The industrial sector was a graveyard of white paper and broken ambitions. Sherlock Sheets didn't stop to savor the victory over the forty students; his internal clock was ticking, and the rhythmic thrum of a distress signal was pulsing through his tactical headset.
"Shoji... Jiro..." he rasped, his lungs burning from the atomized oil and dust.
He didn't run. He stepped into the air.
"Molecular Card Path: Icarus Transit!"
With a sharp flick of his wrists, a series of cards snapped into a steep, ascending curve.
Sherlock blurred upward, his tan duster snapping like a flag in the gale-force winds of his own making. He wasn't using a jetpack or thrusters; he was using the pure, mechanical tension of his paper to catapult his body forward. Each step on a card sounded like a gunshot—crack, crack, crack—as he defied gravity through sheer mathematical willpower.
From his vantage point, the stadium looked like a chaotic mosaic of war. But in the Canyon Sector, a dark, localized fog was swallowing the light.
"Sensory deprivation," Sherlock noted, his emerald eyes narrowing. "A specialized ambush."
Down in the shadows of the jagged rock formations, Shoji Mezou and Kyoka Jiro were backed against a sheer cliff. They were surrounded by a team from a rival school wearing sleek, matte-black tactical gear.
The air around them was vibrating with a high-frequency "White Noise" that rendered Jiro's earphone jacks useless. Every time she tried to plug into the ground, the feedback sent a jolt of agonizing pain through her skull. Shoji, despite his massive strength and multiple eyes, was blind—a thick, chemically-enhanced "Blackout Smoke" had neutralized his heightened senses.
"I can't... I can't hear their footsteps!" Jiro cried, clutching her head.
"Stay behind me, Jirou!" Shoji roared, his multiple arms forming a protective wall of muscle around her. "I can't see them, but I can feel the displacement of air!"
A student from the rival school, a girl with a Vacuum Quirk, smirked as she raised a device that looked like a localized sonic cannon. "UA's 'Senses' are useless in a vacuum of information. Let's end this."
She pulled the trigger. A concentrated blast of sound-pressure roared toward the cornered pair.
WHOOSH.
Before the blast could hit, a wall of white materialized out of the smoke. It wasn't a solid wall. It was a complex, multi-layered "Accordion Fold" of paper, thousands of micro-perforations vibrating in the wind.
The sonic blast hit the paper and... vanished.
"What?! The sound... it was swallowed?!" the girl gasped.
From the smoke-clogged sky, Sherlock Sheets descended like a vengeful ghost. He didn't land heavily; his Feather Fall ribbons flared out, slowing his descent until he touched the ground with the silence of a falling leaf.
His tan duster was scorched, his face was smeared with soot, and his gloved hands were trembling from the lipid-drain—but his eyes were colder than the canyon stone.
"Sound is merely a vibration through a medium," Sherlock said, his voice cutting through the white noise with terrifying clarity.
"Sherlock-kun!" Shoji's many eyes blinked open as the smoke began to dissipate under the draft of Sherlock's landing.
"Maintain your position, Shoji," Sherlock commanded, his hands moving into a sharp, interlocking mudra. "Jiro, give me a low-frequency pulse on my mark. We're going to rewrite the map of this canyon."
"You think one more UA brat changes anything?!" the leader of the tactical team yelled. "Everyone! Focus fire on the Magician!"
The ten tactical students launched a coordinated assault—sonic grenades, vacuum blasts, and high-speed projectiles.
Sherlock didn't just protect himself. He exploded a cloud of paper that encased Shoji, Jiro, and himself in a vibrating dome. The paper wasn't rigid; it was soft and porous, designed specifically to dissipate kinetic energy and noise.
"Now, Jiro! Maximum output!"
Jiro didn't hesitate. She plugged her jacks into the specialized "Acoustic Conductors" Sherlock had built into the inner lining of the dome.
"HEARTBEAT DISTORTION!"
The sound didn't go outward. It was funneled into Sherlock's paper. Using his neural gloves, Sherlock manipulated the vibration, turning the dome into a massive, directional speaker.
"Ultimate Move: Resonance Shatter!"
