"They hurt me," Hope whispered, her voice barely audible, choked with tears.
"They won't let me go…"
Hope's mother stood frozen, her body locked by Issei's quirk.
His eyes glowed a cold blue.
Her face twisted with rage, her voice a strained hiss. "You… little brat… you don't know what you're messing with!"
Her hand twitched toward her purse, maybe for a weapon, but Issei's gaze tightened, the frost thickening, the air turning icy.
"Be quiet," Issei said, his voice sharp, cutting through her defiance. His blue eyes bored into her, unyielding. "You're done. Tell me who's keeping her. What are they doing to her?" His quirk squeezed her mind, demanding answers.
Her lips trembled, her voice a shaky whisper. "You… can't beat… the HS—" Before she could finish, a sharp glint flashed on the horizon.
A rifle's crack split the air, and Hope's mother's head jerked back, blood spraying as a bullet tore through her skull.
She collapsed, dead before she hit the ground, her body crumpling like a broken doll.
Issei's senses screamed, pinpointing the shooter—a figure in black standing near the car, rifle raised, already aiming again.
The next bullet was coming, fast.
Gran Torino lunged, activating his quirk moving to shove Issei out of the way, his voice barking, "Kid, move!"
But Issei pushed Hope into Gran Torino's arms as he calculated there wasn't enough time for Grandpa to reach them, her small body stumbling as the old man caught her.
The next instant, pain erupted in Issei's chest, a searing heat as a bullet punched through his left lung, exiting his back in a spray of blood.
He staggered, gasping.
Hope screamed, "Issei!".
Dr. Sato, frozen in shock, dropped to her knees, her hands shaking. "No, no, no…" she stammered, her voice useless in the chaos.
The shooter adjusted their aim, the rifle's barrel glinting, ready for another shot.
Issei staggered, his body crumpling to the grass, a bullet hole through his left lung, blood gushing from the wound and spilling on the ground.
Gran Torino, his face twisted with rage, moved faster than his old body should allow, his quirk—propelling him toward the sniper like a missile.
His eyes blazed, the gentle old man gone, He will kill today...
"You bastard!" he roared, his cane discarded, fists clenched, ready to tear the shooter apart.
But before he could close the distance, the sniper's earpiece crackled, a sharp voice barking an order.
The figure hesitated, then lowered the rifle, the car turned on tires screeching as they sped into the night.
At the same moment
Hope collapsed, clutching her head, a pained gasp escaping her lips.
An invisible quirk effect surged through her, wiping her memories of the "HSPC" , erasing the name from the training, the drugs, the cell.
Her eyes glazed over, her body slumping to the ground, her sobs fading into confused whimpers.
The HSPC was covering their tracks, retreating, leaving her mind a blank slate to protect their secrets.
Issei lay on the blood-soaked grass, his senses sharp despite the agony, catching the sniper's retreat, Hope's collapse, Gran Torino's angry shout.
But he couldn't move, couldn't breathe right, his left lung a ruined mess, blood pooling inside, choking him with every shallow gasp.
Dr. Sato, shaking off her shock, scrambled for her phone, her voice frantic as she called for an ambulance.
"Hurry… park... kid's dying!" Her hands trembled, her eyes wide with panic.
The thought of Hope being safe flickered in Issei's mind, a fleeting relief, but it was drowned by a primal, overwhelming terror.
Death loomed, cold and absolute, its shadow swallowing everything else.
No matter who he was—hero, kid, fighter—death was the ultimate fear, a truth humanity had wrestled with for eons and never conquered.
His mind screamed, a single, desperate chant:
I don't want to die
I don't want to die
I don't want to die
I don't want to die
I don't want to die
I don't want to die
I don't want to die
I don't want to die
I don't want to die
His chest burned, each breath a wet, gurgling struggle, blood soaking his shirt, pooling beneath him.
Gran Torino glanced back at Issei, his face paling as he saw the blood, the boy's shallow breaths.
"Damn it...kid, hold on!" he barked, scrambling to his side, his hands pressing hard on the wound, blood slicking his fingers.
He picked him up ready to rush towards the nearest hospital.
"You're not going anywhere, you hear me? '."
His eyes were wet, his jaw tight, fighting the fear of losing the boy he'd raised.
Hope stirred, her eyes unfocused, her voice a faint murmur. "Issei…?" She crawled toward him, her hands shaking, her mind a fog from the quirk's wipe, but her fear for him made it easier to focus.
"Don't… don't go…gradpa he'll die.." She said to Her blood control sealed a cut on her own arm, instinctively she focused on Issei...
Sropping his bleeding with her quirk... even if she never tried it on someone else before she die it on first try in the time of crisis.
Torino's eyes widened a little as he understood and decided to wait for the ambulance...as the blood stop was only temporary solution and rudimentary as hope wasn't a healer.
