The common room of Heights Alliance was usually a place of reprieve, but tonight the air felt like a tightening noose. Izuku sat on the edge of a sofa, the blue light of his phone reflecting in his eyes as he scrolled through a news report that seemed to be vibrating with the shockwaves of the entire country.
[BREAKING: HERO KILLER STAIN CONFIRMED DEAD IN POLICE CUSTODY]
The details were clinical and brutal. During a routine pit stop for a prisoner transport vehicle, a group of unidentified gunmen had intercepted the patrol. They hadn't tried to free him. They had breached the back of the truck and gunned Chizome Akaguro down where he sat in his restraints. Six bullets to the chest and head. He was dead before the officers could return fire.
Izuku's phone buzzed incessantly.
Mina:Guys, did you see the news?! He's dead! Someone actually killed him!
Kaminari:This is insane. The police lost him? In a transport? I thought he was going to Tartarus!
Izuku looked around the room, his eyes searching for the rigid posture of Tenya Iida, but the Class Rep's seat was empty. He was likely still in his room, or perhaps back at the hospital. Izuku felt a cold, hollow pit in his stomach. Stain was a monster, but this, this wasn't justice. This was an execution.
A heavy, calloused hand suddenly clamped onto Izuku's shoulder. He flinched, the green electricity of One For All sparking instinctively before he looked up.
It was Katsuki Bakugo. He looked pale, his movements slightly stiff from the stitches in his gut, but his eyes were burning with a familiar, jagged resentment.
"Oh... Bakugo. Hey," Izuku said, trying to steady his breath. "I was just reading about..."
"Cut the crap, you damn freak," Bakugo spat, his grip on Izuku's shoulder tightening until the bone groaned. He leaned in, his voice a low, dangerous rasp. "I saw you in the training trial today. Bouncing around like a flea. The way you move... those pivots off the pipes, the way you use the recoil... stop copying me."
Izuku blinked, looking genuinely surprised. "I wasn't copying you, Bakugo."
"The hell you weren't!" Bakugo snarled, his palms beginning to smoke, the acrid scent of burnt sugar filling the air between them. "I spent ten years watching you scribble in those notebooks, stalking me, dissecting every move I made. Now you get a quirk and you think you can just wear my style like a suit? You think because I was in a hospital bed, you could just steal my spot?"
Izuku looked at the smoking hand on his shoulder, then back at Bakugo. He didn't feel the old, paralyzed fear. He felt a weary, cold frustration.
"I wasn't copying you," Izuku repeated, his voice dropping into a smug, quiet steadiness. "I learned that movement from Gran Torino."
Bakugo's lip curled. "Who the hell is that nobody? Some bargain-bin hero you found in the yellow pages?"
"That 'nobody,'" Izuku said, a small, sharp smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, "was the hero who trained All Might. He's the reason the Number One knows how to stand. I didn't need your style, Bakugo. I have a much better teacher."
Bakugo's eyes widened, his pupils shrinking as the weight of the statement hit him. For a second, he looked genuinely stunned. Then, his face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
"Oh, you think you're so smart now?" Bakugo hissed, leaning in so close their foreheads nearly touched. "I don't care who trained who. You're still just a stalker. You're the same useless nerd who followed me around like a dog, hoping some of my greatness would rub off on you."
Izuku took a slow, deep breath. He felt the phantom chill of Yoshi stir in the back of his mind, a dark, expectant hum.
"You're right," Izuku whispered, so low that only Bakugo could hear. "I did follow you. I spent years observing you. But if you want to bring up the past... Kacchan... we can do that. I could go to Principal Nezu right now. I could go to Aizawa-sensei. And I could tell them exactly what those years were like for me."
Bakugo froze.
"I could tell them about the burns on my shoulders," Izuku continued, his voice as cold as the ice Todoroki had used in the alley. "I could tell them about the suicide baiting. I could tell them about the boy who told me to take a swan dive off the roof because I was a 'pebble' in his path. I haven't forgotten, Kacchan. And I don't think UA would find it very 'heroic' if they knew the Number One prospect was a tormentor who tried to push a classmate to his death."
Bakugo's eyes widened with a sudden, sharp jolt of genuine fear. His grip on Izuku's shoulder loosened, his hand hovering in the air as if the skin had suddenly turned to white-hot iron. "You... you wouldn't..."
