through them, and suddenly a black smoke grenade exploded above one of the alleyways.

I covered my mouth and nose with my elbow, the acidic smell burning my nose and throat.

And then, under the falling cloud, I saw men and women suddenly collapse to the ground.

Behind them, the rest of the crowd kept moving forward in panic, stepping over the bodies and falling on them one by one.

In the span of a second I was already under the cloud, breathing held back, grabbing the bodies of those who had fallen and dragging them up to the rooftops.

With a teenager over my shoulder, I was about to grab a woman when another of Hawk's feather lifted her and carried her to safety.

Dozens and dozens of red feathers fell from the sky, picking up people one by one, unconscious bodies flying through the air and onto the rooftops.

Three poor policemen, who understood what Hawks and I were doing, tried to stop the rest of the demonstrators from advancing and crushing the people before them to death.

I saw one policeman lying on the ground, stunned.

I crouched down in front of him and slapped him.

His wobbly head jerked upright, his haggard eyes darting back and forth over his surroundings before coming to rest on me.

Mouth pasty, he sat up quickly as I ripped the mask from his belt and pulled it over his face.

- Look there. You see your colleagues ? They need your help. Go and help them.

I didn't stay to see if he'd listened to me and was already on my way to another alley, leaving the feathers finish the job.

The smell of burning hit my nose and I turned west without thinking, darting from rooftop to rooftop like a bolt of lightning across the sky.

I stopped on a building for half a second, trying to figure out what was happening.

A huge shopping centre, the kind with an entrance at each end, was on fire.

Black, acrid smoke poured out of a first-floor window and swirled into the sky.

The ground floor, blocked by locked sliding doors, was black with people, fear and panic.

Someone pushed, and suddenly people were falling on top of each other like logs.

I could see their horrified expressions, hear their screams, smell their terror, and the stench of burning bodies clung to my throat as if I could taste it.

The next thing I knew I was standing outside the doors with my fist raised.

I shouted.

- Out of the way !

A woman grabbed her daughter and held her close.

The next second, every window in the building exploded.

The mall shook as if it were about to collapse.

Then, with a gesture, I grabbed the people piling up and lifted them before pushing them out.

The people ran without looking back, fleeing for the sake of fleeing, not really knowing where they were going.

- You two, come here at once!

Two large men, out of danger and ready to run, turned towards me. Their faces were covered in soot, and they were dressed as plumbers or cleaners.

They hesitated, then came running.

- Help the people to get out and then take them to the big building with the gargoyles two streets away in this direction. There are policemen there who will take care of everything.

The relief on their flushed faces irritated me.

- What are you waiting for? You, help that girl over there. And you, look after that boy on the floor.

In the space of a few instructions and a handful of seconds, I managed to organise the crowd so that they didn't accidentally kill each other.

It must be damn stupid to die because of your own panic and not because of the terrorist on the run.

The terrorist, the terrorists. Maybe a gun, maybe a Quirk.

I took several steps backwards, trying to decide how much power to put into my jump.

My chakra crackled on my skin, my muscles tensed, and then I saw one of the two men turn his head towards me.

- Thank y-

The wind whistled in my ears, the flames licking at the window suddenly pushed away by the cold breeze that accompanied me.

Dark, thick smoke blocked my view of the surroundings.

I concentrated on my hearing to pick up the slightest sound.

The steel of the building creaked, the skeleton of some wood structure screaming as they collapsed, the plaintive moans and tears drowned in the chaos of the building that was about to collapse.

In a flash I was gone, guided by my senses.

I didn't stop to greet people or to calm them: I grabbed them, forced myself to be an ounce gentler with the wounded, stacked as many of them as I could on my back and shoulders, then carried them to safety outside before jumping back up just as quickly.

One of them threw up as I set him down to be cared by the other survivors.

I swept through each area at breakneck pace, instinct taking over just as it had at the summer camp.

The steel roof rumbled as if it were about to collapse from within.

I turned, ready to bolt, when I heard muffled breathing, like someone breathing through water bubbles.

My chakra hummed beneath my skin.

DIY department.

I shunshined.

I gasped at the sight for a second, unable to comprehend how such a thing could still be alive.

Crushed by kilos of metal beams, an old man with squashed legs lay on a bed of spilled nails and screws. A hammer's handle, reddened by the flames, had embedded itself in the hollow of his hand, crucifying him in place.

The old man's eyes opened wide at the sight of me, and his head rose slightly before falling back helplessly. He inhaled, and again I heard the bubbling blood in his lungs before it died away.

I jerked the beams free with my shoulder and braced myself for the hammer before freezing.

There was nothing below his waist.

I blinked, the sight of the torn blue trousers crunching beneath the boiling flesh etching itself into my memory.

My fingers, an inch from the hammer, curled up out of my volunty.

I hesitated for a second, not knowing what to do.

If I move him, I don't think he will survive the trip. And even if he does, there's no guarantee that someone competent will arrive before he dies.

The man's lips, full of saliva and blood, moved softly, but he made no sound.

It hurts, it hurts.

I read his words so clearly that it was as if I could hear them in my head.

His hand, lighter than the wind, came to rest on my forearm.

Please.

He wasn't asking me to save him.

Abruptly I stood up, shaking my head, refusing to go forward with it.

Behind me, at the back, another shelf collapsed. The wooden planks to my left had just fallen into the entrance, blocking the way out and forming a makeshift log.

I'd never killed anyone who didn't threaten me or got in my way, and-

His hand remained pinned to my jumper, his limp wrist and dangling fingers following me as if someone had glued a corpse's hand to mine.

It took me a second longer to realise that his bloody bracelet was stuck to my clothes.

Gently, delicately, I untied his hand.

His cold fingers squeezed mine so weakly that I wondered if I wasn't the one holding on to him.

- I can't do this.

His lips didn't move, but his intense gaze hadn't left me.

Please.

I knew my hand would start to shake even before the first stroke.

I met his wet gaze, saw the fatigue in his half-closed eyelids, recognised the pain in the tension of his body, felt the hand of Death guiding mine.

'I killed because I had no other choice. Because my life was no longer in my hands.'

I had limits. There was a logic to my actions.

If I started killing indiscriminately, what would it do to me?

What would happen to me?

The corners of the old man's mouth turned up imperceptibly.

His hand guided mine, and I let it, without really wanting to, fear and worry making my heart race.

His eyes crinkled, encouraging.

His crow's feet at the corner of his eyes - like my father's - became more pronounced as he encouraged me, beads of sweat rolling from his wrinkled forehead into his hair.

He put my hand over his mouth, his nostrils flaring for the last breath of fresh air.

I'd always killed for a reason.

My body took over instinctively.

His eyes flew out of their sockets, his eyebrows flew up to his forehead, his face flushed violently, his back arched against my grip, his hand gripped my wrist.

I stood still, calm, his pulse beating frantically beneath my fingertips.

It's just an animal, Shoto.

His big eyes looked into mine, as if begging me not to let him finish the journey alone. I didn't look away.

All men are animals.

I squeezed harder.

Then everything fell back, everything died, and my clean, virginal hands were covered in the blood I'd shed and the blood I'll shed again.

I stood up, took a step back, stopped, took another step back.

I'd never thought I was the 'good guy', but I'd never thought- I'd believed I was-

Am I capable of killing people who haven't done anything to me?

I couldn't answer that.

And that was an answer in itself.

Disturbed, the red tint of the Sharingan altering my vision, I looked up at the body whose extinguished gaze was turned to the sky.

I raised my hand and immediately the surrounding flames converged on him, charring his body.

The strange memory of a summer afternoon more than ten years ago came back to me.

You're losing it, Shoto. He's the one who guided your hand.

I made ice stars with Mizuki – Kenzei ? - Mizuki-

He was dying anyway.

-and I told him what I had almost done to Touya, what I wanted to do, what I should have done, and I told him how scared I was of myself, of what I was capable of, of what I would do one day, and-

The smell of burning pork wafted into my nose.

'It's not your abilities that scare us'

I watched the corpse burn in the flames, unable to look away, something irrational clutching at my gut, a buried emotion that had nothing to do with this unknown old man, choking my throat like my own venom rising from my bowels.

'It's you and what you're going to do with them that frightens us'

And for the first time in ten years I was afraid of myself and what I was capable of.

*

Author's note :

GUESS WHO'S BACK !

I know some of you worried I was going to dissapear forever - yet here we are exactly one full month after I announced my break (I want applause).

I'm very happy to be back, yet I can't say that this past month hasn't been blissful. I was getting onto one of the most important arc before getting off and I'm glad I did because I wouldn't have been able to write as freaking good as I did.

The story is gonna get more and intense as time goes on : I've prepared things that I like to think are (very) good plot twists and that I (think) no one has been able to guess.

Still got the problem of writing too much - we're nearly around 300k words, and I think the story will go anywhere between 450,000k and 500,000k (If I get really overboard) - but I'm sure that's only good news for you all.

I am also hopeful about opening the Kage tier when I finish writing everything (it will contain all of the chapters until the end of the story). We probably won't have it until june, but we'll definitely get it - I'll give your more details when it happens.

Anyway, don't hesitate to comment or anything and, as always, see you in the next update !