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— I am going to offer you almost the same thing Yotsubashi offered, — TNO said.
The warmth vanished from the room.
No one raised their voice, but every expression closed at once.
— Then this will be a short meeting, — Shibata said.
— I said almost.
TNO brought a new diagram onto the screen.
A new company stood at its center.
Not Rikiya's fund.
Not the port management company.
An independent holding into which the six owners would contribute their Hosu shares and port-related operating assets. If all of them agreed, the new structure would control approximately fifteen percent of the votes in the port. Okutami's principal holding would supply the reconstruction capital and receive a controlling financial interest in the new company.
— So we sell ourselves to you instead, — the woman said.
— No. You unite under my protection.
— Beautiful wording usually costs more than honest wording.
— Then read the charter.
They opened the documents.
The existing executives would retain their positions.
Their companies would retain their names, employees, and operational independence.
The new holding would be unable to sell its port shares to Detnerat, a government fund, or another major shareholder without a qualified majority among the six founders.
Routes, contractors, and internal organization would remain under the authority of the existing management, provided that each company met the holding's financial and safety standards.
TNO would receive their consolidated vote on port-wide matters, control over the reconstruction capital, and the power to block transactions that threatened to break apart the combined stake.
They would receive the money to rebuild.
And a shield against being absorbed one at a time.
— How much money? — Shibata asked.
— The Okutami Fund will contribute fifty million dollars to the new holding's authorized capital, — TNO said. — That is a condition of its creation. The money will not be divided among you personally. The holding will administer it, and priority will go to the assets brought into the company: the shipyard, warehouses, tug fleet, and terminals.
— In other words, the holding restores our section of the port first?
— Exactly. Not my private property, not Detnerat's terminals, and not government infrastructure. First, we repair what you contribute to the alliance. A unified company can negotiate common contracts, purchase materials in volume, and finance the work from a single pool of capital.
TNO circled the six sections on the map.
— Individually, none of you can restore your property without crippling your business. Together, you gain something you have never possessed: sufficient capital and the ability to repair your section of the port as one system instead of six neighboring properties.
Several people stopped turning pages.
No one asked which account currently held the money. Perhaps the number sounded too confident to question. Perhaps the Okutami name encouraged them to imagine that fifty million dollars was already resting in some forgotten corner of the inheritance.
TNO did nothing to correct that impression.
He did not have the money yet.
It was a bluff.
Not an empty lie—the necessary assets belonged to him. But TNO was presenting potential sale proceeds as secured capital. He gave no timetable for those sales, mentioned no possible discounts, and allowed everyone in the room to picture fifty million dollars waiting in cash.
In reality, he had only vacant houses, unnecessary apartments, an excessive vehicle collection, and a preliminary estimate of eighty million dollars. An appraisal was not a sale. Buyers might demand discounts. Offers might take months. And the very urgency of the liquidation could tell the market that the heir needed money.
TNO had just committed fifty million dollars to a company that did not exist.
He reserved the remaining thirty million in his mind for emergencies.
He understood the risk.
He named the figure anyway.
They needed to see that he would be the first to place his own fortune behind the system he was proposing.
— In return, the Okutami Fund receives the controlling financial interest in the holding and the consolidated vote attached to its fifteen percent, — TNO added. — No holding, no fifty million. I am not financing six separate companies so they can resume fighting one another tomorrow.
This was not charity.
It was the price of controlling an alliance that had not yet been formed.
Stripped of its charter and careful corporate language, TNO was throwing a very expensive bone to six minor port owners.
Fifty million dollars would allow immediate work on the most critical sites: restoring power to warehouses, repairing berth communications, ordering work on cargo-handling equipment, and preparing the shipyard to receive the damaged vessel. Each company could have spent months arguing with its insurer over those same projects without ever possessing the money to begin.
None of them knew that the bone was still scattered among TNO's garages, vacant houses, and unused apartments.
But the principle had already changed the entire reconstruction plan.
No one needed to wait for a single miraculous rescue package. The government could repair the roads and infrastructure under its control. Detnerat could restore the terminals and warehouses attached to its thirty-percent stake. The future holding could rebuild the property of its six members. Okutami's railway was already prepared to move cargo as soon as the others could provide it. Shared infrastructure would be financed in proportion to ownership.
The insurers remained relevant. If their payments and government subsidies arrived, the money could reimburse part of the expense or accelerate later stages.
