Location: Kaito's Apartment – Naruhata
Date: Monday | 07:00 PM
RUSTLE.
Makoto pulled six large plastic containers of fried pork, noodles, and rice out of a massive takeout bag.
She set them down on the kitchen island and started handing out wooden chopsticks.
"I still can't wrap my head around it," Makoto said, shaking her head. "A military contract. You went to New York for three months, fixed a whole Pentagon base, and just walked away with a blank check offer."
Kaito's apartment was packed.
It had been exactly one week since he flew back to Naruhata.
He spent the first few days just sleeping, drinking tea, and keeping his business phone completely turned off to recover from the jet lag.
Tonight, the entire O'Clock Agency had crashed his place to throw him a welcome-back dinner.
Koichi was sitting on the floor by the coffee table, happily stuffing a pork dumpling into his mouth. Kazuho sat next to him, pouring soy sauce into small dipping dishes.
Iwao stood by the window. He had his arms crossed and a quiet smile on his face, just watching the kids eat.
Soga, Rapt, and Moyuru were crowded around the couch, currently fighting over the last spicy chicken skewer.
"So, America," Koichi said, swallowing his food. "Was it crazy? Did you eat nothing but massive burgers and hot dogs for three months?"
"The food portions over there are way too big," Kaito admitted.
He was sitting on a barstool, wearing a plain grey hoodie and dark sweatpants instead of his usual suits. "I honestly just missed eating normal rice."
Kazuho laughed, handing him a bowl. "Well, eat up. We bought enough to feed an army."
"Hey, I have a serious question," Soga chimed in, leaning over the back of the couch. "You worked directly with Star and Stripe, right? America's Number Two. Is she as scary as Endeavor?"
Everyone in the room quieted down. They all looked at Kaito. Iwao tilted his head, genuinely curious to hear the comparison.
"Not at all," Kaito said, taking a bite of his food. "Endeavor is a brawler, but he fights with pure obsession. He pushes his body until he burns out. Cathleen... she is a brawler too, but she just wants to punch things like All Might. She's actually incredibly warm. She basically adopted me as a little brother, and her family had me over for dinner."
"Wait, really?" Makoto blinked in surprise. "The news always makes her look like this untouchable military weapon."
"That was exactly her problem," Kaito explained. "The US military put too much red tape on her. She was carrying the weight of the entire country on her shoulders. She was exhausting her stamina by making giant air avatars just to catch jets because she was terrified of making a mistake."
"Politics," Iwao grunted from the window. "That kills more heroes than villains do."
"Exactly," Kaito nodded. "She is still the exact same person. I just cut the political red tape and gave her Quirk some tactical rules. I proposed specific training plans so she could fight freely without having to calculate the physics every single time."
Rapt scratched his head. "Man, your brain is scary sometimes."
"It's just basic mechanics," Kaito said simply.
"By the way, did you meet Captain Celebrity there? After all it's all over the news the first week you've been gone. He flew all over America because he wanted to reunite with his wife." Rapt chimed in.
"Yes. Most people didn't know he was married at all."
For the next hour, the apartment was loud. They talked about Koichi's recent patrols, Soga's neighborhood watch, and Iwao's quiet retirement.
It felt entirely normal. Kaito didn't have to wear his professional mask here. He was just eating dinner with his friends.
By nine o'clock, the food was completely gone.
"Alright, let the guy sleep," Iwao said, clapping his massive hands together.
Koichi and Soga helped bag up the trash. The group said their goodbyes, leaving their slippers by the door and heading out into the Naruhata streets.
CLACK.
The front door locked.
The apartment was suddenly very quiet. Kaito wiped down the kitchen counter and threw the last trash bag into the bin.
BRRR-RING.
BRRR-RING.
His personal phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out.
The caller ID said 'Emi Fukukado'.
Kaito swiped the screen and put the phone to his ear.
"Hello, Emi."
"Arisaka! You're finally back!" Emi's loud, energetic voice blasted through the speaker. "I was wondering when you were going to turn your phone back on!"
"I needed a week to catch up on sleep," Kaito said, walking over to his couch and sitting down. "How did the Ketsubutsu board meeting go?"
"It was a complete landslide!" Emi cheered. "It was already approved months ago, but the school board is incredibly excited now to see what you can do since you just finished a contract for Star and Stripe."
"That is good news," Kaito smiled slightly.
"Yeah, but honestly... are you still on board for this?" Emi asked, her tone dropping to something a bit more serious. "I mean, you just overhauled America's Number Two. You probably have the top agencies in Tokyo begging for your time right now. A high school consulting gig is a pretty massive step down for the Golden Manager."
