Takeshi Yamada's quirk made him exceptionally good at taking hits.
Unfortunately, it did nothing to soften the feeling of a failing grade
He stared at the test paper bleeding red ink across his desk. Thirty-two percent. A personal worst. His fingers closed around the page and his skin thickened reflexively, gray and textured like stone. The paper compacted into a dense ball with a faint tearing sound that made the student next to him flinch.
Around him, chairs scraped against the ground. Lunch bell. Students filtered out in clusters, voices rising, quirks flickering to life in casual displays. A girl's hair shifted from black to pink. Someone's fingertips sparked. Another student phased partially through their desk before remembering that was property damage.
Nobody looked at Takeshi.
A horn on your forehead and a body built to break things tended to create empty space around you. Teachers positioned themselves near exits when he entered rooms. Other students gave him the bad kind of distance, the kind that felt like quarantine.
Twelve years of this. Twelve years of people assuming he wanted to hurt them.
"Man," someone said, dropping into the seat directly across from him, "that test absolutely wrecked me."
Takeshi's head snapped up.
Kazuki Hayate was already unwrapping his lunch like this was completely normal. Like sitting with the rhino mutant was just something people did.
They had known each other for three days.
Three days since the gym incident. Three days since Kazuki had walked up to three aggressive students and made them leave with nothing but presence and breathing.
"Yeah," Takeshi muttered, unsure what else to say.
Kazuki pulled out his own test. Sixty-nine percent, which wasn't great but wasn't catastrophic. "Question five killed me. I stared at it for so long I started drawing a cat in the margin because I panicked." He laughed, pointing at the red circle around a crude doodle. "Sensei wrote 'this is not an answer' with like, three exclamation points."
Something in Takeshi's chest unclenched.
He almost smiled.
Then Kazuki went quiet.
His eyes drifted past Takeshi's shoulder, unfocused, staring at nothing. His jaw worked slowly as he chewed. The movement was measured. Deliberate. His breathing shifted, became controlled. Slow inhale through the nose. Long exhale through the mouth.
The air pressure changed.
Takeshi felt it. His quirk responded automatically, skin hardening another layer, muscles tensing beneath the reinforced epidermis. This was the look from the gym. The one that had made three combat-ready students flee without a word exchanged.
"You know what helps me?" Kazuki said finally, voice low and measured.
Takeshi's horn tingled. An instinct he didn't understand.
"Breaking big problems into smaller ones." Kazuki was still staring at nothing, like he was reading something invisible. "Can't charge through everything head-first."
The words hit different.
Kazuki knew. Of course he knew. The guy noticed everything. This wasn't casual lunch conversation. This was pointed. Specific. Takeshi had spent his entire life charging through problems because that's what his quirk let him do. Rush forward, take the hit, break through.
And it never worked.
"Start with fundamentals," Kazuki continued, taking another bite of rice. "If you master the small pieces first, the bigger picture usually clicks into place on its own."
This wasn't about tests anymore.
Territory. Structure. Control. You didn't take over a school by going after the strongest threats first. You started at the foundation. Built upward. Consolidated power in increments.
Holy shit.
Kazuki's hand came up. Index finger extended. Thumb cocked back like a hammer.
The finger gun.
He aimed it directly at Takeshi's chest.
"You've got this," Kazuki said.
Then he just went back to eating his curry like he hadn't just given marching orders.
Takeshi sat frozen, staring at the space where the finger gun had been. His heart hammered against his reinforced ribcage. His quirk was still active, skin thick and ready, but for what? There was no threat. Just Kazuki, eating lunch, humming something under his breath.
But that gesture.
That wasn't friendly.
That was a mark. An assignment. A command disguised as encouragement.
Around them, the cafeteria buzzed with normal middle school chaos. Someone's quirk misfired and a tray clattered to the ground. Laughter echoed off the walls. Two students argued about a video game.
Everything was normal.
Everything was different.
