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While headquarters chose which names would bear the official consequences, the Okutami residence in Tokyo was deciding who would inherit a ruined port.
Kazuo Moriyama had suddenly "fallen ill" that morning.
The message arrived shortly before the workday began:
*"My apologies, Nomura-sama. I have developed a fever. I will be working from home today and will do my best to remain available. All current documents have been uploaded to the shared folder."*
TNO dismissed the first missed call as an accident.
After the second, he sent Kazuo a message himself.
Kazuo replied twenty minutes later. His vocal cords were inflamed, speaking was difficult, and it would be better to send any questions in writing.
TNO became suspicious immediately.
After twelve years at Okutami Senior's side, Moriyama had surely conducted negotiations through fevers, broken bones, and people far more unpleasant than any illness. Yet he had disappeared on the precise day the heir first needed someone who could explain not a list of assets, but the balance of power surrounding them.
Shortly after noon, the secretary announced a visitor.
— Rikiya Yotsubashi. President of Detnerat. He is requesting a private meeting regarding the restoration of the port.
— Did he arrange it with Moriyama?
— He claims the meeting was agreed upon in advance. It does not appear in Mr. Moriyama's calendar.
That did nothing to ease TNO's suspicion.
He allowed the man in.
The meeting coincided with lunch. TNO had no intention of rearranging his day for an uninvited guest, so he ordered the table set for two and invited Yotsubashi to discuss business over the meal.
Yotsubashi arrived without an entourage.
The tall, middle-aged man looked unusual enough for his face to linger in memory after a single meeting. A long, pointed nose. A heavy, protruding chin. Small, dark eyes. His short reddish-brown hair was combed back from a receding hairline that descended to a sharp widow's peak. His eyebrows were nearly invisible, while two small moles darkened the left side of his forehead.
At first glance, Yotsubashi seemed lean, but his immaculate black pinstripe suit did nothing to conceal his broad shoulders. A dark green shirt and matching tie made him look eccentric, yet entirely respectable as the president of a major corporation.
A calm smile, a bouquet for appearances, and a locked case for the true purpose of his visit. He offered his condolences for Okutami Senior's death so naturally that a less attentive listener might have mistaken them for sincerity.
— Have you eaten yet, Yotsubashi-san?
— Not yet.
— Then join me. Discussing the restoration of a port on an empty stomach would be especially symbolic, but hardly useful.
Rice, fish, meat, soup, and several small plates of vegetables were already waiting on the table. TNO's portion was almost three times the size of his guest's. After the regeneration for which Mite had processed the Nomu's absorbed blood, the reconstruction of his arm, and the recent activation of Tiger, his body demanded fuel more insistently than any doctor's recommendation.
Yotsubashi glanced at the plates, then at the slender teenager. He asked nothing, but the smile that lingered for an extra second made the question clear enough.
— I am still recovering from what happened at the port, — TNO said, picking up his chopsticks. — My body requires a great deal of energy.
Understanding flashed in Rikiya's eyes. He gave a brief nod and did not return to the size of the meal.
TNO, however, continued studying him.
Beneath the human shell, his Byzantine Eyes discerned the +alpha pattern. Yotsubashi's Quirk resembled a reservoir compressed to its limit: tension never left it, but settled in layers, growing denser as it waited to be released. The calmer the man appeared, the stranger the structure looked. It had not been made for calm. It converted inner pressure into physical power.
An interesting Quirk.
But an inconvenient one. It required accumulated stress, and the result was almost certainly too conspicuous. TNO already lived with headaches, foreign memories, and a body that had recently grown a tail. Letting another mechanism fed by stress into himself out of simple curiosity would be foolish—especially across the table from a man capable of noticing the change.
He limited himself to observation. He did not reach toward the Quirk or seek an accidental touch.
— Your father was a man of extraordinary will, — he said.
— Did you know him well?
— Well enough to respect him.
— That is not an answer.
Yotsubashi's smile did not shift.
— You truly are his son.
TNO nearly laughed.
— Did you know my manager would suddenly fall ill today?
— No. I hope there is nothing seriously wrong with Mr. Moriyama.
