Arthur’s mind raced, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he pounded the worn pathway leading away from the deceptively cheerful gymnasium. The distant, tinny music of the leaving party faded behind him, replaced by the frantic thudding of his own heart and the lonely sigh of the wind whistling through the island’s sparse, salt-stunted trees. He had to calculate where Rentaro would take Michiru, where Nana, in her desperate pursuit, would inevitably follow. The boat docks – isolated, exposed, offering few escape routes and an abundance of shadowy hiding places – loomed large and ominous in his mind as the most logical, and therefore most horrifying, stage for the unfolding confrontation.

He sprinted towards the harbour, his unfamiliar teenage legs burning with the unaccustomed exertion, his phone clutched tightly in his hand, though he had no time for the laborious process of translation now. The air grew colder, tasting of salt and damp, decaying wood as he neared the coast.

He arrived, breathless and his chest aching, just as the scene at the end of the longest, most dilapidated pier reached its horrifying crescendo. Silhouetted against the dull, bruised pewter of the overcast evening sky, Rentaro Tsurumigawa’s spectral form – a shimmering, translucent duplicate of his arrogant human self – had Michiru Inukai cornered against the rotting railings. Razor-sharp, crystalline projectiles, like shards of malevolent ice, hovered menacingly in the air around him, glinting faintly in the dim light. Michiru was crying, her small body trembling, her face a mask of pure terror, but even so, she seemed to be trying to shield herself, a tiny, defiant figure against a monstrous, ethereal threat.

Nana Hiiragi stood between them, a fierce, protective tigress in a party dress. Her usual neat pink pigtails were askew, her clothes torn in several places, and a dark bruise was blooming on her cheekbone, but her violet eyes blazed with a desperate, almost feral fury Arthur had never witnessed in her before – not the cold, calculating fury of an assassin about to make a kill, but something raw, deeply personal, and utterly protective. She was intercepting Rentaro’s psychic attacks, her own movements preternaturally quick and agile, dodging and weaving, but she was clearly outmatched, her physical efforts largely ineffective against the intangible, relentlessly attacking projection that could still, somehow, inflict real harm upon her.

“You won’t touch her, Tsurumigawa!” Nana snarled, her voice hoarse and strained as she narrowly dodged a volley of shimmering blades that sliced through the air where she’d been a split second before. One of the shards grazed her arm, drawing a thin line of blood.

“She ruined _everything_!” Rentaro’s projected voice was a distorted, inhuman screech, filled with venom and thwarted rage. “She deserves to die for her meddling! And you too, Class Rep, for getting in my way!”

Just as Rentaro’s astral form lunged forward with a particularly vicious-looking ethereal spear, its crystalline point aimed directly at Michiru’s heart, Nana, with a desperate cry, shoved Michiru violently aside. The smaller girl stumbled, falling hard onto the rough wooden planks of the pier. The spectral weapon, impossibly, plunged deep into Nana’s side. Nana gasped, a choked, pain-filled, liquid sound, her eyes flying wide with shock and disbelief. She stumbled, her hand instinctively going to the phantom wound in her side, though no spectral blood flowed from the astral injury, the devastating impact on her life force, her very essence, was terrifyingly apparent. Her face began to pale with an alarming rapidity.

At that exact, critical moment, Rentaro Tsurumigawa’s shimmering projection flickered violently, like a faulty hologram. It let out a final, agonized, drawn-out shriek that seemed to tear through the very air, then dissolved into nothingness, vanishing as if it had never been. Kyouya. Kyouya Onodera had found him. He had found Rentaro’s hidden, vulnerable physical body and neutralized the threat. Arthur let out a shaky, almost sob-like breath of relief for that small, vital mercy, but his gaze was fixed, horrified, on Nana, who was collapsing slowly to her knees, her face now a ghastly, waxy white.

Michiru scrambled to Nana’s side, her face streaked with tears and grime, her voice a desperate, broken wail. “Nana-chan! Nana-chan, no! Please, no!”

Arthur finally reached them, his chest heaving, his own terror a cold, hard knot in his stomach. He saw the life visibly draining from Nana’s eyes, the way her body was becoming limp. He saw the way Michiru was looking at her – a dawning, terrible understanding mixed with a desperate, almost fanatical resolve. He knew, with a sudden, sickening certainty, what Michiru was going to do. Her healing Talent… he remembered the whispers, the theories about its ultimate, desperate application. It could, some said, even bring back the recently departed, but only at the ultimate cost: the user’s own life force.

“Michiru, no!” Arthur yelled, the words tearing from him in raw, desperate, unthinking English, forgetting the phone, forgetting the language barrier, forgetting everything but the impending, pointless tragedy unfolding before his eyes. He lunged forward, his hands outstretched, trying to pull her away from Nana’s rapidly cooling body. “Don’t do it! You’ll die! It’s not worth it!”