That night, Takeshi lay in bed staring at his ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars his mom had put up when he was six had faded to barely visible smudges. He'd been meaning to take them down for years.
Start small. Master fundamentals. The bigger picture clicks into place.
He thought about the first-years getting hassled near the gym. Petty bullying. Intimidation. Small problem in the grand scheme of things, but it created an atmosphere of fear. And fear was inefficient. Fear made people unpredictable.
Hayate had walked past that spot seventeen times in the last three days.
Takeshi had counted.
The guy saw everything. Of course he'd seen the bullying. He'd walked right past it, hadn't intervened, hadn't even slowed down.
Because he was testing.
Seeing if his people could identify problems without explicit instruction.
This was the assignment.
The next day, Takeshi stationed himself near the gym equipment shed during lunch. He didn't announce his presence. Didn't threaten anyone. Just stood there, back against the wall, practicing Kazuki's breathing technique.
In through the nose. Four counts.
Hold. Four counts.
Out through the mouth. Four counts.
His quirk hummed beneath his skin, a constant low-grade activation that made him feel denser than normal. Immovable. His horn caught the sunlight and he knew he looked intimidating. That was fine. That was the point.
Three older students approached a first-year who was trying to retrieve something from his locker. The kid's quirk let him stick to surfaces, but he was small. Weak-looking. Easy target.
The tallest of the three, a kid who could generate sparks from his palms, let electricity crackle across his knuckles. Threat display. Classic intimidation.
They saw Takeshi.
All three stopped.
Takeshi didn't move. Didn't speak. Just looked at them the way Hayate had looked at those students in the gym. Empty eyes. Calculating. Like he was deciding whether they were worth the effort of violence.
The sparks died.
All three left without a word.
The first-year blinked up at Takeshi, eyes wide with shock and relief. "Thank you, Yamada-san! I thought they were going to—"
"Don't thank me," Takeshi said quietly. "Thank Hayate."
The kid's expression changed. Eyes going wider. "Hayate-san sent you?"
Takeshi didn't correct him.
The kid bowed deeply and scurried off.
Word traveled fast in middle school. Faster when it was interesting.
By Thursday, Takeshi had a problem.
Three different students approached him with variations of the same phrasing.
"Hayate-san said you could help with something."
"I heard from Hayate-san that you handle problems."
"Hayate-san mentioned you're the person to talk to."
Hayate had said nothing of the sort.
Takeshi was ninety percent sure of that.
But the problems were real. A second-year stealing lunches. Graffiti in the bathroom. A group blocking the stairwell during passing period to shake down younger students.
Small problems.
Fundamentals.
Takeshi handled them.
He recruited two other students to help with coverage. Guys he'd known tangentially, both with physical quirks, both tired of watching bullying happen. He didn't tell them what to do explicitly. Just positioned them in key locations and let presence do the work.
It worked.
He never mentioned any of it to Kazuki.
A boss didn't need to micromanage. That's what made him a boss. He set direction and let his people execute. Takeshi was simply executing.
On Friday, Kazuki complimented his test score.
Fifty-eight percent. Still failing, but improving.
"See?" Kazuki said, grinning. "Small steps."
Takeshi felt like he could run through a wall.
—
Kenji Matsuda's quirk made him very good at strategy games.
It also gave him nosebleeds when he pushed too hard.
Right now, blood was dripping onto his notebook.
He'd been trying to run a probability analysis on Kazuki Hayate for forty minutes and his quirk was essentially throwing up its hands in defeat.
Too many variables. Too many branching paths. The decision trees split and split and split until Kenji's vision blurred and pressure built behind his eyes like a migraine made of math.
Which meant Hayate was either:
A) Incredibly random and chaotic, orB) Operating at a level of strategic complexity that Kenji's quirk literally couldn't process
Kenji strongly suspected B.
He'd watched the gym incident from the second-floor window during free period. Three students with combat-ready quirks, one with electricity generation, one with enhanced claws, one with a rhino-type mutation, had fled from a single calm boy who barely moved.
