Chapter Text
What happened in Tartarus—that incident—passed through the Hero Public Safety Commission’s hands and came out the other side with an entirely different name.
According to the official statement—
Tartarus had suffered a large-scale power failure.
Security systems in several sections had temporarily gone offline.
Villain inmates had seized the opening and attempted a mass breakout, plunging the prison into chaos.
But heroes had been deployed immediately.
The site had been sealed.
The attempted escape had been suppressed through a large-scale containment operation.
The news repeated the same lines, over and over, like a prayer with all the meaning scraped out.
“Security collapse due to a power failure.”
“A coordinated mass escape attempt by villains.”
“Multiple heroes deployed. Situation contained.”
And beyond that—
Not a single channel. Not a single article. Nothing.
People believed the sentence they were given.
They said Tartarus was “back to normal.”
And everyone walked past that day without ever knowing what had really happened inside those walls.
<Hero Public Safety Commission Hospital, Mirko’s Private Room>
The white corridor was still too clean.
Through the narrow gap beneath the door, a faint mechanical sound leaked out at steady intervals—thin, clinical, indifferent.
Hawks met the doctor’s eyes for only a second.
“The cells are still present,” the doctor said quietly, “but her condition has improved significantly.”
When Hawks opened the door—
Mirko stood by the window.
One hand gripped a strength trainer. The other braced against the window frame as she stared out at something beyond the glass.
The room hadn’t changed.
A mini-fridge. A treadmill. Wreaths and gift baskets that looked like they belonged to a celebration someone had staged for the cameras.
Mirko looked the same, too—hospital gown, the hard outline of her body beneath it, the way she stared out the window like she was waiting for an enemy to crawl up from the horizon.
But when she turned to face him—
She was different.
Eyes that didn’t run.
A gaze that didn’t dodge.
Her shoulders were squared. Her ears stood straight up. Her chin was slightly raised, her mouth set tight like a lock that had finally decided what it would and wouldn’t open for.
Her grip tightened around the trainer, slow and deliberate.
Creeeak.
Tendons rose, vanished, rose again. There was tension in her—but not the kind that collapsed. It felt… aligned. Like someone forcing their body and mind to point in the same direction again, one breath at a time.
Hawks let out a careful exhale.
“How’s your body?”
Mirko squeezed once more—then released.
She lifted her head. Her gaze didn’t waver.
“I’m fine.”
The next words came slower, heavier.
“It’s all gone. The hallucinations… the voices. All of it.”
A faint smile tugged at her mouth.
Not the wide, feral grin she used to wear like armor. Just the smallest expression a living person could manage.
Hawks tried to smile back. He managed something small—something that looked like relief.
“Thank god.”
Mirko didn’t hold the expression.
The trainer hit the bedside table with a soft thud.
Thuk.
Her face tightened again, and she looked straight into his eyes.
“Tartarus,” she said. “The damage report.”
Hawks’s jaw went rigid.
“We’re still investigating.”
“The final count—”
“Security staff.” Mirko cut him off like a blade.
“And… the inmates.”
The air in the room snapped into place around those words.
Hawks lowered his gaze for a moment, then lifted it again.
He didn’t run. But before he spoke, he swallowed once—like he needed to force the sound past his throat.
“The staff…” he said carefully. “Some of them had minor injuries.”
That part he could say.
The next part was the problem.
“The inmates…”
A pause.
Beep—.
The monitor filled the gap like it wanted to pretend it belonged there.
Hawks made himself finish.
“Dozens injured.”
And then—his voice caught.
“...Seven dead.”
The words landed in the room with more weight than metal.
Mirko’s gaze dropped. Her lips parted as she let out a small, thin breath.
Something inside her eyes sank—slowly, inexorably—like she’d just stepped off the edge and found the real fall waiting beneath.
“You can’t say it was all you,” Hawks said quickly.
His voice was careful, and at the same time—desperate.
“Some of them got taken out by the security systems or the guard bots. And in the chaos… they turned on each other.”
“Kyūdai Garaki.”