But their permission would no longer determine when the work began.
Different portions of the port would recover at different speeds. TNO's original stake required almost no physical repair, which allowed him to direct his capital toward the future holding's newly consolidated territory and begin work there before anyone else.
It was precisely the kind of risk expected from a young, overly ambitious entrepreneur: invest his own money before the state, the insurers, and the more experienced owners. If the calculation failed, the loss would be his. If Hosu recovered, everyone would remember who had stopped waiting first.
— Where is the trap? — the tug operator asked.
— In the choice.
TNO changed the page.
Each company could pay its entire share of the reconstruction cost independently and preserve its current ownership. Or it could contribute part of its equity to the new holding, receive shares in the combined company, and avoid most of the immediate expense.
Formally, it resembled Rikiya's proposal.
In practice, the numbers worked differently.
The cost of rebuilding was too high compared with the annual returns produced by the small stakes. If the owners paid alone, their investment would take years to recover, leaving their businesses vulnerable in the meantime. Selling to Rikiya would provide money but destroy their independence. Joining the new holding would dilute each owner's direct share, but preserve the underlying business and transform several weak interests into one substantial bloc.
— You receive control, — the woman said.
— Financial control. Not operational control.
— Until you rewrite the charter.
— Any amendment to the autonomy provisions requires five of your six votes. My stake cannot override that.
The silence changed.
It was no longer hostile.
It was calculating.
This was where the previous night's analysis had altered TNO's original plan.
At first, he had intended to repeat Rikiya's method: use the price of reconstruction to pressure each small owner, acquire their shares, and subordinate the companies one by one. The approach was simple, direct, and entirely consistent with the path of conquest.
High Spec had not invented a better plan for him. It had merely allowed TNO to hold the consequences of every option in his mind long enough that he could no longer dismiss inconvenient details in favor of a simple answer.
An outright takeover would destroy part of what he was paying to acquire: the executives' experience, the workers' relationships, the trust within the old companies, and the hatred of Detnerat that had accumulated over years. If TNO attempted to manage everything himself, he would gain six businesses he did not understand and six groups of employees waiting for an opportunity to leave.
Autonomy was not a concession.
It was part of the purchase price.
TNO allowed the owners to continue regarding the businesses as their own. In exchange, he received their votes, their loyalty, and a common wall against Rikiya. He did not need to digest every company. He needed only to make them move in the same direction.
If all six agreed, Okutami's twenty-seven percent and the new holding's fifteen would form a forty-two-percent bloc.
Not a formal majority.
But it would make TNO the largest private center of power in the port. Detnerat would retain thirty percent and the Tokyo administration twenty-eight. From then on, obtaining a majority would not require buying scattered minor shares. It would require convincing the state to choose a side.
Rikiya plus the administration: fifty-eight percent.
TNO plus the administration: seventy.
The state would become the deciding vote, but the independent owners would no longer be merchandise waiting to be purchased during the next crisis.
Rikiya devoured the weak.
TNO offered the weak a place around a larger predator.
— Why should we trust you? — Shibata asked.
— You should not.
TNO pointed toward the documents.
— That is why your rights are written there instead of being promised over tea. Give the draft to your own lawyers. Tell them to find anything that would allow me to strip away your autonomy. If they find it, we amend the provision—or end the negotiation.
— And if they find nothing?
— Then the port gains a forty-two-percent bloc, and Rikiya loses the ability to approach each of you alone.
Shibata looked at the others.
— Your father once proposed something similar.
— Why did you refuse him?
— He wanted to run everything himself.
TNO leaned back in his chair.
— I have no desire to study ship repair, freight schedules, or the correct way to store containers. I want the people who already understand those things to stop losing one company at a time.
Shibata studied the diagram of the proposed holding, then drew the preliminary protocol toward himself.
— I will be the first to join.
The woman from the forwarding company raised an eyebrow.
— Without even showing it to a lawyer?
— Of course I will. I said I would be the first to join, not that I would sign without reading it.
For the first time during the meeting, quiet laughter passed around the room.
Shibata ran a hand through his hair and looked at TNO as something other than a hero from the news.
