Seeing the pharmaceutical company up ahead, she gritted her teeth, eyes filled with venom and resentment as she uttered.
"...We're here."
There was no response.
She frowned.
"...Hey."
Nothing.
"What the hell .. are you ignoring me?" She puffed out her cheeks. "I said we're here."
Still nothing. A vein bulged across her forehead.
"OI!"
The man lazily turned another page.
"...Mm?"
The woman stared at him in disbelief.
"Would you put the damn book down already?!"
She twisted violently against her restraints. "I've been telling you for the last thirty seconds! This is the place!"
The figure finally stopped walking.
"...Huh?" He slowly lifted his head. His visible eye wandered toward the abandoned pharmaceutical building.
"...Oh. I see."
"Sorry. Tuned you out for a bit."
The bound villainess nearly exploded. "YOU WHAT?!"
She bounced furiously against his shoulder.
"I'M THE ONE WHO'S BEEN GIVING YOU DIRECTIONS! I'M LITERALLY HANGING UPSIDE DOWN!"
"...My head hurts!"
"...My stomach hurts!"
"...MY DIGNITY HURTS!"
"And You're telling me you've been reading that stupid book the entire trip!"
"It's actually pretty good."
Glancing back down at the small orange paperback novel, he closed it while letting out an internal sigh. 'Thankfully the name isn't Icha Icha Paradise. Or else I would suspect I was getting possessed by the actual Kakashi.'
Pocketing the novel, he looked back up at the rusted gates and chained entrances of the closed-down facility. "So, this is the place?"
"Yes, you psychological horror movie reject, this is the place!" she hissed.
Her glare was practically overflowing with malice.
"Happy now? You got your little tour. Now let me go before you regret it."
The masked man remained completely still. Yuta looked at the building for a moment longer.
Then reached into his pocket, and pulled out a folded piece of paper, retrieved from the underground room of the loading dock they'd passed through some time ago.
His eyes moved across it. Then back to the building.
"Twelve," he said.
"What?"
"There are twelve people inside." He refolded the paper. "You told me eight."
The villainess stiffened on his shoulder.
"I... I miscounted."
"Mm." He pocketed the paper. "You also didn't mention the basement level. Or the two people on the roof."
Silence.
"I have bad spatial memory," she said, with rapidly diminishing conviction.
Yuta turned his head to look at her directly. The hood cast most of his face in shadow but she could see the one visible eye that looked entirely unimpressed.
"You were going to let me walk in there underprepared," he said.
"I was going to —" She stopped. Tried a different angle. "Look. A deal's a deal. I brought you here and you let me go. That's what we agreed."
"You agreed to lead me to a gathering of escaped convicts from Shinjuku Prison." He turned back to the building. "Not to leave out a third of the headcount and the people positioned to shoot whoever comes through the gate."
"Tch ... It still counts."
He didn't say anything and her expression darkened as a result.
"What? Scared now? Where's the whole Macho cool guy act you had hours ago huh? Or does the thought of facing multiple people scare you that ..."
Without a word, he casually slipped his hand out of his pocket.
CRACKLE!
Tiny arcs of blue electricity danced across his sleeve.
"...I'll take it you want to get electrified again." he muttered, his voice flat and entirely bored.
The villainess' expression froze as all color drained from her face. A violent shiver ran through her restrained body at the thought of experiencing yet another"shock therapy"
"N-No!"
She instantly grit her teeth, her bravado evaporating into thin air. "Okay. Fine. Fifteen. There are fifteen. The extra three came in last night, I didn't know about them until this morning."
"Quirks."
"I'm not sure. Not everyone reveals their secrets up front. All I know is one has a ranged quirk."
"What is it?"
"Bone Piercer. He can fire bone spikes from his hands about forty meters. Accurate up to twenty."
"Thank you." The lightning faded from his knuckles.
She let out a relieved sigh, staring at the ground and silently cursing him ... a seemingly young adult who had no right to be this terrifying ...to die a miserable, lonely death inside.
She didn't stop there, proceeding to curse everything that led to her falling into the hands of this monster.
