CHAPTER 334(Cellophane! Pt. II)

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CHAPTER START---

"This was not the plan!" Toga says as she paces back and forth, meanwhile Twice is sitting nearby simply watching her and Dabi is scrolling on his phone.

They were in an empty building at the edge of Tokyo, a few stories up to overlook the streets below.

"Relax," Dabi says. "His boss isn't in Japan, and they don't know what happened, we'll be fine."

As Toga is about to respond, Spinner enters the room from one of the connected doors, and puts his phone away.

"Well, what'd he say?" Toga asks, hope in her voice.

"Tomura said it'll be almost two days before the Nomu we need gets here," Spinner says. "The best bet is to hold him until then."

"So we're stuck here, that's just great," Dabi grumbles.

"You can head out if you want, the three of us came to deal with this, not to tie you down from handling your business."

"Nah, this could be fun," Dabi says. "Besides, if he tries anything, I'd be nice to kill one of those UA brats."

After a few more minutes of discussion, they hear scraping in one of the connected rooms.

"I think he's awake," Twice says happily.

"We should probably go say hi," Spinner turns and walks to the door.

Everyone follows him in to see a hastily emptied room.

All the furniture had been moved out and the sleeves were blocking the wall of glass overlooking the city.

They'd intended to take him to one of the more remote safe houses, but sadly, this apartment was the closest safehouse they had access to.

And nobody wanted to be caught while kidnapping Cellophane.

"Oh, it's you idiots," Cellophane says while looking over at them, his arms and legs tied to the wooden chair they've chained him to. "If you let me go now, I'll only hurt you a little bit, and I'll even put in a good word so you only spend the rest of your life in Tartarus."

"Tch, is that supposed to be a good deal?" Toga asks as she draws her knife, angrily pointing at Cellophane.

"It's the only deal that you will survive."

"You think I'm scared of you?!" Toga rushes forward, ready to pierce his heart, but Cellophane doesn't flinch, and isn't surprised when Spinner grabs her.

"Guess atleast one of you grew a brain, or piece of one," Cellophane scoffs as Spinner holds back the fuming girl.

Dabi and Twice join Spinner and Toga in the room, all standing in front of Cellophane, glaring down at him.

"I'm not interested in joining the boy band, so don't bother."

"As if we'd ever sing with you," Twice says.

Dabi rolls his eyes while Spinner doesn't react.

But Toga glares even harder, "How would it be a boy band, I'm a girl dumbass."

"I thought they only kept you around as a groupie…atleast that's what the rumors say."

"That's just trash the heroes spread to make me look bad, I'm still saving myself for the one I love!" Toga says while pointing her knife at him.

Beneath his visor, Cellophane glances at Spinner, who flinches in response to her words, and he sees his opening.

"Rumors? Really?" Cellophane asks. "And here I was considering joining you guys if the initiation rumor was true, about you testing out all the new recruits. I heard when you guys suddenly expanded you had to take them all in big groups…all at once."

"I'll kill you!" Toga lunges forward and stabs him in the right shoulder, but Cellophane doesn't flinch.

Instead, he takes the moment that she's close to him and whispers to her, "See, you're not cute when you're like this. No wonder no boy will ever love you, after all, your parents never even loved you."

Toga immediately tries to stab him again, but Spinner pulls her back before she can.

"Don't let him get to you so easily, he's just trying to piss us off," Dabi says. "This fucker thinks he's untouchable, that he's better than us, but he's not. That's why he's in the chair, and we're not."

"Well, I'm sure you're familiar with knowing when someone is superior, right?" Cellophane says. 

Dabi gives Cellophane a curious look, "Try me."

"You know, I'm the person Horizon trusts the most in our class, we're actually pretty great friends, so he told me something interesting about you."

"And what's that?" Dabi asks.

"He told me your daddy never loved you, he didn't even go looking for your corpse, that he had a party and got right back to making a better kid the moment you were a memory," Cellophane says. "That's why you joined the league of idiots right? To get back at whoever your dad is, you're a manchild who deserves whatever is coming to you."

Dabi stares at Cellophane, and drops of blood flow from his eyes.