— When my father left me the shipyard, I spent the entire first year trying not to go down with it. People twice my age sat around me with very intelligent expressions and explained why every possible decision was wrong. I thought I was trapped among incompetent, stubborn old men. Then I began to suspect I might not be any better. — He gave a short laugh. — But you are doing remarkably well, Nomura. If this coalition genuinely leaves me in control of my own yard, I am in.
That first agreement changed the room more than the promised fifty million.
Until then, TNO had been proposing a structure with his fund at the top. Now one of the owners had voluntarily called it a coalition and placed his own name beside it.
— My twenty-seven percent consists primarily of the port railway, — TNO reminded them. — Tracks, depots, switching yards, and locomotives are worthless on their own. If your terminals receive no ships, I have nothing to transport. If the warehouses close, my trains stand idle. If the shipyard fails to return vessels to service, the port loses clients—and I lose cargo first.
He looked at all six owners.
— I do not need six employees. I need six functioning parts of one machine. When one part breaks, the others stop.
This time, the woman smiled.
— Then let us begin with the obstruction already jamming the entire machine, — TNO said. — Shibata, can your people tow the damaged vessel to the reserve berth?
— My tugs are already sitting idle.
— Contact the company that owns the vessel. Determine who will repair it and under what terms.
Shibata shook his head.
— Not at our expense. First, the state completes its damage assessment and determines the insurance coverage. I will negotiate with both the owner and the insurer. Once the shipyard receives an insurance advance, I will begin repairs and return the vessel to its owner.
— Until then, move it away from a working cargo berth, — TNO said.
— As soon as the engineers and investigators authorize the tow.
No one objected. One after another, the owners nodded. For the first time in two days, the damaged vessel had not only someone responsible for it, but a comprehensible route forward: the reserve berth, the insurance assessment, Shibata's yard, and finally its owner.
The negotiations continued.
By the time they ended, no one had signed the final charter. All six owners had agreed to submit the documents to their own lawyers and establish a temporary reconstruction committee. The preliminary protocol named the Okutami Fund as guarantor of the financing and appointed TNO chairman of the committee until the holding could be formally registered.
TNO did not wait for the registration.
He approved the first contracts with payment deferred for thirty days and secured against Okutami's future capital contribution. Contractors were scheduled to enter the most heavily damaged properties in the fifteen-percent bloc the following morning: emergency warehouses, berth communications, and cargo-handling equipment.
Legally, the land and infrastructure still belonged to six separate companies.
In TNO's mind, it was already newly conquered territory.
And construction would begin there before it began on either government or Detnerat property.
The six owners celebrated.
There was no champagne or music. They simply allowed themselves to speak more loudly for the first time in two days. Shibata slapped an old rival on the shoulder. The woman from the forwarding company called her deputy and demanded every estimate concerning the damaged warehouses. Someone returned from the coffee machine with drinks for the rest. They interrupted one another, argued about contractors, and smiled at figures that had represented nothing but losses that morning.
TNO watched the six insignificant representatives of the port rejoice after he had formally subordinated them through his financing, a temporary committee, and the promise of a unified vote.
How small these little joys are.
They spoke of saved jobs, working cranes, contracts, and salaries. Material things. Perishable things. Things that would inevitably disappear. They celebrated as though warehouses, rails, and bank accounts were worth more than their own lives.
Perhaps that is what people call a purpose in life.
They found it in work. In careers. In companies that had outlived their founders and would one day outlive them as well. Perhaps those petty attachments were what made people rise each morning, endure humiliation, and return to the port two days after their colleagues had died.
TNO understood the mechanism.
He simply did not share it.
Money, buildings, and corporations remained tools to him. They could be acquired, lost, stolen, or rebuilt. No port deserved worship.
Somewhere beneath the material world, an invisible chaos of primordial elements raged. Streams of +alpha intertwined, separated, and assembled themselves into Quirks—the most extraordinary creations TNO had ever seen.
His face remained turned toward the owners as they discussed the details of the future reconstruction.
But his Byzantine eyes were not looking at their faces.
They were not looking at this world at all.
They saw the patterns of their Quirks.
Six different Quirks shone beneath human flesh. Weak. Mediocre. Not one of them deserved a permanent slot within Oneself. Yet each possessed a unique architecture: its own intersecting lines, its own density of nodes, its own movement of +alpha.
TNO could have watched them forever.
He had still not learned how to sate himself on that beauty. Even the most useless and insignificant Quirk remained singular. A pattern that chance itself could never reproduce perfectly.
