Rain smeared the billboards into watercolor ghosts, but the footage shining across every street refused to blur. The confession looped on a ten-second cycle: Director Kamizuru, shoulders rigid, voice trembling as he admitted the Ward Six experiments. People stopped in the middle of crosswalks to stare, umbrellas tilting like wilted petals.
Nobody talked at first.The silence was the loudest the city had ever been.
Then came the questions, sharp and overlapping.
"Is this real?""Why didn't the heroes know?""Why did it take him to expose it?"
In a cramped ramen shop off Fifth District, a group of students replayed the clip for the fifth time. A lady at a bus stop clutched her bag tighter, eyes darting between the screen and the nearest patrol hero. A taxi driver muted his radio, drove a single block in total quiet, then turned the volume up again as if giving himself permission.
Everywhere Shinso went, the city had made him small.Tonight, he made the city notice.
He parked the bike in a deserted parking deck and climbed the stairs two levels up. Tucked in the corner of floor eight was an abandoned relay station, forgotten during a renovation budget cut. He'd spent three nights refurbishing it. A little paint. A little rewiring. A little security shielding.
He hauled open the rusted door.
The room inside was dim, humming with old servers he'd revived, cables strewn like veins across the floor. Screens lit up the instant he entered—pulse monitors, news feeds, surveillance pings.
A map dominated the wall, dotted with red markers.Ward Six.Ward Nine.Ward Eleven.All the places the city pretended didn't exist.
He shed his raincoat, shook out his hair, and approached the central console. The broadcast he'd unleashed was playing on every major channel. Spin doctors were scrambling. Agencies were issuing half-statements that contradicted themselves by the second.
Good. Let them scramble.
Shinso typed quickly, scanning the shifting narratives.Some called him a whistleblower.Some a criminal.Some a terrorist.Some—mostly younger voices on the underground nets—called him necessary.
He didn't let himself feel anything about that.
A small alert blinked in the corner of the screen.
INBOUND TRANSMISSION – UNTRACEABLE
He tensed.
Encrypted text scrolled across:
YOU MADE YOUR MOVETHEY WILL RETALIATEBUT YOU'RE NOT ALONE
Shinso's jaw tightened.He hadn't contacted anyone.He hadn't recruited anyone.He hadn't asked for followers.
Another line appeared:
WARD SIX ISN'T THE ONLY FILE
Shinso leaned forward.
"Who are you?" he muttered.
No reply.Just static.The line cut itself.
He stared at the blank screen, fingers hovering over the keys. Someone out there had access. Not just access—intent. And they were watching.
He didn't have time to unpack that.
A new notification flashed:
COMMISSION PRESS CONFERENCE – LIVE IN 30 SECONDS
Shinso flicked the feed onto the main screen. A podium stood under harsh white lights. Behind it, the Hero Commission emblem gleamed like a shield polished too aggressively.
The spokesperson stepped forward: silvery suit, sharp posture, the confidence of someone who had already rehearsed three versions of a lie.
"Citizens," she began, voice smooth as glass, "the footage circulating tonight is incomplete and misleading. Director Kamizuru was acting independently, without approval or knowledge of the Commission."
Shinso scoffed. "So that's the angle."
The spokesperson continued:
"The individual responsible for breaching the Skyline Finance broadcast—Hitoshi Shinso—has demonstrated unstable behavior. His quirk makes him particularly vulnerable to manipulation, and we have reasons to believe he is being influenced by external radical groups. We urge the public not to engage with or support his actions."
Shinso's fingers curled into fists.
There it was.The script he'd predicted.The narrative they always chose.
The spokesperson pressed on:
"We assure you: the hero community stands united. We will apprehend Shinso and bring stability back to the city."
The feed ended.
Shinso stared at the blank screen, the afterimage of polished deception lingering in his mind. He'd expected retaliation, but not the sheer speed of it. They were afraid—not of him, but of the precedent he represented.