Izuku didn't wait for him to finish. He stood up, slinging his bag over his shoulder. He looked at Bakugo, not with hate, but with a profound, stinging pity.
"I'm glad you didn't die, Bakugo," Izuku said, his voice returning to its normal, soft tone. "I really am. I hope you continue to get better. I hope you find whatever it is you're actually looking for."
After his talk with Gran Torino he started to think that Bakugo was one of those students that really may not need to be here, just a weed waiting to be plucked. But for all the potential he has and the genuine want to be the best, Midoriya did hope that wasn't the case.
He turned and walked toward the elevators, his posture straight, his head held high. He didn't look back. He didn't need to. He could hear the silence of the room behind him, and the sound of Bakugo's trembling breath.
___
The room was a void, illuminated only by the faint, clinical glow of life-support monitors that hummed like a swarm of mechanical insects. In the center, a mahogany chess table stood as a solitary island of order.
Tomura Shigaraki stared at the board, his breathing shallow and jagged behind the hand gripped to his face. He reached out, his trembling fingers hovering over a knight, before he saw the trap. His king was cornered, boxed in by a relentless advance of black pieces.
"Checkmate, Tomura," a voice smoothed out of the darkness, rich, resonant, and terrifyingly patient.
Shigaraki's hand didn't move toward the king. Instead, he slammed his palm onto the board. Under the influence of his quirk, the wood didn't just break, it dissolved into a fine, grey powder, the ivory pieces clattering into the dust.
"I'm done!" Shigaraki hissed, scratching frantically at his neck. "This game is stupid. It's restricted. It's slow and it's boring."
"Patience is the foundation of any great collapse," All For One replied from the shadows, his silhouette motionless. He didn't sound angry, he sounded like a father watching a child fail a math test. "You've been doing excellent work lately, Tomura. The world is looking at you with the fear I once inspired. But tell me... the Hero Killer. Why did you have him executed? I thought you were interested in his 'conviction.'"
Shigaraki slumped back in his chair, his red eyes burning through the gaps in the fingers. "He pissed me off. He called me a child. He looked down at me as if I were a side-quest in his little crusade." He paused, his voice dropping into a more calculated rasp. "But... I thought about it. Really thought about it. People are flocking to us because of his name. If he's alive, even in Tartarus, he's a focal point. He's a leader who hates me. If he's a martyr, his 'will' is a tool I can use. But if he's alive, he's a leak. I can't have a wild card telling my new recruits that I'm 'unworthy' of the world I'm building."
A low, appreciative hum vibrated in the room. "A strategic purge to ensure absolute loyalty. I couldn't have done it better myself, Tomura. You are learning that symbols are most useful when they can no longer speak for themselves."
"His ideology is a plague," Shigaraki muttered. "There are already copycat groups popping up in the gutters, trying to be 'mini-Stains.' It's pathetic."
"Let them play in the mud," All For One said dismissively. "You have the real assets. You secured the more useful ones, that boy Dabi and the girl Toga. They are... unique."
"They're annoying," Shigaraki spat. "She's a freak and he smells like a crematorium."
"And yet, they are your blades," All For One said. He gestured toward the far end of the room where a purplish-black haze was beginning to swirl. "Go. Your family has gathered. They are waiting for their King to tell them which way the wind blows."
The warp gate deposited Shigaraki in the center of a cavernous, dilapidated warehouse. The air was thick with the scent of stagnant water and the predatory aura of the League's expanded roster.
"He returns!" Toga chirped, skipping forward with her knives glinting. "Hi, Tomura-kun! Did you have a nice talk with your scary friend?"
"The boss is back," Muscular grunted, cracking his knuckles with a sound like breaking timber. "So, are we actually going to kill something today, or are we just sitting around waiting for the news to report on that dead fanatic in the alley?"
Twice paced in small circles nearby. "Stain's gone! Good riddance! We should hit UA again! Break some more kids! No, that's too risky!"
Mustard, the boy in the gas mask, leaned against a crate. "UA is a fortress now. Going back there is suicide. We should focus on the underground. Take over the smaller gangs, build an army."
"Boring," Magne sighed, adjusting her sunglasses. "If we go underground, we're just another gang. We need to stay on the front page."
Shigaraki raised his hand. The room went silent. Even Moonfish stopped clicking his teeth.
