Ten kilometers.
To most, that was a distance across a city. To Hayato Kuroiwa, it was the length of a thread he had just pulled to unravel a masterpiece.
He lay prone on a grassy hill overlooking a quiet park, his body angled in a way that would have looked absurd to any passerby. His arms were braced against the air, his shoulder tucked into a void, and one eye squinted at nothingness. Under the touch of his fingers, his custom-built anti-materiel rifle was a ghost, rendered completely invisible by his Camouflage Scope. To the world, he was just a man in a green jacket lying in the dirt. To him, he was the god of the horizon.
He exhaled, the silent vibration of the shot still humming in his marrow.
"Tsk. A little to the left," Hayato muttered, a playful, jagged grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. "The heart would have been poetic, but the gut? The gut is messy. The gut makes people scream. A loss is a loss, after all."
He wasn't bothered. The League had paid him a fortune to simply "cause a tragedy," and Hayato prided himself on being a man of his word. He thought of Lady Nagant, rotting in her cell in Tartarus, and the Pied Piper across the ocean. They were technicians. He was an artist. They hit what they were told to hit, Hayato hit what would make the best story.
And a golden boy like Bakugo, bleeding out in front of millions? That was a best-seller. A great story to hit headlines when the people of Japan realised the legendary hitman Emerald Eye is back in action.
"Oh! Oh dear, are you quite alright, young man?"
Hayato didn't flinch. He didn't even drop his invisible aim. He simply rolled his head to the side, maintaining his awkward, propped-up position.
An elderly woman stood a few feet away, clutching the leash of a shivering Golden Retriever. The dog wasn't looking at Hayato, it was staring at the space where the invisible rifle should be, its hackles raised, a low, terrified whine vibrating in its throat.
"Me?" Hayato asked, his voice jovial and light, as if he hadn't just punched a hole through a child from two zip codes away. "Just practicing my yoga, ma'am. It's a new pose. The 'Patient Predator.' Very good for the lower back."
The woman blinked, looking at his empty, braced hands and the way he was squinting into the distance. She let out a small, nervous laugh. "Well, you certainly look... dedicated. It looks a bit silly, if you don't mind me saying!"
"I don't mind at all," Hayato chirped, his dark eyes sparkling with a cold, mismatched mirth. "The best things in life look a little silly right before they get serious."
The dog let out a sharp bark and retreated, pulling at the leash, desperate to get away from the "nothingness" that smelled of ozone and gun oil.
"Oh, behave, Taro!" the woman scolded gently. She checked her watch and smiled at Hayato. "Well, I'll leave you to your... stretching. I have to get home. My granddaughter is waiting for me, we're going to sit down and watch the UA Sports Festival on the television. It's the finals today!"
Hayato's grin widened, revealing a row of perfectly white, unassuming teeth. He waved a hand, the one not currently 'holding' the invisible trigger.
"The Sports Festival? Oh, you're in for a treat, ma'am," he said, his voice dropping into a whisper that didn't quite reach her. "They're really going above and beyond for the special effects this year."
"I'm sure they are! Good luck with your... yoga!" she called out, shuffling away with her terrified dog.
Hayato watched her go until she was out of sight. He turned his gaze back toward the horizon, where a faint, shimmering yellow dome had just finished sealing the stadium like a tomb. High above, the black jet was a tiny, falling speck, and the golden light of All Might was trapped on the outside of the glass.
He reached out and stroked the invisible barrel of his rifle, the metal cold and real against his skin.
"Enjoy the show, grandma," Hayato whispered, his dark eyes reflecting the distant glow of the barrier. "But you might want to tell your granddaughter to look away. It's about to get very, very messy."
___
The world had narrowed down to the rhythmic, wet sound of a struggle that wasn't a fight. It was the sound of Katsuki Bakugo trying to breathe.
Izuku stood frozen, his boots sinking into grass that was rapidly turning into a marsh of deep, spreading crimson. He watched Bakugo's chest. It moved with a frantic, shallow twitch, then stopped for a terrifying heartbeat, then hitched again in a jagged, uneven stutter.
He was alive. But he looked... small.
A cold, hollow sensation scooped out Izuku's insides. He waited for the tears, for the scream of his childhood friend's name, but all he felt was a sickening, existential vertigo.
If Bakugo, the boy who had been the sun, the boy who had been an invincible wall of noise and explosions, could be broken by a single, silent piece of lead, then what was Izuku? What were any of them? The "strongest" person he knew was lying in the dirt like a discarded toy, and the blood wouldn't stop. It was so much. It smelled like copper and iron, thick enough to taste.
I'm going to throw up, Izuku thought, his knees trembling. I'm going to—
"DUCK."
The voice wasn't Yoshi's. It was a woman's voice, resonant, calm, and echoing from a place deep within the core of One For All that he hadn't reached yet.
