The history books of the modern era are comfortable lies. They speak of the transition into a Quirk-filled society as a series of growing pains, a period of legislative adjustment that eventually gave birth to the shining light of All Might.
But if one were to peel back the polished layers of national propaganda, they would find a sixty-year-old scar that has never truly stopped weeping. Before the "Symbol of Peace," there was the "Age of Ash," a time defined by a singular, pathological obsession, the biological supremacy of the human form over the "monstrosity" of the mutant.
In those decades, heteromorphs, those born with physical mutations, were not considered citizens. They were viewed as errors of evolution, a regression into the primordial soup that threatened to pull the human race back into the dark.
Discrimination wasn't a choice, it was a civic duty. Mutants were forced into "Refinement Zones". Ghettos that were essentially open-air cages. There were "Culling Festivals" where the sound of breaking glass and the smell of burning fur became the background noise of suburban life.
The mutants were weak, shattered, and utterly without a voice. No one fought for them because the very world told them they were unworthy of being fought for. They huddled in the dark, praying not for liberation, but for a quick end before the White Standard found them.
Standing at the pinnacle of this systematic cruelty was Reiji Kisaragi, known to the adoring, pure-blooded public as the White Standard.
Reiji was an entity of such profound, crystalline beauty that it was said to look at him was to understand the divine. He was tall and slender, his skin the color of polished porcelain, unmarred by the "blemishes" he so despised in others. His hair was a river of silk, whiter than a shroud, falling perfectly around a face of haunting, aristocratic symmetry.
He moved with the calm, terrifying grace of a glacier, slow, inevitable, and cold enough to stop a heart. He didn't wear armor, he wore garments of heavy, expensive silk in shades of eggshell and dove-grey, appearing more like a prince of a lost kingdom than a man who had personally overseen the erasure of entire bloodlines.
His Quirk, Refinement, was the ultimate manifestation of his ideology. Reiji imposed "perfection" upon his enemies. Through his sword, a slender, silver blade called The Needle of Sovereignty, he could conceptually erase anything he deemed a "flaw."
Resistance was a flaw. Hardened mutant hide was a flaw. Regeneration was a flaw. When Reiji swung his blade, it did not meet the resistance of flesh or bone, it simply passed through them as if they were ghosts, because in his mind, they had already been erased. He didn't kill with rage, he killed with the detached, clinical boredom of a gardener pulling weeds. He truly believed he was a hero, a loyalist protecting the "Purity of the Nation," and his name was celebrated in every human household as the Standard of Virtue.
The only shadow that could stand against the blinding white of Reiji Kisaragi was a creature born from the very filth the Standard sought to purge.
Kōga Tsukishiro was a titan of fur and predatory muscle, a humanoid Amur tiger that stood as a living insult to Reiji's "perfect" world. He was massive, his shoulders broad enough to block out the sun, his body covered in pale gold fur slashed with obsidian-black streaks that looked like scars. His amber eyes didn't glow with the light of a savior, they burned with the feverish, self-consuming fire of a man who hated his own existence.
Kōga was a tragedy of internal conflict. He hated the humans who hunted him, but he hated the mutants he shared a cage with even more. He viewed his own fangs and claws with a sickening, visceral disgust, often seen in the black-site records trying to shave his own fur or blunt his own nails with stones. He carried the same prejudice as the White Standard, believing himself and his kind to be monsters, yet he possessed a lethal, animalistic will to survive and spit his hate out into the world that overrode his desire to die.
His Quirk, Predatory Assimilation, was a horror beyond comprehension. By consuming part of a target, a piece of their flesh, Kōga could permanently graft their power onto his own soul.
However, the mental strain was so immense that he could only ever hold two foreign Quirks at once, any more threatening to tear his psyche apart. He didn't fight for the "mutant cause"... he fought because Reiji was the only person in the world who looked down on him more than he looked down on himself.
The final confrontation between the two legends was a collision of two different brands of nihilism. It took place in the burning ruins of the Shinjuku district, a place that had been turned into a mass grave for heteromorphs. Reiji stood in the center of the carnage, his white silk untainted by the blood raining around him, his blade ready to "refine" the Amur Tiger into a memory.
Kōga didn't roar. He lunged with a silent, jagged fury. The battle lasted for a long hour, levelling four city blocks. Reiji's Refinement stripped away Kōga's fur and muscle, but Kōga simply kept moving, fueled by a self-loathing so potent it acted as armor.
In the end, it was the "monster" who triumphed. Kōga breached Reiji's aristocratic guard and tore the White Standard apart, piece by bloody piece, until there was nothing left of the "pure" god but a pile of stained silk.
Kōga didn't celebrate. He stood in the wreckage, weakened and bleeding, and waited for the human military to arrive. He was the most dangerous creature on the planet, a mutant who had killed the national icon and stolen the strength of a god. The government was terrified. They realized that no normal prison could hold him. They needed something deeper. Something colder.
The arrest of Kōga Tsukishiro was the primary catalyst for the creation of Tartarus.
The facility was built around him, its deepest levels designed specifically to suppress a man who could eat God and walk away. When the heavy, atmospheric bulkheads hissed shut on his cell for the first time, it was a moment of national relief. The world wanted to forget the Purge. They wanted to forget the White Standard's cruelty and the Amur Tiger's rage. They buried Kōga alive and threw away the key, leaving him to rot in a tomb of silence.
Sixty years have passed. The history books have turned Kōga into a myth and Reiji into a footnote.