The answer came without hesitation.
Too smooth to prove guilt. Too timely for TNO to stop considering it.
— Let us assume that is true. Do you want to buy my stake?
— No, — Rikiya replied. — Detnerat has no intention of acquiring your twenty-seven percent.
TNO stopped chewing.
— Then why is the president of Detnerat personally making the rounds of the port's owners?
— I came to offer a way forward.
Yotsubashi opened the case. The screen displayed the structure of a new port restoration fund. Its listed participants included Detnerat, the Tokyo administration, a state financial institution, several shareholders, and representatives of the management company.
— The administration and I have prepared a stabilization mechanism. An owner pledges their block of shares to the state and immediately receives secured financing. The money allows the company to survive the shutdown, retain its employees, and continue paying wages. Once the insurance payments, subsidies, and other restoration funds arrive, the obligation is repaid, and the lien is released.
— And the port keeps waiting until then.
— Major work cannot begin until the damage assessment is complete. This way, at least, the owners will not go bankrupt while they wait.
— What if the future payments are insufficient?
— The owner contributes the difference or extends the agreement.
— And if they cannot?
Rikiya dabbed his lips with a napkin.
— Then the secured creditor receives the rights over the block specified in the agreement.
The state provided money immediately. In return, the owner placed their stake in someone else's hands and hoped that insurers, subsidies, and future profits would one day allow them to redeem it. For the port, that meant months of waiting. For Rikiya, it meant the near-immediate disappearance of several independent rivals from shareholder votes. While their blocks remained encumbered, Detnerat's thirty percent would be the largest unencumbered private vote, and negotiating with a single state institution was easier than bargaining with six stubborn owners.
— A pretty way of saying that everyone either pays or pledges their property.
— Ultimately, someone must accept responsibility for restoring the port, — Yotsubashi replied calmly. — The longer its owners pass that responsibility among themselves, the less there will be left to restore.
TNO opened the attached damage map.
The Okutami railway network had suffered almost no damage. Several tracks were covered in soot, and the foundation beneath one section required inspection, but the rails, depots, switching yards, and most of the rolling stock remained intact.
— My infrastructure does not require anything close to the amount you are asking from me.
— Your railway is part of the port as a whole, — Rikiya replied. — Intact tracks will earn nothing if there are no terminals, warehouses, or ships left beside them. The fund distributes responsibility according to ownership, not according to where the damage happened to fall.
— Twenty-seven percent of the port does not mean twenty-seven percent of every broken window, — TNO observed.
— Of course not. Your block is concentrated primarily in the internal railway network: tracks, classification yards, depots, and motive power. You were luckier than most. But a railway earns money only when someone else's cargo moves over it.
Rikiya enlarged the map.
Terminals, warehouses, and three berths still unable to receive ships lit up on the screen. Beside one of them loomed the dark outline of the damaged vessel.
— That ship belongs to a transport company, not the port's management structure, — Yotsubashi continued. — Its owner or insurer must pay for the hull. But until the investigators authorize towing, it occupies a working berth. The entire port is already paying for that delay.
— Who can move it?
— The port administration, once the engineers issue their assessment. It will require tugboats, the owner's consent, and somewhere to relocate the vessel. There is a repair yard, but it will not begin work without a guarantee of payment.
TNO committed that to memory.
The ship did not need to be repaired with his money. First, it needed to be removed from a place capable of earning money. Two separate problems that the fund's documents carefully compressed into the single word restoration.
— And the owners of those terminals?
— Fragmented, — Rikiya replied. — Several small operators. Individually, their stakes are too small and their reserves insufficient to restart operations on their own. Some will probably prefer to sell their assets rather than wait for the insurers and the state.
— What do they own in total?
Rikiya took a sip of tea without looking away.
— Not enough to act independently. The precise structure is in the appendix.
He had no intention of saying the number aloud.
TNO opened the indicated table. Six companies had been scattered across separate rows among subsidiaries, state entities, and technical holders. He had to add up their shares himself.
Fifteen percent.
