The training ground behind the main house was open gravel with old trees at the edges. Megumi stood at one end in plain Zen'in training clothes. Naobito waited at the other in a worn version of his uniform, sleeves rolled up.
"No lectures," Naobito said, rolling his left shoulder. "Jin'ichi played coach. Jinya played monk. I'm not interested in either." He cracked his neck, grinning with cold teeth. "I'm going to beat the shit out of you."
Megumi said nothing.
"That's the spirit," Naobito said with a smirk. "Come on then."
The shadow beneath Megumi's boots stirred.
Megumi opened with Totality. The dog broke from the ground in a low sprint, claws tearing through gravel. Naobito didn't even glance down at it.
The air snapped.
Naobito vanished. It wasn't a smooth sprint by any means. To Megumi's eyes, Naobito's afterimages skidded across the ground.
In a single second, Naobito traced five blinding steps across thirty feet of stone, skipped off the dog's rising head, and unloaded nineteen precise strikes against Megumi's guard and torso.
Megumi never saw the punches. He only felt nineteen explosive impacts hammer his forearms, ribs, and chest in the span of a single heartbeat.
The final strike lifted Megumi off his feet. He flew backward, crashing hard into the dirt and tearing up gravel before rolling to a stop. The breath ripped out of his lungs.
'Too fast,' Megumi thought, his chest burning as he struggled to breathe. 'What was that? He skipped the whole yard.'
"Get up," Naobito said, standing right where Megumi had been standing a moment before. Not a single drop of sweat on him. "Your eyes are garbage. You're too busy staring at the spot I left. I was already finished by the time you blinked."
Megumi pushed himself to his knees, coughing violently. His ribs throbbed like cracked slate.
"My quirk is Frame Projection," Naobito said, taking a slow step forward. "I split one second into twenty-four frames. I map my movements across every single one of them before I move. Once I start, the whole sequence executes without hesitation. Stack them together and nobody alive can match my speed, with the sole exception of All Might."
Megumi wiped his chin, watching the older man's face.
'Twenty-four in one second,' Megumi thought. 'He already decided every move before he even took a step.'
"Watching won't help you," Naobito said. "I'm gone before you can create a mental image of where I am."
Megumi forced his feet under him. He summoned Nue into the air above and Toad at his side. Nue dived with talons humming in electricity, while Toad whipped its tongue low toward Naobito's ankles.
Naobito had already mapped his twenty-four frames.
In a disjointed blur of motion, Naobito stepped onto Toad's extending tongue, kicked Nue's wing out of alignment, and dropped into Megumi's guard. Great Serpent already waiting lunged from the dirt to snap its jaws shut over him, but Naobito used the rising snout as a springboard, launched over it, and planted his open right palm flat against Megumi's collarbone.
Instantly, Megumi's body locked up.
'Can't move,' Megumi thought, panic flashing cold through his chest. 'My body won't respond.'
A rigid, unnatural stiffness seized every muscle. His mind was clear, but his body failed to trace twenty-four movements inside the second. In a fraction of a heartbeat, Megumi flattened into a rigid frame, frozen in mid-motion like a drawing on glass.
Naobito stepped into a heavy straight punch, driving his fist directly into the center of the frozen frame.
The frame shattered with a sound like breaking ice.
The instant it broke, the full force of the punch blasted through Megumi's body. The impact blew him twenty feet across the gravel on his back.
Pain flared through his chest and spine. Megumi rolled onto his stomach, pushing up on shaking arms, spitting dark blood into the dirt.
"That's the rule of my quirk," Naobito said, stepping over the scattered stones. "When I touch you, your body gets dragged into the same twenty-four-frame clock. Fail to map your movements inside that timing, and you turn into a frame for one full second. When I punch that frame and break it, your body takes every bit of the damage."
Megumi forced himself up, his breathing ragged. "And if you mess up your sequence?"
"I don't," Naobito said with a smirk.
'Summoning directly won't work,' Megumi thought, wiping blood from his lip. 'He's just using them as stepping stones.'
Megumi changed tactics immediately.
As Naobito initiated another mapped burst, Megumi dropped straight down into the shadow below his boots, slipping beneath the gravel.
He surfaced ten paces away behind a stone marker.
Naobito was already there. The twenty-four frames had already accounted for the exit. Before Megumi's shoulders cleared the dark surface, a heavy boot slammed into his collarbone, dragging him out of the ground and pitching him across the clearing.
