Three months after fleeing to Japan. The apartment in Musutafu was small by Manhattan standards—modest, even—but it had thick walls, good security, and a view of the skyline that reminded me why we'd come. My Japanese improved to functional, enough to pass the entrance exams. Tony visited when his father's business allowed, and we trained in borrowed spaces, testing the edges of my recovering power.
My range crept back to seventy feet. Then eighty. Then ninety. But the old precision never fully returned. Every gold manifestation cost more energy than before. The knot of light behind my sternum—the core of my Quirk—had shrunk after the gravity chamber incident. It pulsed weaker now, but steadier. More controlled.
I learned to live with the trade.
---
Eleven years old. The gravity chamber arrived on a Tuesday.
Tony had it installed in a converted warehouse on the edge of town—Stark tech, sleek and deadly. I stood at the entrance, looking at the reinforced walls, the pressure seals, the control panel with a single dial labeled G-FORCE.
'You don't have to do this today,' Tony said. 'We can ease into it.'
'No.' I stepped inside. 'Start at two Gs.'
The first minute was fine. Heavy, but fine. My breathing shortened. My heart worked harder. At two minutes, I started shadowboxing. The movements were sluggish, wrong. At three minutes, I pushed to three Gs. My knees buckled. I caught myself on the wall—the metal groaned under my grip.
At four minutes, I tried to form gold.
Nothing happened.
I focused. Pushed. A single flake appeared in my palm, trembling, then dissolved. My Quirk was compressing under the gravity, unable to manifest properly. Panic flickered. 'Without my Quirk, I'm just a strong kid. Not strong enough.'
At five minutes, I increased to four Gs.
The world went red. Something in my chest cracked—not bone, something softer. A vessel, maybe. Blood filled my mouth. I tried to call out, but the gravity pressed my tongue down, my jaw shut. My vision tunneled. The gold in my veins—the metal I'd consumed for years—began to precipitate out of my blood, forming microscopic crystals in my capillaries.
I collapsed. The impact shattered my left kneecap. I felt it go, felt the pieces grind. The control panel was ten feet away. Ten feet under four Gs might as well have been a mile.
Then the chamber powered down. Tony's voice, distant: 'Emergency override. What the hell were you thinking?'
The door opened. I crawled out on my hands and one good knee, leaving a trail of blood and gold flecks. My mother was there. She didn't scream. She just looked at my leg, at the angle it bent, and her face went white.
'I'm fine,' I said. The words came out slurred.
'Don't.' Her voice was quiet. 'Don't you dare say you're fine.'
The healing took three days. My Quirk returned—but not completely. The knot of light behind my sternum was smaller now. Dimmer. I'd burned away part of myself that wouldn't grow back. My left knee ached constantly after that. A permanent cost.
Every time I looked at the gravity chamber, I tasted blood.
---
Eleven years old, six months after arriving. I discovered the underground fight clubs by accident.
A classmate mentioned them in passing—places where Quirked fighters competed for money, no rules, no referees, no questions. The kind of places that didn't check IDs. I went on a Friday night, watched three matches, and understood immediately: this was where I'd find the experience I couldn't get from training alone.
I signed up that night. They called me Ashura after my first fight—demon of battle, because of the gold in my eyes and the way I moved. I never used my Quirk in those matches. Just technique, just the abnormal strength and durability I'd been born with, just the adaptability that let me learn an opponent's rhythm in seconds and break it in minutes.
The first match broke two of my fingers. The second cracked three ribs. The third—against a man who could turn his skin to diamond—broke both my hands and opened a cut over my eye that needed seven stitches.
I walked home after each fight, hid the blood under my jacket, and told my mother I'd 'overdone it at the gym.'
She believed me. Or pretended to.
---
Twelve years old. Cybele started watching me differently.
Not just fear—calculation. She saw the scars accumulating on my knuckles, the way I flinched from sudden touches, the gold flakes in my sweat that hadn't been there before. She saw me come home at midnight, limping, and say nothing.
One night, she cornered me in the kitchen.
'You're not going to the gym,' she said. It wasn't a question.
I didn't bother lying. 'No.'
'Where are you going?'
'Somewhere I can learn to fight people who actually want to hurt me.'
She stared at me for a long moment. Then her eyes filled with gold tears—not falling, just gathering. 'I married a man who thought like that. He left before you were born. I won't watch you become him.'
'I'm not him.'
'You don't know that. You never met him.'
The silence stretched. I wanted to argue, to defend, to explain that I wasn't my father. But I didn't know my father. Couldn't promise I wasn't becoming exactly what she feared.
