The neon lights of Nagoya's Sakae district bled into the wet asphalt, shimmering like oil on water. Izuku Midoriya stood on the ledge of a skyscraper, the cold wind whipping his tattered green hood against his face. Down below, the city hummed with a nervous, electric energy.
Inside him, One For All hummed at a low, vibrating ten percent, but the "Golden Light" of the quirk felt tarnished. Every time he tapped into the power, he felt the predatory itch of the obsidian vines, Blackwhip, coiling like snakes beneath his skin.
He still hadn't learned anything other than the quirks name. He hadn't heard Nana Shimura's voice since before the incident in Yokohama either.
He had seen the news flicker on a jumbo screen an hour ago.
UA High School. Third Breach. Nezu ousted. And the words that had turned Izuku's blood into slush: One student missing. Abduction confirmed.
Izuku gripped the edge of the concrete so hard it began to spider-web under his fingers. He wanted to rage. He wanted to throw himself into the sky and leap across the prefectures until he reached Musutafu, until he found the classmates he had abandoned. The guilt was a physical weight, a jagged stone in his throat.
He should have been there. He was the "Successor," the boy All Might had bet the world on, yet he was hiding in the shadows of Nagoya while his friends were being hunted in their own home.
Who did they take? the thought haunted him. Was it Iida? Uraraka? Or just about any one of his friends, he wanted to know and then dash to help them in whatever way he could.
"I can't go back," he whispered, his voice disappearing into the gale.
He was out in the big world now, truly alone. There was no mother to come home to. There was no All Might to offer a hand or a word of wisdom. Izuku was a champion with no corner, a soldier with no general.
He forced his mind away from the school and toward the immediate threat. He couldn't save UA tonight, but he could save Nagoya.
He was hunting a lead. A "villain" who called himself Gentle Criminal. In the grand, bloody theatre of the League and the Harvest, Gentle was an anomaly. He was a YouTuber, a clout-chaser, a man seeking a legacy through polite property damage and grandiose speeches and some other kinds of heists too.
To the Heroes, he was most likely just a nuisance. To Izuku, he was a tragedy in the making. Gentle had been on a long bender, escalating his "performances" and causing massive structural damage to the city's historic district.
Property can be fixed, Izuku thought, jumping from the ledge and catching a flagpole with a flick of his wrist. People can't.
His thoughts drifted, as they often did in the quiet moments between rooftops, to the rarity of healing. He thought of Recovery Girl's wrinkled face and the exhaustion in her eyes. Quirks that could mend flesh and bone were biological miracles, freaks of nature in a world that mostly produced ways to break things.
If there was just one more, he thought bitterly. Someone with a quirk strong enough to reach into the dark where Mom is. Someone who could fix whatever is going on with All Might.
He knew it was a fantasy. The world now was full of Stingers and Shigarakis, people who took and took until there was nothing left. He felt a sudden, sharp pang of hatred for the unfairness of it, that the "Golden Age" had produced so much power for destruction, but so little for restoration.
He landed silently on a rooftop overlooking a tea shop that had been vandalized earlier that evening. The scent of spilled matcha and broken wood wafted up to him.
"Nagoya stays quiet," Izuku muttered to the shadows.
He wouldn't let the Harvest take this city. He would catch Gentle, not out of malice, but because Nagoya needed to believe that someone was still watching. And once the "harmless" criminal was contained, Izuku would turn his eyes back to the East. He would find the League. He would find the missing student.
He took a breath, the cold air filling his lungs, and for a split second, his eyes flashed with a terrifying, obsidian light. He wasn't the timid boy anymore. He was a hero being brought up in a darkening age, and he was through waiting for permission to fight.
A flash of a gold-trimmed coat caught his eye in the alleyway below.
"Found you," he whispered, and with a burst of green sparks and black vines, he dove into the dark.
___
Gentle Criminal sat on a discarded wooden crate, his movements fluid and rehearsed even in the shadows. He poured a stream of amber liquid from a silver thermos into a delicate porcelain cup, his gloved fingers steady, but his brow furrowed with a deep, existential irritation.
Beside him, La Brava hunched over her glowing laptop, the blue light reflecting off her oversized eyes. Her small fingers flew across the keyboard, but she wasn't editing their latest "performance." She was watching the live feed from the East.
"Five million viewers, Gentle," she whispered, her voice trembling. "In ten minutes. Shigaraki... he just takes the air out of the room. Every major news outlet has dropped our Nagoya coverage to focus on the UA breach. We're being buried by the algorithm of carnage."
Gentle sighed, the steam from his tea curling around his moustache. "It is crude, Love. Unrefined. To strike at a school three times? It shows a lack of imagination. A true villain, a criminal of stature, should be a sharp blade, not a blunt, rusted hammer. And yet..." He looked up at the darkened sky. "Society loves the hammer. They have no taste for the grand narrative we are trying to build."
"Then let's change the narrative," La Brava said, her eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce protectiveness. "If the League is the only thing the world sees, let's go after them. We can hunt the hunters, Gentle! We'll hack their trackers, find their hideouts. If we take down a member of the League, the 'Hero' world will have to acknowledge us."
Gentle set his cup down on a saucer with a sharp clack. "A death wish, my dear. We are artists, not soldiers. The League consists of monsters who would treat our noble quest as a mere snack." He paused, his eyes narrowing as he thought of the scrolling news ticker. "But... there is the matter of the kidnapped student. If we were to find them first... if we were to pull whoever they are from the jaws of the League and present him to the world ourselves..."
He stood up, his gold-trimmed coat catching the faint light. "We would take center stage. Heroes, villains, and the Commission would be forced to watch us. We would be the protagonists of the final act."
