Location: Landmark Tower Mall, Yokohama
Date: Two Weeks Post-Global Raid
WEE-WOO.
WEE-WOO.
WEE-WOO.
The deafening wail of police sirens bounced off the towering glass skyscrapers of Yokohama's central shopping district.
"Stay back! Nobody crosses the barricade!" a police captain roared through a megaphone, his voice cracking as he waved his arms frantically.
Above them, the heavy, rhythmic thumping of local news helicopters chopped through the air, their cameras zoomed tightly on the chaos below.
KRR-RASH!
Another massive pane of tempered glass shattered from the second floor of the mall, raining razor-sharp shards onto the pavement below like deadly hail.
Inside the high-end jewelry concourse, a panicked syndicate of Trigger-enhanced villains had barricaded themselves.
They weren't low-level thugs; the drugs had mutated them into hulking, monstrous figures.
They held a dozen terrified civilian hostages at gunpoint, hiding behind the overturned marble kiosks.
The local heroes were completely pinned down behind the police cruisers.
"Suppressing fire is useless!" a local hero shouted, ducking as a hail of automatic gunfire chipped the concrete of his cruiser. "They have the high ground! We can't rush the escalators without them tearing the hostages apart!"
Screeeech.
A sleek, heavily armored black transport van drifted around the corner, its tires smoking as it slammed to a halt directly at the edge of the police perimeter.
The heavy side doors slid open.
There was no battle cry. There was no chaotic, adrenaline-fueled rushing.
Twelve sidekicks wearing the pristine, heavy tactical gear of the Gunslinger Agency stepped out. Their boots hit the asphalt in perfect, synchronized unison.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
"Gunslingers!" the police captain yelled, running over, the relief washing over his face.
"Thank god! The primary hostile has a mother and child pinned against the atrium railing on the second floor! We can't get an angle!"
"Hold your fire, Captain," a deep, raspy voice commanded.
Snipe stepped out of the van, the afternoon sun glinting off the brass buckles of his heavy leather coat and the dark lenses of his industrial gas mask.
He drew his custom, heavy-caliber revolver, the cylinder clicking into place with a sharp, metallic snap.
Snipe didn't look at the villains on the balcony. He looked at his men.
"Flak. Tracer," Snipe said, his voice calm and entirely devoid of panic. "Establish the geometric perimeter. Execute."
"Yes, Sir."
The two veteran sidekicks stepped past the police barricade. They didn't crouch. They didn't scramble for cover behind the concrete planters.
They simply drew their weapons and walked directly into the open, sunlit plaza in front of the shattered mall entrance.
"Are they insane?!" a news anchor stammered from the helicopter above, the live feed broadcasting to millions. "They're walking right into the firing squad!"
On the second-floor balcony, a villain with a mutated, multi-barreled arm laughed hysterically. "Stupid heroes! Light 'em up!"
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
A blinding hail of bullets tore down from the balcony, ripping up the asphalt and shredding the decorative trees in the plaza.
Flak and Tracer didn't flinch. They didn't run.
They moved with a terrifying, fluid grace. Kaito Arisaka had drilled the core philosophy of the Gun Kata into their bones: Through the analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the geometric distribution of gunners in any combat space is statistically predictable.
Flak stepped half a foot to the left. Tracer pivoted on his heel, dropping his right shoulder by exactly four inches.
Whizzz. Fwip. Fwip.
The bullets tore through the empty air where their heads and chests had been a microsecond prior.
They were stepping flawlessly into the "zero-probability zones"—the blind spots in the enemy's firing arcs.
They weren't just dodging; they were actively calculating the trajectory of the incoming fire and simply removing their bodies from the mathematical equation of the bullet's path.
They moved like lethal, synchronized dancers.
"What the hell?!" a villain screamed, his gun clicking empty. "Why won't they go down?!"
"Readjusting," Tracer whispered. He exhaled a slow, controlled breath.
His Quirk, Laser Sight, activated. Brilliant red beams shot from his eyes, painting the structural weak points of the villains' weapons.