TNO had tried.
Within the domain, he had shaped purified +alpha into lines, connected nodes, altered the density of the currents, and attempted again and again to create a complete Quirk from nothing.
He had failed.
The structure either collapsed or remained a beautiful but lifeless diagram incapable of performing even the simplest function. He was trying to reproduce in hours what had developed inside human beings over years, growing alongside their nervous systems, their bodies, and their experiences.
High Spec had not supplied a solution.
But it had made him look at Oneself from another angle.
If he could not create a Quirk from empty +alpha, perhaps he could strengthen an existing Quirk by feeding another one into it. And if two patterns were compatible, perhaps they could be combined into a single structure that retained both functions while occupying only one permanent slot.
He called the first idea *Quirk Radicalization*.
The second, *Synthesis*.
For now, they were only names and a collection of calculations born beneath the influence of borrowed superintelligence. He would test them once the port stopped demanding every moment of his attention.
What a beautiful creation.
But who had created it?
Was it an accident as blind as the one that had assembled humanity from primitive life? Or the intervention of an intelligence beside which human genius would look like a child's toy?
TNO did not know.
Whoever stood at the origin of Quirks deserved to be called a god. Not for mercy, justice, or any promised afterlife.
For creating something that had outlived its creator.
The owners continued discussing the port.
TNO continued staring at the eternity hidden inside them.
4
By the evening of Hosu's first working day, a report had reached Rikiya Yotsubashi's desk.
Berths Four and Five were receiving vessels. The damaged ship would be towed as soon as forensics granted clearance. Independent owners who had refused for years to sit in the same room without trading accusations had held a closed meeting with the Okutami heir.
A separate paragraph mentioned rumors of a new holding company, fifty million dollars in initial capital, and contractors ordered to enter the damaged properties the following morning.
Rikiya finished reading the page.
— I underestimated him, — he said aloud.
The assistant standing across the desk allowed no surprise to show on his face.
— Nomura Okutami?
— I saw a seventeen-year-old heir who could be forced to choose between a bad option and a worse one. He was supposed to be frightened by the cost of reconstruction and decide that a ruined port was not worth further investment.
Rikiya had counted on more than inexperience. Okutami Senior had died only recently; the funeral had not even taken place. His father's death, a hospital stay, a ruined port, and an inheritance whose structure he had barely begun to understand had all fallen on Nomura at once. Any other young man in his position would not yet have grasped the loss before finding himself buried beneath folders, demands, and other people's expectations.
That was precisely when an adult was supposed to arrive with a ready-made solution to every problem.
Rikiya had mistaken Nomura for a spoiled heir accustomed to living on the results of his father's work. A boy who would gladly surrender part of his authority if someone relieved him of responsibility, ended the conversations about looming expenses, and allowed him to return to his old life. Grief was supposed to make him pliable, while the fortune dropped into his hands was supposed to frighten him more than delight him.
The calculation had been simple.
If Nomura pledged his stake to the state, the largest independent share would temporarily disappear from shareholder voting. If he refused and contributed nothing to the fund, the value of his shares would continue falling with the idle port. A few more weeks of losses, broken contracts, and demands from the other owners, and the young heir would begin searching for a way to dispose of an asset that did nothing but consume his fortune.
Then Detnerat—or one of its affiliated entities—would offer him a way out.
Twenty-seven percent for a price that, under ordinary conditions, would not have bought even half such a stake.
The Tokyo administration itself had no use for that much ownership. The state already held twenty-eight percent of the port; adding Nomura's stake would raise its share to fifty-five. The law prohibited it from retaining more than fifty-one percent of a port operator's stock. Even if the pledged shares passed into public ownership, the administration would have to commission an audit, value the stake, and auction it among private investors.
That was exactly what Rikiya had been waiting for.
He had a contact inside the administration who could warn him about the procedure, bidder requirements, and wording of the future lot before anyone else. On paper, the auction would remain open. In practice, Detnerat would arrive prepared ahead of every competitor and take all twenty-seven percent under the hammer before the others understood the stake's real value.
— But you told him you had no intention of buying his shares, — the assistant reminded him.
— I said the question was not currently on the table. Had Nomura understood in advance how badly I wanted his stake, he would have begun bargaining before the costs had time to frighten him.
Rikiya had never intended to seize the shares by force or falsify a document. He had merely created conditions in which selling would appear to be the owner's only rational decision.