"I'm not taking any agency contracts right now," Kaito replied. He leaned back against the cushions, staring at the ceiling. "I told you before I left. Fixing pro agencies is just treating the symptoms of a broken society. The actual root of the problem is in the schools. If we don't fix how heroes are educated, I'm just going to be doing damage control for sloppy brawlers for the rest of my life."
"...."
Emi let out a slow breath over the phone.
"You're really serious about changing the whole system, aren't you?" Emi said, sounding genuinely impressed. "Alright then. We have the green light. They matched your rate. When can you start teaching the second-years?"
"I'm not teaching your students, Emi," Kaito said.
"Wait, what? Why not?" she asked, sounding confused. "You wrote the syllabus."
"Because I am a twenty-two-year-old guy in a suit. I don't have a hero license, and I don't have an education degree," Kaito explained.
"Teenagers in a hero course don't expect corporate consultants to teach them. They want to learn from the heroes they see out in the field. They respect you."
"But they need your tactical breakdowns," Emi argued. "I don't know how to explain half the physics you wrote down on that napkin."
"Then I will teach the teachers," Kaito replied. "We will run a faculty masterclass. I'll show your veteran instructors how to apply the new curriculum. Then, they take that knowledge into the classroom and pass it down to the kids themselves. It builds trust in your own staff, and it works better long-term."
The line went quiet for a few seconds.
"You really hate taking the spotlight, don't you?" Emi laughed softly.
"I prefer effectiveness," Kaito said. "Tell the principal I will be at the campus tomorrow at noon. Assemble the second-year hero course instructors."
"You got it, Kaito. See you tomorrow!"
CLICK.
_-_-_-_-_-_
Location: Aldera Junior High – Classroom 1-A
Date: Monday | 03:30 PM
RIIIING.
The final bell of the day echoed through the hallways of the middle school.
Students immediately jumped out of their chairs, chatting loudly about video games and weekend plans.
In the middle row, Katsuki Bakugo sat completely still.
He was in his first year of junior high. He was only twelve, but the heavy scowl on his face made the other kids stay away from him.
Bakugo just slowly picked up his notebooks and shoved them into his bag.
"Hey, Bakugo!"
Two boys walked up to his desk. One had long, greasy hair.
The other had small, red wings on his back and fingers that constantly smoked. They were his usual lackeys from elementary school.
"You want to hit the arcade near the station?" the long-haired kid asked, grinning. "Or we could go find some extras from Class 1-C to mess with. I heard that one kid with the weird eye quirk was talking trash."
"....."
A few months ago, Bakugo would have slammed his hands on the desk, sparked an explosion, and yelled about how he was going to crush whoever looked at him wrong.
Today, Bakugo didn't even look up.
ZIP.
He closed his bag and stood up. His face was terrifyingly blank.
"Get lost," Bakugo said. His voice was completely flat.
"...."
The two lackeys blinked. They looked at each other, confused.
"Come on, man, don't be boring," the smoking-fingers kid laughed nervously, reaching out to pat Bakugo's shoulder.
SMACK.
Bakugo slapped the kid's hand away. It wasn't a playful swat.
It was a fast, hard strike that echoed in the emptying classroom.
"Did you hear me?" Bakugo asked, finally looking them in the eye.
His red eyes were cold. There was no arrogant fire in them.
Just a sharp, intense focus that actually made the two boys take a step back.
"I said screw off," Bakugo growled quietly. "I'm not wasting my time playing arcade games with you losers."
"..."
"...."
He threw his bag over his shoulder and walked right past them, leaving the two boys standing there in stunned silence.
"What's wrong with him?"
"You tried right? I don't know what happened in the past few months but he really changed."
"What do you mean changed? He is still the same hot headed guy. But yeah, something is really going on."
"Maybe he got a girlfriend or something?"
"Shouldn't it be bros before hoes?"
Bakugo walked down the hallway, ignoring the whispers of the other students.
He pushed through the front doors of the school and headed straight toward the edge of town.
As he walked, his jaw clenched tight.
He couldn't get the memory out of his head. Sector 4.
He remembered throwing a massive right hook, fully expecting Deku to cower and cry.
Instead, Deku had just stepped to the side, grabbed his collar, and thrown him into the dirt like it was nothing.
Deku didn't have a Quirk. He didn't scream. He just used pure, disciplined movement.
Deku dismantled Bakugo's entire fighting style without throwing a single punch, and then knocked him out with a precision strike to the neck.