Tracer didn't aim with his eyes; he aimed with his memory of Kaito's forms. He whipped his arms out in sharp, geometric angles.
BANG-BANG! BANG-BANG!
Tracer fired in a rapid, percussive rhythm. His bullets didn't hit the villains' bodies. They struck the exact firing pins and magazines of the enemy rifles.
Clang! Shatter!
Three villains screamed as their weapons violently exploded in their hands, rendering them completely unarmed.
Flak moved next.
He swept his arms in a contained, precise arc, diving into a roll and popping up directly beneath the balcony.
"Compression," Flak grunted. He utilized his Scattershot Quirk.
Normally, a shotgun blast would blow out the entire storefront and risk hitting a hostage.
But Flak locked his elbows perfectly, angling his wrists down by exactly three degrees.
BOOM!
The buckshot spread was contained to a flawless, one-meter geometric circle. It tore through the railing, shredding the kneecaps of the remaining thugs without scratching a single glass display case behind them.
"UGHHH!"
The lower-level villains collapsed, groaning in agony.
In less than ten seconds, without taking a single hit, the Gun Kata had completely neutralized the firing squad.
"Damn you!" a booming, monstrous voice roared from the center of the balcony.
The lead villain stepped forward. The Trigger drug had heavily mutated his Quirk. His entire chest, face, and torso were covered in thick, impenetrable, grey stone plating. He was essentially a walking bunker.
He grabbed the terrified mother by the throat, pulling her entirely in front of his massive body as a human shield.
He leveled a heavy, high-caliber automatic rifle directly at Snipe's head down in the plaza.
"Drop the guns or I blow her in half!" the stone-scaled villain screamed, his eyes twitching with chemical madness.
The police captain went pale, grabbing Snipe's coat. "Snipe! You can't shoot him! His Trigger mutation gave him frontal rock-armor!"
"I can see that," Snipe rasped, keeping his eyes locked on the balcony.
"Then you know your Quirk is useless here!" the Captain yelled in pure panic. "Your Homing Quirk targets the closest center mass! If you fire, the bullet will either bounce harmlessly off his stone chest, or worse... it will take the shortest route and punch right through the hostage to get to him!"
Snipe tightened his grip on his revolver. The Captain was absolutely right.
His Quirk was a magnet. It guaranteed a hit, but it could not guarantee where the bullet landed. It couldn't perform a pinpoint, non-lethal strike on a microscopic target.
The villain was entirely armored in the front. The only vulnerable spot on his entire body was a tiny patch of soft, un-mutated skin directly behind his right ear.
To hit that spot, a bullet would have to bypass the hostage, bypass the frontal armor, swing wide into the open air of the atrium, and strike him perfectly from the side.
His Quirk couldn't do that.
But his Manager had taught him something that could.
"I know my Quirk can't make that shot, Captain," Snipe said softly.
Snipe holstered his left-hand gun. He planted his heavy boots firmly onto the concrete of the plaza.
He didn't activate his Quirk. He closed his eyes beneath his mask and reached inward.
Thump.
He visualized the sheer, blinding terror of a near-death experience. He remembered the grueling, agonizing simulated drownings Kaito had put him through in the dojo.
He remembered the feeling of his lungs burning for oxygen.
He manually hijacked his own sympathetic nervous system.
Thump-thump.
Snipe forced his adrenal glands to dump raw, unfiltered adrenaline directly into his bloodstream.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!
Snipe's eyes snapped open. The veins on his neck and forearms bulged violently against his skin. Sweat instantly beaded on his forehead.
His heart rate skyrocketed to a lethal, agonizing four hundred beats per minute.
Bullet Time.
To Snipe, the world simply... stopped.
The dust falling from the shattered balcony froze in mid-air. The screaming of the police officers became a low, distorted, drawn-out hum.
The stone-scaled villain's finger tightening on the trigger looked like it was moving through thick, heavy molasses.
