What Do You Want?

Just take the first hit.

Mateo's internal growl echoed in the hollow space behind his ribs. The last time they'd fought—the last time Eschart had nearly ended him—she'd moved like captured lightning given form. One moment crouched, the next a blur of electric fury that had left him convulsing in the rubble of a collapsed storefront.

Her armor wasn't just protection. It was a weapon. Technology that pushed her beyond human limits, launching her forward at speeds that made mockery of flesh and bone. Not light-speed—that was physics-defying fantasy—but fast enough that dodging became a prayer, and parrying became suicide.

So tanking the first hit was inevitable. He'd survived it once by coating his skin in a thick layer of protective slime, absorbing the worst of the shock. The memory of that electric agony still made his muscles twitch.

The world narrowed to a single point of focus.

Eschart crouched like a loaded spring in the middle of the cracked asphalt street. Morning light painted the abandoned AshDrift District in shades of rust and shadow—empty storefronts with shattered windows, a defunct gas station with its pumps torn out, and scattered debris from the war that had gutted this part of the city. Behind her, the skeletal remains of a fast-food joint stood like a broken tooth against the sky.

She vanished.

The air split with a sound like tearing silk. Mateo's instincts screamed at him to move, duck, roll—anything. He ignored them. Let her come.

Her boot connected with his raised forearm, and the world exploded into white-hot agony.

Electric current ripped through his slime barrier like it was tissue paper. Voltage found every nerve ending, every synapse, turning his body into a symphony of pain. His vision strobed. His jaw clenched so hard he tasted blood from his own tongue. Somewhere in the chaos, he heard his own voice—a sound between a scream and a snarl.

But he was still standing.

His slime had absorbed the worst of it, the barrier crackling and smoking but holding just enough to keep his heart from stopping. Steam rose from his shoulders where the current had earthed itself through his armor.

Quirks had limits.

That was the one truth that kept him breathing. Alex's push-and-pull had failed against objects too massive. Henrik could only fuse so much metal into his flesh before his body rejected it. Even Akira's transformation quirk had weight restrictions that physics wouldn't bend for.

Mateo's slime reserves were nearly empty—another few hits like that and he'd be fighting with nothing but fists and fury. Which meant Eschart couldn't sustain that level of attack either. The opening blow was meant to finish him. Everything after would be regular combat.

He hoped.

With smoke still rising from his scorched armor, he dropped low and rolled sideways. A gauntleted fist tore through the space where his head had been, punching a crater into the asphalt. The impact sent a shockwave rippling outward, spider-webbing the street in a ten-foot radius.

Mateo's ears rang like church bells. His slime had already begun reinforcing his joints on pure instinct—tendrils hardening around his spine and knees as he rebounded to his feet. A thin strand whipped outward toward a bent streetlamp, wrapping around its base and yanking him sideways like a slingshot. He barely cleared Eschart's follow-up blow.

"Good reflexes," she said, stepping out of the settling dust cloud. Her voice carried that same conversational tone she'd used when torturing information out of captured heroes. "But not good enough."

She lifted her hand. Electricity bloomed at her fingertips like deadly flowers.

Mateo didn't wait for the garden to fully bloom.

He launched a hardened glob of slime directly at her eyes. Eschart slapped it aside with contemptuous ease, but that momentary blind spot gave him the opening he needed. He closed the distance in three quick strides, coming in low and aiming for her legs.

Her knee came up in a lightning-fast counter. Mateo twisted, avoiding the worst of it, then shifted his weight and wrapped sticky tendrils around her ankle. For a split second, he thought he had her.

Then she smiled.

"Gotcha."

Current surged through her body and into his slime. The feedback hit him like a sledgehammer to the chest. His nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree—every neuron firing at once in a cacophony of pain. He stumbled backward, arms smoking, the taste of copper flooding his mouth.

She didn't give him time to recover.

Eschart was on him again, throwing combinations that would have shattered concrete. Left hook to the ribs. Right cross toward his jaw. Uppercut aimed at his solar plexus. Mateo's slime-coated arms absorbed the impacts, but each blow drove him backward, deeper into the killing ground of the empty street.

