[MUSTAFU POLICE DEPARTMENT – EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER]
Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi stood before a wall of monitors, his tie loosened and his expression grim as data streamed across the screens.
"Run it again," he ordered.
The technician's fingers flew across the keyboard. A 3D model of the Yamanote Line appeared, the train rendered in detail as it moved along its route at 90 kilometers per hour.
Then, at timestamp 1:06:14 PM, the train simply... ceased to exist.
One frame it was there. The next frame—nothing.
"GPS telemetry shows all passenger devices terminating simultaneously," the technician reported. "Not 'signal lost.' or 'out of range.' Complete device failure across all registered phones."
"Simultaneously?" Tsukauchi repeated.
"Down to the millisecond, sir. Every single device stopped transmitting at the exact same instant."
Tsukauchi's brows furrowed even more.
"What about the train's own systems? Emergency beacons, black box recorders?"
"Also terminated. Whatever happened didn't just move the train, but also severed all electronic communication."
Behind him, the police commissioner stepped forward. "Theories?"
"Villain attack. Warp type quirk. It's the only way that explains something like this." Tsukauchi pulled up another screen showing the blurred purple-black mist captured by a traffic camera.
"This matches the descriptions of the spatial distortion from the U.S.J. incident two months ago."
"Kurogiri," the commissioner said quietly. "The League of Villains."
"Almost certainly." Tsukauchi highlighted the mist on screen. "But this is orders of magnitude larger than anything we've seen before. Eight train cars, 716 people, all displaced simultaneously."
"Displaced where?" That was the question, wasn't it?
"Unknown." Tsukauchi brought up a map of Japan with a massive circle drawn around Mustafu. "Normally, portal-based quirks have maximum range limitations. Based on previous League activity, we estimate Kurogiri's effective range at approximately 1000 kilometers. But that gives us a search radius of—"
"Three million square kilometers," the commissioner finished, staring at the enormous circle that encompassed not just all of Japan, but vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan, and even reached the Korean Peninsula and parts of China. "That's... that's impossible to search."
"Not without diplomatic problems. Without a doubt, it's impossible to keep this quiet now."
"The Inasa Tunnel?"
"Empty. Forensic teams found the tracks severed."
The room fell silent.
"We'll probably have to ask for help, coordinating with Coast Guard, JSDF, and international hero agencies," Tsukauchi said, though even he could hear the hollow note in his voice. "But without a specific location..."
"There is no 'without a specific location,' Naomasa," the Commissioner said, his voice dropping to a grave mutter. "If they were moved to land, we'd have thousands of witnesses. If they were moved to another city, the news would be screaming it. The fact that it's silent means they aren't on land."
Tsukauchi looked back at the map. The vast, blue void of the Pacific dominated the eastern half of the search radius.
"You think he dropped them in the ocean."
The mere thought alone made many pale.
"... That option ... Would explain why we can't track any devices aboard. The moment those phones hit the brine, the short-circuiting would be instantaneous. If they dropped from a significant height... the impact alone would be like hitting concrete." Tsukauchi added.
BANG! The room turned to an officer who slamming the table with his fist. "Why? What in hell are these psychopaths thinking? U.A ... Hosu, and now a train filled with innocent people. Have they gone mad?"
Detective Tsukauchi sighed. "That," he said while reaching for a newspaper and tossing it over. "Is the only thing we actually have an answer to."
The officer picked it up.
"U.A FIRST YEAR REMARKABLE PERFORMANCE: HERO OF TOMORROW SAVES HOSU."
Those were the headlines. "This kid?"
"Yuta Akutami, U.A Freshman." Tsukauchi explained. "He defeated four of the Hosu villains that attacked Hosu last night."
"So this is retaliation on the kid." The commissioner stated.
"Perhaps it's more than that." Tsukauchi uttered. "With Hosu failing, this must their way of sending a message to Hero society. Perhaps that was the main reason, and the kid being on the train just gave them a target."
