The officer leaned out the window and pointed. "Hey! Why are you standing in the middle of the road? Move aside!"
The man standing in the road did not move. He looked at the car with calm, flat eyes and kept his hands at his sides.
J stepped out of the passenger seat. He scanned the man from head to toe. The face was completely ordinary. The rest of him was not. His body seemed too well trained to be an ordinary man, especially the cuts accross his fingers.
"Sir, this does not concern you," J said. "Step aside and let us do our job."
"Let the man inside go," Manager Kim said.
"That is not something I can do."
Manager Kim looked at the car, then back at J. "You're not a simple police officer, are you?
J studied him. "Who sent you?"
"I am here on a task. The man inside that car needs to testify in court today. I will be taking him with me."
J nodded once and gestured to the two officers behind him. They moved toward Manager Kim from either side without a word.
The first officer reached for Manager Kim's arm.
CRACK!
Manager Kim's elbow caught him across the jaw before the hand made contact. The second officer lunged and Manager Kim stepped into it, took the man's wrist, twisted once, and put him face-down on the pavement. Both officers were down in under three seconds.
J watched the two men on the ground. 'Just as I suspected. He is no ordinary man.'
He looked at Manager Kim. "Who are you?"
Manager Kim said nothing.
J took off his jacket and set it on the hood of the car. He loosened his collar and rolled up his sleeves. "I didn't want to do this. But you're leaving me no other option."
Manager Kim turned to face him fully. "Don't regret it later."
---
J came in with a straight right aimed at Manager Kim's jaw. Manager Kim slipped it and answered with a short cross to J's ribs. The hit was compact and precise.
J stepped back and absorbed it. 'Faster than he looks. His stance... is he from special forces?'
Manager Kim did not follow up. He reset his stance and waited.
J came again, this time with a combination, jab to draw the guard up, then a low kick to the thigh. Manager Kim checked the kick with his shin and pushed J's lead hand offline, then drove a short elbow into J's shoulder.
J felt his arm go slightly numb. He shook it out and kept moving.
They traded for a minute like that, both of them reading, both of them giving just enough to learn something without committing to anything they could not take back.
'He has no wasted movement,' J thought. 'Every block is a counter. He is definitely from the special forces. But why would someone like him come for an old man?'
Manager Kim was thinking the same thing from the other direction. 'He manages every exchange. He is definitely experienced. His body is thoroughly trained.'
J threw a straight right with more behind it this time. Manager Kim rolled with it and came up with a one-inch punch delivered from close range, driving his knuckle into J's sternum.
J's breath left him in a rush. He stepped back and felt the impact settle into his chest.
'I didn't expect this task to get so complicated,' J thought. 'But he is still within my manageable range.'
He reset and looked at Manager Kim properly for the first time since the fight started. "May I know your name?"
"No," Manager Kim said.
---
J closed the distance fast and drove Manager Kim back with a flurry of strikes, not trying to land clean but forcing Manager Kim to use his guard, to move, to spend energy. Manager Kim covered and circled, absorbing the pressure, and then he stopped circling and stepped directly into J's next punch.
The punch grazed his cheek. Manager Kim's hand came up and his fingers closed around J's wrist.
J felt the pressure immediately. He tried to pull back and could not. "...?!"
Manager Kim twisted the wrist outward, stepped through, and used the leverage to put J off his base. J twisted with it to keep his arm intact and Manager Kim released him and stepped back.
J stood and looked at his wrist. The skin had lines across it from the grip. He flexed his fingers. 'Okay. I have gauged his strength. Now, let's do this properly.'
He reached back and unclipped his riot shield from the mounting on the car door. He rolled his wrist once and settled the grip.
Manager Kim looked at it.
"A shield," Manager Kim said.
"It's a special bullet proof shield. I had prepared it for another occasion," J said.
Manager Kim reached into his jacket and pulled out a short silver cord wrapped between his fingers. He laced it through his grip and held both hands up. The cord caught the afternoon light.
J looked at it. 'Wire?'
He did not know the man's name. He did not know his generation. But he knew one thing. The man before him was dangerous, and extremely so.
---
The fight changed.
Manager Kim came in with his hands moving in tight arcs, the cord extending his reach by centimeters in ways that made the difference between a graze and a cut. J used the shield to intercept, catching the cord against the face of it and redirecting. But Manager Kim was not trying to cut through the shield. He was using it to control where J held the shield so his other hand could work the angles the shield could not cover.
BOOM!
J drove the shield forward in a straight push. Manager Kim absorbed it with both forearms and held his ground, boots scraping back across the concrete.
'His wires are technically useless against my shield,' J thought.
