While Mewtwo was busy delving into Muscular mind and memories, elsewhere, a man walked into the ruins of the old raid site—the one from a few months prior.
The police and heroes had finally stopped patrolling the area, leaving it quiet, abandoned, and open to anyone daring enough to enter. The man's steps were slow, and strapped to his back, tied like a makeshift backpack, was a small teddy bear.
For weeks he'd been investigating, gathering bits of information piece by piece until the full picture began to take shape.
The heroes—those supposed symbols of justice—had failed to act quickly enough. Because of them, his daughter had died. They might not have killed her directly, but their negligence had.
Yet the ones who had carried out the attack, the villains responsible for the hotel massacre, had come from this place. This was their den.
He had read the reports and cross-checked every rumor he could find. The heroes had fought here, in this very spot. It was where Endeavor—the number two hero at the time—had taken down one of Japan's most dangerous criminals.
So, this was it.
This was the place he needed to see.
For months, entry had been forbidden. The police had sealed off the entire area, combing it for evidence and scraps of information that might explain what had happened. He'd waited, counting the days, until the investigation finally ran its course.
Now the tape was gone, the guards had left, and the wreckage was his to walk through.
He doubted he would find anything useful—the authorities had likely taken every clue worth keeping—but it didn't matter. If this was truly the place from which the men who had attacked the hotel had come, he needed to stand here. To see it with his own eyes. Even if it changed nothing.
When he was sure the ruins were empty, he advanced carefully through the debris.
He headed straight for one location in particular—the center of the blast. The place Endeavor had fought. Even after months, the destruction was unmistakable: blackened stone, melted steel, walls scarred with claw marks and fire. The ground still seemed to breathe heat, as if the fight had burned itself into the earth.
He moved from one corner to another, shifting pieces of rubble, searching for anything—an insignia, a trace, something the authorities might have missed. But there was nothing. Only ash and silence.
Finally, he turned back toward the center of the crater. He crouched near a patch of scorched ground where the impact lines suggested someone had fallen—or perhaps risen—from the fight. From the pattern of the burns and the shape of the footprints, he guessed it must have been Endeavor. After all, he was the only one who had walked away alive.
He followed the faint traces scorched into the earth—lines of molten ground that had long since cooled but still bore the imprint of Endeavor's boots.
Each step led him deeper into the ruins until he came upon another battlefield. This one was smaller in scale, yet no less violent.
Warehouses stood shattered and gutted, twisted beams of steel lay scattered like bones, and patches of metal still shimmered with a dull, glassy sheen from the heat that had once consumed them.
A broken motorcycle lay on its side, half-buried in debris.
The ground around it was spiderwebbed with cracks, as if the sheer force of the blows exchanged there had rippled outward through the concrete. The man crouched, eyes scanning every surface. He searched without a clear purpose—only the desperate drive of someone broken, grasping for any piece of meaning left behind.
He shifted rubble, sifted through dust, moved from one ruined structure to the next. And then, something caught his eye: a stone—or what looked like one. Unlike the others, this piece was smooth, triangular with rounded edges, glinting faintly even under the weak light. It wasn't truly a stone at all. It looked almost… crafted. Too perfect fo be just an accident o result of a battle.
At first, he thought it might simply be a lump of melted rock, shaped by the ferocity of Endeavor's flames.
But when he turned it in his hand, the texture was different—denser, heavier than a simple rock.
"I'll take this with me," he muttered under his breath, slipping it carefully into his pocket.
He pressed on, moving deeper into the ruins. He explored every corridor, every empty room, every collapsed hallway. Nothing. The police had done their job thoroughly; every scrap of evidence worth keeping had been removed long ago.
"Tch. Nothing here," he hissed, frustrated, but he didn't stop. His search led him to the lower levels—the remains of a hidden mansion buried beneath the warehouses. The air there was heavier.
He combed through the wreckage, but again, found nothing of use. The walls were bare; even the dust felt stale, lifeless.
He was about to give up when a voice echoed behind him.
"You're wasting your time," it said, calm but edged with irritation. "I already searched every corner of this place. Didn't see the heroes coming—I couldn't get what I wanted out before they arrived. By the time I realized what was happening, the fight was already over. Now the police have stripped it clean."
The man froze, his blood turning cold.