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder, red and blue lights flashing through the trees.
Dr. Sato knelt beside Issei, her hands hovering, useless but trying. "Stay with us, Issei, please…" she whispered, tears in her eyes, guilt and fear choking her.
She'd doubted him, called him paranoid, and now he was dying for being right.
Gran Torino's hands shook, blood seeping through his fingers, his gruff facade cracking under the weight of helplessness.
Hope clung to Issei's hand, her tears falling.
The ambulance screeched to a stop, paramedics spilling out, their shouts cutting through the night. "Move, move!" one yelled, dropping beside Issei, tearing open a medical kit.
They worked fast, cutting away his shirt, slapping gauze on the wound, but the blood kept coming, his lung collapsing, his breaths fading. "He's critical!" a paramedic barked, signaling for a stretcher. "We need to move, now!"
Issei's vision darkened, Hope's face the last thing he saw.
The paramedics lifted him, Gran Torino and Hope following, the old man's voice hoarse, urging them to hurry and take the girl with them.
The world faded, the sirens a distant hum, as Issei's fight hung on the edge, his life bleeding out under the park's cold sky.
---
The ambulance roared through the city, its sirens blaring, cutting through the night.
Issei lay on the stretcher, his body strapped down, an oxygen mask pressed to his face, but each breath was a struggle, blood gurgling in his chest.
The paramedics worked frantically, one pumping a bag to force air into his ruined lung, another starting an IV, fluids dripping fast to counter the blood loss. "BP's crashing!" one shouted, their voice tense. "We're losing him!"
Hope sat crammed in the corner, her knees pulled to her chest, her eyes locked on Issei.
Her mind was a blur, the memory wipe leaving gaps, but her fear for him was sharp, real, cutting through the fog. "… please…" she whispered, her hands trembling, her blood control unable to do much.
Until it surprisingly did her eyes became sharper as she instinctively for a moment healed him enough putting all her energy and thought in saving him.
One of the paramedics looked baffled as Issei stabilized slightly., " It's a miracle!"
Dr. Sato alongside Torino followed in her car, her hands shaking on the wheel, her mind racing with guilt.
She'd failed Issei, AGAIN.
The hospital loomed ahead, its lights bright against the dark, and the ambulance screeched into the bay, doors flying open.
Medics rushed Issei inside, barking orders—"Trauma bay, now! GSW, left lung, massive hemorrhage!"—as Hope trailed, stopped at the ER doors by a nurse.
"You can't go in," she said, her voice firm but kind. "Let them work."
Hope's legs buckled, and Gran Torino just behind caught her, easing her to a chair.
"Breathe, kid," he said, his voice gentle but strained, his eyes fixed on the ER doors.
Hope's tears fell silently, her voice a whisper her quirk finally stopped working..
"He… he saved me… he can't die…" Her memories were fractured but not gone.
His heart monitor beeped erratically, his blood pressure barely registering. "He's in shock," a surgeon snapped, prepping for emergency surgery. "Get him to the OR, we need to stop the bleeding!"
But then, unnoticed for a moment, Issei's eyes fluttered open, glazed and unfocused, staring through a small gap in the chaos—a window to the left.
His gaze locked on something beyond the glass, something no one else saw.
It was , a being that defied description. Its form shifted constantly, features melting and reforming before Issei could grasp them.
One moment, half a face—sharp, skeletal—then it warped, smooth and eyeless, then jagged again.
Its "eyes" were swirling pools of blood, churning endlessly, pulling at his soul.
The air grew heavy, the world distorting as if reality itself was bending, folding in ways humans couldn't perceive, yet the doctors and nurses moved unaffected, oblivious to the higher-dimensional shift.
It was Death straight Up...
Death walked through the wall, untouched by the physical world, its presence a cold weight.
Space twisted around it, the room warping—walls curving, lights stretching—yet only Issei saw.
It approached, slow and deliberate, until it loomed over him, its ever-changing face inches from his and then settling on his own.
"Ready to go…?" it asked, its voice a chilling echo of Issei's own, low and haunting.
Issei's heart stuttered, fear clawing at him, but something deeper surged.
His eyes lit up, a faint blue glow sparking in them, a vision forming: a world where he denied death and broke its grip.
His mind screamed, "Never! "
The word tore from his throat, a roar that shook the air, unheard by the doctors but felt in the warped space around him.
Death just smiled in return...
His eyes snapped open again, this time in the real world, his hands wrapped tightly around the neck of a nurse who was administering a sedative shot.
She gasped, her syringe clattering to the floor, her eyes wide with shock. "Stop—!" she choked, but Issei's grip loosened instantly, his glazed eyes clearing as he realized what he'd done.
The room was still, the doctors frozen, staring at the boy who should be dying.