Beside them stood the other figures: thirty for Detnerat, twenty-eight for the Tokyo administration, and twenty-seven for Okutami.
The total came to one hundred.
There were no faceless "other owners." There were four forces: the state, Detnerat, Okutami's railway, and six small companies that had not yet managed to become a single voice.
— Did you offer the pledge to all six?
— I offered them a way to survive the catastrophe.
That was not an answer.
But TNO already understood: yes.
Rikiya spoke of the six almost indifferently.
To TNO, the remark became the first useful piece of information he had gained over the entire meal. Rikiya regarded the small owners as votes that would soon disappear beneath a state lien. He did not want to buy their businesses. He wanted to remain the only major private owner the administration would be forced to reckon with.
Then the six were still independent. Then they could still be approached.
For now, it was only an opportunity without names, figures, or any real understanding of corporate law. But it was already more than Kazuo had given him over the past two days.
That was the real opening.
TNO was expected to pay for the restoration of other people's assets simply because his own twenty-seven percent had survived the catastrophe better than most.
— In your case, there are two options. First, you pledge your block to the state and receive liquidity immediately. Second, you keep the stake unencumbered and invest your own money in the restoration.
— So either I temporarily let the state hold my twenty-seven percent by the throat, or I pay to repair someone else's terminals out of my own pocket.
— I would call it a division of responsibility.
— I would call it two doors into the same room.
Rikiya's smile widened slightly.
— Then choose whichever door you find more convenient.
TNO scrolled through the documents. The pledge provided money immediately and removed the need to find it himself, but placed his block under a state lien. Until the obligation was repaid, some decisions would require the secured creditor's approval. If the insurance payments were delayed or proved smaller than promised, a temporary measure might outlive the owner himself.
Entering the fund would consume an enormous share of his liquid capital, but preserve the unencumbered block and TNO's right to influence the reconstruction. Once the port was restored, the shares were supposed to regain their value—perhaps even exceed it.
On the third page appeared the phrases "subordinated financing," "cash-flow distribution priority," and "proportional dilution in the event of additional capitalization."
TNO could still infer the meaning of the first. In the second, he understood the individual words. The third looked like an exceptionally long way to announce that someone would be left without money.
He did not ask.
Not knowing the terminology would reveal him as exactly what Yotsubashi had come to find: an inexperienced seventeen-year-old heir who had accidentally found himself at the head of a fortune. So TNO discarded the foreign language of finance and reduced everything to a primitive model.
A ruined port produced almost nothing.
A restored port would begin operating again.
The sooner it was restored, the sooner the profits would return.
The logic seemed obvious. Perhaps too obvious for a proposal that required forty-seven pages of explanation.
On paper, the second option looked less like an expense than a temporary investment. TNO could not calculate who would stand first in line for the future cash flow, or how much of it would remain for the shareholders. But he understood the important part—or believed he did: pledging the largest independent block to the state in exchange for money he still possessed made no sense.
That was precisely what made the second option more dangerous.
TNO could sense the danger. He simply lacked the experience to see the entire structure.
He knew how to recognize a threat in the movement of a hand, a change in tone, or the direction of someone's gaze. He knew how to survive wars, break people, and seize foreign powers. But there was no armed enemy before him. There were contracts, funds, projected returns, and people capable of calling robbery a market necessity.
Okutami Senior had been a shark in that world.
TNO was not.
— I will not sign anything today, — TNO said. — The documents will remain with me.
— Sensible, — Yotsubashi agreed. — But please bear in mind that the port is losing contracts every day. In a week, the amount required to restart operations will be higher.
He left as calmly as he had arrived.
Kazuo did not appear the following day either.
The fever persisted. His voice still made conversation impossible. He answered written questions selectively and with long delays.
*"The fund's structure is consistent with standard joint-restoration practice."*
*"The final share of government expenditure has not yet been confirmed."*
*"Alternative options will require separate analysis."*
Not one name of an independent consultant.
Not one contact for an owner who had refused to join Rikiya's fund.
Not one model in which Okutami retained his shares without accepting Detnerat's terms.
