Two days later:
Akira sat in a caged room.
On his wrists, quirk-suppressing cuffs hummed slowly. They were heavy, metallic, and locked tight around his wrist. They were supposed.... as the name suggests... suppress quirks of the person it was put upon.
'Supposed' to.
Akira looked down at his hands... and a small flicker of flame danced in them.
He could feel it. Right there, beneath the surface, humming with the same warmth it always carried. The red flame, along with the blue flame. Both of them, alive, present, accessible. If he wanted to, he could light a fire right now. Melt the cuffs. Burn through the door. Walk out of this building and into the street and nobody in this facility had the power to stop him.
But he didn't.
Because Nezu had asked him to trust the process. And according to him, Jian had a plan.
So he sat. And he waited. And he looked at his hands.
Why aren't the cuffs working?
The more he thought about it, only one answer came into his mind.
Aurelia.
It had to be connected. The purple flame, or whatever Aurelia had unlocked inside him during their meeting in the mindscape — it had changed the fundamental architecture of his quirk. The cuffs were designed to suppress a quirk. What if his quirk was no longer a quirk? What if it was something much greater?
He would figure it out later, but right now, there were more pressing things to think about.
He closed his eyes and let his mind drift backward. Two days.... so much had happened in two days.
When he had woken up the second time in the hospital, the room had been different.
Nezu was not there to greet him this time around.
This time, Mei sat in the corner, her legs crossed, her arms folded, her claymore unsummoned but her posture carrying the weight of a weapon that could appear at any moment. She looked tired....
And beside the bed, sitting in the chair closest to him, was his mother.
Honoka looked like she hadn't slept. Her eyes were red. Her hair, usually perfect, was in a mess. She was wearing the same dress she had worn at the Sports Festival, and was still barefoot.
Her fingers wrapped around his, squeezing with a grip that suggested she hadn't let go since they put him in the bed.
Akira had looked at her. Then at Mei.
Mei met his eyes. She gave him a single nod, stood up, and walked to the door.
"Glad you're alright, kid," she said over her shoulder. Then, softer: "I'll give you two some space."
The door closed behind her.
And Akira was alone with his mother.
The silence that followed was different from the silence with Nezu. Nezu's silence had been comfortable....
But this? This silence was heavy. It sat in the room like a physical thing, pressing down on Akira's chest, making it hard to breathe for reasons that had nothing to do with his injuries.
He looked at Honoka.
And he was afraid.
Not of the HPSC. Not of the trial. Not of Madam President or the legal consequences or the political fallout or any of the hundred things that should have been terrifying him.
He was afraid of what his mother would think of him.
Because he had killed a man.
He had erased a human being from existence — a terrible human being, a murderer, a monster, but a human being nonetheless — and he had done it deliberately, consciously, with full awareness of what he was doing.
He had become, in that moment, exactly what the HPSC had feared. Exactly what All Might had worried about. Exactly what the word "fear" in "Symbol of Fear" actually meant.
And now his mother was sitting beside his bed, holding his hand, looking at him with those red, exhausted eyes, and he didn't know if what he saw in them was love or grief or disappointment or something worse.
He couldn't speak. The words were stuck somewhere between his chest and his throat, trapped behind a wall of fear that no purple flame could burn through.
Honoka looked at him..... And she knew. She knew exactly what was going in her son's head.
Of course she did. She was his mother. She had raised him and knew every expression his face could produce.
She knew he was afraid of her.
And it broke her heart.
She reached forward. Gently. Her hand cupped his chin and lifted his face until his eyes met hers.
Then she pulled him into a hug.
A soft hug.
She held him like he was the most precious thing in the world. Because he was.
"Mom?" Akira said. His voice cracked on the single syllable.
"I am so proud of you, baby."
The words hit him like a wave, and something broke inside Akira.
Not his composure. Not his strength. Not his willpower. Something deeper. It was the weight... the weight he carried
It didn't disappear. It would never disappear. He had killed a man, and that would live inside him forever. But the weight moved from crushing to carrying, from burden to foundation, the same way it had shifted in the fire arena when he thought of his family before creating the barrier.
His mother was proud of him.
And that was all that mattered.
He hugged her back.
His arms wrapped around her and he held her with a strength that was gentle despite everything his body was capable of.
"Thank you, Mom."
A single tear ran down his face. Just one. It traced a line from his eye to his jaw and fell onto his mother's shoulder.
