Secret Scene

Insert between Christopher passing out and waking up in the hospital.

Christopher found himself in a dark room with a dome like ceiling. The ceiling was vast, almost infinite and firmly beyond his reach. The dome was speckled by little shards of wispy white light. They looked like stars.

Christopher was holding a single mirror in his left hand, Hailey’s mirror. The mirror that felt so familiar to him. At his feet was a broken mirror, its shards scattered across the featureless black void that passed for a floor. Its frame shattered into a dozen pieces. … Whose mirror had that been? He never could remember after they broke. Before his eyes, the broken mirror’s frame evaporated and its shards floated towards the dome of stars above him. The shards came to rest among their brethren there on that unreachable dome.

Christopher sighed. If he’d remember anything from this world when he woke up, maybe he’d figure out how his quirk worked. He thought he should be sad at the loss of a memory, but he was just disappointed. Christopher was numb. He always did whenever he entered this world. His emotions were distant like a quiet voice across a raging river.

“THAT WAS STUPID!” A familiar voice screamed, shattering the silence of this tranquil little room.

Christopher looked behind himself. A particularly large shard detached itself from the dome and came to float in front of him. It buzzed with agitation. He didn’t know why this shard was so large, maybe the mirror was built stronger than the others. Whomever’s mirror it was, must’ve been important to him. Or maybe the mirror was just particularly powerful. Maybe both.

“Agreed.” Christopher nodded. “It’ll take some time to parse what all went wrong.”

“Start with the decision to engage!” The shard rammed itself into Christopher’s head. He took a step back as the impact reverberated throughout the room. He didn't feel pain. There was no pain here. The shard buzzed around him screaming expletives. Christopher rubbed the spot of impact in mild annoyance.

“No, engaging was the correct decision. I knew where a wanted killer was. If I’d run to get an authority figure I’d have risked losing him.”

“That justifies the risk you took in planting your phone on him, NOT FOLLOWING HIM!”

“I wanted a backup plan in case he ditched the phone--”

“YOU ARE A CHILD!” The room shuttered against the shard’s voice. Its voice resonated with the shards above. They sang like chimes in the wind. Christopher winced as the cacophony rolled across him. When the chorus finally quieted Christopher spoke again.

“My age is irrelevant. We almost caught him, if just a few more things went our way, we would’ve succeeded.”

The shard crackled with agitation. “GODDAMN SUN MAN COULDN’T CATCH DESOLATOR! What makes you think you know what it’d take?!”

“First of all, he’s nothing like he was when he fought Sun Man.”

“That's like saying 'geeze mom, the crocodile doesn't have a chainsaw strapped to his head anymore, surely I can pet hi--'”

“Second.” Christopher interrupted. There was a voice screaming at him to analyze what the shard had just said, but it was drowned in the torrent of his own thoughts. Thoughts driven towards what was increasingly becoming an obsession. “Today we got closer to catching him than anyone has in the last two years.”

“And how’d two years ago work out?!”

“There’s no visual record of mom’s battle, so I have no way of knowing.”

“It sucked.” The shard answered. “She… broke. Just to stand a chance she had to stop being... her and all it got her was killed.”

“That’s ominous, but decidedly uninformative.” There was a small voice yelling at him for minimizing what his mom went through. He didn’t pay it any mind.

“What I’m saying is, your mom sacrificed everything to win and it still wasn’t enough.”

“I don’t need to sacrifice anything.” Christopher heard a different voice, a voice across a raging river. The voice screamed at him to smile, to grin, to be smug. He couldn’t. “I’m better equipped to beat him right now than I ever will be. I've got an advantage neither my mom nor Sun Man were capable of having.”

“… I’m not following.”

“You didn’t see it?”

“I don’t see anything from the real world that’s not in your head.” The shard sighed. “And all I can see is wishful thinking. Something about Desolator not being able to kill you.”

“He could kill me, but he won’t. He WON’T kill children.”

“And you’re not a kid forever...”

“Precisely. That’s why I have to do this now. While he’s at a handicap.”

“That’s genuinely insane. But...I’m not gonna be able to stop you am I?”

“Not even if I could remember our conversations." Christopher nodded. "No-one could I think. Even if Rosethorn-sensei expels me I’d become a vigilante.”

The shard buzzed. It was apoplectic. It tried to figure out if there was some path forward, some way to stop this idiot from getting himself crippled or worse. It stopped buzzing suddenly. It brightened. “Alright, I’ve got an idea.”

“Doesn’t matter how good your idea is, I’ll forget when I wake up.”

“Maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll remember if it’s a short enough message.”

“Really?”

“I hope so. You’re not ready to take on Desolator, but I think I can give you a path to getting ready. So, all I need you to do is remember one name. Just one name.”

“I’m listening.”

“Saraki.”