Interlude: Disillusionment

(POV ???)

"I'm exhausted." Echoed a hollow voice in a lonely, barely furnished apartment overlooking a city. A city…no, a society she was meant to defend.

There was once a time she would gaze upon the stars on nights very similar to this one and dream a simple dream.

"Heroes.." Her dream was to help people. To save lives. To do what's right and make the world just a little bit better along the way. Just like the stars hanging brightly in the night sky, she wanted to be that light shining in the darkness that people could look to for hope and guidance.

Her dream was to be a hero.

In the end she got her wish, and just like the numerous stars that dot the night sky, she would never shine bright enough to push away the darkness. Instead she would forever be surrounded by it, until eventually she burnt out and faded away with no one having noticed and the world moving on as if nothing had changed.

"It's all just a phony sham…" Looking at all the people that continue on with their lives, blissfully unaware of the darkness "necessary" for their so-called peace to remain the status quo. It made her sick to her stomach.

Thinking of all the blood that "needed" to be shed to maintain this peace. The blood she was forced to shed. It made her wonder, is a society built on blood and lies worth fighting for? A system with two sides to it. A front and A back. A system that needed both sides to maintain itself.

Was such a thing truly necessary for peace? Was peace always so fragile?

She was once told that it was and so she obeyed. She did her job and didn't ask anymore questions. She killed and lied then killed again. Over and over. She thought what she was doing was right. That being a hero just meant she had to make tough decisions. After all, this was the Hero Public Safety Commission that ordered her to do so. Surely they more than anyone save for maybe All Might himself knew what it meant to be a hero, right?

So why did it make her sick when the children looked up to her in awe? Why did it terrify her when they exclaimed their desires to follow in her footsteps? Why did she feel so dirty when they asked for a simple handshake?

She received no answer to the questions or nightmares that kept her up at night. She hasn't been to sleep for a few days now and she felt like she was just one step from being pushed over an edge she couldn't come back from.

*Bzzt*

Just as she was contemplating attempting to sleep again to clear her mind, her pager began to buzz. The little device only had one use, and that was to alert her when there was another job to be done. More than likely another life to be taken. She hated it.

She briefly considered ignoring the call but she knew that was futile. Her apartment was located in the same building as her employers. They'd just come barging in and question her absence if she did that. If she wanted to take a break she'd have to tell them in person.

With a sigh she stood up and prepared to get changed into her costume only to belatedly realize she was still wearing it. She had forgotten to shower and get changed when she got back from her last mission. How long ago was that anyway? What day was it even to begin with? Somewhere along the way they started to blend together.

She briefly checked the mirror near her door and took in her appearance one more time. What greeted her was a tall and very curvy woman. Long dark blue hair with numerous scattered pink streaks on it which she had casually tied into a ponytail with two shoulder-length full strands of hair left to frame her face. Her eyes were purple with a mauve shade framed by dark blue-colored angled eyebrows.

Her hero costume was a simple dark bodysuit with two plates underneath her chest and knee guards. She also wore a long scouter over her right eye, which was in the shape of a lightning bolt.

What really stood out however, was her tired maybe even dead looking eyes which used to be filled with so much life. Her outfit was actually in need of a bit of repair and had a few cuts and tears that were luckily barely noticeable unless one were looking for anything out of place. Still it all combined together gave off the impression of someone in serious need of rest.

Reasoning she was going to decline anyway and ask for a vacation, she decided to forgo a quick shower and just head to the briefing as is and take one when she got back. Perhaps seeing her current haggard appearance would earn her a few sympathy points and sway their decision.

She would never know that her casual decision that day would drastically change her fate in very unexpected ways.

-_-_-

"Ah, Nagant. Glad you could make it." Stepping out of the elevator onto the top floor of the building, she came face to face with the current president of the Hero Public Safety Commission (HPSC), Kirifuda Kasu.

He was a rather pale looking but surprisingly chiseled and broad shouldered man with blonde hair and glasses framing his angular face and black beady looking eyes. He was dressed in a standard business suit with no accessories to note. Looking to be in his late thirties to early forties, he gave off the impression of a typical corporate big shot.

"You know me, Sir. Always eager to help." She said completely deadpan in a monotone voice, with no small amount of sarcasm leaking out seeing as they both knew she didn't really have a choice in the matter.

"Indeed. Moving on, we have a new assignment for you." He carried on unperturbed, recently having gotten used to her growing sarcastic nature. Sometimes he wondered what happened to that starry eyed girl he invited to work with the Commission. But the thought never persisted long as he knew just how mentally taxing this job could be, even for him. No, especially for him.

He knew things and did things that many would find abhorrent and corrupt, but he swears he did it all in the name of preserving their peaceful but very fragile society. Someone had to make the tough choices in life and that burden unfortunately fell to him.

It's all for the greater good and all that jazz.

All Might may be the symbol of peace in this super powered society, but his light casts a very big shadow. A shadow many choose to hide in and perform reprehensible deeds while claiming to follow his example. When you have people that are capable of shaking the bedrock of society. People who use the system currently in place for their own agenda to wreak havoc…

…Sometimes law and order just won't cut it. Those troublemakers have to disappear along with their crimes. Things must be swept under the rug so to speak, or else the people's faith, their trust in heroes will be shaken.

At the end of the day, it's the people's trust in heroes that keeps this society afloat. Once that's gone? All hell will break loose. Which leads us back to the current situation. He fiddled with his laptop and switched on the display behind him to show the faces of two men in costumes he doubted she had ever seen before considering they just made their debut not too long ago.

"These two…they've been inciting ordinary civilians to commit crimes before hunting down those freshly minted "criminals" and collecting the rewards," He said plainly getting straight to the point, figuring she really didn't need any more information than that.

"Now though? These bad apple "heroes" are about to go missing. Understand?" He said only showing any kind of emotion at the mention of the two's current occupation.

Really that should have been the end of it. Another mission not to dissimilar to any other she had been given. She'd comply, go out for the night, and tomorrow two heroes would have mysteriously vanished overnight never to be heard from again. The public would briefly wonder what happened, then move on again in a week, likely caught up in what one of the other more high profile heroes got into recently.

Two people would be dead and the world would keep spinning, all thanks to the lovely little blue and purple haired cog that kept things running nice and smoothly.

But not tonight. Tonight she was tired. She hadn't slept in what felt like weeks. She was dirty, and no amount of soap and water could make her feel clean. No matter how much she scrubbed, nothing would wash away the filth painting her hands.

And so, even though she only came with the intention of asking for a vacation, tonight, she couldn't stop herself from asking the one question that constantly plagued her mind ever since the first time she put a bullet in someone's head.

"Is killing them really gonna improve society?"

[A/N: As I said before, I like even numbers so even though this is shorter than my usual chapters, I decided to break this interlude up into two. Especially since this was a great place to end this one. In the future the second interlude would have just been from someone else's POV or a different scene but there's no one else I really want to cut to right now that will play a big part in the next arc that I don't want to be a surprise.]