But Nomura had not been frightened.
He contributed the money, preserved his twenty-seven percent, found the scattered fifteen, and used the choice offered to him as a textbook.
Rikiya walked to the window. For the previous two days, his people had been redirecting Detnerat's cargo through other logistics hubs. The loss of Hosu increased costs and caused delays, but it did not threaten the corporation's central business. Rikiya had concentrated on protecting his own supply chains. He intended to return to the minor owners once their money ran low and their resistance softened.
Nomura had prevented them from drowning separately.
While Rikiya rescued Detnerat's routes, TNO gathered the most heavily damaged fifteen percent into his future holding and became the first owner to begin reconstruction there.
The new holding's terminals were the first to resume accepting cargo. Nomura had not attempted to restore all of Hosu at his own expense. He had directed his money wherever it would immediately strengthen his influence, while the railway network contained in his inherited twenty-seven percent connected those functioning sections to the rest of the country.
In one sense, Rikiya was grateful to him. Someone had finally forced the port back into motion, returned its workers to their jobs, and stopped at least some clients from fleeing.
But gratitude did not change the unpleasant fact that Nomura was rebuilding his own holding first. The remaining sections continued falling behind, and now everyone could see the difference.
The owners would soon meet again. Afterward would come an audit of who had contributed what to restoring a strategic facility. If the reports showed that a seventeen-year-old heir had done more for Hosu than Detnerat, Rikiya would lose more than influence. He would allow Nomura to establish himself as the man who had saved the port twice.
— Prepare our own restoration program, — Rikiya said. — Direct the money toward the terminals, warehouses, and equipment under Detnerat's operational control. We will contribute to shared infrastructure in proportion to our thirty-percent stake.
— Activate Detnerat's full contribution to the reconstruction fund?
— All of it. Increase the amount if necessary. In one week, I do not want anyone saying that Nomura alone brought the port back to life.
It was not a retreat.
Rikiya had simply stopped waiting and entered a game he had expected to play alone.
The assistant was about to close the folder when Rikiya stopped him with one hand.
— What about tonight's meeting?
A second report landed on the desk. It had nothing to do with Hosu or Detnerat's logistics. Its cover bore a name that did not yet exist in any government registry:
*THE ARMY FOR EQUAL SUPERPOWER USE.*
The lawyers had asked him to remove the word army three times.
Rikiya had refused three times.
He had been gathering supporters of Quirk freedom for years.
But he had not started the work.
Rikiya's father had financed the first foundations long before his son gained full control of Detnerat. He assembled lawyers, supported small local associations, and preserved the names of people willing to turn scattered discontent into political power one day. Along with the corporation, Rikiya inherited an archive, a covert financing system, and a cause to which his father had devoted a significant part of his life.
Abandoning it would mean admitting that all those years had been wasted.
Rikiya continued what his father had begun. At first, it looked almost harmless: a legal aid fund for a man fined after using his ability in self-defense; attorneys for a workshop owner forbidden from using his Quirk without an industrial license; a modest advertising campaign against the forced concealment of mutations.
Then came public lectures, local associations, sponsored research, and videos in which ordinary people asked why an ability they had possessed since birth was treated as a threat until the government gave them permission to use it.
Detnerat funded the work through foundations, civic organizations, and companies with no formal connection to one another. Rikiya did not buy protesters or consider them a hired crowd. The money paid for transportation, printing, advertising, legal defense, and meeting spaces. The people came on their own.
And their numbers kept growing.
— Confirmed membership has passed sixty thousand, — the assistant reported. — Nine more chapters opened this month. The coordinators in Osaka and Nagoya are ready to enter a unified structure. The Tokyo group is asking us to approve common symbols and a single manifesto.
Sixty thousand people already stood beneath his wing. Not viewers who had clicked a button beneath a video, but people who paid dues, attended meetings, or supported local chapters. To abandon the cause now would leave them without a structure and erase his father's legacy at the same time.
The next page contained a growth chart.
The line had risen especially sharply over the past several years, at the same time the Symbol of Peace began appearing less often. Officially, All Might remained invincible. His smile still concealed the cracks in society. But each public appearance grew briefer, the intervals between them grew longer, and criminals tested more frequently how far they could go before the Number One Hero arrived.
Ordinary citizens might not understand the reason.
