[HPSC HEADQUARTERS – CRISIS MANAGEMENT ROOM – 9:47 AM]
Madam President stood before a wall of monitors, each showing different aspects of the unfolding disaster. Search operations. News coverage. Social media sentiment analysis. Public safety alerts.
"Status on passenger manifest release?" she asked without turning around.
An aide consulted a tablet. "683 families have been notified as of 9:30 AM. 33 remain. We're working through emergency contacts now, but with phones destroyed, passengers without IC card entries are proving difficult to identify. Most families haven't reported them missing yet."
"How long until we can release the names publicly?"
"Realistically? Another 36-48 hours minimum. We need to confirm every identity, notify every next of kin. Releasing an incomplete list would create more chaos than ..."
"Understood." Madam President finally turned. "What about the U.A. connection? How contained is it?"
Another aide spoke up. "Mostly contained. U.A hasn't said a word yet but we have no idea how long it will hold. With respect, ma'am, someone will leak eventually. For one, the boy has a next of kin and who knows how she'll react. We can have U.A be quiet for the meantime but there's nothing we can do to prevent them informing her unless we want to bear the potential lawsuit that will come after. Even then that's just for the meantime."
He paused, flipping a page. "Currently this incident is taking the nation by storm. With Hosu just being the previous night, the linkage is already everywhere. Soon the media will find those related to the incident to get their statements. In time, someone will probably notice something and inquire from U.A. Even if they don't, they will once the manifest is released. Someone will definitely theorize that the League specifically targeted the hero student from Hosu. The resulting reaction would be beyond our control. Unfortunately mam, unless we remove his name from the manifest entirely and suppress everything, then it's inevitable the moment we confirm Yuta Akutami was on that train."
"I see." The woman replied with a weary frown.
The recent events had given her constant headaches.
Moving forward with a clear suppression wasn't possible. It concerned U.A High. The darned rat would never allow it. It was only a matter of time.
"Then we control the leak. When we release the full manifest we bury his name in the middle. No special designation. No 'U.A. student' callout. Just another name on a very long list."
"And if journalists make the connection anyway?"
"Then U.A. issues a brief statement expressing grief and declines further comment. No interviews. No special coverage. We do not give the League the satisfaction of knowing they created mass panic by successfully hunting down a teenage boy."
The room fell quiet.
Reality wouldn't be so simple, but ultimately, it was the best they could do.
"How's the actual search progressing?" Madam President asked.
A tactical coordinator brought up new displays. "No results ma'am. Endeavor's team is concentrating thermal scans on the most likely drift patterns based on ocean currents. Hawks has nothing."
"Prognosis?"
The coordinator's expression said everything. "Survival past 48 hours in open ocean is less than 2% probability. We're approaching hour twenty-one. If anyone's still alive out there..."
"They won't be for much longer," Madam President finished. She turned back to the monitors. "Continue operations. I want updates every ninety minutes. And get me a direct line to U.A.—I need to coordinate with Nezu about student security protocols moving forward."
"Yes ma'am."
_
[YAMANASHI PREFECTURE – GRAN TORINO'S RESIDENCE – 9:15 AM]
Izuku sat at the newly repaired table, phone in hand, scrolling through news articles with increasingly worried eyes. His breakfast sat untouched on the plate beside him.
"Breaking News: Yamanote Line Still Missing After 21 Hours"
"Search Teams Find No Trace of 716 Passengers"
"League of Villains Blamed for Train Disappearance"
His thumb kept swiping, each headline worse than the last.
"Kid."
Izuku jumped, nearly dropping his phone. Gran Torino stood in the doorway, changed out of his hero costume into casual clothes.
"Sorry, Gran Torino! I was just ..."
"Reading about the train." Gran Torino moved to the table, sitting. "I've been watching the coverage too."
"Oh ... I see." Izuku set his phone down.
"You feel bad huh?"
"Well ... Yeah. Sorry. I should be focusing on training. I know that. But I just... I can't stop thinking about it."
His hands clenched to fists. "All those people. They were just trying to get somewhere. They didn't do anything wrong. They weren't heroes or villains or ... they were just normal people taking a train."
The old man reached for his pastries and started eating.
Even for a pro like him who had seen and experienced many things, today's dish was quite hard to stomach.
"Do you think... do you think any of them survived?"
"Honestly?" Gran Torino took a bite, chewed thoughtfully. "No. If the League dropped them in the middle of the ocean like the reports suggest, the impact alone would have killed most. The cold water, the lack of rescue... survival past twenty-four hours is nearly impossible."
"Nearly," Izuku latched onto the word. "But not completely impossible."
"Kid." Gran Torino sighed. "Don't torture yourself with maybes. The search teams are professionals. If there was anyone alive out there, they'd find them. The fact that they've found nothing at all..." He trailed off.
Izuku's fists clenched on the table. "It's not fair. Those people didn't choose to be heroes. They didn't sign up for danger. They were just living their lives and ..."
"And that's exactly why villains are villains," Gran Torino interrupted.