"Gentle, look out...!"
Thud.
The air didn't just move, it shrieked.
Before Gentle could even reach for his cane to activate his elasticity, a weight hit him in the small of his back like a falling girder. He was slammed face-first into the wet pavement, the breath forced out of his lungs in a sickening wheeze.
He tried to roll, to push the ground into a protective cushion, but his wrists were instantly jerked together behind him. He felt something cold, slick, and impossibly strong tightening around his skin. It wasn't rope or handcuffs; it felt like living, predatory wire.
"Gentle!" La Brava screamed, reaching for her camera, but a single, obsidian vine lashed out from the darkness. It pinned her small frame against the brick wall, not crushing her, but holding her with a terrifying, absolute tension.
Gentle struggled, his face pressed into the grit. He looked up sideways and saw the silhouette standing over him.
It wasn't a hero. It wasn't the police.
The figure was wreathed in flickering, jagged green sparks that hissed like a nest of vipers. From its back and arms, thick, ink-black vines pulsed with a low, malevolent thrum. The boy wore a tattered green mask that looked more like a snarl than a face. His eyes, visible through the slits, weren't the hopeful emerald of a student. They were cold, fractured.
The obsidian vines around Gentle's wrists tightened, drawing a hiss of pain from the criminal.
"Stay down," the figure said. The voice was low, a jagged gravel-crawl that sounded far older than the boy it belonged to. "You're a nuisance Nagoya doesn't need right now. Don't fight, and I won't have to break anything."
Izuku Midoriya didn't look at the camera. He didn't look at the porcelain cup he had just shattered. He stood in the steam and the shadows, a spectre of raw, tactical efficiency, looking less like a saviour and more like the very hammer Gentle had just been condemning.
"Who... who are you?" Gentle gasped, his aristocratic mask finally crumbling into genuine fear.
Izuku's eyes flickered toward the East, toward the smoke rising from Musutafu. "Deku" he whispered. "And I'm through letting people like you waste my time."
___
The air in the League's newest hideout was a crawlspace beneath a derelict chemical plant, thick with the smell of stagnant water and industrial rust.
The heavy iron door groaned on its hinges before Katsuki Bakugo was hurled into the cell. He hit the concrete floor with a wet, heavy thud, sliding several feet until his shoulder connected with the far wall. He didn't groan. He didn't curse. He just lay there, a heap of broken pride and bruised muscle.
His shirt had been torn away during the "interrogation," revealing a torso that looked like a map of a war zone. Dark, plum-coloured bruises, some the size of dinner plates, bloomed across his ribs, and a jagged cut over his brow leaked a slow, rhythmic drip of crimson onto the floor. In the half-light, the blood looked black, like the very shadows he was now trapped in.
From the doorway, a high-pitched, melodic giggle pierced the gloom.
Toga Himiko leaned against the frame, her oversized cardigan slipping off one shoulder. She was twirling a butterfly knife with a hypnotic, silver blur, her eyes wide and shimmering with a terrifying, lovesick hunger. She stepped into the cell, the soles of her shoes clicking softly as she approached the boy on the floor.
"You look so much prettier when you're not yelling, Katsuki-kun," she whispered, her voice a sharp contrast to the cold stone. She knelt beside him, the tip of her blade tracing the line of his jaw, just barely breaking the skin. "You look like a doll. A big red doll. I wonder if your blood tastes as angry as you used to be."
Bakugo's eyes flickered open, but the fire that usually burned behind his pupils was gone. There was only a hollow, grey ash. He stared through her, past her, at a world that no longer existed for him. He didn't even flinch when the cold steel touched his neck. He felt... dead. It wasn't just the physical exhaustion or ache of whatever drug they put through his veins to make it harder for his quirk to function, it was the realization that the "Hero" he had tried to be had been executed by the very people he had sought to surpass.
"Now, now, Himiko. Let's not spoil the merchandise just yet."
The voice was smooth, theatrical, and entirely devoid of warmth. Mr. Compress stepped into the light, his mask reflecting the dim bulb overhead. He adjusted his top hat, looking down at Bakugo with the clinical detachment of a stagehand moving a prop.
"Tomura has sent word," Compress continued, his gloved hand resting on Toga's shoulder to pull her back. "We are to leave him for a few days. He wants the 'Saviour' to stew in his own failure. Solitude is a far more effective tool for breaking a spirit than a blade, my dear."
Toga pouted, her bottom lip trembling in a way that would have been cute if she wasn't currently drenched in someone else's spray. "But he's so quiet now! It's the perfect time to play!"
"Patience," Compress murmured, his voice echoing in the small space. "Shigaraki promised you first go at him... next time. When he becomes what the Master intends for him to be, you can have all the 'playtime' you desire. For now, we let the rot set in."
Toga let out one last, jagged giggle, blowing a kiss toward Bakugo's motionless form. "Fine. Sleep tight, Katsuki-kun. I'll be back to see what's inside you soon."
The two villains stepped out, the heavy iron door slamming shut with a finality that shook the very foundations of the cell. The bolt slid into place, a heavy, mechanical clank that signalled the end of his world.
Bakugo remained on the cold floor. The silence that followed was louder than any explosion he had ever made. He watched a single drop of blood fall from his brow and vanish into the cracks of the concrete.
He was stuck in the lightless silence, in a corner where no one is searching.
He thought of his mother's face as she told him it was over. And he thought of Deku... no, Midoriya... standing over the broken body of All Might.
Whatever did happen to All Might? Katsuki wondered. Would he be coming to save me?