But Michiru was lost in her grief, her loyalty, her terrible, loving determination. She barely seemed to register his presence, his frantic, foreign words. Shaking her head, her cloud of fluffy white hair matted with tears and sea spray, she gently, almost absently, pushed his restraining hands away. “She saved me, Tanaka-kun,” she whispered, her voice trembling but resolute, her gaze fixed on Nana’s still face. “She saved my life. I have to… I have to save her. It’s the only way.”

Ignoring Arthur’s renewed, frantic pleas, Michiru pressed her small, trembling hands against Nana’s still form, over the place where the spectral spear had struck. A soft, ethereal white light began to glow around her, emanating from her palms, then engulfing both her and Nana. The light intensified, pulsing with a gentle, almost heartbreaking rhythm, bathing the grim, windswept scene in its otherworldly luminescence. Michiru’s small body began to tremble violently, her face contorting in an agony Arthur could only imagine, but her hands remained firmly fixed on Nana, a conduit for the impossible. The light flared, becoming blindingly bright for a single, eternal moment, then, with a soft, final sigh that seemed to carry all the sorrow of the world, it receded, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

Michiru Inukai crumpled to the rough wooden planks of the pier, a small, still heap, her vibrant life force utterly extinguished.

A heartbeat later, Nana Hiiragi gasped, a ragged, shuddering intake of breath, her eyes flying open. She sat up slowly, looking around in dazed, profound confusion, her hand going to her side, where only moments before a fatal wound had been. Then, her gaze fell upon Michiru’s still, lifeless form beside her. Understanding, followed by a wave of raw, uncomprehending anguish, crashed over her. A sob, harsh, broken, and utterly devoid of artifice, tore from Nana’s throat – a sound so full of genuine, unadulterated pain, so unlike anything Arthur had ever heard from her, that it momentarily stunned him into silence. This wasn't the calculated grief she’d so expertly feigned for her previous victims; this was real, shattering, soul-deep sorrow.

Arthur stepped forward, his own face a grim mask, his earlier panic replaced by a cold, weary, and profound anger. He raised his phone, his fingers deliberately, almost violently, typing out his words.

“Well, Hiiragi,” his translated voice stated, flat and devoid of any inflection, cutting through Nana’s ragged, heartbroken sobs. She looked up at him, her face streaked with tears, her violet eyes wide with a mixture of confusion, grief, and dawning horror. “It seems you finally got what you wanted. Another Talent eliminated from this island.” Nana stared at him, her mouth opening and closing, but no words came out. “You should be rejoicing, shouldn’t you?” Arthur pressed, his voice, even through the phone, laced with a cruel, cutting sarcasm. “Or,” he paused, letting the words sink in, twisting the knife, “are some Talents worth more than others, after all?”

Nana flinched as if he had physically struck her. She looked from Arthur’s cold, accusing face back to Michiru’s peaceful, lifeless body, and a look of dawning, unutterable horror began to mix with her grief.

“I’m taking her,” Arthur’s phone continued, his voice now unwavering, filled with a cold, hard resolve. “Tsuruoka and his damned Committee won’t get their hands on her for experimentation.” He saw Nana’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly at the casual, knowing mention of Tsuruoka’s name. Yes, she knew now that he knew. The game had changed. “She deserves to be treated with dignity in death, Hiiragi, not carved up like some lab specimen for your masters to study.”

He knelt beside Michiru, his own heart aching with a profound, unexpected sorrow for this gentle, brave girl he had barely known, yet had come to care for. “You killing Tachibana… the time traveler… that was your worst, most senseless act. You couldn’t even let a dying boy like Hoshino live out what little time he had left in peace.” He looked directly at Nana, who had stopped crying now, her expression a frozen mask of shock, confusion, and a dawning, terrible guilt. “There were times, Hiiragi, so many times, I was sorely tempted to stop you permanently. To end your murderous spree myself. For Michiru’s sake, for Nanao’s, for my own damn principles, I refrained.”

He paused, then added, his voice, even through the phone’s impersonal synthesizer, laced with a profound, weary sorrow, “She deserved so much better than you. Better than any of us on this cursed island.”

Without another word, Arthur gently, carefully, scooped Michiru Inukai’s small, impossibly light, lifeless body into his arms. He stood, turned his back on the stunned, grieving, and utterly shattered Nana Hiiragi, and began the slow, heavy walk back towards the distant, uncaring lights of the school buildings. He left Nana alone on the windswept pier with the accusing ghost of her actions, the devastating weight of Michiru’s sacrifice, and the first, agonizing, unwelcome taste of genuine, heartbreaking loss. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t.

[#talentless nana](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/talentless%20nana)[#nana hiiragi](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/nana%20hiiragi)[#munou na nana](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/munou%20na%20nana)[#munounanana](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/munounanana)[#nanahiiragi](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/nanahiiragi)[#talentlessnana](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/talentlessnana)[#無能なナナ](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/%E7%84%A1%E8%83%BD%E3%81%AA%E3%83%8A%E3%83%8A)**Blaze0** notes