He forced himself to breathe. Slow. Measured.Panic corrupted judgment.He needed clarity.
Across the room, a small portable transmitter buzzed. He crossed to it and flipped it open. The device lit with a soft pulse—an encrypted channel he'd built for emergencies.
He spoke into it, voice low but steady.
"They're framing me for instability," he said. "They'll escalate containment efforts. Initiate fallback route three. Disable all passive trackers. Start relocation protocols for any potential witnesses tied to Ward Six."
A mechanical tone confirmed the message.
Shinso closed the device, let his shoulders release an ounce of tension, and turned back to the map board.
Three new red markers blinked to life.
Ward Three.Ward Four.Ward Twelve.
His stomach dropped, not from fear, but from cold recognition.
Ward Six wasn't an anomaly.
It was part of a pattern.
And he had just kicked the first domino loose.
He straightened, eyes sharpening as he reached for the nearest file.
Chapter Two wasn't going to be about hiding.
It was going to be about choosing where to strike next.
The hero agency's briefing room was lit like an interrogation cell—white, flat, and intentionally unforgiving. Rain streaked across the windows in frantic diagonal lines, and every desk was buried under printouts of Shinso's broadcast frame-by-frame.
Erasure Hero Shota Aizawa stood at the center table, hair tied back, eyelids heavy not from exhaustion but from disgust.
He'd seen cover-ups before.No one in the hero business made it past year one without learning how the Commission shaped truth like clay.But this?This was different.
He rewound the footage again, pausing at the exact frame where Shinso stepped into the neon light on the rooftop. The boy's eyes weren't wild. Weren't unstable. Weren't unhinged.
They were steady. Focused.Resolute.
Aizawa muttered under his breath, "That's not a villain's gaze."
A young sidekick across the room swallowed hard. "Sir, the Commission's orders say we're to classify Shinso as a Tier 2 rogue operative. They said he's a threat to civilians."
Aizawa shot him a look sharp enough to cut wire. "And you believed that?"
The sidekick flinched. "I—I don't know what to believe."
Aizawa scrubbed a hand over his jaw. The Commission wanted the hero community united in a single narrative. But unity built on censorship wasn't unity. It was obedience dressed in nicer clothes.
He enlarged the clip of Director Kamizuru's confession. The tremor in his voice. The guilt. The way he looked at Shinso like a man staring at a mirror he'd spent years avoiding.
Heroes didn't terrorize humans into truth.But they did force systems into accountability.
Aizawa whispered, "Good job, kid."Then louder: "This wasn't random. Shinso planned it. Measured it. He targeted corruption, not civilians."
The room shifted. Sidekicks exchanged worried glances. Everyone knew criticizing the Commission wasn't a career move. It was a burial plot.
A senior hero cleared her throat. "Aizawa… if you defend him publicly, they'll bury you next."
"I'm not defending him," he said. "I'm stating facts."
"Facts can be inconvenient."
Aizawa's expression flattened. "That's their problem, not mine."
He walked to the window, watching the rain-smeared city buzz with panic. Sirens carved through traffic like warning knives.
Behind him, the briefing monitor buzzed to life again—this time with a new message from the Commission:
HITOSHI SHINSO IS TO BE DETAINED IMMEDIATELY.USE OF QUIRK SUPPRESSION FORCE IS AUTHORIZED.
Aizawa's hand tightened around the remote.
Authorized.As if Shinso were some rabid experiment loose in the wild.
He turned back to the room. "Listen carefully. If you encounter Shinso, you do not engage unless there is immediate civilian danger. He's not attacking people. He's exposing them."
One sidekick whispered, "But, sir… what if the Commission sees our logs?"
Aizawa met his eyes, voice low, steady, dangerous in its calm.
"Then they'll learn I said what needed to be said."
Before anyone could respond, a soft chime echoed from Aizawa's personal wrist-com. A direct message. Encrypted.
He rarely got encrypted messages. And never at this time of night.
He opened it.
