Location: Naruhata Ward – Unit 203, Naruhata Estates
Date: Saturday | 20:15 Hours
Click. Thud.
The heavy, reinforced door of Kaito Arisaka's apartment shut behind him, sealing out the damp, cold evening air of Naruhata.
He kicked off his leather loafers, nudging them neatly against the wall of the genkan with his toe.
He shrugged off his charcoal-grey suit jacket, hanging it on the coat rack before loosely pulling his tie down with a long, heavy exhale.
PUFF.
Peace.
It was absolute.
The double-paned argon glass he had paid a small fortune for killed the street noise completely.
But the silence inside the hallway was what caught his attention tonight.
Usually, even with the soundproofing, Kaito could feel the faint, chaotic rhythm of his neighbors.
The heavy, rhythmic thud of Iwao Oguro pacing next door. The frantic footsteps of Koichi running late for a patrol. The muffled, bubbly pop music leaking from Kazuho's room down the hall.
Tonight, the floorboards were quiet. The entire floor felt completely abandoned.
"Are they still patrolling? Or did they all go out for a ramen bite?" Kaito muttered to the empty room, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
He walked into his pristine kitchen, opened the fridge, and grabbed a bottle of cold mineral water.
Glug-glug.
The icy water stung his throat in a good way, washing away the corporate exhaustion of dealing with Best Jeanist's high-society clientele all week.
He walked into the living room, dropped onto his plush sofa, and lazily tapped the TV remote.
Click.
The flat-screen mounted on the wall flared to life. Kaito didn't need to text Koichi to ask where they were; the national news was already doing it for him.
["—Absolute chaos in the streets of Osaka!" a frantic Sato Press news anchor yelled over the sound of distant, booming explosions. Helicopter footage showed entire city blocks engulfed in thick, oily smoke.]
["Multiple factions are clashing in the Namba Financial District! We are seeing Villain Factory assets being systematically dismantled by an unknown, heavily armed syndicate in business suits! Pro Heroes Fat Gum and O'Clock are currently engaged in mass civilian evacuation—"]
"Hmm?" Kaito blinked, slowly lowering his water bottle.
The camera zoomed in on a hastily erected police barricade.
There was Fat Gum, acting as a massive, fleshy shield against a barrage of stray bullets.
Darting through the air above him was Koichi, using his flight and repulsion to snatch a trapped civilian out of the crossfire.
And running logistics on the ground were the three trainees—Soga, Rapt, and Moyuru—frantically directing foot traffic while Makoto yelled orders into a megaphone.
They were in the middle of a literal warzone.
"Overtime again," Kaito sighed, leaning his head back against the cushions.
He didn't jump off the couch. He didn't bother help them in the background.
Iwao was a seasoned veteran, back in his absolute prime.
Koichi had evolved and he had the kinetic-dampening gear Kaito had personally engineered.
Makoto had the logistical layout of the city memorized.
They weren't amateurs anymore. They didn't need a babysitter.
But as Kaito watched the screen, seeing the Villain Factory being absolutely slaughtered by the suited corporate soldiers, a slow, highly opportunistic smirk crept across his face.
When a house is on fire, the owners are usually too busy grabbing buckets of water to notice someone picking the lock on the backdoor.
Thud.
Kaito set his water bottle on the glass coffee table.
He walked over to his desk, pulled out the heavy black Level-0 HPSC laptop Sir Nighteye had given him, and brought it back to the couch.
Click
The screen illuminated his face in a cold, blue light.
With All For One's primary network in a blind panic from the UN Raid, and the Meta Liberation Army actively tearing their Kansai lieutenants to shreds, the Villain Factory's cybersecurity was entirely focused on the physical bleed.
They were trying to reroute trucks, save their bio-assets, and salvage their physical territory before the Pro Heroes arrested them all.
They weren't watching their digital vaults.
Clack-clack-clack.
Kaito settled in. He wasn't just doing Nighteye's audit anymore. He was going shopping.
He bypassed the first three layers of All For One's offshore shell companies in under forty seconds.
The encryption was frantic and sloppy—a system desperately trying to lock its doors while the entire criminal underworld collapsed around it.
"Another sponsor," Kaito whispered to the screen, his eyes reflecting cascading lines of encrypted financial routing numbers. "Your accountants are distracted."
Kaito dug deep into the digital world. He bypassed the Cayman Islands, ignored the Swiss accounts, and finally isolated a massive, dormant slush fund buried beneath a fake shipping conglomerate in Singapore.