He wipes them away and smiles, "damn, you're pretty good at this. But I know UA doesn't teach this stuff, he's making you brats into real monsters, huh?"

"It's not hard when you just have to be honest," Cellophane nods to Spinner. "You should try it sometime, honesty."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Spinner asks, hand itching to draw his sword, already tired of hearing their captive speak.

Cellophane sighs, "How about you take off my visor so we can talk face to face?"

Twice shrugs, "Sure, that thing looks super stuffy anyway, not like my super cool mask!"

Yet again Spinner has to stop one of his friends from doing something stupid, preventing Twice from removing the visor.

"How about you and Himiko just, keep your hands to yourself for the rest of this, alright?"

"But, don't we want to know who he is?" Twice asks.

"No," Spinner says. "Team Horizon has gone to extreme lengths, aside from Tsukuyomi, to hide their identities. We're trying to minimize Horizon's reasons for actively hunting us. The best case scenario is we drop this guy off somewhere, Horizon will know it's a distraction but he will have to respond personally, and then we get some work done elsewhere simultaneously."

"Ohhh, yeah that makes sense," Toga says. "But can I stab him some more?"

"No, we want him as whole as possible, and as for whatever is beneath that visor," Spinner leans forward and taps the visor. "If we know, Horizon will hunt us across the planet if he has to, right now we're barely on his radar, and we'll keep it that way."

"Don't you think it's a bit too late for that?" Dabi asks, gesturing to their captive. "I don't see a way to step backward after this."

"You're probably right, but this guy isn't a problem for us and won't change anything on the battlefield, nothing wrong with returning him in one piece and hoping for the best."

Toga folds her arms, "Well the longer we have him the more likely his boss is to appear here, let's just do whatever we're doing quickly."

"I'm working on it."

"You've been saying that all night," Toga mutters.

"Damn," Cellophane says, drawing their attention back to him. "You know, Spinner, it's moments like these I'm glad my girlfriend doesn't talk much, I can't imagine dealing with this weirdo."

"She's not my girlfriend," Spinner says.

"Oh, sorry, I just figured with the looks you were giving her…you know."

This causes Toga to look over at her friend, "Spinner? What's he talking about?"

"Uh, it's," Spinner begins stuttering and awkwardly stepping away. "It's nothing, I swear, he's just trying to get in our heads."

Toga looks genuinely hurt by that, feeling as if once again she was unworthy of love, and beneath his visor, Sero smiles.

"I guess you aren't his type," Cellophane says. "Sorry, but I guess I was right the first time."

Hearing that almost pushes Toga to tears, and at a loss for words, Spinner steps forward and gently hugs her.

Beneath his visor Sero glances at his hud yet again, seeing his communication systems still being jammed, and quietly commanding it to reset yet again.

"If you love her, you should tell her," Cellophane says, and Dabi looks around confused as somehow this touching moment was taking place mid-interrogation. "What we all do is dangerous, we can't afford to waste a moment."

Spinner takes a step away from Toga, and gently wipes some of her tears away, "we should talk after, just us, alright?"

She looks up at him through teary eyes and nods, smiling brightly for the very last time in her life.

"I don't get it," Cellophane says, capitalizing on this serene moment of vulnerability. "You're not living glamorously, you're always on the running, looking over your shoulders all the time, but…you're so committed to being in the League Of Villains, why?"

Dabi doesn't move, only staring at Cellophane.

But Spinner steps forward, speaking clearly and simply. "Because this is our family. What about you, I doubt the 'True Hero' types follow Horizon, so, why?"

"Well, at first, it was the money, then, it was because we were friends," Cellophane confesses. "But along the way, I liked how he'd always push me to do better, I pulled ahead of all my rivals, I got the respect of the people I had on posters in my room, and I even got an awesome girlfriend. Not to mention the lifestyle…and all he's done to help me and my family."

"So you owe him, is that it?" Spinner asks, disgusted. "Stain was right about you people, you're no Hero."

"Yeah, but, there is one more thing, but I guess it's a bit stupid that—" Cellophane's voice became lower with each word, as if he were shy and embarrassed about what he was about to confess. "No, I guess, it's too embarrassing. Nobody would ever take it seriously."