"We aren't going to the underground," Shigaraki said, his voice carrying a new, terrifying weight. "And we aren't going to UA. They're expecting us there. They've built their little walls and their little dorms, waiting for us to knock on the front door."
He looked around the room, a jagged grin spreading behind the hand on his face.
"We're hitting the prisons. Specifically... Tartarus."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even Emerald Eye, who had been casually cleaning his nails with a pocketknife, froze.
"Tartarus?" Hayato Kuroiwa asked, his brow furrowing. "Tomura, that's not a prison. That's a tomb. It's five hundred meters underwater with enough security to stop a small country."
"Which is why it's perfect," Shigaraki laughed, a dry, rattling sound. "But we won't just hit Tartarus. We're hitting three targets simultaneously. Mizuhashi Correctional, that's the small one, full of the petty trash. Then The Akugara Vault, where they keep the mid-tier threats. And finally, the big one."
He began to pace, his sneakers scuffing against the concrete. "We hit Mizuhashi first. The heroes will flock there to 'protect' the public from the low-lifes. Then we hit Akugara. By the time they realize it's a distraction, we'll already be at the gates of Tartarus. We're going to cause mass chaos. I want the streets flooded with every monster the heroes have spent decades trying to hide."
"What if the strong ones don't want to join us?" Spinner asked, stepping forward. His voice was thick with hesitation. He was dressed in gear that paid homage to Stain, and his eyes were clouded. "How does this fit with Stain's will? He wanted to purge the fakes, not unleash every common criminal back onto the innocent."
Dabi, who had been leaning against a pillar in silence, let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter. He pushed off the wall, the blue flames of his quirk flickering momentarily in the palm of his hand.
"Are you scared, lizard?" Dabi sneered, stepping into Spinner's space. "You talk about Stain like he's a god, but look at the reality. The heroes couldn't even protect him in a truck. They're weak. They're cowards hiding behind barriers."
Dabi turned to the group, his scarred face twisted into a grin. "Breaking those prisons is the ultimate tribute to Stain's ideology. We're going to show the world that the 'peace' they love is a lie held together by thin glass. When we open those gates and the heroes fail to stop the tide, everyone will see what Stain saw, that the system is broken beyond repair. We aren't just freeing prisoners. We're freeing the truth."
Shigaraki nodded, his eyes glowing with a dark, satisfied light. "UA thinks they're safe in their bunker. They think they can wait us out. But how are they going to feel when they realize the 'safe streets' outside their walls are filled with the people who want to eat them alive?"
He turned toward the exit, his shadow long and jagged against the warehouse wall.
"Get ready," Shigaraki commanded. "We're going to give the world a show they'll never forget. We're going to tear the doors off the cage."
___
The world above knows Tartarus. It is an architectural nightmare, a monolithic, multi-layered tomb of reinforced steel and carbon-fiber composites anchored five hundred meters beneath the crushing weight of the Pacific Ocean. The surface entrance is nothing more than a heavily fortified landing pad, a mere needle-point in the vast blue expanse. To descend is to enter a vacuum where the sun is forgotten. The elevator ride is a slow, pressurized descent that causes the ears to pop and the heart to stagger.
Inside, the atmosphere is defined by the "Hum." A constant, low-frequency biometric dampening field pulses through every wall, every floor, and every breath of recycled air. It is a technological anesthetic designed to put the "spark" of a quirk into a state of permanent hibernation. The cells are soundproofed, isolated boxes where time ceases to have meaning. There are no faces here, only the red unblinking eyes of cameras and the cold, mechanical voices of automated guards. It is a place where humanity is stripped away, leaving only the "danger rating" and the serial number.
In Cell 662, the air was thicker than usual, heavy with the smell of wet stone and the stagnant residue of a monster's breath.
Yuta Shimizu sat in the center of the dark space, his massive frame a brutal compromise between man and predator. At forty-four years old, his body had become a jagged landscape of slate-gray skin, thick and rough like the hide of an ancient leviathan. His dorsal fin pressed against the back wall, a sharp blade of cartilage that had spent years marking the concrete. His shark-like head was tilted down, his wide jaw lined with rows of serrated, needle-sharp teeth that glinted in the dim light. His eyes, black, glassy, and utterly devoid of anything resembling a human soul, stared at the floor.