He could feel his stamina bleeding away with each exchange. Every second, she seemed faster. Sharper. More precise. While he was just... tired.

Desperately, he backpedaled and threw up a wall of slime between them. It hardened into a barrier just as Eschart's fist connected with it. The wall exploded like a bomb had gone off, shards of hardened slime raining down around them as electricity crackled through the fractures.

"Slime," she said, breathing harder now but still controlled. "Of all the quirks in the world, you became a hero with slime."

She struck again—a straight punch that Mateo caught with both hands. His arms buckled under the force. The impact drove him to one knee, slime flooding his limbs to keep them from snapping entirely under the pressure.

Eschart leaned close, her helmet casting a shadow over his face.

"Come on. Try harder."

Electricity flowed from her gauntlets into his body. Not enough to kill—just enough to make every muscle fiber scream in protest. His vision grayed at the edges. Unconsciousness beckoned like a warm bed.

The air began to smell like ozone again. Electric arcs crackled around her armor, building toward something bigger. The air itself seemed to shimmer with potential energy.

She's charging up again.

Come on, you bastard, do something! Mateo's mind screamed at his body, but it wasn't responding. The week of running, fighting, barely eating, and sleeping in ruins had taken its toll. His muscles were still spasming from the electrical attacks. His mouth was dry as sand. His limbs felt like they were made of lead.

I can't fight in an open space like this.

The thought came with crystal clarity. He needed walls. Corners. Shadows. Somewhere he could set traps and strike from darkness, the way he'd done to Bones and Razors and twenty other villains in that departmental stairwell. His eyes swept the abandoned street and locked onto the fast-food joint fifty yards away. One story, lots of interior walls, multiple rooms.

Not ideal, but it would have to do.

He injected the last of his slime reserves into his leg muscles. By squatting and building tension like a compressed spring, he launched himself forward in a desperate leap toward the restaurant's entrance.

"Running to that death trap?" Eschart's voice followed him. "End up like those other fools? Not happening, kid."

She shot forward like a missile and caught him mid-leap with a devastating kick to his ribs. The impact folded him in half around her boot. He flew sideways, slamming into the restaurant's brick wall with a wet crunch that echoed through the empty street.

Mateo crumpled to the ground, his body refusing to obey his commands. Just like that day with the indestructible men. Just like every time his body had finally said enough.

All his injuries, all the accumulated damage from a week of hell, crashed down on him at once. His ribs screamed where Eschart's kick had connected. His vision swam. His arms felt like dead weight.

Eschart approached like a predator closing in on wounded prey. The false cheerfulness was gone from her voice, replaced by something colder. More honest.

"King sent those men as bait, you know," she said, stopping just outside kicking distance. "Razors, Bones, all of them. To lure you out of your hidey-holes where you'd be stripped of advantages."

She moved closer. Close enough that he could see his reflection in her helmet's visor.

"And you killed them anyway. Just like that. Tell me, kid—do you really think you're a hero?"

Her metal-plated boot connected with his jaw, snapping his head to the side. Stars exploded across his vision. Then another kick, this one to his ribs. Each impact carried a jolt of electrical current—not enough to kill, but enough to make every nerve ending sing with pain.

"Is that what they taught you at the Academy? Kill any villain you see? Is that what Reeves told you?" Her voice was building toward something—anger, frustration, maybe even pain. "You think the world's just heroes and villains? Black and white?"

Another kick caught him in the stomach, doubling him over. Blood pooled in his mouth. He tasted the metallic tang of broken teeth.

"Hell, I've seen villains with more empathy than you! No one thinks you're a hero anymore. They think you're a monster!"

It doesn't matter what anyone thinks, Mateo thought through the haze of pain. All that matters is avenging them. All that matters is avenging him. And I'll kill you too, Eschart.

The kicks kept coming. Methodical. Precise. Soon his entire face was a mass of swelling and torn flesh. Micro-fractures spider-webbed through his skull. With a sickening crack, the right side of his jaw gave way.