Her name was Nakime Michakatsu. Villain Name, Grimoire Goddess.
Ever since she was captured, the relationship between the two had been bizarre to say the least. The infamous vigilante—the "White Fang"—had recently become a terrifying legend among the underworld for systematically breaking the bones and pinning the spikes of escaped convicts across the prefecture.
The woman slung unceremoniously over his shoulder was one such convict, captured hours prior.
She wasn't currently locked in a police precinct for one simple reason: she had bargained. She claimed she could lead him directly to a massive gathering location of fellow prison escapees from the Shinjuku breakout. In return, she bargained for her life, her bones, and most importantly, her face.
After all, she had seen a colleague get decked in the face not long ago. In front of a bastard that valued true gender equality, she didn't dare put her beloved face on the line.
The White Fang paid her silent curses no heed. He adjusted his grip on her restraints and prepared to cross the street toward the chained gates when a rumble vibrated through the earth.
BOOM!!
The distant shockwave was faint, but the atmospheric pressure shifted just enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
He paused, turning his head toward the far opposite end of the city. He couldn't see anything concrete through the dense, towering grid of skyscrapers, but the sky in that direction looked warped, heavy gray clouds swirling unnaturally. 'Another villain attack nearby,' he thought, his brow furrowing beneath his wide-brimmed hat. ''Close enough that I can hear it.'
It was a tricky situation. The scale of that distant blast suggested something on the level of a high-tier disaster, but he had a hot trail right in front of him.
Before he could deliberate further, shadows shot out from the roof of the pharmaceutical company.
SWISH-SWISH-SWISH! Without warning, jagged, elongated bone spikes were fired in rapid succession.
Yuta didn't even blink as his neck snapped sideways.
SHUCK!
The first bone spike missed his cheek by a fraction of an inch, slicing through the air and driving straight through the shoulder fabric and thigh space of the female prisoner before burying itself deep into the concrete floor below.
"KYAAAH! Hey! They're shooting at me too! You idiots, I'm on your side!!" she shrieked, her face turning entirely pale as she realized her "allies" didn't care about collateral damage.
She barely had time to finish her scream before the entire facade of the pharmaceutical building fell apart.
Torrential projectiles and lethal quirks shot out from multiple hidden directions at once, completely pinning their location.
"Boiling Blood Blast!"
"Bone Piercer!"
"Chainsaw Slash!"
"Sand Flower Barrage!"
Blood, bone, whirring steel, and pressurized grit all converged onto the single point where the vigilante stood.
'This is ..'
BOOOOOOM!!! The earth where they stood was utterly demolished. A thick curtain of pulverized asphalt, dust, and debris shot upward in all directions, completely swallowing the street in a dust shroud.
Seconds passed with the dust hanging heavy in the morning air. The attack seemed to be a success, and yet no one made any further moves. The hidden attackers didn't move a muscle, waiting for any sign of a clear corpse.
Unfortunately, they were destined to be disappointed.
The dust cleared and nothing occupied the crater.
"Hmm, they're more cautious than the last group."
The lazy, clear voice echoed from the exact opposite side of the street. Atop the roof of the vandalized convenience store, standing perfectly balanced on the edge of the cracked concrete ledge, was the White Fang. He was still casually holding the female villain over his shoulder. The woman was covered in a thick layer of cold sweat, her chest heaving in sheer terror at how close she had just come to meeting her end.
The Vigilante's single visible eye swept over the still, silent pharmaceutical building across the street.
To any regular observer or even an average Pro Hero, the structure would look completely abandoned—not a single soul in sight. Anyone who didn't know any better would think those deadly attacks had literally materialized out of thin air.
"Since it's come to this, don't you think you should quit the stealth mode?" He asked softly, lifting a gloved hand to slide the brim of his hat slightly upward. "After all..."
Slowly, the dull look in his eye vanished. The iris shifted, bleeding into a stark, brilliant blood-red, embedded with three distinct, black Tomoe that began to slowly rotate. "...your camouflage sucks."
The villains didn't stay hidden for long. "...Tch."
A voice clicked its tongue.
The shimmer coating the pharmaceutical building rippled like disturbed water.