In that expanded fraction of a second, Snipe's brain functioned like a supercomputer. He calculated the lateral weight of his heavy-caliber bullet. He measured the exact friction of his barrel. He felt the cold wind resistance howling between the Yokohama skyscrapers.
He didn't aim. He swung.
Swoosh.
Snipe whipped his arm forward in a violent, tearing horizontal arc. The sheer force of the movement made his rotator cuff scream in physical agony.
In the microscopic window of ignition, right at the absolute apex of the swing, he snapped the trigger.
BANG!
He didn't just fire the gun; he transferred the devastating kinetic momentum of his swinging arm directly into the brass casing.
The bullet tore out of the barrel. It didn't fly straight. The heavy, unnatural spin grabbed the crosswind of the plaza, violently hooking the projectile in a wide, impossible, crescent-shaped arc.
The bullet sailed forty feet through the air. It hooked wide to the left, completely bypassing the terrified mother. It sailed past the villain's impenetrable stone chest plate.
And then, dictated purely by physics and momentum, it snapped back inward.
THWACK.
The bullet slammed perfectly into the one-inch patch of exposed soft tissue directly behind the stone-scaled villain's right ear.
"UGHH!"
The kinetic shockwave rattled his skull. The villain's eyes instantly rolled into the back of his head.
He dropped the hostage, the rifle slipping from his fingers as he collapsed onto the balcony like a puppet with its strings cut.
Thud.
The plaza went dead silent.
The police officers, the paramedics, and the news crews hovering above stared at the balcony in absolute, paralyzing disbelief.
A Pro Hero had just curved a bullet through thin air without using a Quirk. It wasn't magic. It was a terrifying, god-like mastery of physics.
Snipe slowly lowered his smoking gun.
"Huuuffff..."
He exhaled a long, shuddering breath, physically forcing his heart rate back down to normal.
His arm trembled violently from the sheer physical toll of the biological overdrive, but his posture remained completely upright.
He looked up at the balcony, watching Flak and Tracer move in to secure the sobbing mother.
"Hostage secured," Snipe announced quietly, tipping his hat to the dumbfounded police captain.
The crowd behind the barricades erupted into a deafening roar of cheers.
_-_-_-_-_-_-_
Location: Yokohama – Gunslinger Agency Urban Training Ground
Date: 22 Days after
SPLASH.
"GAAAH—COUGH! COUGH!"
Flak thrashed violently against the heavy canvas straps binding him to the steel scaffolding.
He was hanging completely upside down, his face bright red and his eyes bulging as Tracer yanked a massive, galvanized bucket of freezing ice water away from his head.
"Don't panic! Focus the pulse!" Snipe roared, his voice rough and completely devoid of pity.
The Pro Hero paced around the scaffolding like a caged tiger, a heavy stopwatch ticking in his hand. "Your brain thinks you are drowning! Let the fear hit the bottom of your stomach and bounce back up! Give me the heart rate!"
"Three... three hundred and twenty beats!" Tracer yelled, checking the medical monitor strapped to Flak's bare, shivering chest.
"Not enough! You need four hundred to break the threshold!" Snipe barked, pointing a gloved finger at Flak's face. "If a villain has a gun to a kid's head, three hundred beats a minute just gets you a front-row seat to a funeral! Dunk him again!"
SPLASH.
Standing in the cool shade of the agency's back awning, Kaito Arisaka took a slow sip of his black coffee.
He leaned against the brick wall, watching the brutal, agonizing training session with mild amusement.
To a casual observer, it looked like Snipe had lost his mind and was torturing his own sidekicks.
But Kaito knew exactly what the Pro Hero was trying to do. Snipe was trying to force his men to reach Bullet Time—the sheer, hyper-perceptual adrenaline spike that Kaito had demonstrated six weeks ago.
Kaito took another sip of his coffee, hiding a small, awkward smirk behind the rim of the cup.
Snipe was a brilliant marksman, but he didn't know the truth. The truth was that the ability to artificially spike one's heart rate to four hundred beats per minute without dying wasn't just a martial arts technique.