'I'll come home,' I said finally. 'Every time.'
She didn't answer. Just turned and walked back to her room.
---
Thirteen years old. The diamond-skin man nearly killed me.
His name was Tetsuo. Former pro hero, stripped of his license for excessive force. He'd found the underground circuit and discovered he enjoyed it more than the spotlight. When I stepped into the ring, he laughed.
'You're a child. Go home.'
I didn't answer. Just raised my fists.
The fight lasted eleven minutes. I broke my left hand on his jaw in the third minute. Broke my right on his ribs in the seventh. By the ninth, I was fighting with elbows, knees, forehead. By the eleventh, I had him in a chokehold, my shattered hands locked around his throat, and I squeezed until the referee pulled me off.
He was unconscious. I was bleeding from a cut over my eye that would leave a scar. Both my hands were broken. My left knee—the one that had never fully healed—screamed with every step.
I walked home. Hid the blood. Told my mother I'd 'overdone it at the gym.'
She didn't say anything. But that night, I heard her crying in her room.
---
Fourteen years old. The morning routine was mechanical now.
Wake up. Eat gold-infused breakfast. Ignore the mirror. The scar on my collarbone from the gravity chamber incident had faded to a thin white line. The scar over my eye from the diamond-skin fight was still pink, still new. My left knee ached constantly—not badly, just enough to remind me.
'MIDAS!!! WAKE UP! YOU GOTTA GO TO SCHOOL!!'
I surfaced from sleep like breaking through ice. 'I'm up, I'm up!'
The bathroom mirror showed me someone I still wasn't used to. Wild charcoal hair falling over my eyes, sharp planes to my face, hollow cheeks and a jawline that could cut glass. Muscles coiled under pale skin—not bulky, but dense, corded. And the eyes—molten gold, catching light wrong.
'Damn… guess the training gave me more than just looks.'
I changed fast—school uniform, black and formal. Downstairs, my mother waited with breakfast and judgment.
'You need to hurry before you're late.'
'Damn, Mom… no "good morning" or anything?'
She didn't smile. 'I stopped saying good morning when you stopped sleeping.'
I sat down, started eating. Golden waffles, transmuted eggs. The taste was automatic now, fuel rather than food.
'I sleep.'
'You collapse. That's not sleep.' She set down her coffee. 'Midas, I saw the footage from the underground fights. The one last month, against the diamond-skin guy. Tony showed me.'
I froze.
'You broke both hands. Both. And you came home and told me you'd "overdone it at the gym."'
I set down the fork. 'What do you want me to say? That it's dangerous? I know. That I could die? I know that too.'
'I want you to say that you're still human.' Her voice cracked. 'That you still *feel* something other than the next fight, the next improvement, the next step toward being "the strongest."'
The silence stretched.
'I'll try,' I said finally. The same words I'd given her in the hospital. They'd meant nothing then. They meant less now.
She stood, walked to the window, stared out at the Musutafu skyline. 'Your breakfast is on the table. Don't be late for school.'
I finished eating alone.
---
Outside, I reached into my pocket, found the gold coins. I threw one into the air, caught it as it expanded, reshaped, became a motorcycle. I hopped on, shot upward at six hundred miles per hour.
'I've come a long way.' The thought was bitter now. 'And I've paid for every step.'
School arrived. Autopilot. Girls fawned, guys glared, teachers droned. I found my desk, put my head down. The bell rang eventually. I got up, went out the window—third floor, no hesitation—dropped into open air.
That was when I heard the scream.
'Let go of me!! Someone help!!'
A girl my age, uniform torn, being dragged toward a black van. Three men, mutation-types.
I didn't hesitate. I jumped.
---
*Later that night, after the rescue, after Momo, after the police, I sat on the roof of our building, staring at the stars.*
*Tokyo's light pollution washed out most of them, but a few bright points pierced through. Cybele found me there, wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, and sat beside me without speaking.*
*'I'm not going to break,' I said eventually.*
*'I know.' She leaned her head against my arm. 'But I'm still going to worry.'*
*I let the silence stretch. The gold in my veins pulsed in time with my heartbeat—steady, controlled, mine.*
*'I'll come home,' I said. 'Every time.'*
*She didn't answer. But her hand found mine, and we stayed there until the sun began to rise.*
*Eleven months until U.A. The gravity chamber waited. The underground fights waited. Hydra waited.*
*I wasn't ready. But I was closer.*
*Fourteen years old. The knot of light behind my sternum pulsed—weaker than before, but steady.*
*'Was it worth it?' I asked the empty sky.*
*No answer came.*