"I was originally planning on training after breakfast but I doubt you can train in this state of mind. So take some time to clear your mind. We'll begin in a few hours."
"Um ... Yes sir."
He picked up a pastry, but before taking a bite, he glanced at his phone one more time.
The headline had updated:
"Hour 22: Still No Survivors Found"
_
[PACIFIC OCEAN – 1,047KM EAST OF TOKYO – 2:34 AM – DAY 3]
Captain Haruto Kagemaru had been sailing the Pacific for thirty-two years.
In that time, he'd seen a lot of strange things. Bioluminescent squid the size of small cars. Ghost ships drifting with no crew. Once, a yacht loaded with what he was pretty sure were smuggled quirk-enhancement drugs, abandoned and sinking slowly.
He'd learned a lot of useful things. Don't ask questions, don't get involved. To keep his head down, his ship moving, and his manifest clean enough to pass inspection but dirty enough to stay profitable was a skill mastered over years.
The MV Kanemaru wasn't registered in Japan anymore. Technically, she wasn't registered anywhere. A ghost ship crewed by ghost men, hauling ghost cargo between ports.
For folks like them with useless quirks, getting involved with things that didn't concern you meant an ugly death in this day and age
"Captain."
Haruto looked up from the shipping manifest he'd been pretending to review. His first mate, Koji, a weathered man with a prosthetic arm stood in the doorway of the bridge.
"What?"
"You should see this."
Haruto sighed. 'What now?' he set down his cold coffee, grumbled, and followed.
The deck was dark except for running lights and the faint glow of the moon breaking through scattered clouds. The storm from yesterday had finally cleared, leaving the ocean calm and eerily smooth.
Koji led him to the starboard rail and pointed. It was nothing but black water.
At first, Haruto didn't see anything. "What the hell are you ..." He paused as his eyes caught something.
A shape. Floating. Maybe twenty meters off the starboard bow.
"Is that...?" Haruto squinted.
"Body," Koji confirmed. "Face down. Been trailing us for about five minutes. Caught it on the thermal scope."
Haruto fell silent. Bodies in the ocean weren't uncommon. Smuggling routes, yakuza dumping grounds, suicide jumpers.
However one so far out?
"Dead?"
"Thermal's reading warmth. Not much, but it's there."
Haruto stared at the floating form. At this distance, he could make out dark clothing, pale skin, what might have been red-and-black fabric.
A kid. Looked like a damn kid.
"We're three days behind schedule already," Koji said quietly. "Manila's expecting this shipment. We pick up a body, we have to report it. Reporting means authorities. Authorities mean ..."
"I know what it means," Haruto snapped.
He knew exactly what it meant. Questions about where they'd been. Why they were out here. What they were carrying. Inspections. Delays. Maybe arrests if the customs officer was having a bad day.
The smart move was to keep sailing. Pretend they hadn't seen anything. Let the ocean take care of it like it always did.
Haruto stared at the body.
At the kid.
"Bring us alongside," he said. "Slow. Don't want to lose him in the wake."
Koji's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. "Captain ..."
"I was seventeen once too," Haruto said quietly. "And when I went overboard off Osaka, some bastard captain pulled me out even though he had every reason not to. I'm not leaving a kid to drown."
Koji nodded. "Understood."
He disappeared back toward the wheelhouse.
Haruto moved to the rail, watching as the Kanemaru changed course slightly, engines throttling down to a crawl. The body drifted closer ... or rather, they drifted to it.
As they approached, Haruto could make out more details. Definitely a teenager. Male. Soaked clothing that looked like some kind of uniform.
Red hair, though it was hard to tell in the moonlight.
No life jacket. No debris nearby. No wreckage. Just a kid floating face-down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a thousand kilometers from the nearest land.
'How the hell did you end up out here?'
The ship came to a near-stop. Koji appeared with two other crew members, already lowering the rescue ladder.
"Careful," Haruto ordered. "If he's hypothermic, moving him too fast could stop his heart."
Haruto climbed down to the waterline himself.
Upon touching the body, they discovered the kid was lighter than expected. Malnourished maybe. His skin was ice-cold and his lips blue, but when Haruto pressed fingers to his neck, there was a pulse
"He's alive," Haruto called up. "Get the medical kit ready. And warm blankets. Lots of them."
They hauled him up the ladder between them, water streaming off his clothes. Once on deck, they laid him on his side in the recovery position.
Up close, Haruto could see he was younger than he'd thought. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Asian features ... Japanese, probably. His clothes were strange: looked like a school uniform, but nothing Haruto recognized.
"What do we do with him?" one of the crew asked.
Haruto pulled a blanket over the unconscious boy. "Get him below deck, into a bunk. Strip the wet clothes, wrap him in dry blankets, monitor his breathing. If he stops breathing, we do CPR until he starts again or we're sure he's gone."
"If he wakes up. We figure out who the hell he is and how he ended up a thousand klicks from nowhere."
They took the body below deck. Haruto watched from a distance. 'Kid, you just used up about nine of your lives getting this far. Hope you have a spare.'
_
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