"Thank you, Mom," he repeated... just to be sure his mother heard it.
She said nothing. She didn't need to. She just held him, her face pressed into his hair, her hands on his back, her body shaking with the quiet, private tears of a mother who had watched her son die and come back and was now holding him in a hospital bed and would not be letting go any time soon.
They stayed like that for a long time.
Just a son with his mother.....
***
Back in the present, Akira opened his eyes as he stared at his wrists again.
He flexed his fingers. Felt the warmth pulse beneath his skin. Then smiled, just barely.
Later, he thought. I will figure it out later.
Just then, the door opened, and two figures entered. The first was Madam President, and behind her was Nezu.
"It's time for your trial," Madam President said.
Akira looked at her. His crimson eyes met her dark ones. He said nothing... because it was not needed.
He held her gaze for three seconds. Then he looked at Nezu.
Nezu nodded.... and so, Akira understood, it's time.
Akira stood up. The cuffs clinked against each other. The guards outside the door tensed as their hands went to their weapons.
Akira ignored them and walked forward.
They moved through the detention facility in silence. Madam President in front. Akira in the middle. Nezu beside him. Guards flanking. The corridors were grey, sterile, lined with doors that led to other cells, other prisoners, other people who had crossed lines that society had drawn.
They reached the exit.
The doors opened.
And the world hit Akira like a wall.
Noise..... Bright light... and people... a lot of people. The street outside the facility was packed — hundreds of people, pressed against barricades that the police had erected, held back by officers in riot gear who looked like they would rather be anywhere else.
Signs. Banners. Posters. Everywhere.
FREE AKIRA
#SYMBOLOFFEAR
HE SAVED US
THE HERO WE NEED
FUCK THE GOVERNMENT
A massive banner stretched across the street between two buildings, which was hand-painted: AKIRA SHUZENJI DID NOTHING WRONG.
The crowd saw him walk out, and the noise went insane.
"A-KI-RA! A-KI-RA! A-KI-RA!"
Cameras flashed. Reporters surged against the barricades, microphones extended, questions shouted over the noise. Helicopters circled overhead, their cameras aimed downward.
Akira looked at the crowd.
These people had watched him bleed. They had watched him fight. They had watched him die and come back. They had watched him burn a villain alive in the sky.
And they were here. At seven in the morning, on a weekday, standing outside a courthouse with hand-painted signs, chanting his name.
He raised his cuffed hand.
Akira gave them a small wave, and the crowd went insane.
The chanting doubled in volume. People jumped, screamed, cried. A woman in the front row was holding a photograph of Akira's blood oath and sobbing. A group of teenagers had painted their hair red in solidarity. An old man in a wheelchair was holding a sign that simply read: THANK YOU.
Madam President walked faster. The wave had not been authorised. The public display of support had not been anticipated at this scale. Every second Akira spent in front of these cameras was a second that the HPSC's carefully crafted narrative — "rogue student, public menace, unauthorised quirk usage" — eroded further.
They entered the Supreme Court.
The noise faded behind them as the massive doors closed. And then the courtroom doors opened.
It was enormous. Tiered seating rose on both sides like a theatre, filled with people — politicians, military officials, hero agency representatives, media personnel with press badges, legal teams with stacks of documents.
Akira's eyes, on the other hand.... found them immediately.
On the left side of the gallery, in the section reserved for the defence's associates, Jian sat with his legs crossed. Beside him, Mei. Wei, Na, and Xiaoqing sat behind them. Yu was beside Wei, her tablet ready.
Reika sat with her hands clasped in her lap, her face composed but her eyes bright with emotion. Kiyomasa sat beside her, immovable as stone. And between them, Momo.
Nia was absent as pets were not allowed in the court.
Momo was wearing a simple dress with her normal ponytail.
When she saw Akira, everything else in the room ceased to exist for her.
He gave them a nod.
They nodded back.
We are here, we are with you, and we are not leaving.
Akira was led to the defendant's podium — a raised platform at the centre of the courtroom, facing the judge's bench. He stood behind it.
He looked up at the judge — an elderly man in traditional robes.
The judge surveyed the courtroom and nodded.
He lifted his gavel.
And brought it down.
BANG.
"Let this session begin."
+++++++++++++++++++++
Something happening with Akira's 'quirk'.....🔥🔥
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