In the movie Wanted where Kaito had pulled the idea from. It was a genetic bloodline trait.
A biological anomaly passed down through generations of killers. Normal humans couldn't just learn it by being waterboarded. If a normal person pushed their heart that fast, their chest would simply burst.
When Kaito first demonstrated the bullet curve to Snipe, he had completely fabricated the lie that anyone could do it with enough training just to hide his reality-warping Quirk.
But Kaito hated loose ends. If Snipe tried to teach his men and they all failed, the lie would fall apart.
So, Kaito had fixed the problem.
Four weeks ago, during a casual morning briefing, Kaito had silently looked at Snipe.
With a microscopic, completely invisible Snap of reality, Kaito had gently rewritten the Pro Hero's endocrine and respiratory systems.
He didn't edit the sidekicks. He didn't grant a magical bloodline. He simply turned Snipe into a biological catalyst.
Kaito had altered Snipe so that whenever the Pro Hero entered "Bullet Time"—whenever his heart hit four hundred beats per minute—his sweat glands and exhalations would release a highly specialized, airborne pheromone. It was a catalytic neuro-stimulant.
Snipe's sheer physical intensity literally altered the atmosphere of the agency. When his sidekicks were subjected to extreme physiological trauma—like simulated drowning—in his immediate presence, they inhaled that catalyst.
The pheromone hijacked their panicked nervous systems, temporarily forcing their baseline human biology to mimic Snipe's own adrenaline overdrive without their hearts bursting.
They didn't know it was a microscopic biological change.
Snipe just thought he was pushing them to their limits, and the sidekicks simply believed it was the heavy, intimidating training of Snipe and the sheer perfection of Kaito's martial arts.
"Now! Give me the target!" Snipe yelled, throwing a training pistol into the dirt directly below Flak's hanging arms.
Snipe was breathing heavily, his own heart racing as he watched his student, completely unaware that his very exhalations were currently keeping Flak alive.
Flak didn't hesitate.
The catalyst flooded his lungs. In his hyper-perceptual state, the freezing water dripping from his nose seemed to hang in the air for minutes.
He snatched the pistol from the dirt, aimed blindly toward the far brick wall, and whipped his arm in a harsh, horizontal arc while hanging completely upside down.
BANG!
The rubber bullet tore out of the barrel, violently curved around a thick concrete pillar in the center of the yard, and slammed dead-center into a red paper target taped to the back wall.
Smack.
Flak dropped the gun, his body going completely limp against the straps as his heart rate plummeted back to reality.
"Ughh!"
He groaned, completely exhausted, but a massive, breathless grin spread across his blue lips.
"I did it..." Flak wheezed, his chest heaving. "Snipe-kacho... I saw the curve."
Snipe stood perfectly still for a moment.
"Haha!"
Then, the rugged Pro Hero let out a loud, booming laugh, slapping Tracer on the back before moving to unbuckle Flak from the rig.
"Get this man a towel and a hot meal!" Snipe ordered proudly. "We finally broke the wall!"
Kaito watched the celebration from the shade.
He checked his watch. It was almost noon.
Snipe threw a thick towel over Flak's shivering shoulders and walked over to the awning, wiping the sweat from his own forehead with the back of his heavy leather glove.
"Did you see that, Arisaka?" Snipe asked, his raspy voice thick with genuine pride. He wasn't talking to Kaito like a corporate boss; he was talking to him like a fellow martial artist. "It took a month of hell, but the kid finally cracked the adrenaline threshold. He actually curved the shot."
"I saw it," Kaito smiled lightly, lifting his coffee cup in a small toast. "You pushed him to the absolute brink. You are a harsh mentor, Snipe-san."
"Only way to survive the streets these days," Snipe grunted, leaning against the brick wall next to Kaito.
Sigh.
He let out a long, tired sigh, the adrenaline of the morning finally wearing off. "I was looking at the calendar this morning. Our contract ends in exactly two weeks."
