The purple gas crawled through the forest like a living lung, but high above the canopy, the air was thin, cold, and smelled of impending death.
Kota stood trembling on the edge of his secret lookout, his small hands clutching the hem of his shirt. Before him stood a mountain of a man, a nightmare draped in a tank top. His skin didn't look like flesh; it looked like a tangled mass of raw, throbbing muscle fibers that groaned with every movement.
The mountain air was no longer crisp; it was stagnant with the smell of scorched earth and the metallic tang of blood. On the high, isolated plateau overlooking the burning forest, the silence was broken only by the heavy, wet thud of shifting muscle.
Kota Izumi stood paralyzed, his small frame trembling against the jagged rock wall.
Towering over him was a mountain of a man, his body a grotesque tapestry of exposed, pulsating muscle fibers.
"I remember those eyes," Muscular rasped, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "The Water Hose duo... they looked at me just like that before I crushed the life out of them. It's funny, kid. I didn't even care about them. I just wanted to show them what real strength looks like."
Kota's breath hitched. The reality of his parents' death wasn't a hero's tale anymore; it was the man standing in front of him. "You... you're the one..."
"Yeah. And now, I'm going to make sure the bloodline ends right—"
Muscular lunged, his massive fist cocked back to pulverize the child into the cliffside.
Fwish.
A blur of white cut through the moonlight. A wall of high-density paper slammed into Muscular's forearm, the impact sounding like steel hitting stone. The villain stumbled back, a look of genuine surprise crossing his scarred face.
From the shadows of the cliff path, Sherlock Sheets stepped into the moonlight. His tactical gloves were already glowing, and his emerald eyes were devoid of their usual analytical chill—they were burning with a cold, focused fury.
"Sherlock-kun!" Kota cried, tears streaming down his face.
"Kota, get behind me," Sherlock commanded.
Sherlock's phone buzzed in his pocket. He reached for it, hoping to signal Aizawa, but Muscular moved with a speed that defied his mass. A massive fist smashed into the ground where Sherlock stood a second before. The shockwave sent Sherlock flying against a tree, his phone shattering into useless plastic and glass against a rock.
Muscular barked a laugh, his muscles rippling and expanding until he was twice his original size. Shigaraki told me to keep an eye out for a 'Paper Magician.' You're on the kill list, kid. Right up there with that Midoriya brat and the blonde kid with the explosions whom we are here to have."
"I am aware of my standing," Sherlock replied. He performed a sharp hand sign.
"Paper Art: Scattered Needle of Pain!"
Hundreds of steel-hard paper needles erupted from his gloves, homing in on the gaps in Muscular's muscle fibers. They struck with a sickening thud-thud-thud, burying themselves deep.
"Is that it?!" Muscular yelled, his muscles bulging outward, literally ejecting the needles from his body through sheer force. "I told you! My Quirk is the ultimate defense!
Muscular said "Pain? You think needles work on me? My muscles are a shield, brat! You're throwing toothpicks at a mountain!"
Muscular lunged again, his speed defying his massive bulk. Sherlock barely managed to dodge, the wind from the punch cracking the rock behind him.
The Magician used his Origami Dance to increase his speed and predict the vectors of attack, dodging by mere millimeters, but the fatigue was mounting. He threw card after card—slashing, vibrating, binding—but Muscular simply grew more muscle over the damage.
He's too dense, Sherlock analyzed, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Steel-strength paper isn't enough to breach the dermal layer of a muscle-augmentation Quirk of this scale. I need to change the state of the matter.
"You're fast, kid! But you're just delaying the inevitable!" Muscular swung a massive overhead blow.
Muscular mocked, stepping forward. The ground cracked beneath his weight. " Shigaraki said you were a genius, but all I see is a kid playing with stationary!"
Sherlock didn't waste breath on a retort. His mind was moving at a thousand variables per second. He flicked his wrists, and a dozen Molecular Vibration Cards hissed through the air. They were engineered to be as strong as tempered steel, their edges honed to a sub-molecular sharpness.
They struck Muscular's chest and arms, sinking inches deep into the muscle. But the villain didn't even flinch. With a sickening squelch, the muscle fibers contracted, catching the cards like a vice and snapping them in half.
Observation: Structural density of the target exceeds the piercing threshold of standard steel-grade paper, Sherlock analyzed. Even if I can pierce the outer layers, the regenerative speed of his augmentation creates a self-sealing armor. I am essentially trying to cut through a mountain with a scalpel.
"Paper Art: Vortex of the Void!" Sherlock commanded.
Fifty sheets surged forward, wrapping around Muscular's legs and arms in a high-tension bind. For a split second, the villain was pinned. Sherlock lunged, a paper blade extending from his palm like a spear, aiming for the gap between the muscle cables near the neck.
"Too slow!" Muscular roared. He flexed his torso, and the 2000-psi pressure of his expanding muscles literally shredded the vortex. The paper exploded into white confetti.
A massive fist caught Sherlock in the ribs. He felt the air leave his lungs in a painful rush as he was hurled backward, his body skipping across the rocky ground like a stone across a lake. He came to a halt inches from the cliff's edge, the long drop to the burning forest yawning behind him.
