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“Beginning review of events with hero, Lemillion –”
“Togata. Just Togata, please, sir.”
Mirio didn't look up as he spoke, eyes held lazily at the recording device on the table between him and this man from the Commission. He didn’t learn his name, hadn’t gotten a proper look at his face. He knew that he had bad taste in shoes, wore his suit a size too large – whether by design or by circumstance he wouldn't ask – and that whoever this man claimed to be, the ring around his finger suggested he had a family to get back to.
“Alright,” the man continued, stilted, as if thrown off by the intrusion. “Togata then.” He cleared his throat, adjusted the recorder on the table. “Well. I’d like to ask you today about the things you saw on the day in question of –”
“Did you know,” Mirio interrupted “That the human femur bone can withstand nearly three thousand kilograms of force before it breaks?”
The man from the Commission grew still. He folded his hands together over the legal pad in his lap and waited. A muscle in Mirio’s right arm twitched. He bit down on his jaw to keep from complaining about it but reached up to dig his thumb into the base of his shoulder anyway. He continued.
“It’s amazing, right? The things the human body, even without a quirk, can withstand. It’s like we were designed to be heroes. Kinda cool, right?” He grinned and his cheeks twinged from the strain of it.
In the time it took the man to respond, Mirio counted four ticks of the clock behind them. The room really would look more inviting, Mirio decided, if they would keep on more than the one light, opened a window maybe.
“A tremendous feat indeed. You have some experience with that?”
Mirio laughed and waved a hand at him. “Oh no, no. Not me. Ideally, anything coming at me with that much force would just go right on through me.” He tried to smile again and slid his hand clear through the table to demonstrate his point. The metal left a tingling cold in his fingers even after resolidifying. The man raised an eyebrow at him in interest.
The man from the Commission opened his mouth to speak again.
“I’ve just been thinking,” Mirio continued. “About how the human body does so many things it technically shouldn’t be able to do. How weird is that? These built-in protective mechanisms.”
Mirio rolled his wrist, tried to shake out the cold in his fingertips. Maybe it would stay there forever. Maybe he had to take a part of every fight with him like this from now on. Maybe he would remember this as a feeling under his skin for the rest of his life, a brand of this exact moment, with him forever.
Mirio wondered if maybe that’s what it felt like for him too.
“Lemillion, please –”
“Togata.”
“Yes, alright. Togata. We understand what you’ve suffered through these past few days. Help us wrap this out, and then it can be over.”
“But it’s not is it?” Mirio turned his full attention to the man. The lines in his face made him look older than Mirio would have assumed. “Over that is.” The man eyed him up and down slowly.
“Is it not?”
Mirio shrugged. He looked down at the table again. He slipped his hand through the middle of the tepid glass of water they’d offered him, over and over again, just to see how it felt.
“Like I was saying before –” Mirio began.
“Togata, please –”
“I am constantly just amazed by what the body does to protect us, you know?” A breath caught in his throat. “I know this little girl.” He choked, started over. “I know this little girl. She went through some horrible things, but recently, she doesn’t even remember what happened.”
The man from the Commission nodded like he understood. “Eri. From the Hisaikai Raid.”
“I wasn’t done.” Mirio looked up. He smiled as the man went quiet again. He whispered an apology and bowed his head. “Thank you. Well like I said, little Eri, she doesn’t remember much of what happened to her anymore. Something about her memory trying to block it out so it doesn’t scare her too much. And there it is again. The body protecting us. I mean, how crazy is that?”
Mirio pulled his hand away from the glass and laid them both on the table. He looked down at the recording device between them, still counting out the minutes as they spoke.
“You want to know about Midoriya, don’t you?”
The man sat up straighter in his chair, cleared his throat. He began riffling through the folder on his lap as he rambled. “We know where the fight with Shigaraki took Deku –”
“Midoriya.”
The man from the Commission ignored him. “But we don’t have a clear idea of what happened at the end. Where did he go? Who might he have contacted when he did?” He peeked at Mirio over the folder in his hands. Mirio clenched his fingers and looked as polite as he could muster. “We just want to bring him home, Togata. That’s all. I promise.”
Mirio’s smile stretched thin across his face.
“I know you think that. And it’s nice. It’s a nice thought. But I also know that that’s not true.”
The man frowned. “What do you mean?”
Mirio settled further back in his chair. “If you want my advice: you should give up.”
“What?” Mirio shrugged.
“Sometimes you have to know when you’re out of your league. It’s no fun to admit, believe me, I learned that the hard way. But you should also believe me when I say: you aren’t in a position to go looking for him.”
With a gruff, deep breath through his nose and a hand shoved through his hair, the man squeezed his eyes closed. Mirio counted two ticks of the clock before he got his breathing back in order.
“And what,” he asked through gritted teeth, “makes you say that?”
“You didn’t see the look on his face.” The words came out more cracked and fragile than Mirio meant it to. “You didn’t see the look on Midoriya’s face when he found him.”
The man leveled Mirio with a serious expression, brows drawn so low they brought a menacing shade to his eyes. He laid a hand in the center of his chest, just off from his heart.
“You mean Dynamight.”
“Bakugo.” The man glared.
“He was a fighter, a true hero.”
“He was kind of a little shit.” Mirio grinned. The man from the Commission didn’t find it nearly so funny. Mirio leaned back over the table, coming in close so as not to be misunderstood. The man fought like hell to disguise it when he leaned away in response.
“Here’s the thing, sir. The boy that I knew, and the one you’re looking for? They aren’t the same. Not anymore.” Mirio tipped his chin closer to the recording device. He spoke slowly. “You didn’t see Midoriya’s face when he found Bakugo. I did. I have never seen him look like that. And before you try and give me any more bull shit about it –” Mirio raised his eyebrows pointedly at the man. He snapped his mouth closed again and folded his arms. Mirio almost wanted to laugh at how childish it made him look.
“Whatever’s happened to Midoriya, he isn’t going to be the same anymore, and I doubt he’d be able to help with what you need- want from him.”
“And why is that?” The man mumbled.
Mirio sighed and pulled away, disappointed. “You just don’t get it. Gosh, guess I didn’t explain myself well enough, I’m sorry.” He chuckled and rubbed the side of his head. The man blinked at him, entirely lost. “I don’t think Midoriya is going to be much help for you, sir. It’s his brain.” Mirio tapped his own forehead. “That moment on the field, I watched something in him change. I think his brain is probably protecting him from the things that happened out there.” Mirio quieted and looked down at his hands in his lap. “That wasn’t how it was supposed to go you see. None of this is right, so.... can you really blame him?”
Mirio counted ten ticks of the clock then. He sat in silence with the man from the Commission, and he wondered if the man assumed he could wait him out. The idea made Mirio want to laugh again, but it didn’t seem like the right time. Maybe later.
When he decided not to wait any longer, Mirio pressed his hands against the table and stood. “Well. I think that’s all I have for you, sir. It really was nice to meet you.”
“Togata –”
“Sorry I couldn’t help you more than that, but what’s done is done you know? Maybe someone else on your list will know something. But until then –” the man watched, eyes flicking across Mirio’s face as he leaned in close, his shadow cast long and heavy over the man’s body. Mirio looked down at the table and reached out a hand.
“Try to remember all of this, before you cause any more problems, okay, sir?”
Mirio clicked the recording device off.