One figure appeared.
Then another.
Then five. Like ghosts, the concealment effect, most likely the effect of someone's quirk was taken down and revealed the hidden silhouettes stepped out.
A hulking mutant with charcoal-black skin and arms as thick as tree trunks cracked his neck.
A lanky man whose forearms were lined with jagged bone protrusions casually twirled another spike between his fingers. And a chainsaw-headed brute with forearms revving with actual chainsaws. Others emerged across rooftops, broken windows and balconies. Some bore grotesque mutations. Some looked completely ordinary. Some were so scarred they barely resembled human beings anymore.
Among them, floating slightly above the pavement on a shifting, swirling pillar of fine dust, was a mature woman with sharp features.
Slung over Yuta's shoulder, Nakime Michakatsu glared at the group through gritted teeth. The cold sweat on her neck turned to hot, boiling fury.
"Heh... you bastards," she spat, her voice shaking with venom. "So you wanna kill me too, huh? After everything we've been through together in that hellhole!"
"You brought him, sweetheart," the older woman on the pillar of sand replied smoothly. She casually gestured with a wave and a lazy, mocking smile, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. "By all rights, you're the one who put us in this situation. We saw a clean chance to take him while he was off-guard, and we took it. You can't really blame us for prioritizing our freedom, can you?"
Nakime's jaw clenched so hard it clicked, as she understandably had no rebuttal.
The sand-manipulating woman turned her attention away from Nakime, her smile instantly vanishing. Her eyes became flat, completely bored, and radiating an undisguised hostility as she locked her gaze onto the man beside her.
"Same looked and mask on. You must be that psychopath targeting escapees all week.
She didn't bother to hide the displeasure on her face.
"Running into you..." She exhaled through her nose. "My luck this week has been genuinely terrible."
"Indeed."
The voice came from the far left. A slight man in the second-floor window, prayer beads looped around both hands, his fingers moving through them with the automatic rhythm of someone who had been doing it for decades. His eyes were closed.
"My eyes sense a deeply foul omen emanating from this individual." He paused at one bead. "A true danger to our continued existences. It is, regrettably, a very clear conclusion."
From the roof, a mutant whose torso was rapidly producing additional arms — four, then six, the joints cracking outward with uncomfortable efficiency — rolled his neck. The object of their attention however, had his attention elsewhere. "I don't blame you. Recently, I get those a lot."
Looking at the swirling wind in the distance, Yuta let out a quiet sigh. There really wasn't any time to waste.
Suddenly, a massive surge of chakra rushed to his left palm, the raw energy instantly manifesting as a violent, blinding torrent of lightning.
CHIRP! CHIRP! CHIRP!
Before the visible villains could even register the deafening, bird-like screeching of the technique, he promptly swept his lightning-bathed hand straight across the roof of the vandalized convenience store right beneath his feet.
CRACK-BOOOM!!!
The brilliant arcs of electricity tore through the concrete ledge like a net of living plasma, expanding across the entire rooftop in a fraction of a second.
"GAHHH—!"
"AGH!!"
Three distorted figures abruptly materialized as their camouflage collapsed, smoke rising from their twitching bodies before they collectively slumped onto the rooftop.
One rolled limply off an air-conditioning unit.
Another landed face-first across the cracked concrete.
The last simply twitched once before going completely still.
"..."
"..."
The expressions of every villain present changed, their smug confidence completely evaporating as they realized their calculated pincer movement had failed to produce any fruit.
On Yuta's shoulder, Nakime's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.
She stared at the four unconscious figures on the rooftop with changing expressions before coming to a clear conclusion.
"...I really should have just gone to prison," she sighed.
Yuta slowly turned his head to look back at the pharmaceutical building. He raised his left hand, presenting his palm to the remaining thirteen convicts—
Blue arcs of lightning danced between his fingers, illuminating the underside of his wide-brimmed hat.
"So trust me when I tell you..." His eyes moved across each of them in turn. The sand woman. The monk. The mutant. Every figure arranged across every window and rooftop and broken balcony.
"...that omen's about to get a lot worse."