'He was already waiting,' Megumi thought, hitting the dirt and rolling hard. 'He planned for the exit before I even dropped down.'
Megumi switched to partial summons.
He didn't manifest the beasts in full. Instead, he pulled their properties straight through his own shadow.
From the dark beneath his boots, three physical copies of himself tore free from the gravel. They had real weight, fast hands, and enough strength to attack, even if they'd shatter under a real hit. The clones surged forward in a staggered line, rushing Naobito from three separate angles.
Behind them, Megumi raised his right hand, locking his fingers into a tight barrel. Without manifesting Max Elephant, he drew its crushing pressure directly through his own palm, shaping and compressing the water until the air around his knuckles hissed.
He fired. A thin, piercing stream of high-pressure water cracked across the yard like a rifle shot.
Naobito didn't even slow down. His twenty-four frames carved through the setup in a single second.
With three disjointed steps, Naobito smashed through the first copy with a backhand, shattered the second with an elbow, and tilted his head just enough for the water stream to whistle past his ear. Before Megumi could drop his hand, Naobito closed the final yard and drove a vicious knee straight into Megumi's sternum.
The water stream died instantly. The last clone dissolved back into shadow.
Megumi crashed down into the gravel, gasping for air as blood welled in his throat.
'Couldn't even touch him,' Megumi thought, his lungs seizing in pain.
"Cute tricks," Naobito said, standing over him with his hands on his hips. "Rabbit copies of yourself. Elephant water straight out of your hand without the beast. Still too slow. A trick that takes half a second to set up is an eternity to me."
Megumi stayed on his hands and knees, head hanging low.
Every rib burned. His forearms were bruised to the bone, and his jaw ached where a stray strike had caught him.
'If he keeps hitting me like this, I'm going to break,' Megumi thought. 'Buy time. Just don't fall down.'
He drew a slow breath and reached inward.
He pulled the cold from his core, remembering the lesson Jinya had drilled into him the day before.
'Don't make armor,' Megumi reminded himself. 'It's too heavy. Wrap the muscle and bone from the inside, keep the joints open.'
He drew a thin sleeve of shadow over the surface of his muscles and bones, wrapping his body from the inside out while leaving his joints free to move.
The cold locked into place.
Naobito blurred forward again.
Twenty-four frames in one second. Naobito's fist drove toward Megumi's ribs with bone-shattering force.
Megumi braced. The punch landed like an iron sledge. The shadow sleeve across his ribs groaned, absorbing the worst of the impact before cracking and dispersing into black mist. Megumi was still knocked back three paces, but his bones stayed whole.
'It worked,' Megumi thought, teeth grinding against the ache in his side. 'It took most of it.'
Naobito's eyes sharpened slightly. "Oh? Jinya's reinforcement."
Naobito followed up instantly, unleashing a barrage of rapid strikes.
Because the technique was brand new, Megumi couldn't hold it continuously under that kind of relentless punishment. Every second blow broke his concentration, peeling the shadow sleeve away from his skin. Punches bruised his shoulders, clipped his cheek, and hammered his thighs. But each time the reinforcement shattered, Megumi forced his focus back, drawing the dark sleeve over his muscles again.
'Hold it together,' Megumi told himself through the pain. 'Put it back up. Don't drop it.'
With every exchange, his efficiency improved by a fraction. He was still taking a brutal beating, still locked completely on the back foot, but he was staying on his feet.
When midday arrived, Naobito finally stepped back.
He walked over to a wooden bench by the fence and pulled the cork from a ceramic bottle, taking a long swallow. Megumi collapsed onto one knee, chest heaving with ragged breaths. His training clothes were torn, his knuckles were raw, and blood smeared his mouth.
He forced himself upright and walked stiffly toward the bench, sitting on the opposite end.
"You made your point," Megumi muttered, voice raspy.
"Most brats your age would be crying by now," Naobito said, setting the bottle down with a clatter. "You keep getting up. That's the only part that matters. Nobody beats a top hero on their first morning. What matters is whether you keep your head while you're getting dismantled."
Naobito tossed the bottle across the bench. Megumi caught it with stiff fingers, brought it to his mouth, and took a swallow.
Wine.
He spit it back into the bottle, coughing, his face twisting. Naobito laughed, a sharp bark that echoed across the gravel.
"What the hell," Megumi managed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"You looked like you needed it," Naobito said, still grinning. He took the bottle back and drank from it without hesitation.