Izuku didn't think, he plummeted to the grass. A split second later, a gust of wind so violent it flattened the turf whipped over his head. A red blur streaked past.
"Eyes up, kid! This isn't the time to freeze!"
Before Izuku could blink, he was scooped off the ground. He felt the sharp, firm grip of a hero's gloved hand and the rustle of stiff, crimson feathers. He was being carried at a dizzying speed away from the center of the crater.
He looked back and saw a group of medical robots and a pair of lower-ranked heroes rushing toward Bakugo, shielding him with a portable barrier as they began to cart his limp body toward the underground tunnels.
"He's... he's going to be okay, right?" Izuku choked out, looking up at his saviour.
It was Hawks. The Number Three Hero was scanning the arena with eyes like a raptor, his expression uncharacteristically grim. "The medics are the best in the world. Focus on yourself, Midoriya. Look around."
Izuku looked. The stadium had become a slaughterhouse of chaos. Dozens of Nomu, the same gray-skinned monsters from the USJ, were spilling into the stands. The screams of thousands of people created a wall of sound that vibrated in Izuku's teeth.
He saw Mirko decapitating a creature with a kick that shattered the concrete, he saw Endeavor's flames turning a section of the seating into a furnace. The heroes were fighting back, their experience turning the tide, but the sheer scale of the ambush was overwhelming.
"I have to help," Izuku said, his hand glowing with the green sparks of One For All. "I can..."
"No," Hawks snapped, his wings flared wide as he set Izuku down near an evacuation exit. "You're a student. Right now, you're an obstacle to the pros. If you want to be a hero, look at the people, not the monsters. Help the teachers get the attendees into the bunkers. Go!"
"But...!"
"All Might is locked out!" Hawks yelled over the roar of a nearby explosion, pointing a finger toward the shimmering yellow dome above them. "That barrier is a high-frequency energy wall. It's blocking all communications and physical entry. We're on our own in here. Do your job, kid!"
Izuku looked up at the barrier, and his heart stopped.
The plane, the massive jet that had been spit from the black cloud, was falling, but it wasn't the metal that caught his eye. The cargo doors were open. It wasn't just Nomu falling out anymore.
People.
Men, women, children, passengers from the hijacked flight were being dumped out of the sky like refuse. They were falling in a wide, chaotic spray. All Might was on the other side of the yellow glass, a golden streak of desperation, flying from person to person, trying to catch them before they hit the barrier, but they were falling too fast, in too many directions. He couldn't be everywhere.
Hawks was needed, but he was already trapped here.
Izuku watched, paralyzed. He watched a man in a business suit fall. He watched a woman clutching a child. They hit the yellow barrier from the outside.
Thud.
The sound was dull. Heavy. It was the sound of a sack of flour hitting a floor or maybe heavy rain or hail bouncing off a window, it echoed through the entire stadium like a drumbeat of death.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Bodies hit the impenetrable ceiling of the arena and slid off, falling into the city streets outside, or simply shattering upon the energy field. It was a rain of human beings.
"No," Izuku whispered, his vision blurring. "No, no, no..."
Everything was wrong. This was supposed to be his moment. This was the school of his dreams. He had a great relationship with the only parent he knew, his mother, moved to Tokyo, met All Might, worked until his bones ached... and for what?
To watch his bully die in the dirt? To listen to the sound of innocent people breaking against a shield meant to confine him?
The world began to tilt. The "Hero Society" he had worshipped felt like a house of cards falling in a draft of wind.
"Stop crying," Yoshi's voice crawled into his ear, cold and dripping with careless venom. "This is what heroes are, Midoriya. They are walls that people break themselves against. Look at them. They're just meat and gravy now. Let me out. Give me the reins. I can fix this... but you have to let go."
I can't... I don't want to hurt anyone... Izuku sobbed internally.
"You already are," Yoshi hissed. "Your hesitation is the sound of those thumps."
"Don't listen to him, Ninth."
The feminine voice returned, warmer this time, like the glow of a hearth in a dark room. It was steady, devoid of Yoshi's nihilism.
"The world is breaking, Izuku. It's cruel, and it's unfair, and it's bigger than you right now. But you are not a vessel for hate, and you are not a bystander. You are the one who stands up when everyone else is falling."
Izuku felt a strange warmth spread through his chest, pushing back the numbing cold of Yoshi's presence.
"Rise up," the woman's voice whispered, fading into the embers of his consciousness. "Go beyond the fear. Do what you can, where you are."
Izuku wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, leaving a smear of Bakugo's blood on his cheek. His breath hitched one last time before his jaw set. He didn't look at the sky anymore. He couldn't save the people on the plane. But he could save the people screaming ten feet away from him.
He turned toward the stands, the green electricity of One For All exploding around him in a violent, flickering aura.
"Hawks is right," Izuku muttered, his voice shaking but certain. "I have to move."