It was dirty money, completely untraceable, intended to fund Dr. Garaki's next generation of gestation tanks.
"Found you," Kaito murmured.
He didn't use a brute-force script or a loud Trojan that could trigger a failsafe. He didn't need to.
Clack-clack-clack. Tap.
Kaito's fingers moved across the keyboard with a terrifying, flawless rhythm.
He didn't fight the offshore bank's military-grade firewalls; he simply slipped through digital backdoors the original architects didn't even know existed.
He navigated the labyrinth of the global banking mainframe, located the ownership signature of the Villain Factory's proxy, and manually rewrote the routing nodes.
He seamlessly shifted the destination from All For One's network to a heavily encrypted, multi-layered blind trust registered exclusively under his own control.
[Transferring: ¥4,500,000,000.]
The massive number didn't trigger a single alarm.
To the digital world, there was no breach, no hack, and no stolen data.
It simply registered as a perfectly legitimate, highly classified corporate transfer.
The green confirmation bar flashed on the screen.
"Consider this a protection fee," Kaito chuckled dryly, looking at the staggering sum of stolen villain money sitting securely in his account.
"A protection fee for not beating you up every now and then."
Click.
He casually shut the laptop, picked up his water bottle, and kicked his feet up onto the coffee table.
Slurp.
With another sponsor's fund secured, Kaito took another sip of cold water and watched the Osaka war on his TV, completely relaxed.
Let the heroes and the terrorists fight in the mud. The Golden Manager had just executed the heist of the century from the comfort of his living room.
_-_-_-_-_
Location: Kansai Region, Osaka – Namba District Alleyway
Date: Saturday | 21:00 Hours
Pitter-patter.
WEE-WOOO. WEE-WOOO.
Pitter-patter.
The rain in Osaka tasted like ash and copper.
Sirens wailed in the distance, completely drowned out by the rhythm of automatic gunfire a few blocks over.
But inside this narrow, dead-end alleyway, the war felt millions of miles away. It was deeply, violently personal.
Splash.
Iwao Oguro—the Speed Hero: O'Clock—stood blocking the only exit.
His heavy tactical uniform was soaked. He adjusted his brass knuckles, the metal clicking sharply in the dark.
Standing twenty feet away, backed against a brick wall, was Number 6.
The Villain Factory's regional commander didn't look like a normal human anymore.
His black bodysuit was torn, revealing pale, heavily modified flesh that pulsed with the unnatural glow of the Trigger drug.
"You just don't know when to lie down and die, do you, Old Man?" Number 6 sneered. His voice vibrated with a manic, drug-addled arrogance, but his eyes were sharp. Calculating.
"You think you're a hero because you put the coat back on? Because you somehow scraped your Quirk back together?"
Squelch. Shhh-rrrip.
The flesh along Number 6's forearms violently split open.
Thick, jagged white bone extruded from his own skeleton, lengthening and sharpening until he was dual-wielding a pair of dense, organic bone-swords directly from his wrists.
"I'm the peak of evolution!" Number 6 screamed, his body blurring as he vibrated in place. "I have your speed! I have the Doctor's upgrades! I can snap your neck before the electrical signals even reach your brain!"
Iwao didn't speak.
His scarred, grizzled face was set in a terrifyingly calm scowl.
He raised his fists, settling into a flawless, grounded brawler's stance.
"Evolution doesn't mean a damn thing if you don't know how to drive the car, kid," Iwao grunted.
Number 6 snarled.
FWOOSH!
The world simply stopped.
The heavy raindrops froze mid-air, suspended like millions of tiny glass beads.
The distant sirens stretched into an imperceptible, low-frequency hum.
Both men had activated Overclock at the exact same millisecond.
Their brains accelerated to an impossible degree, processing the world so fast that physical time seemed to crawl to a dead halt.
They both had exactly ten seconds of perceived time before their brains would be starved of oxygen.
Ten seconds in their world. A fraction of a microsecond in reality.
Swoosh.
Number 6 lunged first. He didn't just run; he launched himself off the brick wall, using his momentum to swing the right bone-blade directly at Iwao's neck. It was a lethal, sweeping arc.
One.
Iwao didn't panic. He had lived in this frozen world for decades. He saw the microscopic shift in Number 6's shoulder.
Instead of stepping back, Iwao stepped in.
Two.
Fwiip
Iwao ducked under the bone-blade, letting the razor-sharp edge graze the collar of his trench coat.
He rotated his hips, driving his brass-knuckled fist straight up into the exposed joint of Number 6's extended elbow.
CLANG!