They could still feel their protection weakening.
Every new crack in All Might's image brought Rikiya people who no longer wished to entrust their safety to one hero and to laws that forbade them from defending themselves with their Quirks. If the Symbol of Peace continued to weaken, sixty thousand would be only the beginning.
Rikiya turned through the photographs. Peaceful marches. People holding signs. Workers forbidden from using their Quirks outside certified enterprises. Mutants taught throughout their lives to apologize for their own bodies. Parents of children whose abilities schools demanded be suppressed through medication and disciplinary restrictions.
The ideal remained simple.
A Quirk was part of a person.
Therefore, the freedom to use it should be considered as natural a right as freedom of movement, speech, or profession. The law should restrict harm, not the mere ability to use what a person had possessed since birth.
— The name continues to raise concerns, — the assistant reminded him carefully. — "Army" allows the ministry to portray us as a paramilitary organization.
— Requests can be ignored, — Rikiya replied. — An army must be reckoned with.
— Even if it is not yet armed?
— Our weapons are our numbers, our money, and our willingness to stop asking permission to exist as ourselves.
He said it without theatrics. Rikiya truly believed he was building a liberation movement rather than a cover for personal power. Detnerat provided infrastructure, but it had not created the resentment. The government had managed that on its own through decades of prohibitions, licenses, and fear of every ability that refused to fit an approved mold.
The assistant did not close the report.
— There is another problem.
Different photographs appeared on the screen.
A group of young people in matching masks smashed a storefront after a rally had ended. A street gang offered to protect a regional chapter in exchange for access to its warehouses. Several new agitators had previously been investigated for extortion, Trigger smuggling, and illegal fighting. In closed chats, they no longer discussed the right to use Quirks. They discussed which shops would be easiest to loot while the police were occupied with a protest.
— We are growing too quickly, — the assistant said. — Local coordinators are accepting almost everyone. Many of the new supporters do not care about the manifesto. They want a crowd in which they can use force without consequence.
Rikiya held his gaze on one photograph. A man with a jaw mutation smiled at the camera while holding a bloodied police officer by the hair.
— Every large movement attracts radicals.
— Some of them are not radicals. They have no convictions at all.
— Then we will give them convictions.
The assistant fell silent.
This was Rikiya's blindness. He understood people crushed by the system too well and was too willing to see the same oppressed person in everyone who claimed to hate restriction. Cruelty looked to him like the result of pressure. Greed was a habit a shared cause could correct. The desire to spread chaos was merely anger that had not yet been given direction.
He believed the organization could turn refuse into supporters.
But some of those joining had no desire to become part of Rikiya's future. They preferred a present in which a slogan about freedom permitted them to break, steal, and call any resistance oppression.
Rikiya turned back to the photographs of the march.
— Approve the creation of a unified command. The regional chapters will enter a common structure. Expand the advertising campaign. Do not reduce funding for legal aid.
— And the screening of new members?
— Strengthen it. But do not close the doors.
Hundreds of people on the screen raised signs demanding Quirk freedom.
Rikiya saw the future army of citizens who had finally stopped being ashamed of their own nature.
He did not yet see the mob growing inside it.
***
By then, TNO was already leaving Hosu's old administrative building.
The six owners remained in the conference room, dividing the first responsibilities, arguing over contractors, and turning their preliminary agreement into actual documents. TNO did not know that a report about the meeting had already landed on Rikiya's desk and forced Detnerat to abandon its patient strategy.
He crossed the checkpoint, briefly acknowledged the workers who recognized him, and climbed into the waiting car. Outside the window, surviving railway tracks, temporary cabins for the reconstruction crews, and burned port structures slid slowly past.
Only when Hosu disappeared behind a turn did the need to keep his back straight and weigh every word finally release him.
On the journey back, TNO understood how exhausted he truly was.
High Spec had faded before dawn. During the negotiations, he had been forced to listen to three owners arguing at once, read amendments from their lawyers, and calculate every likely response with his ordinary mind.
After the effortless clarity of the previous night, the limitation felt almost insulting.
But the knowledge remained.
His English had not vanished with the copied Quirk. Neither had the terminology, the books he had read, or his understanding of contractual structures. High Spec had accelerated his learning; it had not replaced his memory with temporary information.
TNO opened an English-language financial report.
He read it without difficulty.