Resonating with those words, after feeling ashamed for being himself his entire life, Spinner's heart demands he reach out to help the person in front of him.

So he takes two steps forward in front of Cellophane, and leans in.

"You can't tell anyone I'm saying this but," Cellophane whispers to Spinner. "The reason I follow Horizon, even while he's so violent, and ruthless, and after all the things he does to villains, it's because, well…"

"Why?" Spinner asks, quietly.

"Because I like it."

"Wh— AHHHH!" Spinner screams as Cellophane breaks the legs of the chair with his pure leg strength and kicks Spinner in the knees, shattering both kneecaps in one moment.

This causes him to get pushed back into the wall behind him, shattering the chair.

In their moment of confusion, before the villains can react Cellophane spins and throws a piece of the chair at Twice's face, making it cross in front of Dabi.

Dabi fires a small flame at the piece of wood while Cellophane moves in the opposite direction, placing Toga between Dabi and himself and closing the distance on her.

Dabi hesitates to fire for a moment while Toga rushes forward, and twice begins making Doubles to grab Cellophane.

Cellophane makes quick work of Toga by spinning and kicking her in the side of her leg, breaking her leg, then in the same motion grabbing her hair and throwing her toward the door the villains entered from.

Dabi takes this opportunity to release a massive blast of flames, not caring about the building or taking the Hero alive, simply wanting this to be over.

The blue light blinds everyone in the small room, who isn't wearing a high-tech adaptive visor.

Cellophane barely moves to the right, the entire left side of his body being scorched black in the process.

But his adrenaline is so high that he keeps moving, and the flames are so intense they instantly kill the nerves, resulting in his left side feeling completely numb.

He reaches Dabi and grabs him, swinging him around and throwing him into the group of Twice Doubles, destroying all of them in one motion as Dabi's flames run wild.

The immense heat reaches Spinner and he ignores his pain, rolling out of the way and grabbing a knife from his belt.

He looks up just in time to see Cellophane about to land with a stomp directly onto Dabi's skull, and throws the knife into the Hero's calf, causing him to miss.

Dabi takes his chance and his entire body begins to release smoke as he tries to kill the hero with one vertical fire blast, one that would pierce through the ceiling and roof of the building and spare his allies.

But to his surprise, Cellophane doesn't hesitate to remove the knife from his leg and pierce Dabi's hand, then pin that hand to the villain's chest, all in one motion.

"Argh!" Dabi screams as he feels the sharp pain in his chest. 

Then Cellophane grabs him by the leg and spins him, throwing him through the door to the other room, shattering it, before blue flames erupt in that room.

Seeing all the villains dealt with, for now, Cellophane looks down at his body, and feels himself getting tired as the adrenaline wears off.

'I need to get out of here,' he decides. 'But I can't just go tell Horizon I got captured…I need something.'

To Spinner's horror, he's forced to watch with his broken legs, as Cellophane walks over to Toga and stomps on her head, knocking her out in one hit, then slings her over his shoulder.

The Hero then begins walking to the glass wall that was now exposed thanks to Dabi's attacks, with the villain on his shoulder.

But before he leaves, he takes one last look at Spinner, making sure the villain remembers this moment.

"I told you, you should never miss an opportunity to tell the person you love how you really feel, this life is too dangerous to be wasting time," Cellophane says, then sighs. "But I suppose you should be used to this, huh? You finally found a girl who might actually be interested in a loser like you, and you can't even protect her…I could never imagine being so pathetic."

Those words echo in Spinner's mind as he sees Cellophane use her as a cushion between himself and the glass and leap out the window, taking her away from them.

After swinging a few blocks away, toward the nearest police station, Cellophane's communication systems are back online, only for a strange video to start playing in his visor.

It showed the earth, but from many nations were littered with red circles, blocking entire specious of the globe.

'What the hell is this, and why won't it cut off?'

As he arrives at the police station, he looks around to see all the electronic billboards and people's phones are showing the same video.

Then words finally appear.

'Hello world, I am Tech…'

END CHAPTER---