But as of 09:00 AM this Tuesday, the ocean gave up its dead.
Kōga Tsukishiro is seventy-eight years old now. His once-vibrant gold fur has turned to the color of ash, his massive frame is leaner, and his amber eyes are clouded by decades of isolation, but the fire inside has not dimmed, it has merely condensed. He is the first prisoner of Tartarus, a relic of an age of blood, and he has just stepped out into the morning sun of a world that thinks it has solved the problem of hate.
The Amur Tiger is free. And sixty years of silence is about to become a scream that the Hero Society will never forget.
___
The hideout was no longer the cramped bar of Kurogiri's making, it was a sprawling, subterranean concrete bunker, the air thick with the scent of unwashed bodies, cigarette smoke, and the heavy, electric hum of a hundred different Quirks simmering in the dark.
Tomura Shigaraki lay draped across a rusted metal bench, his head lolling back as he stared at the damp patches on the ceiling. He looked like a bored king surveying a kingdom of rubble. Across from him, Spinner was pacing, his boots scuffing rhythmically against the floor, his lizard-like tail twitching with a frantic, nervous energy.
"He's out, Shigaraki. He's actually out," Spinner said, his voice vibrating with a fervor that bordered on religious. "Kōga Tsukishiro. The Amur Tiger. The first prisoner of Tartarus. Do you have any idea what that means for people like us? For the ones who were born looking like monsters?"
Shigaraki didn't move. He didn't even blink. "I know the history, Spinner. The Tiger and the Standard. A classic boss fight from like sixty to seventy years ago."
"Then you know we have to find him!" Spinner stepped closer, his hands gesturing wildly. "If we bring him into the League, it's not just a recruit. It's a statement. It's a rallying cry for every heteromorph who has been pushed into the gutters. We should offer him an invitation he can't refuse."
A sharp, jagged giggle erupted from the corner of the room. Dabi was leaning against a pillar, sparks of blue fire dancing between his fingers like a hypnotic toy.
"Listen to you," Dabi sneered, his scarred face twisting into a mocking grin. "You're practically drooling, lizard. It's pathetic. You're like some middle-school fanboy at a hero signing. You think an eighty-year-old fossil is going to solve your identity crisis?"
Spinner's jaw snapped shut, his fangs baring as he turned to glare at Dabi. His fists clenched at his sides, the leather of his gloves groaning. "Shut up, Dabi. You don't understand what it's like. You can walk into a store without people calling the police just because of your face. You have no idea what it's been like for us."
Clearly he was under some illusion if he truly believed that after taking a look at the fire wielder.
"No," Shigaraki said. The word was flat, quiet, and carried the weight of a closing vault.
Spinner froze. The anger in his eyes shifted into a shocked, wounded disbelief. "What? Why? Shigaraki, he's the strongest mutant in history..."
"I said no," Shigaraki rasped, finally sitting up. He scratched at his neck, his red eyes narrowing as he locked onto Spinner.
"Shigaraki, listen to me!" Spinner suddenly shouted, his voice echoing off the concrete walls, silencing the murmurs of Twice and Toga in the background. The air in the room grew cold, the tension thick enough to taste. "Mutants have been on the backfoot for almost a century! Since Quirks first showed up, we've been the 'errors.' We've been the ones people tried to find ways to fix our existence. We've been hunted, caged, and erased from the books. A hero of the mutant class is finally back, a man who killed the 'White Standard' and you want to just sit here? I'd be doing a disservice to my blood, serving you instead of a man like him!"
Shigaraki let out a low, dry laugh, a sound like dead leaves blowing across a grave.
"You really did fail all your history classes, didn't you, Spinner?" Shigaraki said, his voice dripping with a cruel, clinical irony.
He stood up, his sneakers scuffing as he walked slowly toward Spinner, invading his personal space. Shigaraki tilted his head, his eyes boring into the lizard-man's.
"You think Kōga Tsukishiro is your savior? You think he's going to lead a parade for the heteromorphs? You're deluded. Kōga didn't kill the White Standard because he loved mutants. He killed him because he hated himself. He was a tiger who spent his nights trying rip away his own skin. He was a mutant who hated mutants more than the humans ever did. He killed a dozen of his own 'kind' during his reign just for looking at him."
Shigaraki leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. "If you go to him with open arms, Spinner, he wouldn't shake your hand. He'd tear your throat out just for being a reminder of what he is. He's not a leader. He's a starving predator who's been in the dark for sixty years. He doesn't want followers. He wants a world that's as broken as he is."
Spinner's posture slumped, the fire in his eyes flickering as the weight of the history lesson hit him. He looked down at his clawed hands, a look of profound, hollowed-out disappointment crossing his face.
Shigaraki watched him for a beat, his expression softening into a mask of cold, tactical patience. He looked around the room, seeing the nods of agreement from Magne and Mustard, and the bored indifference of Dabi.
"We give it time," Shigaraki commanded, his voice returning to its authoritative rasp. "The world is already screaming because of the prison breaks. We let the Tiger roam. We watch what his actions are. We see if he's a player we can use, or an obstacle we have to leap over. We don't extend hands to someone who could spell our doom just because you have a crush on a myth."
He walked back to his bench, laying down once more and staring back at the ceiling.
"Just wait, Spinner," Shigaraki muttered, the finality in his tone ending the discussion. "The Harvest has just started. There will be plenty of blood for everyone soon enough. Don't go looking for more before you can handle what's already on your plate."