Sherlock coughed, the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth. He looked up and saw Kota. The boy was huddled against the rock, his eyes wide with a terror that went beyond the present—he was reliving the death of his parents in real-time.
The child is the priority, Sherlock thought, his vision swimming. If I continue this war of attrition, my stamina will hit zero before I can breach his defenses. I need a catastrophic failure of his structural integrity. I need the Ultimate Art.
But the Thousand Paper Blast of Death wasn't an instant move. It required the total synchronization of his external inventory and his internal biological reserves. He needed at least ten seconds to "charge" the cellulose into a supercritical state. Ten seconds against a monster who moved like a bullet was an eternity.
"I need an opening," Sherlock whispered, his hands beginning to glow with a faint, white heat. "A distraction to force him into a defensive crouch."
Muscular was already mid-leap, a literal mountain of meat descending from the sky.
Sherlock reached into his left glove, triggering a rapid-release command. Exactly one hundred sheets—all he could spare without compromising the final attack—swirled into a tight, dense sphere at his fingertips.
Muscular charged again, his speed increasing as he added more layers of muscle to his legs. Sherlock realized he couldn't outrun him forever. He needed a opening.
"Short-range Blast!"
Sherlock threw a handful of cards directly into Muscular's face. Boom! A localized explosion of paper fragments and kinetic energy staggered the giant for a split second. It wasn't enough to hurt him, but it bought Sherlock the one thing he needed: Position.
Using the recoil, Sherlock maneuvered himself, herding the villain toward the solid rock wall of the mountain.
"100 Sheets: Short-Circuit Blast!"
As Muscular's fist was inches from his face, Sherlock detonated the sphere.
It wasn't a killing blow, but the localized expansion of air and high-density paper shrapnel acted like a flashbang. The shockwave slammed into Muscular's face, the paper shards peppering his exposed eyes and nasal passages. The villain let out a roar of blinded agony, his momentum carrying him past Sherlock and crashing into the mountain wall.
The dust kicked up, obscuring the plateau. Sherlock had his ten seconds. He began the pulse.
As the dust began to settle, Sherlock stood in the center of the plateau, his arms outstretched. The air around him was beginning to hum. From every pore of his skin, a thick, white mist of cellulose was leaking out, flash-drying into thousands of micro-sheets that circled him like a blizzard.
"He... he killed them," Kota sobbed. "And I hated them for it. I hated them for leaving me."
"Why... why are you doing this?" Kota whispered. "You're just going to die like them. Like my mom and dad."
Sherlock looked at the boy, and for the first time, he didn't see a variable. He saw himself.
Sherlock didn't turn his head. His focus was locked on the silhouette of Muscular struggling to stand amidst the rubble. But he spoke, his voice surprisingly steady, carrying a weight that felt older than his sixteen years.
"You think your parents chose to leave you, Kota," Sherlock said, his voice cutting through the whistling wind. "You think they looked at that villain and decided that their duty was more important than their son's smile."
Kota flinched as if he had been struck. "They did! They left me all alone!"
"I thought the same thing," Sherlock replied. The white blizzard around him grew more intense, the paper glowing with an incandescent light. "My mother... she was the Pulp Princess. She was a hero just like your parents. was a hero of the highest order. She could turn a city's worth of waste into a shield for ten thousand people. And then, one day, the shield broke. She died in a collapse, her body found under the very paper she controlled.
For five years, I lived in the same dark room you're in now, Kota. I hated the 'hero' in her. I hated that she was a 'symbol' instead of a mother."
And when she died, I looked at the world exactly how you do. I thought the word 'Hero' was just a fancy way of saying 'Suicide.' I lived in the same dark room you're in now, Kota. I hated the 'hero' in her. I hated that she was a 'symbol' instead of a mother.I thought they chose the strangers over their own son.
Sherlock said"
Sherlock's hands began to shake from the sheer pressure of the cellulose he was manifesting. His skin was turning a ghostly, translucent white.
"I spent years in a basement, surrounded by paper and math, trying to prove that the world was just a series of cold numbers," Sherlock continued. "But then I met people who broke those numbers. My father, who lost his wife but kept building. My uncle, who fought until he couldn't walk. And Midoriya... a boy who had nothing but still gave everything. Momo, a childhood friend who always believed in me."
Sherlock looked at the shattered glove on his hand. "They didn't choose the strangers over us, Kota. They chose a world where we could grow up and have the choice to be whatever we wanted. They fought for the possibility of a tomorrow. And right now... that tomorrow is in my hands."
But then I looked at the math," Sherlock continued, his emerald eyes glowing with a fierce intensity. "I realized that if she hadn't stood her ground, those ten thousand people wouldn't have gone home to their own children. The world isn't a fair equation, Kota. It's a messy, violent calculation where someone always has to pay the price. My mother didn't choose to die. She chose to believe that a world where a child can grow up in peace is worth the risk of her own life."
