The temporary shelter they had found was a hollowed-out warehouse on the fringes of Nagoya, a place where the air tasted of cold grease and old iron. Outside, the city's neon pulse was fading as the early morning hours crept in.
Izuku sat on a crate across from Gentle Criminal and La Brava. He had released them an hour ago, the obsidian vines of Blackwhip retreating into his skin with a reluctant, predatory hiss. He watched them with the steady, unblinking gaze of a bird of prey.
They aren't monsters, Izuku thought, his mind a whirlwind of cynical observation. They're just... actors.
He found their brand of "villainy" irritating, a theatrical, self-indulgent quest for fame in a world that was literally tearing itself apart. But as he watched Gentle meticulously clean his spectacles and La Brava hover over the shattered remains of her laptop, Izuku realized he was in no position to condemn them.
He was a boy who had broken the Symbol of Peace. He was a successor who had abandoned his post. In the eyes of the law, he was a far greater catastrophe than a YouTuber with a taste for Earl Grey.
"You're remarkably quiet, young man," Gentle said, breaking the silence as he adjusted his gold-trimmed coat. He looked at Izuku, his eyes searching the boy's tattered mask. "Usually, the 'heroic' types have more to say about the virtues of law and order."
"I'm not here to lecture you," Izuku replied, his voice a low, gravelly rasp.
Gentle hummed, a soft, aristocratic sound. "But tell me... why is the star pupil of UA roaming the back alleys of Nagoya? The news says the school is a fortress. Surely you would be safer behind those walls than out here in the rain."
Izuku's posture stiffened. He looked at the concrete floor, his eyes tracing the cracks. "I'll go back eventually," he lied, the words feeling like dry ash in his mouth. "But with the lockdown and the new administration... there are complications. I'm not guaranteed the resources I need right now. It's better if I move independently."
La Brava looked up from her broken screen, her large eyes reflecting the faint, flickering light of a single overhead bulb. "You're a terrible liar, Deku-kun," she said softly.
Izuku didn't look up.
"But it's okay," she continued, her voice devoid of judgment. "We all have things we're running from. Or toward."
Izuku sighed, the tension in his shoulders dropping slightly. He looked at the laptop. The casing was cracked, the internal circuitry weeping cold sparks.
"I broke your computer," Izuku said, changing the subject. "The market is a mess right now, but have you found a replacement?"
La Brava's eyes lit up with a spark of technical fervour. "I've been looking. Most consumer models won't hold up against the decryption protocols I run. I need something with a localized cooling system and a military-tier signal jammer. There's a specialty tech vault in the next town over, Gifu. It's the only place within three prefectures that stocks them."
"I'll get it," Izuku said firmly. "I broke yours. I'll replace it."
"You would do that?" Gentle asked, looking surprised. "Risk a trip to a tech hub for a criminal?"
"I pay my debts," Izuku said, his eyes flashing with a brief, emerald light. "And I might need your help later. Both of you."
Gentle exchanged a look with La Brava. A slow, intrigued smile spread across the criminal's face. "The League," he murmured. "You want to hunt the hunters. It is a dangerous script, but one that offers the kind of center stage we've been craving. If we assist the 'Demon of UA' in dismantling the Harvest... our influence would be undeniable."
Izuku nodded, but his focus was pulled away by the buzzing of a burner phone he had picked up in the city. The screen glowed with news notifications. He didn't open them. He couldn't. He wanted to be everywhere, but the physical reality of being one boy with a quirk he was still getting used to.
Gentle watched him, noticing the way Izuku's hand tightened around the phone until the plastic groaned. "The next town over... Gifu," Gentle said, his tone turning serious. "It may offer more than just a computer, Deku. It may offer a lead."
"What do you mean?" Izuku asked, his focus snapping back to the man.
"We wish to find the League for our own reasons, but I am a man who knows his limits, you are a boy that ignores his own." Gentle explained, gesturing with his cane. "I have no desire to trade blows with the high-ranking monsters or the Tartarus escapees. However, information is a currency that flows through the underworld. Rumour has it that Gifu is currently playing host to a particularly violent guest."
Gentle leaned in, the shadows deepening the lines on his face. "Muscular. The man of a thousand fibres. It is said he has returned to his home prefecture. He's been seen camping out in the industrial districts, waiting for a fight worthy of his quirk."
Izuku had heard of the name. The villain was quite known but he was also known to just disappear for long bursts of time before reappearing with bodies.
"Muscular," Izuku whispered.
"He is a core asset of the League's influence," Gentle added. "If you want to find the kidnappers he may be a thread you must pull."