It humiliated Bakugo to his core.
For weeks, he had locked himself in his room. He was furious. He wanted to blow up his entire house.
But when the anger finally burned out, something else replaced it. A harsh, undeniable reality check.
'My power is still weak,' Bakugo thought, his hands curling into tight fists inside his pockets. 'I swing too wide. I rely on the blasts to do all the work. If a Quirkless nerd can drop me just by watching my footwork, then actual villains are going to kill me in seconds.'
He wasn't going to let that happen.
He wanted to be Number One. And to do that, he couldn't just be a loud kid anymore with a strong Quirk. He needed to be perfect.
Bakugo reached the edge of the municipal woods.
It was quiet here. Nobody was around.
He dropped his school bag by a large oak tree.
He took off his school jacket and tossed it on top of the bag.
He didn't spark his hands. He didn't practice his explosions.
Bakugo dropped to the dirt and started doing pushups.
"One. Two. Three."
He kept his back completely straight. He controlled his breathing.
If that quirkless Deku can become strong by training and pushing his body to the limit. How much more if he did the same thing.
The U.A. Entrance Exam was still two years away.
Every other kid his age was playing games and thinking about high school clubs.
Bakugo was already grinding. He was going to push his physical limits until his body was as sharp as his Quirk. He was going to learn discipline the hard way.
"Fifty-one. Fifty-two."
He kept pushing, sweating in the afternoon sun, absolutely silent.
_-_-_-_-_-_
Location: Ketsubutsu Academy – Staff Lounge
Date: Tuesday | 12:00 PM
CHATTER.
The staff lounge at Ketsubutsu Academy smelled like fresh coffee.
Four veteran pro heroes sat around a low table.
They were the core instructors for the second-year hero course. Usually, this period was just for grading papers and complaining about teenagers, but today, nobody was looking at their laptops.
They were all practically sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting.
The door opened.
Emi walked in, grinning from ear to ear. Right behind her was Kaito.
He wore a sharp, dark navy suit, carrying a sleek leather briefcase.
"Alright everyone, settle down," Emi said loudly, gesturing to Kaito. "This is Kaito Arisaka. You already know him as The Golden Manager."
The teachers immediately stood up. They were genuinely excited.
The underground hero networks had been buzzing non-stop for the last few days.
They knew they were looking at the guy who just overhauled America's Number Two hero.
Kaito didn't walk in acting like a superstar. He didn't demand the center of the room.
He just gave them a polite nod, walked over to the small kitchenette in the corner, and grabbed a small paper cup.
He poured himself some of their cheap drip coffee.
"It's great to finally meet you all," Kaito said, taking a sip. He turned around and smiled easily. "Mr. Makabe, right? I was reading your patrol reports from the Shinjuku ward on the train over here. Your arrest rate for petty theft dropped crime in your sector by twelve percent last quarter. That's seriously impressive work."
Makabe, a heavily built older hero with a hardening Quirk, blinked.
A proud smile broke out on his scarred face. "You actually read my district reports?"
"I always review the local data," Kaito said, pulling up an empty chair. He looked at the woman sitting next to Makabe. "And Ms. Shirakumo. Your disaster relief coordination during the typhoon last summer was textbook. You pulled a lot of families out of the flood zones."
Shirakumo rubbed the back of her neck, looking a bit flushed but very pleased. "Just doing my job, Arisaka-san. Thank you."
Within five minutes, any weird tension in the room was completely gone.
Kaito sat there drinking their terrible coffee, asking them questions about their actual street-level hero work.
He treated them like peers. He made it very clear that despite his massive reputation, he deeply respected their frontline experience.
Once everyone was relaxed and joking around, Kaito checked his watch.
"Should we get to work?" Kaito asked.
The teachers nodded eagerly and followed him down the hall.
They filed into a sterile, well-lit conference room and took their seats around a long wooden table.
CLACK.
Kaito set his briefcase on the table and popped the latches.
The casual, friendly guy from the lounge was still there, but the posture shifted.
He straightened up, and his eyes locked into a highly focused gaze. The Golden Manager took the floor.
"Let's just put all the cards on the table," Kaito started, resting his hands on the back of his chair. "Ketsubutsu Academy is tired of being the runner-up. The media ignores your sports festival. The top agencies ignore your graduates. Everyone is constantly looking at U.A. High."
A few of the teachers sighed and nodded.