At the edge of his vision, Alec materialized. His back was turned, black horns gleaming in the morning light, as if he couldn't bear to watch.

Come on, Alec. Do something. The thought came sluggishly, even though he knew it was just his oxygen-starved brain conjuring ghosts. Turn around. Look at me. Give me something to keep fighting for. Please... bro. I'm doing this for you.

Alec's shoulders tensed. Slowly, he turned his head back, just enough for Mateo to see his mouth.

"You're not doing this for me."

Then he vanished, leaving Mateo alone with the pain and the taste of his own blood.

"You're not worth being called a hero!" Eschart's voice cracked like a whip. "You're worse than a villain, you pathetic piece of shit! Get up!"

A white arc of electricity seared the asphalt inches from Mateo's face. The heat was so intense it melted his helmet's faceplate, reducing it to a twisted mess of metal and leather. The arc had been aimed deliberately wide. At this range, Eschart couldn't have missed unless she'd wanted to.

"FUCK THIS!"

Eschart's scream echoed off the empty buildings. She kicked a loose chunk of concrete, sending it skittering across the street. Then she began pacing—left to right, right to left—in a pattern eerily similar to how Reeves moved during briefings.

"I was a hero once," she said to the empty air. "And here I am, beating up some broken kid."

She stopped pacing and stared up at the sky. The morning sun was climbing higher, painting the scattered clouds in shades of orange and red. For a moment, the only sound was Mateo's ragged breathing and the distant groan of the city's wounded infrastructure.

"How did I even get here?" The question seemed to drain something out of her. Her voice lost its edge, becoming almost... vulnerable. "If I'm calling you a monster, what the hell does that make me?"

They stayed like that for several minutes. Eschart staring at the sky like it might have answers. Mateo sprawled on the broken asphalt, feeling his body finally acknowledge every injury he'd been ignoring for the past six days. The burns. The puncture wounds. The malnutrition. The exhaustion. All of it crashed down on him at once, and he felt himself sinking into the pavement like he was made of lead.

Finally, Eschart turned to face him. Her voice was flat now. Businesslike.

"Where is Alan?"

Alan? Mateo's thoughts moved like molasses. He didn't know anyone named Alan. After what felt like an eternity, he managed to speak through his ruined mouth.

"I don't know who that is."

"Alan." There was an edge of irritation in her voice now, like she didn't want to explain but couldn't help herself. "The guy with the paralysis quirk. Lab coat. Worked with me."

Ah. Him.

The man in the white coat flashed through Mateo's memory—those empty, glassy eyes, Henrik's bullet still embedded in his skull. "He's dead."

"Of course he is." Eschart's breath hitched almost imperceptibly. "He was practically useless without me."

She was trying to sound like she didn't care, but Mateo could hear the hairline crack in her voice. The kind of crack that ran deeper than armor.

"What about..." She paused, and for a moment she sounded almost hopeful. "What about Petal? I mean, Reeves?"

"I don't know." The truth came out in a whisper.

"Right." Eschart turned away, no longer seeing him as a threat worth watching. "What about your teammates? Your... friends?"

Mateo looked away, turning his head toward the rubble-strewn sidewalk.

A small, sad smile tugged at the corner of Eschart's mouth. "I guess we're not so different after all."

Another minute passed in silence. With her back to him, Mateo couldn't read her expression. Was she planning to finish him? Leave him to die? Drag him back to wherever villains went when they weren't terrorizing the city?

When she finally turned around, she did something that shattered every assumption he'd made about her.

She crouched down and extended her hand.

"This is the only chance you'll ever get." Her voice was soft but carried the weight of finality. "I'll carry you back to our headquarters. King will probably find you useful—might even give you an additional quirk to make you stronger. But only if you join us."

She leaned closer, and Mateo could see his reflection in her visor—broken, bloody, barely human.

"Either that, or I kill you here. Or leave you to die slowly. Your choice."