Yuta Shimizu.
He rolled the name around in his mind, feeling the mocking irony of it. Clear water. Gentle. Enduring. It was a name for a boy who played in tide pools, not for the King of the Abyss. He thought back to his youth, back to the tiled hallways of a school that smelled of chalk and fear. The memories were distant, blurred like objects seen through a storm-tossed sea. He remembered the way the other children would press themselves against the lockers when he walked by, their hearts thumping like panicked fish.
He remembered a day when he was twelve. A girl, bright, loud, and full of the "surface-dweller" arrogance, had pushed him into the courtyard fountain, laughing as she called him a "sea freak."
He hadn't felt angry. He had felt a strange, quiet clarity. He had reached out and gripped her wrist, pulling her into the shallow water with him. He hadn't meant to kill her, not then, anyway, but he had held her under, watching the way her hair fanned out like seaweed, watching the frantic, rhythmic bubbles of her breath escape until they slowed to a crawl. He had watched her not with malice, but with a deep, inherent understanding that he was the predator and she was the prey.
The school had called it a "behavioral crisis." The counselors had spoken of "prejudice-induced trauma." Yuta knew better. He hadn't been made into a villain by the children's taunts, he had simply been born with the ocean's cold indifference. He loved the silence of the struggle. He loved the way the world went quiet when the water took over.
By the time his trial came, the world had already erased Yuta. He stood in a glass box, a massive shark-man charged with the destruction of a harbor district and the confirmed deaths of four civilians. He remembered the judge, a tired man with a face like crumpled parchment, who hadn't even bothered to read his birth name.
"The defendant, known as King Fin," the judge had droned, his voice devoid of interest. "Sentenced to death row. Immediate transfer to Tartarus."
The trial had lasted less than an hour. Four lives. A city block in ruins. To the judge, it was a bureaucratic necessity. To Yuta, it was the moment he realized that his name didn't matter. He was a warning label. He was a monster to be caged and forgotten. And so, he had forgotten himself.
And today the air smelled different...
It began as a vibration in his marrow, a subsonic rumble that made the water in his internal gills stir. It was a rhythmic, heavy thumping that seemed to be coming from the very foundation of the prison. Then, the ceiling groaned. The low-frequency hum of the dampeners stuttered, a jagged spike of static echoing through the cell, and then, silence.
The suppression field died.
Yuta felt it instantly. It was like a limb that had been asleep for twenty years suddenly snapping back to life. The Hydro rushed into him, not as a spark, but as a flood. He felt every drop of moisture in the recycled air, every gallon of salt water pressing against the other side of the reinforced glass.
The red emergency lights flared, bathing the cell in a strobe-light of blood. A hairline fracture appeared in the corner of the room, and with the sound of a shattering world, the ocean pushed through.
The cell door was ripped from its tracks as the high-pressure sea surged in. Yuta didn't panic. He didn't even move at first. He let the cold, salt-heavy water fill the room, feeling his quirk expand, dominating the current. He willed the water to spin, turning the flood into a localized vortex that shredded the steel furniture and the camera lenses.
He swam out of the cell, moving through the labyrinth of the sinking prison. He saw the chaos, the automated turrets firing blindly into the rising tide, the other inmates screaming as they were swallowed by the deep. He moved with the inevitability of a storm, his massive tail cutting through the water with terrifying speed.
He broke through the final bulkhead, the pressure equalizing as he entered the open sea. He ascended, the darkness of the depths giving way to a pale, shimmering light.
When he broke the surface, the air was a shock, cold, biting, and smelling of smoke. It was a grey morning, the sky a bruised purple near the horizon. Tartarus was a ruin behind him, smoke billowing from the surface platforms as the structure began to settle into its watery grave.
Ahead of him, on the jagged rocks of the landing pad, several black, oily tears were opening in the air. Portals. He saw a man with blue flames flickering from his palms, a girl covered in blood, and a man with a hand masking his face.
King Fin stood in the shallow water, the morning sun reflecting off his black, glassy eyes. He felt the pull of the void, a vacuum of shadow that promised a new world, one where the "monsters" no longer had to hide.
Freedom wasn't a concept to him. It was a physical weight. He reached out, his serrated teeth baring in a jagged, lethal grin.
"Clear water," he whispered, his voice a low, predatory growl. "Is about to get very, very dark."