The math didn't math.
Hayate's quirk was Pneumatic. Kenji had done the research.
Emitter-type. Internally regulated. His body functioned like a living air compressor. He inhaled, compressed air within himself, circulated it through muscle and bone, then expelled it as force, pressure, or controlled propulsion. Clean. Efficient. Mechanically elegant.
The public records were unimpressive.
Training logs showed short bursts of compressed air used to stabilize footing. Micro-propulsion jumps. Pressure dampening during lifts. One note mentioned "excellent internal control, minimal external discharge."
No shockwaves. No visible blasts. No collateral damage.
Certainly nothing that explained why three aggressive students had gone pale, stepped back in unison, and decided without a word that today was not the day.
Kenji stared at the data, then at Hayate across the cafeteria.
Hayate was drinking juice.
Kenji adjusted his glasses slowly.
Either Pneumatic had undocumented applications…
or Hayate was doing something far more terrifying than he realized.
Unless the quirk wasn't the point.
Unless everything else was.
Kenji grabbed tissues, stuffed them up his nose, and decided to go direct.
Monday lunch period, he sat down at Hayate's table with his notebook open and his pen ready.
"Hypothetically," Kenji said, adjusting his glasses, "if someone wanted to reduce conflict in an area without direct confrontation, what would be the most efficient approach?"
Takeshi was already there, eating in silence. He looked up sharply at the question.
Hayate blinked, set down his chopsticks, and chewed thoughtfully. His eyes went distant. That thousand-yard stare that made him look like he was accessing files in his head.
"Just be noticeable, I guess?" Hayate said slowly. "Like, if people know someone's paying attention, they're less likely to start trouble in the first place."
Kenji's pen moved across paper.
Strategic visibility. Panopticon theory. Behavioral modification through observed presence. This was advanced deterrence psychology.
"What if you couldn't be everywhere at once?" Kenji pressed.
"Then you'd need other people in different spots." Hayate shrugged, taking a sip of his tea. The movement was casual but his eyes were still distant. Still calculating. "Consistency matters more than intensity. One person everywhere once doesn't work as well as multiple people in key places all the time."
Kenji underlined that three times.
Distributed network. Persistent presence over concentrated force. Hayate was describing a cell structure without saying it explicitly. Brilliant. If you told people outright they were part of an organization, they'd panic, ask questions, maybe refuse. But if you made them think it was their own idea...
"How would they coordinate without being obvious about it?"
"Uh." Hayate looked at him strangely now. "Group chat? I don't know. Why are you asking me this?"
"Hero logistics fascinate me," Kenji said smoothly. "I'm thinking about support hero work. All the behind-the-scenes coordination."
"Oh." Hayate's expression cleared. "Yeah, that makes sense. That stuff is probably harder than the actual fighting."
It wasn't a lie. Kenji was interested in hero work. Just not the kind Hayate thought.
That night, Kenji activated his quirk despite the looming headache. He mapped the school in his mind, overlaying Hayate's routes, timing, and zones of influence. Incident reports from the past month, cross-referenced with Hayate's presence.
The correlation was surgical.
Wherever Hayate spent time, conflicts dropped thirty to forty percent within a week.
Now he started adding nodes to the map.
Takeshi for physical deterrence and ground operations. Check.
Himself for information gathering and coordination. Check.
They needed more coverage. More range.
He approached Daichi on Tuesday.
Daichi was easy to spot. The guy was built like a truck and usually carrying something heavy. His quirk, Load Bearer, increased his strength proportionally to the weight he carried. Right now he had four bags slung over his shoulders and wasn't even breathing hard.
"Hayate mentioned you helped him move equipment last week," Kenji said.
Daichi's entire face lit up like someone had plugged him into an outlet. "Yeah! It was amazing! Those boxes should've been way heavier but Hayate made them feel like nothing. I think he used his quirk to adjust the air pressure around them? Reduced the effective weight? It was really clever."