The moment that name entered the air, everything froze.
Only the monitor sound slipped across the silence, razor-thin.
Mirko didn’t blink.
“...I killed him.”
Short. Flat. No excuses. No decoration.
If anything, her eyes locked more firmly on the center of the room—as if looking away would be surrender.
“And…”
Her voice didn’t shake. But something underneath it did.
“...I tortured a lot of them.”
The stench of blood and heat.
The cold bite of metal.
Screams sharp enough to tear the inside of your ears.
The tremor under her palm—someone’s body trying to become smaller than pain.
It all stayed vivid in her memory, as if it had been burned into her.
Hawks opened his mouth to protest—to defend her—
Mirko cut him off first.
“This happened because I attacked Tartarus in the first place.”
Hawks’s mouth opened—then shut.
Mirko dropped her gaze for a moment.
She inhaled—slow.
Exhaled—long.
Then she asked, too quietly:
“What about the others.”
Hawks tried to force a smile on reflex. It didn’t make it to his eyes. His throat locked before his face could finish pretending.
“They’re… okay.” He touched his own neck, too quick. “I only got a light cut on my throat—”
“Keigo.”
Mirko interrupted him—without raising her voice, without pushing.
She just held him in place with her gaze.
“Tell me the truth.”
Hawks exhaled.
Her rabbit instincts didn’t allow this kind of lie. Not from him. Not here.
His mouth wouldn’t open easily. His tongue felt stuck to the roof of it.
“Mt. Lady…” His voice went tight. “She had a serious head injury.”
Something inside Mirko stopped dead.
A flash—bright and brutal.
Luna Fall.
The memory of her heel driving down—
The huge shadow collapsing—blonde hair soaking red.
Her fingertips trembled. Just barely.
Hawks swallowed again.
This wasn’t a report. This was hammering nails into someone’s chest.
“...Tamaki,” he managed.
The word cracked dry at the end.
“Torn ligaments in his right arm.”
“Best Jeanist…”
He rolled his tongue like he was searching for a softer way to say it, and found none.
“A rib punctured his lung.”
Hawks bowed his head. His voice dropped lower.
“And…”
The pause was long.
“...Shiozaki was critical.”
The air in the room sank with that single sentence.
“She stabilized,” Hawks added quickly—his hand sliding across his forehead like he could smooth the moment away, “but in the process… Edgeshot did emergency care, and he… took a lot of damage doing it.”
In Mirko’s red eyes, something hardened into a shape she couldn’t undo.
I tried to tear his arm off.
I kicked his side.
I stomped her chest.
I did it.
She inhaled. Exhaled.
This wasn’t a calming breath. This was the kind you take to keep yourself from cracking in half.
“Tamaki…” Mirko whispered.
The name caught in her throat.
“...He was going to get married.”
Before the sentence even finished, another image blazed through her—
Nejire on her knees, clinging to Mirko’s leg, face twisted with raw terror.
Hands, voice, the force of her grip—Don’t. Don’t— like a prayer being ripped apart.
Mirko’s head trembled.
“Jeanist…” Her mouth was dry. “...He already lost one lung. Back at Kamino.”
Her eyes unfocused for a second—then snapped back.
“Shinya…” Her voice thinned. “...His reconstruction treatment was… almost over.”
And then—
Mirko’s eyes shook wider, like the wall she’d been holding upright with her bare hands had just split down the middle.
“Vine…”
Saying that name made something inside her chest drop hard.
She saw it again—Shiozaki vomiting blood, and still reaching out, still trying to touch Mirko’s heart with her own hands anyway.
Mirko couldn’t hold it anymore.
She covered her face with both hands.
A sound tore out of her—breath splitting, grief spilling, a sob she couldn’t swallow back down.
Her rabbit ears trembled violently.
Hawks stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her—careful, quiet.
He didn’t speak.
He simply pressed his palm to her back and stroked downward in a slow, steady rhythm—again and again—like he was trying to teach her lungs how to move.
Mirko fought for her breathing. Held on with shaking hands.
A long time passed before she could force words out.