The dome didn't just vibrate; it screamed. A focused wave of sound, amplified by the geometric tension of the paper, erupted outward in a 360-degree shockwave. The tactical team, who relied on their own high-frequency equipment, were instantly neutralized as their gear shattered and their equilibrium collapsed.
Targets flashed red. One. Four. Eight. Ten.
As the dust settled and the "White Noise" faded into a blissful, ringing silence, Sherlock dropped to one knee. His breath was coming in jagged gasps. The bruises on his ribs from the previous day's training were throbbing with a dull, rhythmic pain.
"Sherlock!" Jiro ran to him, catching him before he could hit the stone. "You're at your limit!
Sherlock looked up, a faint, tired smirk on his face. He looked at Shoji, then at Jiro. "
"You're a maniac," Jiro whispered, her eyes softening with a mix of awe and worry. "But you're our maniac."
Shoji stood over them, his massive frame acting as a shield. "We've passed, Sherlock. Your counter-strike hit enough targets to clear the round for all three of us."
Sherlock looked at the massive screens in the distance. The counter for the second round was dropping fast. 88... 92... 95...
"We need to find the others," Sherlock rasped, forcing himself to stand.
The high-pitched siren of the stadium echoed through the artificial canyons, a mournful wail that signaled the closing of the window. The digital counter on the horizon flickered: 97 slots filled. Sherlock Sheets stood on a jagged outcrop of rock, his breath hitching in his chest. His tan duster was no longer the pristine garment of a "Magician"; it was shredded at the hem, stained with the black residue of industrial oil and the grey dust of pulverized concrete. Every muscle in his body felt like it was being pulled by invisible wires, his lipid reserves dangerously low.
Beside him, Shoji and Jiro were catchng their breath, their own targets glowing with the green light of qualification.
"We need to get to the transition zone," Shoji said, his voice deep and steady despite the chaos. "The first round is almost over."
"Go," Sherlock rasped, his eyes fixed on a silhouette standing at the mouth of the canyon path. "I'll catch up. There's a final variable I need to resolve."
Jiro looked at him, her earphone jacks twitching with concern. "Sherlock, you can barely stand. Your heart rate is spiked."
"It's a calculation, Jiro," Sherlock lied, his voice regaining a sliver of its cold, melodic edge. "The path to the exit is congested. If I move now, I'm a target. If I wait for the gap... I'm a ghost. Now go."
Reluctantly, they retreated toward the exit. Sherlock watched them disappear, then turned his gaze toward the figure blocking his path. It was a student from Ketsubutsu Academy—not Shindo, but a tall, lean boy with hair like spun silver and eyes that held the same predatory stillness as Sherlock's own.
"The Paper Magician," the boy said, his voice smooth and devoid of the frantic energy of the other examinees. "I've watched you for the last twenty minutes. You're efficient. You treat people like numbers on a ledger. I respect that."
"Respect is a social construct," Sherlock replied, his hands sliding into his pockets. "I prefer results. And currently, you are an obstacle to mine."
The Ketsubutsu student didn't shout or charge. He simply raised a hand, and the air around him began to shimmer. His Quirk was Molecular Friction—he could accelerate the movement of molecules in non-living matter, turning a handful of sand into a cloud of white-hot plasma.
"My name is Makabe," the boy said. "And I've decided that UA shouldn't have a tactician in the second round."
He flicked a handful of pebbles toward Sherlock.
Sherlock didn't wait for them to hit.
"Molecular Card Path: Vector Link!"
He launched five cards into the air, creating a jagged, vertical staircase. He blurred upward, his boots hitting the first card just as the pebbles below him turned into miniature suns, melting the stone outcrop where he had stood seconds before.
Sherlock was in the air, but he wasn't flying. He was falling with style. He kicked off the second card, angling his body toward the canyon wall.
"Paper Art: Needle Rain!"
He manifested a cloud of white ribbons, sending them downward in a wide arc. They weren't meant to hit Makabe; they were meant to saturate the air, creating a field of high-density cellulose that absorbed the heat Makabe was generating.
"Clever," Makabe noted, his eyes tracking Sherlock's movement through the cloud. "You're using the paper as a heat sink. But how long can you stay up there?"
Sherlock felt the strain. His heart gave a sharp, agonizing tug against his ribs—the phantom of his cardiac history reminding him of the cost of his "Ultimate Moves." He ignored it.