Sparks actually flew in the frozen air as the heavy brass met reinforced bone.
Three.
Number 6's eyes widened in shock. His arm went numb. But he was modified. He didn't retreat.
BAAM.
He violently twisted his left wrist, shooting a barrage of sharpened bone-shards from his palm like a shotgun blast right at Iwao's face.
Four. Five.
Iwao expected the dirty trick.
Predict the trajectory, don't watch the projectile.
Iwao smoothly tilted his head off the center line, weaving through the bone-shards by mere millimeters.
Six.
Before Number 6 could pull his arms back, Iwao grabbed the villain's left wrist.
He clamped down with an iron grip, using the villain's own forward momentum against him, and viciously drove a knee straight into Number 6's sternum.
CRACK.
Seven. Eight.
"UGHH!"
Number 6 gagged, blood erupting from his mouth, suspended in the frozen air.
The young speedster was panicking now. He had the same Quirk. He had a stronger, genetically modified body. But he was getting absolutely dismantled.
Nine.
Iwao raised his brass knuckles for a knockout blow to the temple.
Ten.
BAM-CRASH-WHOOSH!
Reality violently caught up.
The ten seconds of hyper-accelerated combat resolved in the real world with a deafening sonic boom.
The frozen raindrops shattered into mist. The brick walls of the alley violently cratered outward from the sheer kinetic force of their movements suddenly registering in real-time.
Number 6 was sent skidding backward across the wet asphalt, his boots carving deep trenches into the ground.
BAANG. THUD.
He crashed into the dead-end wall, gasping for air as his brain desperately tried to replenish its oxygen.
HUUF-PUFF
Iwao stood exactly where he had been, steam rolling off his broad shoulders. He took a slow, deep breath, his chest heaving perfectly in time with his recovery cycle.
PTUI.
"Impossible," Number 6 wheezed, spitting a glob of blood onto the pavement.
He looked at his fractured bone-blade, his red eyes wide with absolute frustration. "I'm faster than you! My neural pathways are superior!"
"You are faster," Iwao agreed, his voice a low, terrifying rumble of authority. He took a slow, heavy step forward. "But you run stupid. You use Overclock like a sledgehammer. You waste three seconds of your time-limit just winding up your swings. I don't need to be faster than you, kid. I just need to be where you're going to be."
Number 6 forced himself up, his body trembling.
"DAMN IT!"
His healing factor was already trying to knit his cracked sternum back together, but the psychological damage was worse.
SWIISH-SWOOSH.
He lunged again, abandoning the blades and shooting a massive, dense spear of bone straight out of his chest, aiming to impale the old man.
Iwao didn't dodge. He pivoted on his heel, letting the bone spear slide past his ribs, and instantly trapped the protrusion under his armpit.
"Speed is secondary," Iwao whispered, pulling himself straight down the length of the bone spear, directly into Number 6's personal space. "Grit is what makes you a hero."
WHAM!
Iwao drove a brutal, twisting uppercut directly into Number 6's jaw.
The impact shattered the lower half of the villain's mask, sending jagged pieces of white polymer flying into the puddles.
Number 6's eyes rolled back, his brain rattling violently inside his skull.
Iwao ripped his arm free and kicked the villain squarely in the chest, sending him sprawling into the mud.
BAAM.
THUD.
Number 6 hit the pavement hard. He was bleeding, his breath ragged.
The regional commander of the Villain Factory looked up at the grizzled hero standing over him like an immovable mountain.
Number 6 felt raw fear and frustration.
'One or two Quirks aren't enough to kill this relic,' Number 6 thought, his brilliant, drug-addled mind rapidly calculating the odds. 'He knows the timing perfectly. He knows the blind spots. If I stay here, he's going to cave my skull in.'
Number 6 wasn't a mindless Nomu. He was a survivor. Pride was secondary to the mission. Safety first was the priority.
The speedster scrambled backward, his hands glowing with intense heat as he prepared to Overclock his legs purely for a tactical retreat.
He reached up, tapping the microscopic comms unit buried in his ear.
"Kurogiri," Number 6 hissed, his voice wet with blood. "The Kansai perimeter is compromised. I need an extraction. Now."
Iwao narrowed his eyes, hearing the name. He lunged forward to grab the villain by the throat before he could escape.
Then.
A swirling, terrifyingly cold mass of purple-black mist ripped open in the air directly behind Number 6.
The warp gate expanded instantly. Number 6 grinned a bloody, arrogant smile and threw himself backward into the void. "I'll be back! Stronger! Old relic!"
But he never touched the mist.