Formally, the information was available in the shared folder. In practice, Moriyama had drowned it among hundreds of reports, old minutes, and unexplained appendices, without indicating which documents could actually change the decision.
The state-appointed representative checked legality.
Not benefit.
She could confirm that TNO had the right to sign the agreement. She could not explain why the agreement had been written in precisely that form.
On the second day, the board sent notice that two more terminal contracts had been suspended. The insurers demanded emergency stabilization. Contractors raised their preliminary estimates as the damaged structures continued to settle and equipment sat idle.
By noon, the fund closed its first list of participants.
The decision truly could not be postponed forever. With every passing day, inaction became a decision of its own—only without a signature or any means of controlling the consequences.
Kazuo was still "ill."
TNO made the decision himself.
He refused to pledge so much as a single share from the Okutami block to the state and entered the restoration fund with cash instead. His stake in the port remained unencumbered. Along with it remained his vote, his future profits, and the obligation to contribute his proportional share of the common financing.
The amount was manageable. Okutami Senior's estate consisted of more than the port, and a single contribution could not ruin TNO. Most of the fortune, however, was tied up in shares, real estate, and operating companies. The fund consumed a substantial part of his reserve pool—the liquid assets he could use immediately without selling property or taking on new obligations.
He remained wealthy. But he had sharply reduced the room available for his next rapid decision.
The wording sounded sufficiently businesslike. No one was supposed to realize that beneath TNO's calculations lay a much simpler question: once repaired, would the port earn more than he would have to spend to save it?
— A balanced decision, — Yotsubashi said approvingly during their second meeting.
Too quickly.
TNO caught the faint satisfaction in his voice, mixed with disappointment. The pledge had failed, but the fund had secured its largest private contributor.
Rikiya had not forced TNO out of the ownership structure, but he had still gained something useful. The heir's money had entered the system he had created, and the remaining owners could now be pressured from two directions at once: Okutami's son had preserved his stake only because he was wealthy enough to pay with his own funds; those without that kind of money still had the state pledge waiting for them.
An unpleasant stab flared behind TNO's right eye. He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and waited out the brief pulse without letting it reach his face. The same pain had appeared during his conversation with Kazuo, though then it had been easy to blame on a binder full of documents. Now there was no tiny print before him. No tables.
Only another man trying to force too much of the future into the mind of a seventeen-year-old heir.
For the moment, the inheritance had made him fabulously wealthy. Even after the contribution to the fund, the accounts still held more money than any seventeen-year-old should be allowed to control without ten adults watching over his shoulder.
And the adults had already begun to gather.
Money had temporarily solved almost every problem but one.
The guardian problem.
8
Kaito was the obvious choice for guardian.
The doctors expected to discharge him in a week, but the guardianship decision was needed now. As long as Kaito remained a patient in need of rehabilitation, neither the court nor child protective services would entrust him with responsibility for a minor.
A state-appointed representative meant giving the police full access to TNO's home life, documents, and movements. A distant Okutami relative would be worse. An inheritance had a way of turning familial affection into a form of hunting.
There were still no good options.
That evening, TNO was reviewing the temporary representation form for the third time when a line concerning educational institutions caught his eye.
On paper, he was still Nomura Okutami—a student in UA's Management Course.
He froze.
UA meant the principal.
The principal meant Nezu.
Until that moment, TNO had never considered the academy as a possible guardian. Nezu was neither a relative, a family friend, nor even human. UA, however, was a legal entity. It already bore responsibility for underage students and possessed its own medical, security, and administrative infrastructure.
At the very least, there was no law against asking.
— Why not?.. — TNO murmured slowly.
The longer he considered the stray idea, the less absurd it seemed. UA had influence, understood the value of information, and stood between Aizawa and any student he chose to study too closely. Even a refusal could become a useful conversation.
His student status was enough to request a meeting. The appointed representative approved the trip, the police provided an escort, and an adult was required to wait in the corridor.
Nezu received him in a small meeting room at UA.
Tea was already waiting on the table.
TNO saw the principal's Quirk before Nezu spoke.