The laughter faded. Naobito set the bottle down and leaned back against the bench, his expression shifting into something harder.
When his breathing steadied, he looked up at Naobito. "Jin'ichi told me about my father. About what happened with the clan. But he didn't say much. I want to know what you think. What actually happened between Toji and the Zen'in?"
Naobito settled back onto the bench, the amusement fading from his face. He took another drink before answering.
"Two hundred years, the old bastards on the council ran this clan on one rule: your quirk is your worth. Without one, you're trash," Naobito said plainly. "Then Toji came along quirkless and got sent to the Kukuru Unit to be forgotten. But he clawed his way out through pure strength and combat skill. Slaughtered anybody we asked him to, with steel and his bare hands. Proved their entire belief system was garbage. And instead of admitting they were wrong, the clan continued to keep him in the kukuru and use him."
"Why'd he hide me from them?" Megumi asked quietly. "If he was that strong, why not come back? Why keep me away?"
Naobito's expression hardened slightly. "Because once you're in this family's sights, you don't get to leave. Toji knew that. He got out, built a life outside the clan, and he wasn't about to let them sink their hooks into you." He paused. "Then you showed up with that ability of yours. The second Jinya found out, he would've claimed you. Used you. Toji spent his whole life fighting that. He wasn't about to let it happen to you."
"So he kept me hidden."
"Yeah. And it worked until he didn't." Naobito stood, brushing dirt from his trousers. "Now you're here, and the clan's interested. That's a problem for you to figure out."
"Is that why you took me in?"
"I took you because I wanted to see if you were worth a damn," Naobito said, pushing himself up from the bench. "Jinya wants to own you. Jin'ichi wants to babysit you. I want to see if you can fight when the world stops being polite. Rest for ten minutes. Then we finish this."
When they returned to the center of the clearing, the afternoon sun cast long angles through the trees.
Megumi stood with his shadow reinforcement wrapped tight around his limbs.
'He said he never messes up his path,' Megumi thought, eyes locked on Naobito. 'That's where he's stuck. Once he locks in twenty-four moves, he can't change them. If I get in the way before the second ends, the rule hits him instead.'
Megumi focused his stamina and released the room-wide shadow technique Jinya had taught him.
The shadow under his boots expanded rapidly, rushing across the gravel in a wide, black tide designed to trap Naobito's feet and paralyze him where he stood.
The instant the shadow surged outward, Naobito leaped straight up.
He landed lightly on a high tree branch, looking down at the dark ground with a grin.
"You think Jinya's tricks work on me?" Naobito scoffed. "I've known my brother for fifty years. I know what that shadow does the second it touches stone."
Naobito didn't drop back to the ground.
He initiated a sequence from above. Stacking twenty-four frames of movement, he used the trees as launch pads. He jumped from trunk to thick branch, zooming across the clearing like a lethal pinball. In a blur of sharp angles, he dived from a high bough, drove a heavy forearm into Megumi's reinforced shoulder, and bounced right back into the upper canopy without his boots ever touching the dirt.
The impact drove Megumi to one knee. The shadow sleeve held, but the force rattled his collarbone.
Another sequence began. Naobito ricocheted off three separate trunks, dropped down behind Megumi, cracked a kick against his spine, and leaped back into the foliage before Megumi could turn.
'Trapping the floor is useless if he won't touch it,' Megumi thought, pulling the shadow back beneath his boots.
The pool on the gravel vanished, leaving the clearing completely dry and clear of dark traps.
'Quit trying to look at him,' Megumi told himself. 'My eyes can't catch up anyway. Feel the shadows around the yard instead.'
He closed his eyes halfway and extended his awareness outward, not through a trap on the dirt, but through the shadows cast by the trees, branches, and fence posts all around the yard.
Every object had a shadow. And when Naobito cut through the air and kicked off the wood, the pressure of his passing disturbed those shadows like ripples in water.
Megumi felt the entire twenty-four-frame trajectory.
He felt the weight shifting from the high cedar on the left, the sudden snap of displaced air across the oak branch, and the line of force pulling downward.
'He's fast, but he can't just float,' Megumi thought. 'To keep bouncing between branches, he has to land somewhere. The dirt's clear now, so that's where he'll reset.'
Megumi felt that landing point three frames before it happened.
'There,' Megumi realized. 'Right in the middle of the gravel. He's cutting across to the pine.'