The rain falling in the narrow alleyway suddenly parted.
There was no sonic boom. There was no rushing of wind. There was only a terrifying, absolute silence.
A crimson blur dropped from the dark sky like a guillotine.
CRASH!
Before Number 6 could even register the movement, a heavy combat boot slammed directly into his chest at blinding speed, violently kicking him sideways.
"GAAH!?"
The impact launched the speedster away from the portal.
BAAM.
Number 6 slammed headfirst into the brick wall with a sickening crunch and collapsed face-down into the mud, completely knocked out cold.
The purple warp gate wavered. A pair of glowing yellow eyes peered out from within the mist, analyzing the sudden, overwhelmingly fast threat.
Deciding the asset was lost, the portal rapidly shrank and snapped shut with a hollow pop, leaving Kurogiri to escape alone.
Iwao stopped in his tracks. He lowered his fists, the steam dissipating from his trench coat as he stared at the newcomer standing casually over the unconscious speedster.
The figure was crouched in the shadows, casually shaking the rainwater off a pair of massive, dark-red wings.
"Man, the weather down here is absolutely brutal," a young, incredibly laid-back voice echoed through the dark alley.
The figure stood up, casually stretching his neck before offering Iwao a lazy, two-finger salute.
"Looks like I made it just in time to cancel his flight," the winged hero chuckled, nudging Number 6's unconscious body with his boot.
"Though from the looks of it, old-timer, you already had him pretty well tenderized for me."
Iwao stared at the kid's red wings and the staggering speed he had just displayed.
"...."
"Dispatch," Iwao rumbled into his collar mic, his voice steady but carrying a hint of gruff amusement. "Target is down and secured. The extraction portal was neutralized by... airborne reinforcements. Send a containment unit to my location."
_-_-_-_-_
Location: Tokyo – Hero Public Safety Commission Headquarters
|Time: 20 Minutes Ago|
The massive screens in the HPSC command center were flashing a violent, synchronized red.
The HPSC President stood at the head of the war table, her manicured fingernails digging into the mahogany wood.
She stared at the live feeds from Osaka with a cold, rising dread.
"Identify them," she demanded, her voice cutting through the frantic chatter of analysts. "Who are the men in the business suits? Are they Yakuza?"
"Negative, Madam President," an intelligence officer swallowed hard, typing furiously. "Their coordination is military-grade. Their support gear is completely unregistered, but the kinetic-dampening tech they are using is lightyears ahead of standard black-market hardware. They are systematically executing the Villain Factory assets and seizing their contraband. It's not a gang war. It's a highly organized corporate acquisition."
The President's eyes narrowed.
The UN raid was supposed to be the ultimate victory for the governments of the world.
All Might had crushed the Shizuoka hub. They were supposed to be in control. But someone else had anticipated the fallout and was currently devouring the Kansai underworld while the HPSC watched helplessly.
"And what about Best Jeanist?" the President pivoted, looking at a secondary monitor displaying the latest Billboard metrics. "How did his capture efficiency jump three hundred percent in a single week? Who authorized his gear upgrades?"
"It was an internal agency overhaul, ma'am. Orchestrated by his new management firm. Arisaka Consulting."
The President froze. "That name again."
The 'Golden Manager.' The man who had somehow optimized Snipe, Ryukyu, and Ingenium.
The man who was quietly pulling the strings of the top pro heroes from behind a desk.
The board was shifting too fast. There were too many anomalies. Unknown corporate armies in Osaka. Unprecedented efficiency spikes in Tokyo.
"We are losing the narrative," the President stated. "We need to stabilize Osaka immediately, and I need eyes on the event."
She turned to her lead handler.
"Deploy him. Clean up the Kansai streets."
_-_-_-_-_-_
Location: Kansai Region, Osaka – Namba District
Date: Saturday | 22:10 Hours
For the last hour, Hawks had been sweeping through the chaotic streets of Kansai, neutralizing threats before they even heard him coming.
Now, the MLA Vanguard had nearly finished their sweep.
A squad of five unmarked corporate soldiers stood in the center of a ruined plaza, surrounded by the unconscious bodies of Villain Factory smugglers.
They had secured the Trigger crates and were preparing to extract before the Pro Heroes arrived.
"Load the assets. The leader wants us out in three minutes," the squad leader barked, checking his rifle.
SWISH.
A microscopic gust of wind brushed past his ear.
There was no sonic boom. There was no rushing of air.
The squad leader blinked. He looked to his left. Two of his men were suddenly unconscious on the ground, their weapons neatly disassembled beside them.