A single line flashed:
HE DIDN'T ACT ALONE.
Aizawa's pulse stilled.
Another message followed:
THE FILES HE FOUND ARE ONLY THE FIRST LAYER. MORE CHILDREN. MORE FACILITIES. MORE EXPERIMENTS.
Then a final one:
IF YOU WANT TO HELP HIM, FIND THE ORIGINAL CASE LOGS. THEY WERE STOLEN FROM HERO STORAGE TWO YEARS AGO. YOU KNOW WHO handled the vault then.
Aizawa's breath caught.
Two years ago…That had been during the restructuring.The vault manager had been—
"Hitoshi," he whispered.
Shinso had been assigned retrieval duty that month. He had flagged inconsistencies in inventory logs. And the Commission had buried his findings, reassigned him, then quietly blacklisted him from operational clearance.
The pieces slid together like broken glass forming a picture.
Shinso hadn't snapped.He'd been pushed off the edge slowly, deliberately, until falling became survival.
Aizawa closed the messages. "Suit up," he told the room. "All of you. We're going out."
"But the Commission—"
"They're welcome to revoke my license tomorrow," Aizawa cut in. "Tonight I'm doing my job."
"And what job is that?" the senior hero asked carefully.
Aizawa's eyes narrowed, glowing faintly red with the first traces of Erasure.
"Finding the truth before the Commission erases it."
He stepped out onto the agency balcony. The rain hit him like cold sand, sharp and relentless. The city stretched beneath him, lit with the chaos Shinso had lit the match for.
He pulled up his capture scarf, tied it loose around his shoulders, and vaulted into the night.
Shinso wasn't a threat.
He was a warning.
And warnings were meant to be understood before something worse arrived.
Aizawa disappeared into the storm, hunting the truth the Commission feared most:
The boy they'd thrown aside was finally powerful enough to be heard.
Shinso dragged the heel of his boot across the dusty concrete floor, clearing space on the relay station wall. He pinned the newest set of file printouts there, each sheet marked with a different ward number and a timestamp that made his pulse turn cold.
Ward Three: "Behavioral Adjustment Program."Ward Four: "Low-risk Quirk Conditioning."Ward Twelve: "Resilience Training, Juvenile Sector."
Different names.Same script.
He stepped back and looked at the growing collage—an ugly mural of bureaucracy hiding harm behind clinical fonts.
His eyes caught the timestamp again.
Each of these programs expanded in the last six months.Each expansion was signed off by a Commission subdirector.And each subdirector had their digital signature removed from public records.
Someone wanted this hidden.Someone with reach.
His relay console pinged again.
BROADCAST ANALYSIS: PUBLIC RESPONSE SHIFTING
He opened the window.
Crowd footage streamed in—streets filling with protesters, citizens arguing with patrol heroes, teenagers brandishing pirated billboards of Kamizuru's confession. Some signs read BRING THE TRUTH TO LIGHT. Others read SHINSO IS RIGHT.
A smaller but louder group chanted the opposite—COMMISSION PROTECTS US. STOP THE MANIPULATOR.
Shinso rubbed his temples.
He hadn't asked for either side.
He just wanted the truth visible enough that no one could pretend blindness was innocence.
But cities had a talent for polarizing everything.For choosing sides before choosing understanding.
A soft hiss from the comm console pulled him back. An automated voice crackled:
INTRUSION DETECTED – PERIMETER FLOOR 7
Shinso stiffened.
He killed the lights instantly.The relay room fell into shadow.
He moved to the narrow viewing slit in the wall and peered down the stairwell.
Footsteps echoed—measured, deliberate, not panicked. Too controlled for police. Too quiet for Commission responders.
One person.Maybe two.
And their pace… familiar.
Shinso reached for the compact voice modulator clipped to his belt, but didn't activate it yet. His quirk wasn't his first card. It was his last.
He waited.
A shadow passed under the slit.A drop of water fell from their coat.They stopped—right beneath the relay room.