Megumi tightened his fists. 'If I trip him, he freezes for a second. But a normal hit won't do anything to a pro. I need something heavy, moving full speed before he even lands.'
Megumi brought his hands together into an entirely new sign.
Above in the branches, Naobito began his descent, tracing his sequence toward the open ground.
Before Naobito's boots ever reached the dirt, the shadow behind Megumi erupted.
A massive beast tore free from the black depths. It was a broad, slate-gray ox, heavily muscled and robust, with short curved horns pointing forward, white fur around its mouth, a thin tail, and the circular mark of the Cloth of the Bees etched into its forehead.
The moment its hooves hit the gravel, Piercing Ox charged in a dead straight line. It didn't search for angles or turn. It simply accelerated, tearing deep trenches into the stone, its speed and power multiplying with every yard it crossed.
Midway through his descent, Naobito's eyes widened. He caught sight of the unfamiliar beast, his focus fracturing for a fraction of a heartbeat.
'Now,' Megumi thought.
The exact instant Naobito's lead boot touched down on the gravel to complete frame fourteen. A concentrated ring of shadow surged outward across the stone in a blinding flash. It wrapped tight around Naobito's ankle and calf like cold iron, anchoring him to the dirt for a split second.
The anchor held for only a heartbeat, but it was enough.
His sequence broke.
The penalty snapped down instantly. Naobito's body went completely rigid, his joints locking up as he turned into a flat, two-dimensional frame frozen mid-stride.
One full second.
Piercing Ox covered the final stretch of ground at terrifying velocity, the air whistling around its curved horns like a freight train.
The heavy beast slammed head-on into the frozen frame.
The frame shattered with a sound like a collapsing glacier.
At the final frame of the second, the freeze broke. In that dying fraction of a heartbeat, Naobito wrenched his upper body sideways with frantic, desperate speed.
The horn missed his chest by an inch.
Instead, the massive, stone-hard shoulder of the charging ox crashed directly into Naobito's right side.
The impact sounded like a truck smashing into a brick wall.
The force ripped the right sleeve clean off Naobito's uniform and hurled him violently across the clearing. Naobito skipped twice across the gravel before slamming into the dirt near the far fence.
Piercing Ox plowed forward without slowing, crashing headlong into an ancient oak tree. The trunk groaned and splintered with a deafening crack before the ox dissolved into black mist and sinking shadows.
Megumi dropped heavily to both hands and knees. Blood dripped steadily from his nose from the sheer strain, his vision swam with gray spots, and his hands shook so hard he could barely press his palms flat.
Across the yard, Naobito pushed himself up from the dirt.
His right sleeve was gone. His shoulder and flank were mottled with deep purple bruising, and gravel scrapes ran red along his forearm. He stood breathing hard, chest rising and falling in deep, ragged beats.
For a long moment, the clearing was completely silent.
Naobito rolled his bruised shoulder, winced slightly, and walked slowly back across the gravel.
"You cleared the floor to make me think it was safe," Naobito said, his voice rough and gravelly. "Felt my movements through the tree shadows instead of using your useless eyes. You knew I'd have to touch down once to reset my line."
Megumi looked up from the dirt, gasping for breath. "I needed to break your sequence."
"And you summoned that heavy bastard right before my feet touched the dirt," Naobito said, glancing at the shattered tree trunk. "Gave it a straight line and let it build momentum. If I hadn't twisted at the last frame, that horn would've taken my arm off."
"You still dodged the worst of it," Megumi said quietly.
"I dodged getting butchered," Naobito snapped, looking down at him with hard, sharp eyes. "I still ate the shoulder. You spent five hours getting the shit kicked out of you. You tried summons, shadow hiding, partial summons, reinforcement, and you failed at all of them until you used my own rule to set a trap."
A dry, mean smirk touched the corner of Naobito's mouth.
"That was a proper counter. Jin'ichi would tell you to be proud. I'll tell you that you're slightly less pathetic than you were at sunrise."
Naobito turned toward the house, brushing dirt and wood chips from his trousers.
"Get your ass off the ground. Clean yourself up, eat, and get some sleep. Tomorrow the schoolwork ends. We leave for Kyoto at first light."
Megumi stayed on the gravel for a long time. His body throbbed from head to toe, his ribs ached, and his hands were raw from the stone.
He pushed himself up slowly, shaking the dirt from his knees, and started the long walk back toward the house.
...
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