Kaito nodded slowly. "It does. The Yokohama branch is completely stabilized. Your arrest records are flawless, and your collateral damage payouts are non-existent. My work here is practically finished."
Snipe looked at the Golden Manager.
There was a profound sense of gratitude in the Pro Hero's eyes. Kaito hadn't just fixed his paperwork; he had given Snipe's men a way to survive against the monsters roaming the country.
"I don't know where you go from here, Arisaka, but whoever gets you next is a lucky bastard," Snipe chuckled, crossing his arms.
Kaito just shrugged casually. He pulled his phone from his pocket and scrolled through the morning news.
[ALL MIGHT CRUSHES ANOTHER TRIGGER RING IN SHIZUOKA! THE SYMBOL OF PEACE REMAINS UNSTOPPABLE!]
Kaito read the headline and swiped past it without a second thought.
A month and a half ago, after the UN's global raid, Kaito had deduced that All For One's missing money meant the villain was building something massive.
He knew the Demon Lord had liquidated his inventory to fund a shadow project.
But honestly? Kaito didn't care.
That was a problem for the Number One Hero. Prime All For One was exactly the kind of theatrical, world-ending threat that Prime All Might was born to punch in the face. They were destined opposites. Kaito had absolutely no intention of getting involved in a clash of titans.
His philosophy remained simple: if a problem was above his paygrade, he let the people with the capes handle it.
"I haven't decided where I'm going yet," Kaito said comfortably, putting his phone away. "I'll probably take a few days off. Maybe sleep in past six in the morning for once."
Snipe laughed, a deep, rumbling sound. "You've earned it. Come on, I'm buying the whole agency lunch today. Barbeque. My treat."
"I never turn down free meat," Kaito said, pushing off the brick wall and following the Pro Hero toward the locker rooms.
_-_-_-_-_-_-_
Location: Tokyo – Hero Public Safety Commission Headquarters
Date: Exactly 3 Months - Contract Ends
FLASH-FLASH-FLASH!
The press room of the HPSC was blinding. Hundreds of reporters screamed over one another, shoving microphones toward the podium as the HPSC President released the highly anticipated, bi-annual Hero Billboard Chart JP.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the President announced, her voice booming over the speakers. "The rankings have been finalized. The top spots have seen an unprecedented level of shifting this quarter!"
On the massive digital screen behind her, the portraits of the nation's top heroes illuminated the room.
"Breaking into the Top 10 for the first time, thanks to her flawless disaster relief operations and immaculate public relations... the Dragoon Hero, Ryukyu!"
The crowd cheered wildly.
"Ascending rapidly to the Number 13 spot, completely revolutionizing urban rapid response and supply-chain logistics... the Turbo Hero, Ingenium!"
The flashbulbs went into overdrive.
"And finally, seeing the highest single-quarter jump in Billboard history, rocketing to the Number 16 spot after dropping his agency's collateral damage to absolute zero and pioneering a revolutionary new martial art... the Sharpshooting Hero, Snipe!"
In the back of the press room, Hideki Sato stood with his arms crossed, a massive, knowing grin plastered across his face.
He didn't care about the heroes. He cared about the facts.
"They're calling it 'The Golden Manager Effect,'" Nagi, his lead reporter, whispered excitedly, furiously typing on her laptop. "Three different agencies. Three vastly different hero types. But they all hired the exact same corporate consultant, and all three of them skyrocketed into the top-tier rankings in less than a year."
"Heh," Hideki chuckled, adjusting his rumpled suit. "It's not an effect, Nagi. It's a monopoly. Arisaka isn't just managing heroes anymore. He's deciding who gets to win."
_-_-_-_-_
Location: Yokohama – Gunslinger Agency
Date: 17:00 Hours (Contract End)
Beep. Beep.
Kaito Arisaka looked down at the sleek silver watch on his left wrist. The digital dial flipped from 16:59 to 17:00.
His three-month contract was officially over.
Kaito closed his laptop with a soft clack, sliding it smoothly into his silver briefcase alongside the final, finalized budget reports.