“Eri…” Her voice snagged. “...Don’t let her find out.”
Her throat fractured around the next line.
“She already has too many scars. If she knows about this…”
Mirko’s gaze dropped—then snapped back up and stabbed into Hawks’s eyes.
“She’ll blame herself. She’ll think it’s her fault. It’ll wreck her.”
Hawks nodded.
“I promise.”
This time, there was no hesitation.
And then he spoke again—not as Keigo, not as Hawks—
But as the head of the Commission.
“This incident…” His voice went colder, cleaner. “We’ll classify it. Completely.”
Mirko stayed silent for a long time, still gripping his sleeve like letting go would mean falling through the bed.
Her chest hitched once—hard.
Then she lifted her head.
“I’m..."
Her eyes locked forward, resolved in a way that didn’t ask permission.
“I’m retiring as a hero.”
Hawks looked like his lungs forgot how to work.
“And…” Mirko paused one beat longer, not to run—but to stay. “I’ll accept punishment for what I did.”
The last line came out shorter. Harder.
“I’ll take responsibility… for my actions.”
The room went quiet.
Beep—.
Only the monitor scraped the silence thinly as it passed.
Hawks tried to say something.
His lips parted—then closed.
As Commission Chair, he should have argued. He should have talked procedure, consequences, negotiations.
But Mirko’s eyes were too absolute. Every word he could’ve used turned solid in his throat.
He swallowed once. His hand hovered in the air, suspended, helpless.
A short silence.
Beep—.
Hawks stopped trying to find the “right” sentence.
He looked away.
And from inside his coat, he pulled out a thick envelope.
Letters.
From Tartarus security staff.
Careful not to crease them, Hawks unfolded one.
The paper had been folded and refolded. The corners were worn down by anxious fingers—someone who hesitated, and then wrote anyway.
Gratitude.
Understanding.
And a quiet certainty that said: We know who you are.
The Rabbit Hero before the war.
The one who ran to the end in the fight against All For One.
The post-war “Bunny the Weapon,” moving across the world like a living warning.
And the moment she stood again at Takoba National Stadium after reconstruction treatment, facing the crowd like she’d never learned the word “quit.”
We saw you.
So even now—please endure. Please win.
Hawks stared at the letter for a long time.
Then, finally, he lifted his head.
And he spoke softly.
“Rumi.”
It wasn’t a title.
It was a hand reaching out and refusing to let go.
“No matter what happens to you from here…” Hawks said, pulling each word out with intention, “the fact that you saved the world doesn’t change.”
He inhaled once, then went lower.
“And you… you’ll always remain a hero in everyone’s hearts.”
The last line fell almost like confession.
“…In mine, too.”
Mirko’s mouth twitched upward by the smallest degree.
Not quite a smile—more like a face someone made to stop themselves from shattering.
“Thanks,” she said.
Then she looked at Hawks—straight on—and said his name, clearly.
“Keigo.”
The next thing wasn’t language.
Hawks stepped in first and pulled her close.
This time, Mirko didn’t push him away.
A long time passed. So long it stopped meaning anything except still here.
Beep—.
Beep—.
The machine kept its steady rhythm, like it wanted to insist the embrace shouldn’t end.
When they finally separated, Mirko drew in a breath.
Not a trembling one.
A fixed one—anchored.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and straightened.
The wrinkles in her hospital gown settled over her shoulders like a uniform being put back in place. Her expression settled with it.
She nodded once.
I’m ready.
Hawks couldn’t speak.
He turned and walked to the door.
The moment his hand touched the handle, his face grew heavier—like he wasn’t opening a door so much as admitting something he couldn’t undo.
Click.
The door opened.
The quiet light of the room split, and the harsh white of the corridor poured in.
And in that moment—at the edge of Mirko’s vision—forms took shape.
Down the hallway, on both sides—
Heroes stood in a line.
Nejire.
Tamaki.
Kendo.
Komori.
Pony.
Aizawa.
Kuroiro.
No one spoke.
They simply stood there—waiting for Mirko.