He'd made sure—absolutely sure—that he was alone.
Instinct kicked in. His stance shifted, and with a tense motion, his Quirk activated. From his back, strands of gleaming metal burst forth, snaking around his body like living wires, coiling in tight spirals of defense.
His breathing slowed. His eyes narrowed toward the darkness where the voice had come from.
"Who's there?"
"Who are you?" the man with the teddy barked, wires coiling and ready around him.
"Oh—right. No one in the organization knows me," the other man laughed as he rose to his feet.
His appearance was arresting, not because he was handsome but because his body was unnervingly long and gangly. Six arms hung from his torso, each as long as his legs; they reached nearly to the floor and gave him a spider-like silhouette.
The wire-man's instincts snapped into place. This stranger was tied to that same network he'd been hunting—no wonder he'd assumed the intruder belonged to the organization. To throw him off, the man with the wires drew his Quirk tighter, contracting the metallic strands so they writhed like a nest of serpents along his back and arms.
The long-limbed man grinned. "I'm Craft," he said, as if that name should be enough.
"But you'll know me better if I show you." One of his arms telescoped outward, plunging through the floor as though the ground were water. From that arm, more limbs unfurled, hands emerging from the earth itself. Wherever they passed, a strange scorch pattern marked the floor, a blackened trail like burned calligraphy.
From the other side of the room, hands erupted through the ground again, leaving identical burned traces.
Recognition hit the wire-man like a physical blow.
He'd studied the raid, the hotel attack, every crumb of evidence tied to the organization. This—this was the man who'd coordinated the placement and movement of the organization's operatives. This was one of the missing key figures the authorities had been hunting.
"You…" The wire-man's voice caught. If not for this man's arrangements, the hotel assault might never have succeeded; if not for those arrangements, his daughter might still be alive.
In his eyes, the heroes were culpable—but so were the planners. All of them were villains. A cold smile spread over his face.
"My name is Akira Steelrope," he said, stepping forward, the teddy wobbling on his back. "And I'm not part of your shitty organization. Because of you, my daughter is dead. Now that I've got you here, you won't escape."
At once the wires exploded outward, a hundred metallic tendrils launched in a shimmering storm toward Craft. The long-armed man raised a single eyebrow, unruffled, as the room filled with the sound of snapping metal and the scent of ozone.
"So we killed your family—well, I don't care," the man, Craft snapped, already braced in his Quirk.
The ground shuddered as dozens of arms erupted before him, each seizing handfuls of wires. He plunged other limbs into the floor, and from beneath the earth more appendages surged up, racing toward Akira in a furious, coordinated wave.
Akira lashed his Quirk like a whip, twisting through the tangle of metal with practiced ease.
He ducked and weaved among the grasping arms, breaking the nearest ones with brutal efficiency. Oddly, even as limbs snapped away, his opponent showed no sign of being fazed. It was as if severing those extrusions hurt nothing of consequence.
It dawned on Akira that unless he struck the true body, his blows would do little. He forced himself deeper into the swarm, using his wires to hurl himself forward and to skirt the advancing mass. He danced through the chaos until a terrible realization settled over him: the room itself seemed alive—made of flesh. Arms crowded every corner, hands slid across the floor, and the air tasted of iron.
The other man's voice was soft, almost apologetic—a grotesque contrast to the scene around them. "I misjudged you. I thought you were one of us," he said. "But you're going to die either way. I was one of the strongest—well, I was. We don't exist anymore. Let me introduce myself." He smiled in a way that made Akira's skin crawl.
"I'm Craft. Just Craft. Now you're trapped inside my Quirk. It's time to die. Say hello to your daughter."
Both men braced and launched their Quirks. Akira wrapped himself in a sheath of wire, forging a jagged armor, and thrust his hands forward to release a hundred slashing tendrils.
Craft attacked from all directions, the room erupting with grasping limbs and rushing force.
But neither assault met its mark. A black fog swallowed both volleys—Akira's wires and Evan's fleshy onslaught vanished into the haze as if they had struck nothing at all. The fog rolled and pooled, dense and unnatural, and the world fell eerily silent.
Then a voice spoke, its tone calm and distant, as if coming from every direction at once.
"Children, do not fight. There is no need for you to fight. You are not enemies, even if you believe you are."