Then, a low voice:
"I know you're up there, Shinso."
Shinso's breath caught.
Not fear.Recognition.
He pushed the slit wider by a fraction of an inch.
Aizawa stood in the stairwell, drenched from the storm, capture scarf hanging off him like a tattered warning flag. His eyes weren't glowing—no Erasure yet. His hands weren't raised. His posture wasn't hostile.
He'd come alone.
Why?
Aizawa spoke again, calm but carrying a weight that made the stairwell feel smaller.
"I'm not here to detain you. If I wanted that, I wouldn't come without a team."
Silence stretched.
But Aizawa had always been patient.
"I saw the files," he continued. "I saw the original case logs you flagged two years ago. I saw how the Commission buried your findings. What you exposed tonight… it lines up."
Shinso's fingers curled against the cold metal wall.
Two years ago had been the first time he realized the system didn't want heroes.It wanted compliance.
Aizawa's voice softened, barely.
"You were right, Hitoshi."
Shinso stepped back from the slit like he'd been struck.
He wasn't used to hearing that.Not from teachers.Not from superiors.Not from heroes.
He flicked the small comm breaker, and the relay room speakers activated.
"Why are you here?" Shinso's voice carried through the metal with a faint echo.
Aizawa looked up at the hidden opening. "Because I know how the Commission works. They're not interested in truth. They're interested in narrative control." His gaze sharpened. "And tonight, you disrupted the one they built."
Shinso didn't answer.Not yet.
Aizawa continued, "They'll escalate from containment to delegitimization. After that, to neutralization." A breath. "You're walking into a machine that knows how to erase people without leaving fingerprints."
Shinso leaned forward just enough for his voice to resonate more clearly."You came to warn me?"
"I came to ask what your next move is," Aizawa corrected. "Because if you act alone, they will swallow you whole."
Shinso almost laughed. "Funny. I thought you were here to drag me in for an evaluation."
"If I wanted you in custody," Aizawa said, tone flattening, "you'd already be in cuffs."
Fair point.
Silence again.
This time Shinso broke it.
"Why now?" he asked. "Why help me now?"
Aizawa didn't hesitate.
"Because they're lying," he said. "And because you're telling the truth."
The words landed with the blunt force of something Shinso didn't realize he'd been waiting to hear for years.
Aizawa stepped one stair higher—not aggressively, but with intention.
"Let me see the other files," he said. "If Ward Six wasn't an isolated incident, the public needs to know. We can strategize. We can—"
Shinso cut him off.
"You said earlier I'd fall if I acted alone."
"Yes."
Shinso exhaled. Rain drummed faintly on the roof above them.
"That's the problem," he said quietly. "I'm not sure I trust any system that wants to step in now."
Aizawa absorbed that without flinching. "You don't need to trust systems. Just people."
"People fail."
"People also learn."
Their eyes met across the narrow slit—Aizawa's steady, Shinso's guarded.
Aizawa spoke one last time, voice low enough to feel like an oath.
"Whatever you choose, Shinso… I'm not your enemy."
The stairwell fell silent.
Shinso closed the slit.
Inside the relay room, he stood motionless, rainwater drying on his sleeves, thoughts dragging through him like a slow tide.
He didn't open the door.He didn't send Aizawa away.
He just stood there, feeling the weight of the first real choice he'd had in months.
Not whether to expose corruption.Not whether to run.Not whether to speak.
But whether to share the burden of the truth.
A new notification blinked on the console.
ANONYMOUS SOURCE: WARD FOUR FILE DUMP READY.
Shinso looked at the door.
Then at the screen.
Then back at the door.
The world was shifting, and the next move mattered.
Chapter Two wasn't ending with escalation.
It was ending with a decision.
If you want, I'll launch Chapter 3 next with the first true alliance fracture: Shinso's attempt to reach Ward Four, Aizawa's parallel investigation, and the Commission deploying a specialized anti-brainwashing unit to intercept him.
You said: