Mystery from Another World

Part 68: New Deal

[OP: "Partners in Crime"-- Set it off, ft. Ash Costello]

The teens held their breath. No one was sure what Shine and Wally were going to do.

Shine looked from the 4 villains in one spot to the one Shigaraki in the other.

"You concede then that you made a mistake?" she said.

"Do you need to hear it before you end us?" Shigaraki spat. "I won't beg, Likstar. Either kill us or don't."

"If that's how you want it," Shine's eyes flashed and she moved towards the others again.

"Wait!" Shigaraki cried, in a different tone.

She stopped.

"What do you want?" he demanded. "Money? Us to do you a favor?"

"I want one thing and you didn't do it," Shine said. "Like it or not, I care about those students. You may not understand it, you may hate them for being heroes, you may think I'm stupid for protecting them, but guess what? I didn't give a crap. They were my students. My people. If you feel at all angry that I'm threatening yours right now, then multiply that by every single one of mine who you scared out of their minds that night."

She pressed her sword against Spinner, who leaned away from it.

"This was how close Toga got to cutting them," she said, now finally showing more emotion. "Closer, since she drew blood. Dabi nearly burned me and the two others to death and then we choked on smoke."

She put it next to Dabi, who just stared at her.

"And Compress nearly crushed the other two," Shine pointed to him. "Just because it wasn't planned doesn't absolve your guilt, you allowed it. It tore my heart out to know I put them in danger, but at the same time, I was just minding my own business when it happened, and you attacked anyway. I didn't have to do anything to you... if this is how you are with us, don't you think you should know how it feels to lose people you value?"

"They were only following orders," Shigaraki urged, a bit more frangtically than before.

"So were my kids," Shine said.

"Yes but it was my idea," Shigaraki said.

"Does that make it better? It was my idea also," Shine shot back. "Can you not handle losing to me? Did you think I was stupid? Did you think I was unable to protect them?"

"Hey now, if you felt this strongly, why did you let us get that close at all?" Compress said.

"You had a chance to turn back," Shine said tightly. "I'm merciful. But you didn't take it till they were already hurt. I said not to touch them, and you all did it anyway. I still have burn marks."

She pulled her sleeve to show some fading heat injuries.

"So shouldn't we do what you did to us?" she looked at Shigaraki. "And what sickens me the most is you can't even begin to fathom feeling at all sympathetic for us. Doesn't matter to you how we felt about it... you only care about what you want. You have the gall to accuse heroes of being arrogant and not looking at those under them? We gave you a chance to show us you could be different from them and you showed us you were worse. They were bad enough but at least they didn't attack innocent children to get to us."

Shigaraki was quiet for a long moment.

His friends thought it was impossible he would ever admit to being wrong or to doing anything he shouldn't have. It wasn't like him to think that way.

While they could see Shine's point was hard to refute, they knew he was not a normal person and wouldn't ever say that he should regret something.

What do she expect him to do? Say he was sorry for her?