Muscular let out a guttural scream, his vision clearing as he tore his way out of the mountain wall. He saw Sherlock—saw the massive, glowing sphere of paper the boy was conjuring.
"It's stupid!" Kota yelled. "It doesn't change anything!"
"It changes everything for the person who gets saved," Sherlock said.
He looked at the boy one last time, a look of profound, tragic empathy in his eyes. "You aren't alone, Kota. You never were. Your parents are the reason you're standing here to see me win."
Muscular lunged, his body doubling in size as he poured every ounce of his remaining energy into a final, world-ending strike. Sherlock didn't move. He closed his eyes, thinking of his father, his uncle, and the class that had become his new family.
The plateau became a vacuum of sound as the final seconds of the calculation ticked down. Sherlock's body was no longer just a vessel of flesh and bone; he had become a localized engine of production. The air around him screamed as two thousand sheets of reinforced, high-density paper spun in a tightening spiral, their edges vibrating at a frequency that began to glow a dull, heat-treated red.
Muscular, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, didn't hesitate. He poured every remaining ounce of his stamina into his muscle fibers. His body swelled until he looked less like a man and more like a pulsating, angry mountain of meat. The ground beneath his feet shattered as he propelled himself forward, a locomotive of raw destruction aimed directly at Sherlock's chest.
"I'LL CRUSH YOU AND THE BRAT INTO THE DUST!" Muscular roared.
Sherlock looked at Kota, who was huddled against the rock, staring at the impending collision. In that final moment of clarity, Sherlock didn't see a villain or a victim. He saw the reason his mother had done what she did. He saw the reason the math of sacrifice was the only math that truly mattered.
Sherlock began to pull every single sheet from his tactical gloves. At the same time, he pushed his pores to the absolute breaking point. He wasn't just sweating; he was forcing the cellulose out with such pressure that it felt like his skin was being flayed.
Over 2,000 sheets began to orbit him, a massive, swirling cyclone of white that blotted out the moon.
"Why go this far?" Kota cried out, tears streaming down his face. "You're going to kill yourself!"
"Kota!" Sherlock's voice rang out, clear and resonant against the howling wind. "Listen to me! This is what she told me... the last thing she ever said!"
Sherlock's hands came together, the glowing sphere of paper condensing between his palms until it was small, white, and brighter than the sun.
"People don't look at heroes to see if they win," Sherlock shouted, his emerald eyes burning with a light that matched the sphere. "They look at us to see if it's still possible to try! We aren't here to solve the world's problems, Kota... we're here to prove that the world is worth fighting for!"
"Even if I die here," Sherlock whispered, "if I save you... the equation is balanced."
Muscular roared, leaping into the air, his fist a massive engine of destruction. "DIE, PAPER BOY!"
Muscular was inches away, his shadow swallowing Sherlock whole.
"ULTIMATE ART: THOUSAND PAPER BLAST OF DEATH!"
snap
The collision was not a sound; it was an erasure.
When Sherlock released the compression, the two thousand sheets didn't just explode—they expanded with the force of a detonating star. The high-density cellulose, vibrating at a sub-molecular level, acted as both a physical hammer and a thousand searing blades.
A massive dome of incandescent white light swallowed the plateau, lancing upward into the dark clouds and downward into the burning valley. The shockwave was so immense that it cleared the purple gas from the surrounding square mile in an instant. The very mountain seemed to shudder, a deep, tectonic groan echoing through the Nagano range as the pressure wave leveled the jagged rocks.
For a heartbeat, there was only white. Then, a roar of expanding air that shook the trees for miles.
When the light finally faded, a heavy, oppressive silence fell over the mountain.
The plateau had been transformed. The jagged rocks where Muscular had stood were gone, replaced by a smooth, glass-like crater.
Muscular himself was embedded fifty feet into the far cliffside, his massive muscle augmentation shredded into scorched, blackened ribbons. He was unconscious, his body finally broken by the sheer mathematical finality of the blast.
In the center of the crater stood Sherlock.
His tactical gloves had completely disintegrated, leaving his hands and forearms bare. His skin was the color of winter ash, drained of every drop of moisture and biological reserve. He was perfectly still. He didn't fall. He simply stayed on his knees, his head bowed, his hands still shaped in the final hand sign of the blast.
He looked like an origami statue, a fragile thing carved from the wreckage of the night.
Kota crawled out from behind the rubble, his face streaked with tears and soot. He looked at the fallen giant in the cliff, then at the boy who had stood between him and death. He walked toward Sherlock, his steps hesitant, his breath hitching.
"Hero..." Kota whispered, his voice trembling. He reached out, his small hand brushing Sherlock's cold, dry arm. "You... you really did it."
Sherlock didn't answer. He didn't move. The Paper Magician had reached the end of his deck. He had used his sweat, his blood, and the very memory of his mother to balance the equation. As the embers from the forest below drifted up like burning snow, Sherlock Sheets remained in his silent vigil, the boy who proved that even when the math says you lose, you try anyway.
the battle of the mountain is over. Sherlock is in a state of total collapse, and Muscular is defeated. But the threat is still there.