"What the—Contact! Contact!" the leader yelled, raising his rifle.
SWISH.
A crimson blur moved through the rain. It didn't fly like a normal winged hero. It moved with the terrifying, silent precision of an owl hunting in the dead of night.
Hawks dropped from the sky, his boots lightly touching the pavement.
His red wings didn't have flat, loud edges. The feathers were staggered in a jagged, chevron formation—exactly the way the Aichi Auditor had drawn it on a tablet years ago.
The modified flight path created a perfect pressure vacuum, rendering his movements completely, horrifyingly silent.
Before the remaining three corporate soldiers could even pull their triggers, Hawks sent a flurry of primary feathers forward.
They didn't pierce flesh; they struck the exact pressure points on the soldiers' necks with surgical precision.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The entire squad collapsed in less than two seconds.
Hawks stood in the center of the plaza, rain rolling off his visor.
He looked down at the unconscious men in the business suits. He looked at the advanced, unregistered support gear they were wearing.
Then, he looked at his own wings.
"Man, why didn't Arisaka want to work for the HPSC?" Takami complained to himself as he reached up to his comms.
"Command, this is Hawks. Sector Delta is secure. The unknown combatants are neutralized," Hawks reported, his golden-brown eyes narrowing in the rain.
_-_-_-_-_-_
Next day.
Location: Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo – Nighteye Agency (Private Office)
Date: Monday | 08:00 AM
The sun was shining brightly over Tokyo, a stark contrast to the grim, rain-soaked aftermath of the Osaka war that was dominating every news channel.
Inside the quiet, meticulously organized office of Sir Nighteye, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense.
Kaito Arisaka sat in the guest chair.
He wore his charcoal-grey suit, looking perfectly rested.
He placed a small, silver encrypted hard drive onto Nighteye's desk.
Click.
"The audit is complete, Sir Nighteye," Kaito said.
"Every shell company, every offshore account, and every physical supply route utilized by All For One's empire has been decrypted, mapped, and cataloged on that drive."
"...."
Nighteye didn't speak. The tall, sharp-featured Pro Hero stared at the hard drive as if it were a live bomb.
He slowly reached out, picked it up, and plugged it into his secure terminal.
Lines of data flooded the massive monitor. It was flawless.
It was a complete, structural autopsy of the most terrifying criminal network in human history, dissected down to the yen.
But as Nighteye read the physical coordinates of the supply routes, his blood ran completely cold.
He looked at the logistics on the screen, and then he looked at the newspaper sitting on his desk.
The headline screamed: BLOODBATH IN OSAKA: UNKNOWN SYNDICATE WIPES OUT VILLAIN FACTORY REMNANTS!
Nighteye's sharp eyes snapped to Kaito.
"The coordinates of the supply fleets," Nighteye whispered, his voice trembling with a horrifying realization. "They all converged on Kansai. That is exactly where the corporate militia struck."
"It appears the underworld is highly volatile," Kaito replied smoothly, adjusting his golden glasses. "Power vacuums tend to invite hostile takeovers."
Nighteye replied, leaning over the desk. "My agency spent months trying to map a fraction of this network. You mapped the entire thing, and then, a massive, heavily funded third party blindside them at their weakest geographical chokepoint?"
Nighteye stared into the eyes of the twenty-one-year-old manager.
Kaito almost let out a genuine sigh. He hadn't leaked anything to the corporate militia in Osaka; they had clearly tracked the power vacuum using their own satellites.
But Nighteye's paranoia was already connecting dots that didn't exist.
Kaito simply offered a polite, deeply corporate smile.
"It's my job, Sir Nighteye. I merely balance the ledger. What the market does with the exposed inefficiencies is beyond my purview," Kaito said.
He stood up, buttoning his suit jacket. "Now. I believe we had an agreement regarding my compensation."
"...."
Nighteye stared at him.
For the first time in his life, the former sidekick of All Might felt like he was looking at an intellect that eclipsed even his own master's strength.
Slowly, reluctantly, Nighteye typed a command into his HPSC-linked master terminal.
"The agreement stands," Nighteye said quietly.
DELETE.
"Your surveillance files. Your biometric flags. The HPSC's entire classified dossier on Arisaka Kaito. It is gone. You are erased from the Commission's radar."
"Pleasure doing business with you," Kaito said with a respectful bow.
He turned and walked toward the heavy oak doors.
Kaito didn't look back. He had secured the capital, he had eliminated his surveillance, and he had set the board exactly as he wanted it.
_-_-_-_-_
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