Kaito picked up his briefcase and walked out into the hallway.
Snipe was waiting by the main reception desk, his heavy leather coat slung over one shoulder. The Pro Hero reached out, offering a firm, calloused hand.
"I won't keep you, Arisaka," Snipe rasped, shaking Kaito's hand. "Drive safe. And seriously... thank you. For everything."
"Keep practicing the forms, Snipe-san. The math will keep you alive," Kaito replied, offering a polite, practiced nod.
Kaito turned and walked past the main lobby doors, heading straight for the private staff elevator. He swiped his temporary keycard and pressed the button for sub-level B2.
Ding.
The elevator doors slid shut, sealing away the noise of the agency.
HUFF-PUFF.
Kaito let out a slow, quiet breath, rolling his shoulders to work out a knot of tension. He was exhausted.
He was looking forward to the drive back to his apartment, a hot bowl of udon, and absolutely zero emails.
Ding.
The doors opened to the secured underground parking garage.
He pulled his car keys from his pocket and pressed the unlock button.
Beep-beep.
The headlights of his unassuming, dark grey sedan flashed in the shadows.
But Kaito's footsteps stopped.
He wasn't alone.
Leaning casually against the hood of Kaito's car was a tall, incredibly sharp-featured man wearing a pristine, tailored grey suit.
His pale skin and dark hair with striking green streaks made him look almost ghostly under the flickering fluorescent tube lights.
He was adjusting the bridge of his glasses, his piercing yellow eyes locked directly onto Kaito.
Sir Nighteye. All Might's primary sidekick and the chief strategist for the Number One Hero's operations.
"You are scuffing the wax on my hood, Sir Nighteye," Kaito said, his voice completely flat.
Nighteye didn't move. He simply folded his arms. "You are exactly on time, Arisaka. To the second."
Kaito walked forward, stopping a few feet from the front bumper of his car. His golden glasses reflected the dim garage lights as he looked the legendary strategist up and down.
"I am genuinely curious," Kaito murmured, his tone analytical but mildly annoyed that his commute was being delayed. "I use encrypted ghost accounts for my logistics. I don't use the HPSC mainframes. My car's GPS module was physically removed. I left no digital or paper trail indicating I would use the private staff elevator to reach this specific sub-level today. How did you bypass the security without triggering a firewall?"
Nighteye pushed his glasses up his nose. The reflection of the overhead lights flashed across the lenses.
"Yesterday afternoon, I visited Snipe's agency under the guise of an operational audit. I bumped into his veteran sidekick, Flak. I activated my Quirk on him," Nighteye revealed, a faint, razor-sharp smirk playing on his lips. "I looked twenty-four hours into Flak's future. I simply watched him shake your hand by the private elevator at exactly 5:00 PM. I watched him input his keycard so you could access this specific garage."
Kaito stared at him. The silence in the garage stretched for a long, heavy moment.
Then, Kaito let out a short, genuine huff of amusement.
"A proxy-breach," Kaito acknowledged, offering a slight nod of respect. "Well played. But if you wanted to hire me to fix All Might's PR budgets or manage your sidekicks, you could have just sent a courier to my office tomorrow. I don't do impromptu meetings."
"I don't need a manager," Nighteye said. His tone instantly dropped the polite pretense, shifting into a dead, heavy seriousness that chilled the air in the garage.
Nighteye reached into his coat and pulled out a massive, heavy dossier. It was stamped with the Omega-level classification seal of the United Nations Security Council.
He dropped it onto the hood of Kaito's car.
Thud.
"I need the man who worked on and reinforced the Saitama relay towers," Nighteye said quietly.
"During the disaster in Ota Ward, the entire Kanto region was supposed to experience a total blackout," Nighteye continued, stepping away from the car and walking slowly toward Kaito. "All Might and All For One collided with enough kinetic force to liquefy bedrock. Every single piece of telecommunications infrastructure in a ten-mile radius was pulverized into dust."
Nighteye stopped, his yellow eyes burning into Kaito's.