Nezu's +alpha pattern looked nothing like Rikiya's reservoir. It held almost no weight, no accumulated pressure. Filaments finer than hair spread from the brain throughout the nervous system, returned, crossed one another, and formed new connections faster than the Byzantine Eyes could follow any single line. The Quirk did not store power. It forced every scrap of incoming information to find its place among the facts already known.
Both Quirks he had seen that day were unusual.
Rikiya's ability turned tension into brute strength—a useful battering ram that required time and internal pressure. Nezu's Quirk was an instrument of a different order. It did not create knowledge out of nothing, but it could make human thought monstrously efficient.
And at that moment, TNO was drowning not in a fight, but in documents, shareholders, percentages, and other people's intentions.
The choice between the two imprints was simple.
— You want me to become your guardian, — the principal repeated, carefully setting his cup on its saucer.
— It would solve several problems at once.
— Yours.
— Mostly mine, — TNO agreed. — But the academy would also gain control over the situation surrounding one of its own students.
Nezu looked at the purple-black arm—the only visible remnant of the port mutation that had not vanished with Tiger.
— Control is an interesting choice of word.
They both understood his true objective. Making the principal his guardian would deprive Aizawa of the ability to summon Nomura for informal conversations and test his Quirk on personal initiative. Any action by the teacher would have to pass through Nezu, who could put a leash on an excessively persistent hound.
TNO phrased it more politely aloud.
— One of your teachers has developed an unhealthy interest in my background. I would prefer any future contact to remain within established boundaries.
— Shota rarely takes an interest in someone without reason.
— A reason does not give him the right to turn suspicion into a verdict.
The corners of Nezu's mouth lifted.
— A reasonable argument. But neither I nor UA will become your guardian.
TNO set down his cup.
— Then we are finished.
— You are in too much of a hurry, Nomura-kun. Guardianship was your idea, but it is not the only reason this meeting might prove useful.
Nezu turned the document lying before him. The first page bore the academy's full legal designation and a preliminary program for expanding UA's residential infrastructure.
— Why is the academy refusing? — TNO asked.
— Because an educational institution that teaches you, accepts your investments, and controls your estate would hold too many incompatible powers at once. The arrangement could be defended in legal terms. In practice, the first serious dispute would create a conflict of interest.
TNO did not like the answer.
That was precisely why it sounded more honest than consent.
— But you are willing to take my money.
— To consider an investment proposal, — Nezu corrected. — Under transparent terms unrelated to guardianship, grades, or access to your Quirk.
The principal unfolded a site plan.
Ten minutes from UA's north gate stood the academy's former guest residence. The small three-story building sat behind a separate fence and had once housed visiting teachers and heroes from other prefectures. It had remained almost empty in recent years: too large for one guest, too small to serve as a proper dormitory.
— The board of trustees has been discussing several new dormitories and the reconstruction of this residence, — Nezu said. — UA has no urgent reason to begin immediately, so the project has remained on paper for years. A private investor could change that.
— What does the investor receive?
— Observer status within the fund, complete expenditure reports, and the right to propose an independent audit. No influence over the curriculum and no special treatment in grading. Profitability would be governed by a separate investment agreement.
— That is the part I care about.
TNO pulled the plan closer. He had no intention of living on academy grounds, even at a remote property. Investing in a building that would later generate income was an entirely different conversation.
— After reconstruction, you house students there first, — he said. — Any remaining rooms go to teachers, visiting heroes, or anyone else you choose. The investor receives seventy percent of every housing payment. UA keeps the remaining thirty.
Nezu did not bargain immediately. He compared the preliminary estimate with the value of the land, the old building, and the academy's future expenses.
— In proportion to each party's actual contribution to construction, — the principal clarified.
— Exactly. UA provides the land, the existing building, permits, and infrastructure. I pay for most of the materials and contractors.
— Cementoss can prepare the foundations for the new buildings and most of the concrete frame, — Nezu added. — He cannot replace engineers, steel fixers, or utility specialists, but he can reduce the concrete stage to roughly one-third of the usual time.
— And I pay for most of what begins above the prepared foundation.