"I don't need to stay up here," Sherlock whispered. "I just need to change the geometry of the ground."
As he descended, he didn't land. He used his Feather Fall ribbons to glide in a tight spiral. As he moved, he released hundreds of sheets of paper, each one folding and interlocking with the jagged rocks of the canyon.
"Paper Art: Fortress Fold - Labyrinth Expansion!"
He didn't build a dome this time. He built a maze.
Massive, white walls erupted from the ground, twenty feet high and reinforced with geometric folds that deflected Makabe's friction-blasts. Within seconds, the canyon floor was transformed into a white, shifting forest of paper.
Makabe found himself encased in a world of silence and white. Every time he tried to melt a wall, another one slid into place. Sherlock was nowhere to be seen, but his voice echoed through the labyrinth, distorted by the acoustic properties of the paper.
"You've studied my footage, Makabe," Sherlock's voice drifted from the left. "You know I use cards for mobility and cyclones for defense."
"I know your limits, Sheets!" Makabe roared, unleashing a massive wave of friction that turned a section of the wall into ash.
"But you didn't account for the Razor Cyclone as a sensory tool," Sherlock's voice came from the right.
Suddenly, the air inside the labyrinth began to spin. A localized Razor Cyclone erupted, but it wasn't wide; it was a tight, vertical column that moved through the maze like a predatory animal. The serrated edges of the paper didn't just cut; they created a high-frequency whistle that masked the sound of Sherlock's own footsteps.
Makabe was spinning, his hands glowing with white-hot energy, trying to find the source of the sound. He was a powerhouse, a "Boss" tier student, but he was fighting an architect in a house he didn't understand.
Sherlock appeared above him, standing on a single, hovering card.
"Icarus Transit."
He dived.
Makabe looked up, his hands ready to vaporize Sherlock mid-air. "Got you!"
But Sherlock didn't stay in the line of fire. Mid-descent, he flicked a card to his right and kicked off it, changing his vector in a sharp, 90-degree turn. He blurred past Makabe's side, his fingers brushing against the student's shoulder.
Clack.
The sound of a ball hitting a target.
Sherlock landed behind him, his duster fluttering as the Feather Fall ribbons retracted into his sleeves. He didn't look back.
Makabe froze. He looked down at his chest. Two of his targets were already red from earlier skirmishes. The third was now flickering crimson.
"You... you didn't even use a real attack," Makabe whispered, the glow in his hands fading.
"A magician doesn't use a sledgehammer to perform a card trick," Sherlock said, his voice thin and strained. He was leaning against a paper wall, his hand clutching his chest. "He uses misdirection. You were so focused on the 'Big Move' that you forgot the objective of the exam."
The stadium siren wailed one last time.
[100 SLOTS FILLED. FIRST ROUND CONCLUDED.]
The white walls of the labyrinth began to dissolve, the molecular tension fading as Sherlock released his grip on the Quirk. The canyon returned to its grey, jagged reality.
Makabe looked at Sherlock, a look of grudging respect in his eyes. "You're a monster, Sheets. I hope we don't meet in the second round."
Sherlock didn't answer. He couldn't. He waited until Makabe had walked away toward the failure exit before he let himself collapse against the rock.
His hand went to his inner pocket. He felt the two Crimson Cards—the blood paper he had nearly died to create. Throughout the entire fight, through the isolation of forty students and the duel with Makabe, he hadn't even considered using them.
I didn't need the Red, Sherlock thought, a ragged breath escaping his lungs. I won with the math I built myself. I won as the Paper Magician.
He looked at his hands—the matte-black gloves were torn, and his fingers were stained with the dust of battle. He was a mess. He was exhausted. He was probably one heartbeat away from another visit to the infirmary.
But he was still in the game.
He forced himself to stand, his eyes fixed on the center of the stadium where the walls were already starting to shift for the Rescue Phase. He had survived the Crushing of UA. He had survived the isolation.
"Round two," Sherlock whispered, his voice a ghost of resolve.
He stepped toward the transition zone, the last examinee to cross the line. The Magician had made it through the first act. Now, it was time to see if he could survive the finale.
One, the first phase is over! Sherlock has qualified, but he is physically drained.