International negotiations would no longer require an interpreter. Foreign funds, banks, and logistics corporations no longer existed behind the glass wall of an unfamiliar language.
All of that had cost him a single handshake and several hours of temporary enhancement.
TNO rested his head against the seat.
The pain behind his left eye immediately reminded him that not everything had been free.
The attack spread from his temple to the back of his skull. The darkness behind his closed eyelids flashed white, and for several seconds two voices blended inside his head.
One demanded that he return immediately and pressure the owners before their courage failed.
The other reminded him that Nomura had never negotiated a transaction of this scale without his father.
TNO waited for the pain to subside.
The first-aid kit contained aspirin. He pushed one tablet through the foil, swallowed it with water, and closed his eyes again, hoping it would at least blunt the pain.
Overwork. Too many documents. Too little sleep. Several hours of High Spec forcing his brain to operate at an impossible pace.
The tablet would take effect.
The pressure behind his eye would disappear.
At least, he wanted to believe it would.
When he opened his eyes, a message from Kazuo was waiting on the tablet.
*I am pleased to hear that the negotiations with the independent owners were successful. Please inform me of such meetings in advance so the management company can arrange appropriate support.*
So Moriyama already knew.
His illness had not prevented him from monitoring the heir's decisions.
It had merely prevented him from helping.
TNO began typing a reply.
Then deleted it.
Accusing Kazuo without evidence would be satisfying and useless. Better to leave him nearby. Let the man believe he remained unsuspected, and TNO might eventually learn exactly whom Kazuo kept informed about the heir's movements.
First, TNO needed to learn how to read a person safely through their Quirk.
— Back to the apartment? — the driver asked.
TNO checked the time.
The meeting had ended earlier than expected. Several hours remained before nightfall.
Only after returning to the car did TNO notice a message the state-appointed representative had sent during the conference. Attached was a copy of the official disciplinary order concerning Monica. At first, he thought he had misunderstood the bureaucratic wording. He read it again. Then once more, slowly, checking the dates and signatures.
Suspension.
Demotion.
For several seconds, he simply refused to believe it.
Then came the anger.
How dare they treat her like that?
Monica had entered the burning port. She had pulled him out of the water and saved his life. She had remained beside him when the others retreated and lent him her Quirk, without which their plan would have ended with even more bodies.
And now people who had never felt that heat, heard the screams inside the warehouse, or stood before the mutant's claws had decided that she was the one who had violated procedure.
They did not understand what had happened in the port.
That angered him most of all.
Eight years of service had been reduced to several lines written by officials who needed not an honest answer after the disaster, but a convenient culprit.
TNO reopened his exchange with Kazuo.
This time, he did not delete the message.
*Prepare a plan for selling non-income-producing property. List vacant real estate separately, along with excess cars and motorcycles whose upkeep exceeds their practical value, and any other assets maintained solely as symbols of their former owner's status. For each asset, include an independent valuation, maintenance costs, expected time to sale, and projected net proceeds after taxes and commissions. The objective is to release tens of millions of dollars for the new port holding. Sell nothing without my written approval. I want the first report by noon tomorrow.*
He read the message once.
This was not a request for the manager's help.
It was a plan and a deadline.
If Kazuo had expected to make the inexperienced heir dependent on his explanations, that plan would have to change. The man who had fallen so conveniently ill before Rikiya's arrival could now prove his usefulness by preparing a transaction he had played no part in designing.
TNO sent the message and put away the tablet.
He still had Tsukauchi's number from the hospital tests. The detective had left it in case additional questions arose concerning TNO's Quirk or testimony.
TNO used it for the first time.
Tsukauchi did not answer immediately. He listened to the request, remained silent for several seconds, and then gave TNO the address of the temporary service apartment Monica had been assigned in Tokyo for the duration of her transfer from Osaka. She was still there. The suspension order had arrived too suddenly for the department to arrange her return.
— Just do not pressure her, Nomura-kun, — the detective warned him. — She has endured enough for one day.
— I am going to talk to her.
— That does not reassure me.
TNO forwarded the address to the driver.
— Not the apartment, — he said. — Kaniyashiki first.
He was not going to her as a ward.
Not as an injured teenager who expected sympathy.
And not as an heir who had just begun assembling a future bloc around his twenty-seven percent.
He was going to fulfill the promise he had made on the pier.
To tell her the truth.
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