Izuku nodded, his gaze hardening. The path was becoming clear. He had a team, a destination, and a target.
"Thank you, Gentle," Izuku said, standing up. He felt the weight of One For All vibrating in his bones, the dark vines of Blackwhip humming in response to the name of his old enemy. "We should get some rest. We move for Gifu at dawn."
___
The city of Gifu breathed with a heavy, industrial rhythm, its skyline a jagged teeth-line of factories and skeletal cranes.
Izuku moved through the pre-dawn mist. He had slipped away from the warehouse in Nagoya before the first light of dawn had even touched the horizon, leaving Gentle and La Brava behind without a word.
He wasn't worried about them escaping, he wasn't even worried about them betraying him. In the grand, terrifying scale of the world he now inhabited, they were footnotes, small players in a tragedy that was quickly outgrowing its stage.
His target was bigger. Muscular.
If the rumours were true, the man of a thousand fibres was nesting here, in the cold heart of his home prefecture. Muscular was a brute, but he was also an insider, a core pillar of the League's violent influence. If Izuku could corner him, if he could break him and peel the truth from his lips, he could find the League. He could find the student they had stolen from the bunker.
He leapt from the edge of a water tower, green sparks of One For All, flickering at a strained twelve percent, trailing behind him like dying embers. But as he arched through the air, his mid-air trajectory was abruptly, violently corrected.
A thin, silver line, sharper than a razor and faster than a heartbeat, sliced through the mist. Izuku twisted, his body reacting with a primal instinct he hadn't possessed a month ago. The attack grazed his shoulder, cutting through the tattered fabric of his hero suit as if it were tissue paper.
He hit the gravel of a flat rooftop, sliding into a low crouch, his hands already glowing with the dark pressure of Blackwhip. But before he could launch, the air around him seemed to tighten. Thin, shimmering ribbons of living thread wrapped around his throat, his wrists, and his ankles with a surgical, absolute precision.
"Do not move," a voice commanded. It was cold, clinical, and possessed a razor-edged authority. "Do not speak. One vibration of your vocal cords and the internal damage will be permanent."
Izuku froze. Standing before him was the Number Four Hero, Edgeshot. The Ninja Hero, his eyes narrowed behind his mask, his body folded into a lethal, paper-thin stance.
Izuku's heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He cursed his own arrogance. He had been so focused on the monster in the industrial district that he had forgotten the world he had left behind. He had forgotten the narrative.
I am the villain, Izuku thought, the realization tasting like copper. In their play, I am the boy who broke the sun. I am the one who sent All Might into the dark. I am the criminal they've been instructed to hunt.
"You've been quite difficult to track, Midoriya Izuku," Edgeshot said, his voice dripping with a menacing stillness. He tightened the threads around Izuku's wrists, the pressure bordering on agonizing. "You were told: do not move."
Izuku looked into the hero's eyes. He saw no mercy there, only the grim duty of a man cleaning up a mess. The media, the leaks, the Harvest, it had all converged on this rooftop. To Edgeshot, Izuku was a catastrophe that needed to be contained.
It doesn't matter, Izuku told himself, his mind hardening into a diamond-sharp focus. Let them call me a villain. Let them put me in chains. I have to move forward. I have to find the League. I have to become what they are all too afraid to be. I will be the Champion of this dying world, even if I have to walk through the fire to do it.
"Nezu and the board at UA... they reached out," Edgeshot continued, his tone shifting into something slightly more complex, though no less dangerous. "They asked the top-tier heroes to keep their eyes out for you. They claimed they wanted you brought back to safety..."
Edgeshot stepped closer, his hand rising to deliver a finishing blow to Izuku's nervous system. "Whatever you're searching for in Gifu, it ends..."
BOOM.
The rooftop beneath them erupted. A massive, violent explosion of kinetic force tore through the concrete, sending shrapnel whistling into the air like daggers.
A mountain of raw, pulsating muscle fibres burst through the center of the roof, glowing with a nauseating, fleshy pink light. A massive man with a glass eye and a grin that looked like a jagged wound stood in the center of the debris, his laughter a guttural roar that drowned out the sirens in the distance.
"I thought I heard some mice scurrying around out here!" Muscular bellowed, his fibres expanding until he looked like a god of meat and malice. He turned his glass eye toward the restrained boy and the ninja hero, his bloodlust filling the air like a physical weight. "And look at that! A Pro and a brat! Two for the price of one!"
Muscular took a look at Izuku and his eyes widened as he let out a loud laugh. "You're on the hitlist!" He screamed. "A whooping 50 points for the new villain of UA!"