— In that case, seventy percent sounds quite fair, — Nezu admitted. — You would indeed finance most of the work. An independent estimate and the board of trustees must confirm the final ratio, but I will not object to it as the opening term.
— And this is not a temporary share that expires once my investment has been repaid, — TNO clarified. — My seventy percent remains in place for as long as the buildings exist and remain in use.
Nezu raised his brows slightly.
— Even if the academy houses students there under subsidized placements, scholarships, or other concessions?
— You may make the room free for the student. UA will then cover its established rate from the academy's own budget. I do not care who lives there or who pays the bill. Allocate the rooms however you like. My share remains seventy percent.
— You are leaving all social policy to the academy while taking your income regardless of its decisions.
— Exactly.
TNO looked at the plan again. He no longer saw a possible home. He saw an asset: academy land, accelerated construction, and a future stream of rental income backed by the UA name.
It did not solve the guardian problem.
But it did turn rejection into an opportunity to profit from the institution that had just refused to take responsibility for him.
Nezu pushed the plan aside.
— Investment does not resolve the reason you came here. You will still have to find a guardian yourself. So I will offer one piece of advice: look for someone capable of confirming your will rather than replacing it with their own. You are seventeen and a half, Nomura-kun, not six. You have the right to make your own mistakes instead of perfectly carrying out someone else's decisions.
Nezu tapped a claw lightly against the plan.
— I do not care how large your fortune is. But whoever becomes your guardian must understand that a billion-yen transaction can bring more threats to your door than any Quirk.
It did not solve the problem.
But it finally explained what kind of candidate TNO should seek.
TNO placed the folder Moriyama had prepared on the table.
— Then let us discuss what UA is actually prepared to offer me.
Nezu opened the folder.
— Several dormitories on academy grounds, — TNO said. — The guest residence under a separate reconstruction contract. I finance most of the work and receive observer status within the fund, transparent reporting, and a perpetual seventy percent of every housing payment.
— While the land and buildings remain academy property from the beginning.
— Keep the walls. I am interested in the income they generate.
The academy and its board of trustees had indeed been considering a transition toward housing students on UA grounds. There was no urgent need yet, so the project remained a collection of estimates, plans, and preliminary sites. Nomura's money could turn a distant idea into construction begun before the next disaster rather than after it.
— UA's contribution includes the land, the existing building, permits, and Cementoss's work, — Nezu said as he examined the estimate. — Yours covers materials, contractors, and most of the remaining construction. If an independent assessment confirms that ratio, a seventy-thirty division of revenue will be justified.
— Then you agree.
— I agree to submit the investment proposal to our lawyers and the board of trustees. The property itself, allocation of rooms, and perpetual revenue split will be established in a separate contract.
— An incredibly cautious way to say yes.
— Cautious ways of saying yes are far less likely to end in court.
The headache returned with the scent of tea.
This time, the pain did not strike. It slowly entered behind his left eye and began prying his skull apart from within. The ticking of the wall clock vanished. For a fraction of a second, Nezu's face split in two: one belonged to the person seated opposite him, the other to the +alpha pattern his Byzantine Eyes perceived beneath the skin.
TNO blinked.
The images merged again.
— Are you all right? — Nezu asked.
— Too many numbers in one day.
The principal did not believe him.
He did not press the matter either.
TNO studied him and found no greed, no awe at the sum involved, no desire to bind a wealthy heir to UA as quickly as possible. Nezu treated even a profitable offer first and foremost as a potential hook concealed inside a human gift.
Misanthropy?
No. Hatred was too hot and personal an emotion. What TNO sensed in Nezu was colder: a settled conviction that humans should be expected to act out of self-interest, cruelty, or a hunger for control.
More like an aversion to humanity.
Perhaps an entirely justified one.
— Our lawyers will contact you in the morning regarding the investment proposal, — Nezu said. — As for guardianship, state supervision will remain in place until the Family Court approves a private candidate.
— And Aizawa?
— He is not your teacher, — Nezu reminded him. — You are enrolled in the Management Course. Shota cannot assign you training, demand demonstrations of your Quirk, or interfere with your curriculum.
TNO frowned.