"And they look at U.A. for a very good reason," Kaito continued. "U.A. is an absolute juggernaut. They have the budget. They have the 'Plus Ultra' drive. They recruit kids with massive, destructive Quirks and turn them into unstoppable frontline heavy-hitters. If you try to teach your students to fight like U.A. students, you will lose every single time."
Makabe leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "You're saying we can't beat them in a straight fight."
"You can't out-punch a U.A. kid," Kaito said flatly. "So, we stop trying to out-punch them. We change the battlefield."
Kaito walked over to the whiteboard at the end of the room and uncapped a black marker.
"U.A. produces the sword and the shield," Kaito said, writing the word 'Specialist' on the board. "Ketsubutsu is going to produce the scalpel. We are going to build absolute specialists."
He turned back to face the teachers.
"Our target metric is the Provisional Hero License Exam," Kaito declared. "Every year, U.A. students get targeted during the first round because they are famous. They fight the entire country. While they are busy brawling, Ketsubutsu is going to slip right past them. Our objective for this pilot program is a flawless, one hundred percent pass rate for your second-years."
The room went completely silent.
"One hundred percent?" Shirakumo asked, her eyes wide. "Arisaka-san, I love our students, but that is a massive order. U.A.'s entrance exam is basically destroying giant robots. They filter out anyone who can't fight. We take the kids who slip through the cracks. Some of them just have weak Quirks. They aren't built for combat."
"Give me an example," Kaito said immediately, pointing the marker at her. "Name a student in your homeroom who struggles."
Shirakumo thought for a second, tapping her chin.
"Okay. Daiki," she said. "His Quirk is Temperature Shift. He can only raise or lower the temperature of an object he touches by about twenty degrees. It's too slow to cause frostbite or severe burns. Against a villain with an enhancement Quirk, he gets knocked out in seconds. U.A. rejected him."
"And how are you currently teaching him?" Kaito asked.
"Close-quarters martial arts," Makabe answered for her. "Trying to give him enough hand-to-hand skills to survive a fistfight."
Kaito shook his head.
"Stop grading him on his punches," Kaito said. He turned to the whiteboard and drew a rough, quick sketch of a standard handgun.
"A twenty-degree increase is useless against a villain's face," Kaito tapped the drawing of the gun barrel. "But if Daiki touches the metal barrel of an assault rifle, the sudden thermal expansion will warp the internal firing pin. The gun jams permanently. He just disarmed a mass shooter without throwing a single punch."
"....."
Makabe blinked. He sat up completely straight.
"Let's look at the other direction," Kaito drew a heavy steel padlock next to the gun. "A twenty-degree drop. If he touches a vault lock or a villain's reinforced armor, the sudden temperature drop makes the metal brittle. A regular police officer can shatter it with a baton."
Kaito looked directly at Shirakumo.
"What about your specialty? Rescue," Kaito asked. "A building collapses. A civilian has a severed femoral artery. You have three minutes before they bleed to death. If Daiki applies a twenty-degree localized heat shift directly to the wound, he instantly cauterizes the artery. He just saved a life while the U.A. kids are still trying to lift the concrete off the ground."
"..."
Shirakumo stared at the whiteboard. Her mouth was slightly open.
She had been teaching that kid for over a year, and she had never once thought about using his power like a precision tool.
"U.A. teaches kids how to hit hard," Kaito said, putting the cap back on his marker. "You are going to teach your kids how to fight dirty, how to fight smart, and how to rescue civilians without causing a million yen in collateral property damage."
STEP. STEP.
Kaito walked back to the table. He pulled a stack of thick folders out of his briefcase and slid one across the table to each teacher.
"This is the Shadow Hero Syllabus," Kaito said. "It details tactical optimization for non-combative Quirks, psychological profiling, and hostage negotiation without using force. Read it tonight. Tomorrow, we start applying it to your lesson plans."
Makabe opened the folder. He read the first page, and a massive, excited grin spread across his scarred face.
"Well I'll be damned," Makabe laughed loudly, slamming his hand on the table. "You actually figured out how to make us the favorites."
Emi leaned back in her chair, looking at Kaito with complete awe.
"You're really amazing Kaito"
_-_-_-_-_
[Author's Note]
Hey everyone, just a quick heads-up regarding the update schedule!
My real-life work schedule recently changed for the past week, which means my free time to sit down, plot, and write these chapters has shifted completely.
I won't be able to update at my usual time for the foreseeable future (webnovel reset sched). I'm still writing and updating the story, but the drops will happen at different times depending on my work matters. Thanks for being flexible and continuing to support the fic!
....
Support the journey here:
patreon.com/Dr_Chad
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