Manager Kim pushed back and J slid half a step. The concrete cracked under J's heel.
Manager Kim pressed harder and the crack spread.
J released the push suddenly and sidestepped, swinging the shield in a horizontal arc. Manager Kim ducked under it and came up driving an uppercut into J's chin.
CRACK!
J's head snapped back. He staggered two steps and the back of his boot caught the edge of the cracked concrete and he went down on one knee.
He stayed there for a moment, jaw throbbing, and looked at Manager Kim standing over him.
Manager Kim was breathing harder now. The cut above his cheekbone from an earlier exchange had bled down the side of his face and dried there. His knuckles were red. He was not untouched.
J pushed himself back up. He raised the shield again. "Since you didn't introduce yourself, let me atleast introduce myself. I am 'J'."
Manager Kim watched him without expression. "You may call me Manager Kim."
J lowered the shield. "How about one last trade?"
Manager Kim took bis stance. "You can try everything. But the end result will be what I want."
They both tensed at the same time.
J moved first.
He crossed the distance before Manager Kim could fully set his guard. The speed was on a different level entirely from everything that had come before it, and Manager Kim barely got his arms up in time.
J drove the shield into his guard with everything behind it. Manager Kim skidded back three meters, boots tearing grooves into the asphalt. A crater opened where Manager Kim had been standing.
'Speed mastery,' Manager Kim thought. 'He was holding this back the entire time.'
J was already on him again before the thought finished. A straight right followed the shield, then a left hook to the ribs, then a knee driving up into Manager Kim's midsection. Each hit landed with the weight of something far beyond normal human output.
Manager Kim took the knee and felt his ribs flex with it. He locked his core and absorbed it, but his feet left the ground for a moment.
'Strength mastery as well,' Manager Kim thought. 'And he is applying both at the same time without losing control of either.'
J pressed forward without pause, the shield working in combination with every strike, covering the angles his fists left open and opening the angles his shield created. It was seamless. Defense and offense running as a single system.
Manager Kim was being pushed back and he knew it.
He stopped trying to match the pace and changed the approach entirely. He absorbed two more hits, let J come closer than was comfortable, and began to move differently. Just moving, small adjustments, half-steps and shoulder turns, letting J's strikes land on the outside edges of his body rather than the center, and each time J's arm came close, Manager Kim's hands moved with it.
J did not notice at first. He was focused on the exchanges.
Then he tried to step back to reset his distance.
His foot did not move the way he intended.
J looked down.
The silver cord was wrapped around his ankle. He traced it with his eyes and found more of it, looped around his shin, his knee, trailing up to his wrist where it had wound through three exchanges without him feeling it happen. His shield arm had a loop around the forearm. His rear leg had a loose wrap above the boot.
He had not felt any of it.
Manager Kim stood four meters away, breathing hard, both ends of the cord held loosely in his hands. One wrong movement and every loop would pull tight simultaneously.
J went completely still.
'When did he do this,' J thought. 'If I move, I will die.'
He tested one loop with a small movement. It tightened immediately against his shin.
J looked at Manager Kim. Manager Kim looked back at him.
"When did you do it?" J said.
"That's not something I would like to share with my opponent." Manager Kim said. He was breathing hard and the dried blood on his cheek had cracked where the skin had moved. He was not in good condition. But his hands were steady on the cord.
J assessed the situation completely and arrived at the same conclusion from every direction. Any explosive movement would pull the loops tight across his joints simultaneously. The shield was partially restricted. His speed was useless if the first step destroyed his own knee.
He had lost.
J relaxed his stance. "I see," he said quietly.
Manager Kim did not release the cord yet. He watched J for another moment, making sure the assessment was genuine and not a setup for something else. Then he began to unwind the loops carefully, one at a time, keeping tension in the cord until the last one came free.
J stood on both feet and rolled his wrist. Everything still worked.
He picked up his jacket from the hood of the car and put it back on. He straightened the collar and looked at Manager Kim. "I have been outmatched this time."
"Yes," Manager Kim said. "You have been."
J fastened the top button of his jacket. "But it's not the end"
"I know," Manager Kim said.
J pulled out his phone, and made a call.
Manager Kim stood on the road and let his shoulders drop. He unwound the remaining cord from his fingers and tucked it back into his jacket. His ribs ached where J's knee had connected and the cut on his cheek had opened again and was bleeding slowly.
He turned to the police car and opened the back door.
Bakugo sat with his hands on his knees and looked up at him.
"You have somewhere to be," Manager Kim said. "Let's go."
Bakugo looked at the unconscious officers on the pavement, then at the cracked and gouged road, then at Manager Kim's face. He nodded and climbed out of the car.