— He will have to limit himself to observation, — the principal continued. — In common areas, open classes, and academy events. If grounds arise for closer examination, he will submit a formal request to your course, the medical service, and your guardian's representative.
— So your hound will still be following me.
— Calling a teacher a hound is impolite.
— That does not make it inaccurate.
Nezu pretended not to hear.
— You will be spending more time at the academy. Shota will have an opportunity to satisfy his suspicions through observation without intruding into your life. In return, you gain a man who has no right to approach your Quirk without formal grounds. I consider that a reasonable compromise.
TNO considered the proposal.
Aizawa could watch him from the far end of a corridor as much as he liked. Watching did not mean touching, erasing Quirks, or asking questions in a locked room. The more ordinary days he witnessed, the harder it would become to turn every strange incident into evidence of a conspiracy.
That was enough.
Nezu had refused to become TNO's guardian.
UA had no intention of assuming that role either.
The problem remained unresolved. But on academy land, the first asset created by TNO's own decision might soon take shape—one neither inherited with another person's memories and body nor received as part of Okutami's estate.
If the board of trustees accepted his money.
— Then let us consider the preliminary agreement reached, — Nezu said, extending a paw.
TNO looked at it.
Oneself's temporary slot had remained empty since Erasure faded. From the beginning of the meeting, one question had occupied his thoughts.
Nezu had once been an ordinary animal who received the Quirk *High Spec* and an intelligence surpassing that of humans. One of the rarest cases whose existence science had genuinely managed to confirm and document.
TNO smiled inwardly. Kyuudai should have spent his time studying phenomena like this in his laboratory. Perhaps then his genius would have given the world something more useful than armies of Nomu.
But what would happen if the same ability were given to a human who already knew how to reason, remember, and build complex connections?
Rikiya's Quirk promised power that still had to be accumulated and learned to release. Nezu's Quirk could immediately dissect the clues Rikiya had let slip: twenty-seven percent of the railway, a berth blocked by a damaged ship, fragmented terminal owners, and a fund in which someone would inevitably gain more control than they contributed in money.
There was danger here as well. High Spec might overload a human brain, increase only the speed of processing rather than intelligence itself, or prove useless without Nezu's unusual nervous system. But the temporary copy would decay within a few hours. Even a failed experiment cost less than a permanent slot.
Passing up the opportunity to find out would have been a crime against curiosity.
TNO carefully shook the offered paw.
Oneself touched the +alpha pattern. For an instant, TNO felt the full geometry of the Quirk: not a store of knowledge, but countless connections and a mechanism that forced them to form at a speed impossible for an ordinary mind.
He took only a surface imprint. Not theft. Not permanent capture. The same kind of temporary copy the doctors had already witnessed during the Erasure test.
— Thank you for the meeting, Principal.
He released Nezu's paw before the animal could notice anything unusual.
The effect arrived before TNO reached the door.
For several seconds, his head spun. The room itself had not changed, but the number of connections he noticed rose so sharply that his consciousness could not adjust fast enough. The placement of the cups showed which hand Nezu favored. The arrangement of the documents revealed the order in which the principal intended to send them to the lawyers. The intonations in his last few sentences separated into probabilities, intentions, and carefully preserved avenues of retreat.
Then the dizziness passed.
The information did not slow down.
The human mind simply learned to receive it at a new speed.
TNO stepped into the corridor and stopped. The state-appointed representative asked him something, but he was already opening the first folder of financial materials on his tablet.
Subordinated financing no longer looked like a collection of foreign words.
Cash-flow priority assembled itself into a coherent structure.
The list of minor port shareholders, which had seemed like a meaningless appendix that morning, suddenly divided itself into groups defined by common interests, mutual debts, and conflicts stretching back years.
Where TNO had previously managed to notice only a list of scattered firms, High Spec forced his attention to linger on the links between them and assembled that list into a potential bloc. Perhaps, given time, he would have reached the same conclusion on his own. But too many things demanded his attention at once, and the port had no intention of waiting for the heir to work through his problems one by one.
The Quirk was temporary.
He could not afford to waste a single minute.
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