"Except for the Saitama towers," Nighteye whispered. "They survived. They didn't just survive; they broadcasted the entire fight in pristine high-definition without dropping a single packet of data. My office investigated the civilian contractor who reinforced those towers. We found a twenty-year-old blue-collar worker who was the one that maintained the architectural stress-points and installed military-grade noise-cancellation modules on a standard maintenance budget."
Nighteye looked down at the classified dossier, and then back up at Kaito.
"You have been monitored in the past by the HPSC due to the Hero X anomaly. Your records are still in the database, Arisaka."
"Yeah, tell me about it. Those guys stayed with me for 2 years just because of bad investigations" Kaito replied dryly, remembering his teen life and how he had reinforced those towers to secure his 2,500,000 JPY overtime bonus. "But I'm currently off the clock. If All Might has a problem with his infrastructure, submit a ticket."
"Two months ago, the UN launched the Global Purge," Nighteye pressed, ignoring Kaito's deflection. "The raid in Shizuoka was a phantom. The vault was empty. All For One liquidated his physical assets. You already ran the numbers. The seized capital doesn't match the arrests."
"Is that so," Kaito said. "It seems that All For One did something in advance. He let the UN waste billions of dollars sweeping the floor for him. But that is All Might's problem. Not mine."
"It is my problem," Nighteye admitted, his voice carrying a rare, profound frustration. "My Quirk, Foresight, is absolute when looking at an individual. I can see what a man will eat for breakfast next year. I can see how a villain will throw a punch."
Nighteye slammed his hand flat against the dossier on the hood.
"But I cannot see macro-economics! I cannot look into the future of a Swiss bank account! I cannot see how two billion yen is laundered through fifty different shell corporations across three continents!" Nighteye practically growled, his composure cracking for just a second under the sheer weight of his responsibility.
"All For One is building something catastrophic. But his money is moving faster than my eyes can track."
Nighteye took a deep breath, smoothing his tie and restoring his pristine, professional composure.
"I have the highest intelligence clearance in Japan. I have access to the raw financial data of the entire global underworld," Nighteye said, looking at Kaito with absolute, unyielding intensity. "But I don't have the mind to process it. I need your logistics, Arisaka. I need you to find the Demon Lord's missing capital."
Kaito looked at the thick dossier resting on his car.
He didn't want this. Tracking the shadow-money of a century-old supervillain who was preparing for a war was the exact opposite of a quiet life.
"No," Kaito said simply, stepping around Nighteye to reach for his car door handle. "I make my living fixing hero agencies, Nighteye. I get paid very well to do it. No amount of UN hazard pay is going to convince me to put a target on my back by auditing the boogeyman."
"I am not offering you money, Arisaka," Nighteye said softly.
Kaito paused, his hand resting on the cold metal of the door handle.
"I know what you actually want," Nighteye continued, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper. "You want peace. You want to be left alone. If you take this shadow contract... if you find where All For One is hiding his capital... I will give you true silence."
Kaito slowly turned his head to look at the intelligence director.
"I operate with the full political weight of the Number One Hero," Nighteye stated, his yellow eyes dead serious. "If you do this for us, I will personally use All Might's authority to purge your name from every deep-state database. I will permanently delete your files from the HPSC servers. I will officially make you a completetly invincible to the HSPC. You will never be monitored, drafted, or bothered. Absolute anonymity. Permanent immunity."
Kaito stared at him.
Money was worthless. But that? Total, government-enforced invisibility? That was the holy grail. That was the quiet life guaranteed by the highest authority in the country.
He let go of his car door handle. He reached out and picked up the heavy UN dossier, sliding it smoothly into his silver briefcase.
"Send the Level-0 encryption keys to my secure server by midnight," Kaito answered.
"Consider it done," Nighteye nodded, stepping away from the car. "Happy hunting, Arisaka."
Kaito didn't reply. He opened his car door, tossed the briefcase onto the passenger seat, and slid behind the wheel.
Thud.
_-_-_-_-_
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(9 Advanced Chapters)