Kenji blinked.
He'd assumed Hayate just had good leverage and technique. But air pressure manipulation to reduce effective weight? That was sophisticated. That was showing off power subtly, demonstrating capability without being obvious about it.
Everything this guy did had layers.
"Some first-years need help carrying equipment," Kenji said carefully. "Heavy bags, that sort of thing. Hayate would want someone reliable handling it, but he can't be everywhere."
"I'm on it!" Daichi said immediately. "Anything for Hayate-san! Just let me know who needs help!"
"I'll send you a list," Kenji said.
He walked away satisfied.
Three nodes active. The network was growing.
And Hayate hadn't given a single explicit order. He'd just answered some hypothetical questions about hero work and helped someone move boxes once.
That was the genius of it.
That was what made it sustainable.
–
Rin Kobayashi had broken a guy's jaw three weeks ago.
In her defense, he'd grabbed her ass. In his defense, her quirk had activated on reflex and turned her elbow into a high-velocity battering ram.
Impact Reinforcement was a simple quirk. At the moment of contact, her body hardened. Bones became denser. Tissue became rigid. Force multiplied. A normal punch became devastating. A reflexive elbow became emergency room worthy.
The school had given her a warning. The guy had gotten his jaw wired shut.
Rin considered it a draw.
Then Kazuki Hayate sat at her lunch table uninvited.
She'd been eating alone. On purpose. People didn't sit with her anymore. Not after the jaw incident. Not after the three other fights before that.
"So," Hayate said, opening his milk carton, "that third-year's apparently planning revenge."
Rin cracked her knuckles. Felt her quirk tingle beneath the surface, ready to activate. "Let him try."
"Sure." Hayate wasn't looking at her. He was staring out the window at the courtyard, watching clouds drift past. "Then what happens?"
"Then I break something else."
"Okay. Then he comes back with friends. You fight them. They come back with more friends. Then what?"
"I keep fighting."
"You could." Hayate tilted his head slightly. His breathing was doing that thing again, slow and controlled. "Or you could make it stop."
"How?"
Hayate was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was soft. Almost like he was talking to himself.
"Fear is temporary. Respect is structural."
Rin's quirk deactivated. "What does that mean?"
"Scared people just wait for you to show weakness. They're patient. They'll come back. But respected people..." He trailed off, still watching the clouds. "They stay respectful. Because you've built something that lasts longer than memory of getting hit."
He was talking about territory.
About control.
About the difference between winning a fight and winning the war.
Rin had grown up in a rough neighborhood. Her older brother was in a gang. She knew what sustainable power looked like. It wasn't the biggest guy. It was the guy everyone knew would show up.
"So how do you build respect?" she asked.
"Consistency. Visibility. Making people believe you're always watching even when you're not."
Hayate stood up, grabbed his tray. "Also probably don't break any more jaws. Hard to respect someone when you're afraid they'll snap and hospitalize you."
He left.
Rin sat there, mildly stunned.
That afternoon, there was an argument brewing near the lockers. Two second-years, both with flashy quirks, both puffed up and aggressive. One had already sprouted quills along his arms. The other's hands were heating up, air shimmering around his palms.
Rin walked up.
Didn't say anything. Didn't activate her quirk. Just positioned herself between them and the nearest exit. Hands visible, loose at her sides, but the threat was implicit.
If this goes bad, I end it.
Both students looked at her.
She looked back.
Empty eyes. Calculating. Are you worth the effort?
Both of them walked away.
Rin stood there, genuinely shocked.
She hadn't thrown a single punch.
It happened again the next day. And the day after that. Arguments deflated when she showed up. Quirks deactivated. People dispersed.
Her quirk was built for devastation. Hayate had taught her to weaponize the possibility of devastation instead.
Two weeks later, Hayate noticed. "Hey, you've been staying out of fights. That's really good, Rin."
Rin nearly vibrated out of her skin.
He'd been watching. Evaluating. Testing her.
And she'd passed.
That afternoon, she grabbed three other girls. Yuki, whose quirk let her create small firecrackers from her palms. Sakura, who could turn her skin into copper. Mei, whose quirk gave her extra joints that made her movements unsettling and flexible.
All combat quirks. All tired of getting detention.
"Hayate's teaching me something," Rin said.
"What?" Yuki asked, genuinely curious.
"Strategic positioning. Preventative presence. We need to be in problem areas before problems happen."
"Like guards?" Sakura's metallic skin flickered across her forearm reflexively.
"Like a structural deterrent," Rin said, absolutely making this up as she went but feeling correct about it. "He's testing us. Seeing if we understand the assignment."
"What assignment?" Mei asked, tilting her head at an angle normal necks didn't allow.
"That violence is the last tool, not the first one. That reputation does more work than fists."
They started posting up in key locations. Bathrooms where bullying happened. Hallways where bags got snatched. Stairwells where students got cornered.
Just standing there. Visible. Ready but not aggressive.
Their quirks stayed inactive but everyone knew they were there.
Incidents dropped forty-seven percent in two weeks.
When Hayate complimented Rin again, she had to excuse herself to the bathroom.
She stared at her reflection, breathing hard, trying not to cry.
She'd passed the test.
–
Daichi was carrying six bags when he realized the truth about Kazuki.
His quirk made it easy. Load Bearer was simple math. More weight equals more strength. Linear progression. Six bags felt like nothing. He could probably carry fifteen before he even noticed strain.
But he was thinking about weight distribution. Structural engineering. His dad worked construction and talked about it constantly at dinner. Load-bearing walls. Support beams. How buildings stayed upright. Where stress concentrated.
Kazuki Hayate was a load-bearing wall.
Daichi saw it clearly now. Everyone brought their problems to Hayate. Failed tests. Family troubles. Future anxiety. Relationship drama. Quirk control issues. The guy listened to all of it, face calm, shoulders level, never complaining, never looking tired.
But he had to be tired.
Nobody carried that much weight without strain.
"How do you do it?" Daichi asked one day, adjusting someone else's bag on his shoulder. They were walking back from helping a teacher move supplies.
"Do what?" Hayate was doing his breathing thing. Slow inhale through the nose. Long exhale through the mouth. The leaves around them shifted in a breeze that didn't match the wind direction.
"Carry everyone's problems. You listen to everyone."
Hayate looked genuinely confused, like the question didn't make sense. "I'm just listening. They're doing the actual hard part. They're the ones dealing with the problems."
But Daichi understood structural load. He understood distribution of force. Hayate was the foundation. Everything funneled to him. And if the foundation cracked, everything built on top collapsed.
That couldn't happen.
Daichi started redistributing weight that same day.
First-years with heavy bags? He carried them. His quirk activated automatically, strength increasing proportionally. Students struggling with equipment? He moved it. Anyone who looked overburdened? He helped.
His quirk was in constant low-grade activation now. He was getting stronger. Denser. He'd gained fifteen pounds of muscle in two weeks just from the sustained load.
People started noticing.
"You're really helpful," someone said.
"Just trying to make things easier," Daichi replied.
Then students started specifically requesting him.
"You're friends with Hayate-san, right?" A nervous first-year with a mutation quirk that gave him gills. He got bullied constantly, called "fish freak," had his bag thrown in toilets. "Could you walk with me to the east building? There's this group that keeps bothering me and I thought maybe..."
"Sure," Daichi said immediately.
The group saw Daichi coming. Saw his frame, his posture, the weight he was carrying without visible effort. Six bags that should have made him slow and vulnerable. He looked faster instead. Stronger.
They left.
"How did you do that?" the fish kid asked, amazed and grateful.
"Didn't do anything." Daichi smiled, genuinely meaning it. "Hayate wouldn't like bullying. I just make that clear by being here."
The kid's eyes went huge. "So you represent Hayate-san?"
"We're friends. I know how he thinks."
By the end of the week, Daichi was handling a dozen small problems a day. His quirk was constantly active. He'd gained another ten pounds. His uniform shirt didn't fit right anymore. Buttons strained.
But Hayate looked just a little less stressed during lunch.
Smiled more.
That was what mattered.
–
December. Freezing rain. Five people crammed under the single stop outside the school's east entrance, waiting for the weather to break.
Kazuki was talking about the hero analysis essay they'd been assigned, trying to remember what he'd actually written because he'd done it at eleven PM the night before and caffeine had been involved.
"All Might's really good at the symbolic stuff, you know?" He was watching the rain come down in sheets, kind of zoning out, thoughts drifting. "Like, he doesn't even need to be everywhere because people think he could be anywhere. The idea of him prevents crime just by existing."
Kenji's pen moved across his notebook. He'd started carrying it everywhere.
"It's about strategic presence," Kazuki continued, mostly to himself, still watching the rain. "The idea of him is almost more effective than the actual him. Though I guess the actual him helps. Can't build a reputation on nothing."
Takeshi felt his skin harden slightly, quirk activating on instinct. Symbolic power. Projected force. Reputation-based control. Hayate was talking about infrastructure. About systems that worked whether you were present or not.
"Right," Rin said carefully, watching Kazuki's face. "You need visible results. Consistent results. So people believe the reputation."
"Yeah! Exactly!" Kazuki grinned, turning to look at them. "Like, if everyone just helped one person, you know? Just one. And that person helped one person. It compounds. Exponential effect. Suddenly the whole environment changes and nobody even remembers how it started."
"Distributed effort toward a unified goal," Kenji murmured, writing faster.
"Sure, if you want to make it sound fancy." Kazuki laughed. "I'm just saying people should be nicer to each other. Costs nothing. Helps everyone."
The four of them exchanged glances.
Hayate was absolutely testing them. Seeing if they could read between the lines. Seeing if they understood the deeper structure he was building.
They understood.
That night, separately, they each reached the same conclusion:
Hayate was building something magnificent and they needed to protect it.
Kenji created a rotation schedule. He labeled it "Ambient Positivity Distribution" in his notes. It was really patrol routes, coverage zones, and response times.
Takeshi recruited two more students for what he called "Friendly Monitoring." It was security details and deterrent presence.
Rin established "Supportive Positioning Groups." It was tactical teams for conflict prevention.
Daichi started a "Mutual Aid Network." It was resource distribution and logistical support.
By January, twenty-two students were involved in some capacity.
Fifteen had never spoken to Kazuki directly. They'd been recruited by someone who'd been recruited by someone. Second and third-degree connections.
Eight thought they were part of an actual organization with structure and hierarchy.
The rest thought they were just being helpful because Hayate seemed like a good guy worth emulating.
Kazuki knew exactly four people by name.
He thought he had a nice friend group.
—
February. Light snow. Kazuki was leaving Modern Art History (a class he was barely passing) when he saw a first-year drop all his books.
The kid scrambled to pick them up, papers flying everywhere, scattering across the hallway. People walked around him. Nobody stopped. Someone stepped on one of his papers.
Kazuki crouched down to help.
"I'm so sorry, I'm so clumsy, I'm—" The kid looked up, saw who was helping, and his voice died. "H-Hayate-senpai!"
"No worries, man." Kazuki handed him the last book, then stood up. "Happens to everyone."
The kid looked terrified and grateful in equal measure.
Kazuki did the finger gun.
"Have a good one!"
He walked away, already thinking about lunch.
The kid stared at his chest where Kazuki had pointed. His hands were shaking.
Around the corner, three students had watched the entire interaction in silence.
"Did you see that?" Hiro whispered. His hair-color-change quirk flickered from brown to orange with excitement.
"He marked him," Takeshi said quietly.
"For what?"
"Don't know. But Hayate doesn't do random gestures. That first-year is significant somehow. We should keep an eye on him."
By lunch, eight students were "coincidentally" monitoring the first-year's schedule.
The first-year, whose name was Tanaka and whose quirk let him communicate with pigeons, which was exactly as useful as it sounded, had no idea why upperclassmen kept nodding at him in the hallways.
He nodded back nervously.
This was interpreted as acknowledgment of protection.
Three students started walking the same routes as Tanaka to ensure safe passage.
Tanaka thought he'd accidentally joined a club.
Kazuki, meanwhile, had completely forgotten the interaction. He was busy debating if finger guns were still cool or if he looked like his embarrassing uncle at family gatherings.
He asked his little brother that evening while they played video games.
"Are finger guns cool?"
His brother, age nine, didn't look up from the screen. "No."
"Damn."
"But you should keep doing them."
"Why?"
"Because it's funny when you do it. You look happy."
Kazuki decided that was good enough. If it made him happy and wasn't hurting anyone, why stop?
He kept the finger guns.
Behind him, unseen and unacknowledged, the gesture became a symbol of favor, protection, and orders that were never given.
–
Weeks passed.
Then months did.
Somewhere between midterms and winter break, what had started as coincidence hardened into routine. By spring, it had shape. By summer, it had rules no one remembered agreeing to, but everyone followed anyway.
Nothing had been announced. No meetings were held. No name was chosen.
It simply… organized itself.
At the center was Kazuki Hayate, entirely unaware that he occupied it.
Takeshi became the visible presence.
His rhino mutation, hulking frame, and natural durability made him ideal for what he called "walking routes." Others called it deterrence. He walked the halls with Hayate, stood nearby during after-school activities, and somehow accumulated a small group of students who mirrored his movements without ever being told to. If Takeshi was there, trouble usually wasn't.
Kenji handled information.
He never used that word out loud. He preferred coordination. His Tactical Projection quirk allowed him to optimize patterns of where people gathered, when tensions spiked, which corners of the school produced problems. He started keeping notes "for fun," then spreadsheets "just in case," and eventually schedules that everyone somehow received without remembering how.
Rin positioned herself wherever conflict might happen.
Her Impact Reinforcement quirk meant she never had to throw a punch to be believed. She recruited four others. Not subordinates, she insisted, just "people who don't like bullies", and placed them like chess pieces around the school. Violence decreased sharply in areas Rin frequented, despite her rarely speaking.
Daichi became logistics.
No one voted on this. It just happened. His Load Bearer quirk scaled well with weight, and by September he was carrying backpacks, equipment, extra jackets, lost items, and sometimes people's emotional baggage. He recruited help under the excuse of "being useful" and somehow turned it into infrastructure.
By the time winter break rolled around, Daichi was carrying eight bags at once and had never felt stronger.
The outer circle didn't know Hayate personally.
Most of them weren't even sure he knew them.
Under Takeshi's "guidance," Hiro and two others handled visible presence in problem areas.
Rin coordinated Yuki, Sakura, Mei, and one more who rotated in depending on availability.
Daichi had six students doing "helpful tasks," which in practice meant resource distribution: supplies, notes, food, rides home.
Kenji oversaw four students assigned to "checking in," which was officially framed as being nice and unofficially resulted in daily reports on school morale.
They were building something. A structure. A system. Something that made the school safer and better and more organized.
Something that smoothed rough edges before they cut people. Something that made the school more orderly without ever raising its voice.
They talked about it in fragments. Half-sentences. Glances exchanged over lunch.
They never gave it a name.
They didn't need one.
Hayate just thought middle school had gotten nicer over the year.
And everyone else quietly made sure it stayed that way.
–
On the last day before winter break, Kazuki bought everyone gacha toys from the machine outside the convenience store. Spent all his lunch money. Got himself a tiny plastic orange cat with huge eyes.
He was delighted.
"This is Mr. Whiskers," he told them seriously, holding up the toy. "He's the mascot now."
"Mascot for what?" Daichi asked carefully.
"Our friend group, obviously." Kazuki made the cat wave. "Every friend group needs a mascot. It's science."
The four of them stared at the tiny plastic cat.
Then at each other.
Then back at the cat.
"I love it," Rin said, and she absolutely meant it.
"It's perfect," Kenji agreed, already imagining how to incorporate this into the organizational structure.
"Very cute," Takeshi added, thinking about how to explain this to the others.
"I'm buying one too," Daichi decided immediately.
That night:
Kenji added a cat logo to all his organizational documents. It went in the header. Professional. Clean.
Takeshi started referring to operations as "Prowls" when talking to his recruits. It sounded better than "patrols."
Rin told her team they were "The Claws." Nobody questioned it.
Daichi bought three extra plastic cats in case anyone needed one. His quirk activated slightly from the weight of carrying four cats in his pocket. He got marginally stronger. This was fine.
Somewhere in Japan, a real yakuza boss was running a sophisticated criminal operation with strategic precision, multiple layers of hierarchy, and ruthless efficiency.
In Musutafu, a middle schooler named Kazuki Hayate had accidentally created the same thing with friendship, good intentions, and a plastic cat.
He was currently making his cat fight his brother's action figure on the living room floor.
The cat was winning.
His brother made explosion sound effects.
Their mom told them to quiet down.
Kazuki grinned and made Mr. Whiskers do a tiny finger gun at the defeated action figure.
"Pew pew," he whispered.
It was the funniest thing his brother had ever seen.
It was the most ominous thing twenty-two students would hear about secondhand.
The next day, the four of the inner circle met at the convenience store without planning to. Just happened to show up at the same time.
"So," Kenji said carefully. "Three weeks without school."
"The structure needs maintenance," Takeshi said.
"Coverage shouldn't drop just because there's no classes," Rin added.
"I can handle supply runs," Daichi offered.
They looked at each other.
"We're not talking about this with Hayate," Kenji said.
"Obviously not," Rin agreed.
"He doesn't need to worry about logistics," Takeshi said.
"He's got that video game he wants to beat," Daichi added helpfully.
They split up the responsibilities.
Kenji would maintain communication networks. Make sure everyone stayed coordinated via group chat that Hayate wasn't in.
Takeshi would handle any physical problems. Neighborhood watch, basically.
Rin would keep conflict prevention running. Community engagement.
Daichi would manage resources. Who needed help with what.
None of them used the words "organization" or "operation" or "network."
They used words like "staying connected" and "being helpful" and "keeping up the good habits."
It was the same thing.
They just didn't say it.
–
Kazuki's plan for winter break was simple.
Sleep until noon.Beat that one video game level.Maybe study a little.Hang out with friends if anyone was free.Master the perfect hot chocolate recipe.
He accomplished three of these.
The video game level remained undefeated, its boss mocking him with the confidence of something that knew it would survive the season. His hot chocolate, despite careful measurements and sincere effort, hovered stubbornly in the realm of acceptable but disappointing.
Still, Kazuki slept incredibly well. He studied just enough to avoid guilt. And he met up with everyone twice. Once at the arcade, where he spent too many tokens and insisted finger guns improved reaction time. Once at Kenji's house, where they played board games, argued about rules, and ate enough pizza to raise genuine concern.
It was a good break.
Peaceful.
Kazuki returned to school relaxed, refreshed, and mildly annoyed about the hot chocolate.
Behind the scenes, twenty-two students maintained rotating schedules across six districts, handled seventeen minor incidents, rerouted foot traffic twice to avoid escalation, and prevented one fight by "accidentally" starting a snowball war nearby.
No injuries.
No reports.
No disruptions.
Kazuki thought winter had simply made people nicer.
The others quietly adjusted the schedules for spring.