Mateo's mind reeled. The offer hung in the air between them like a loaded gun. If he joined the villains, he'd have access to information about Slave—the kid with the explosion quirk who'd taken everything from him that night. If they made him stronger, he might actually have a chance at revenge.

But even as the thought formed, it crumbled. Joining them would make him one of them. He'd be supporting the same people he'd sworn to destroy.

Still, he couldn't form words. Not because he was considering it, but because the pain was threatening to pull him under entirely. His mouth was full of blood and broken teeth and bone fragments.

Eschart moved closer, close enough that he could hear her breathing. The moment reminded him of that night in the City Hall basement when Reeves had interrogated Eschart, offering her a chance to return to the heroes.

"What are you thinking about, kid?" she asked, reaching toward his face. Toward his mask.

Something ignited in Mateo's chest.

No one could touch his mask. The black metal horns were chipped and scarred, but they were his. The only thing standing between him and the world. The only piece of his brother he had left. No one—especially not a villain—could take Alec away from him.

That spark found the last dregs of fuel in his heart and exploded into flame.

From his sitting position, he blasted himself forward and activated the hydraulic function in his left gauntlet. The mechanism was damaged, grinding and wheezing like a dying engine. His right gauntlet had been reduced to a jagged mess of metal during his fight with the indestructible men.

He poured what remained of his slime into the working gauntlet and triggered the hydraulics. The cylinders protested, but they obeyed. His fist connected with the protective plating over Eschart's chest, and with a satisfying crack, the armor caved inward. The impact sent her flying backward, tumbling across the asphalt.

Mateo stood—barely. His legs shook like a newborn colt's, but he managed to keep his balance.

Eschart rolled and came up in a crouch, her reflexes still lightning-fast. But the damage was done. Her sleek chrome armor had been compromised, and it looked like the chest piece had been some kind of central hub. Now sparks flew from the joints, sending erratic pulses through the rest of the suit. Her limbs jerked and twitched as the damaged system tried to compensate.

"And here I was thinking about helping you!" She tore the ruined chest piece away, steadying herself. Murderous intent blazed in her voice. "You're dead, kid."

Mateo's eyes locked onto the fast-food restaurant behind her. If he could reach it, maybe he had a chance. Those interior walls might give him the advantage he needed.

With the last embers of his strength, he lunged forward.

Eschart's response was immediate and devastating. Multiple arcs of electricity tore through the air, each one thick as a power cable and carrying enough voltage to melt steel. They punched through the restaurant's brick walls like they were paper, leaving trails of molten rock in their wake.

Mateo barely avoided vaporization, diving and rolling as the world exploded around him. The restaurant's entrance was lost in a shower of sparks and debris.

This wasn't the controlled fighter from before. This was Eschart unleashed, and she was terrifying.

She launched herself at him like a missile. Mateo jumped backward, scaling the wall of a neighboring building with slime-assisted leaps. Electric arcs followed him up, carving through brick and mortar like a hot knife through butter.

Very heroic, he thought absently as he dodged between lightning strikes, running away again.

Amazingly, it seemed like Eschart had been holding back before. Now the air itself seemed to burn as thousands of volts carved through the atmosphere. The building's facade began to crumble under the assault, chunks of masonry raining down on the street below.

They were in some kind of residential complex now—six stories of abandoned apartments, each floor honeycombed with dozens of empty rooms. Mateo dashed along the window ledges, using his slime to grip the crumbling surfaces as Eschart's attacks lit up the morning sky behind him.

I'll have to play the same trick I used on Inferno, he thought, remembering how he'd faked his death to get the drop on his Academy opponent. Make her think I'm down, then strike when—

Movement in one of the windows caught his eye.

Small. Child-sized.

A voice whispered in his ear: What are you going to do?

His body moved before his mind could catch up.

If he kept running, Eschart's attacks would tear through that window and into the room beyond. The kid inside would be ash before he could scream. Mateo didn't think—couldn't think. He just acted.

Slime tendrils shot out to the walls, yanking him toward the window. He led with his shoulder and the jagged remains of his right gauntlet, smashing through the glass like a cannonball. The impact drove shards deep into his flesh, but he absorbed most of the force and rolled into the room.

The child—a boy, maybe nine years old—spun around as Mateo crashed through his window. He was about to scream when Mateo's hand clamped over his mouth.

Behind them, Eschart's lightning carved through the air where the boy had been standing less than a second before.

Moving on pure instinct, Mateo grabbed the kid and dove through the room's doorway into the hallway beyond. He shot a glob of slime at a door handle down the corridor, then ducked into the opposite room, hoping to confuse his pursuer.

"I'm not letting you disappear again, kid," Eschart's voice echoed through the building as she entered through the destroyed window.

The apartment complex was tomb-dark despite the morning sun. The war had destroyed most of the infrastructure, and there was no one left to pay the electric bills anyway. Perfect conditions for Mateo to vanish into the shadows and strike from the darkness.

He climbed the wall with slime-assisted grip, the boy squirming in his arms.

"Let me go, you villain!" the kid squealed, tears streaming down his face.

"I'm not a villain," Mateo growled quietly, though even he wasn't sure anymore.

The boy's cry was loud enough to give away their position. Mateo heard Eschart's footsteps in the corridor, closing in fast.

"Shit."

He ran deeper into the apartment, encasing the boy in a cocoon of slime that left his face free to breathe. The kitchen was small, cramped, with cabinets barely large enough to hold a child. But Mateo had lost enough weight over the past week to fit.

He climbed into an empty cabinet and pulled the door shut just as Eschart entered the kitchen. Through the crack in the door, he could see her activating a light on her gauntlet, the beam sweeping across the room like a searchlight.

"Where are you?" she muttered, her voice tight with frustration.

The light leaked through the cabinet door, and Mateo could see her moving closer. The boy began to struggle again.

"I'm here! Save me—!" he started to yell.

Mateo's hand shot back over his mouth, but not before Eschart heard.

"What was that?" She turned toward their hiding spot, the light beam swinging in their direction.

"Mmgh! Mmmph! MMMRGH!" The boy bit down on Mateo's middle finger, drawing blood from his only good hand.

Of course the kid thought he was the villain. Mateo looked like something out of a nightmare—broken, bloody, smelling of smoke and sweat. While Eschart, in her relatively pristine armor, looked like the hero come to save the day.

How the tables had turned.

Eschart's footsteps brought her directly below their hiding spot. Through the crack in the door, Mateo could see her helmet, could count the scratches in her visor.

If I use the hydraulic function now...

He might be able to land a killing blow to her head. But was he strong enough? And if he failed, would she kill both him and the boy?

The light played across the kitchen for what felt like hours. Then, suddenly, Eschart sighed.

"What do you think you're going to accomplish?" she asked the empty air. "I can't help that kid anymore. He's too far gone."

The light clicked off. Her footsteps receded. The door slammed shut behind her.

Mateo waited ten minutes before emerging from the cabinet. When he finally opened the door, the boy was staring at him with wide, terrified eyes.

"Please don't kill me," the kid whispered. The smell of fresh urine rose from his shorts.

Mateo sighed and looked away. With his current strength, he wasn't sure he could harm the child even if he wanted to.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Then his legs gave out. He collapsed to the kitchen floor, darkness creeping in from the edges of his vision.

As consciousness faded, Alec appeared in front of him. The black horns gleamed despite the absence of light in the room.

"You look like hell, man." Alec ran a hand through his dark hair. "Is this why you became a hero?"

"I became a hero..." Mateo's words slurred together. "Because you wanted to..."

"Yeah, I wanted to be a hero," Alec said casually. Then his tone shifted, becoming serious as he stared down at his brother. "But what do you want, Mateo?"

"What do I want..." Mateo repeated as the pain overwhelmed his mind and the corners of his vision went black.

Behind him, the boy's frantic cries seemed to come from another world entirely. The only thing Mateo could hear was his own voice, echoing in the darkness:

"What do I want...?"