"I see. "
The Commissioner turned away from the screen, his face aged by a decade in the span of minutes.
"Contact the HPSC. Tell them to authorize a satellite sweep of the Pacific and the Sea of Japan for thermal signatures or surface debris. Get me every hero with search-and-rescue capabilities. Prioritize those with water based quirks. And Naomasa..."
"Sir?"
"Contact U.A as well. They'll want to hear this."
_
[PACIFIC OCEAN – 800KM OFFSHORE – 1:15 PM]
Four identical figures stood on the undulating surface of the Pacific, their feet flickering with chakra.
Each one bore the weight of three to four unconscious passengers draped across their shoulders and backs. 'Dammit.' Yuta thought.
The train had sunk. Diving down again would either be suicide or a waste of chakra. Even now, there were dozens of bodies floating on the surface they had carried out from their train cart.
Fifty seven in total. Yet, it probably wasn't even a tenth of the number of passengers. 'Alright Yuta ... Think ...' He swept his gaze swept over the water. All he could see was miles of ocean water. No land in sight. 'I have no idea where I am. Nor any way to get help.' He looked up.
'No birds in the sky either. That probably means I'm quite far off from land. If I'm unlucky ... I'm probably not even in Japan anymore.' He lowered his gaze back to the water. '... Huh?'
A black shadow shooting out of the water appeared in his eyes.
"Move."
The water exploded. A massive, jagged sheet of reinforced metal—part of the carriage roof—shot out from the depths like a breaching whale, propelled by trapped air from below. It skipped across the surface, nearly taking off the head of one of the clones before coming to a halt ten meters away.
Yuta and his clones leaped instinctively, their feet splashing as they repositioned themselves on the churning water. "What in the .." Their eyes are fell on the metal slab. It wasn't the only thing as more pieces of debris floated to the surface.
The silence of the Pacific was broken only by the rhythmic slap-slap of waves against Yuta's feet.
"Change of plans!" Yuta turned to his clones. "Stop treading water. Get everyone to that panel! Then gather every piece of debris and bring them over."
As an anime fan, Yuta hadn't watched any survival in the wild videos before Transmigration.
However, anyone who had watched the Titanic knew that being soaked in seawater would lead to hypothermia. It was currently daytime and the water was already this cold.
In a few hours, these people would freeze to death.
He waded over to the floating roof panel, and slid the three people off his back onto the flat metal. His clones followed suit, unloading their passengers until the steel slab sat low in the water, nearly submerged under the weight.
"Check the other debris. Anything that floats, bring it."
He turned his attention back to the metal beneath his feet. Kneeling down, he pressed his palm against the surface and activated his quirk. A Kanji symbol appeared on the metal, taking a considerable flow of his chakra.
Next to the main panel, a jagged interior door floated by. Yuta reached out, "marking" it as it passed. With a slight tug of his will, it snapped toward the larger panel. He guided the pieces until they overlapped, then used his quirk to tear apart and force the meta to pin together, essentially stapling the two pieces of steel using their own mass.
The idea was simple. Make a floating island of debris. What followed was exhausting. Every time he fused a new piece of debris—a seat frame, a luggage rack, a section of wall, he felt the drain on his chakra reserves.
Eventually, he had to disperse two of the three clones to keep going. 'If not for everything that's happened ..' He thought. 'My chakra should be way more than this if I just had the time to train ...'
He turned to the last clone.
"Put them in the center," Yuta said, wiping salt from his eyes. "Stack the cushions. We need to get the most injured ones off the bare metal."
Two minutes later, everyone was onboard. Yuta let out a breath at the sight of fifty seven people huddled on his makeshift raft. They were shivering, their skin turning a pale, sickly grey.
As he feared, hypothermia was catching up with them.
Worse still ... The clouds were beginning to darken.
The shadow clone came to Yuta, a frown on its face.
"What happens now?"
"Now? Yuta took a look at the changing weather and mirrored the frown. "I need to go get help."
__
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