A burning blue light erupted from the bullet hole in his chest, sizzling like fire, unnatural and fierce.
The wound glowed, and before their eyes, bone regrew, knitting together in seconds, muscles weaving back into place, torn tissue sealing as if time itself reversed.
His lung, shredded moments ago, rebuilt itself, the blood in his chest evaporating, leaving only faint scars. Issei gasped, a full, clean breath, his heart monitor steadying, its frantic beeps slowing to a strong, even rhythm.
He shoved himself up, his body trembling but whole, his eyes wild with adrenaline and confusion.
The nurse stumbled back, clutching her throat, while a doctor barked, "Restrain him!"
But Issei's strength faltered, his vision spotting black, the surge of power draining him.
He collapsed back onto the stretcher, unconscious, his body healed but exhausted, the blue light fading to nothing.
The doctors stood stunned, their hands still, the room silent except for the steady beep of Issei's monitor.
"What… what just happened?" a nurse whispered, her voice shaking.
The surgeon, pale, shook his head. "I don't know… but he's stable. Get him to the ICU, now."
...
The ICU was quiet, the sterile air heavy with the hum of machines and the faint beep of Issei's heart monitor.
A month had passed since the park, since the bullet tore through his lung, since the blue light had burned through his wound, rebuilding him in defiance of Death itself.
Issei lay in the hospital bed, his eleven-year-old body a shadow of what it had been.
His muscles had withered, leaving him skin and bones, his cheeks hollow, his arms thin as sticks.
The doctors couldn't explain it—no infection, no disease, just his body's "natural process," they said, as if it had burned itself out to keep him alive.
Hope sat by his bed, her small hands folded, her wings tucked under a blanket, her face pale but softer than it had been.
Gran Torino sat nearby, his cane propped against the chair, his gruff face lined with worry, his sharp eyes softening as he watched over both kids.
The police investigation had turned up with grim news: Hope's father's body, dumped in a forest near the city, a bullet hole in his forehead, matching the way the mother was killed.
The case was stalled after that, the tracks covered, but Gran Torino hadn't stopped pushing, making calls, leaning on old hero contacts.
Issei's eyes fluttered open, glazed at first, then sharpening as he took in the room.
His body felt heavy, weak, like it wasn't his own, but his senses were still sharp—the antiseptic smell, Hope's faint floral scent, Gran Torino's steady breathing.
He saw their faces, sad and tired.
"Hey, why the long faces? It's not like somebody died."
Hope and Gran Torino froze, their eyes wide, shock replacing sorrow.
The words landed wrong, too close to the truth.
And nobody liked that.
Issei's attempt at humor fell flat, the room heavy with unspoken pain.
He coughed, a faint wheeze from his healed, and muttered, "Tough crowd…"
Hope's face crumpled, tears welling, and she lunged forward, trying to hug him, her wings twitching free of the blanket. "Issei!" she cried, her voice raw, relief and fear tangled together.
Gran Torino, quick despite his age, grabbed her gently but firmly, pulling her back with a comical grunt. "Easy, kid!" he barked, his gruff voice tinged with humor to lighten the moment.
"He's weak as a twig right now. You'll squash him!" His eyes twinkled, but his grip was steady, protecting Issei's fragile state.
Hope stopped, her hands hovering, tears spilling.
"I… I'm so sorry …" she whispered, her voice small.
"It's fine...I'm here amd I'm fine" he said, his voice soft, strained from disuse.
He tried to sit up, but his atrophied muscles failed, his arms shaking.
He sank back, frustrated, his thin frame trembling. "Just… lookin' like a skeleton for now."
"You scared the hell outta us. Doctors said you shouldn't be alive, not after… whatever you did." Gran Torino paused, his eyes searching Issei's, looking for answers the boy didn't have.
"That light, the way you healed… it took everything outta you. You've been out a month."
Hope sniffled, wiping her eyes. "I… don't remember much," she said, her voice shaky. "But I remember you… you promised to save me." Her hand reached for his, careful this time, her fingers cold but steady. Issei squeezed back, weak but determined, his senses catching her faint warmth, her steady pulse.
"What about… them?" Issei asked, his voice low.
Gran Torino's jaw tightened, his gruff exterior hardening. "Cops found her dad's body. Whoever it was they're coverin' their tracks, very well." His voice held a promise, the old hero ready to fight.
Issei nodded, his mind racing despite his body's weakness.
"You rest," Gran Torino said, standing, his cane tapping. "Both of you. I'm gettin' food—hospital slop's terrible."
Hope stayed, her hand in Issei's, her eyes searching his. "You… you'll get better, right?" she asked, her voice small, afraid. Issei met her gaze, his weak smile real this time. "Yeah. I promised, didn't I?" His voice was faint, but his resolve was iron.
...
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Power Stones and Reviews please