CHAPTER 21: The Architecture of the Void
The mountain peak was no longer a place of meditation; it had become a crucible. Sherlock stood on a pillar of rock barely wide enough for his feet, surrounded by a swirling vortex of high-velocity friction currents created by his uncle.
Thomas wasn't holding back. He was using his Friction Mastery to create "heat pockets" and "vacuum zones" around Sherlock. To survive, Sherlock had to move faster than his human anatomy should allow. Every time he slipped, the friction scorched his skin. Every time he hesitated, the air pressure threatened to crush his lungs.
"Balance is a lie, Sherlock!" Thomas roared from the center of the storm. "Stop trying to find a footing and start becoming the air itself!"
Sherlock didn't answer. His mind was a blur of green-tinted calculations. He was pushing his Internal Grouting to the limit, sweating out the reinforced cellulose to keep his skin from peeling under the friction. But he needed more. He needed to be lighter. He needed to be faster.
● I. THE INTERMISSION: THE SILENCE OF THE VOID
After four hours of non-stop drills, Thomas finally snapped his fingers, and the mountain became still. Sherlock collapsed onto the damp grass, his chest heaving. His black compression suit was ragged, stained with sweat and the white residue of bio-paper.
Thomas tossed him a canteen. "Break. Ten minutes. Don't get comfortable."
Sherlock sat up, his hands shaking as he took a drink. His first instinct was to reach for his phone. He hadn't checked it in days. No contact with his father. No Screen time. His uncle had been absolute about the "No Distractions" rule, even going as far as to lock Sherlock's phone in a lead-lined box in the cellar.
My father is likely monitoring my GPS coordinates through a tracker in his backpack , Sherlock thought, wiping his brow. And Momo Whom he couldn't contact due to his uncle rule even when she told him they will share information and tactics to improve but...
He felt a pang of guilt. She had looked so uncertain during their last call. He wondered if she was actually being trained, or if she was just a prop for Uwabami's brand. But as his hand moved toward the ghost of where his phone usually sat, he stopped.
"If I can't master this," Sherlock whispered to himself, "I won't be able to protect anyone. Not my father's legacy, and certainly not her."
● II. THE OUTSIDE WORLD: THE FRUSTRATION OF THE CHOSEN
While Sherlock was being forged in the mountain fire, the rest of Class 1-A was experiencing the reality of the hero industry.
In a different prefecture, Bakugo Katsuki was snarling as Best Jeanist attempted to brush his hair for the tenth time. Bakugo wanted to fight; he wanted to explode things. Instead, he was being lectured on the "elegance" of a hero's public image. He was a caged beast, his fury simmering beneath a layer of hairspray.
In a dark alleyway in another city, Todoroki Shoto stood silently behind his father, Endeavor. The heat coming off the Number Two hero was oppressive. Shoto wasn't learning techniques; he was being forced to witness the brutal, efficient violence of a man he despised. He was a soldier in a war he didn't want to fight.
Meanwhile, in downtown Hosu, Iida Tenya walked the streets with Manual. His eyes were cold, hidden behind his visor. He wasn't listening to Manual's advice on patrol routes. He was looking for a shadow. He was looking for the man who had broken his brother.
● The Gilded Cage of Momo Yaoyorozu
In a high-end dressing room in Tokyo, Momo Yaoyorozu sat before a mirror as a makeup artist touched up her foundation. Behind her, Uwabami was laughing into a microphone, filming a commercial for a new line of snake-venom-based skincare.
Momo looked at her hands—the hands that could create anything from a molecular level. Today, they had only held a perfume bottle for a photo shoot.
I should be training, Momo thought, her heart sinking. I should be practicing my creation speed or my combat endurance. Uwabami says 'appearance is a hero's first weapon,' but I feel... useless. I feel like an ornament.
She glanced at her phone. No messages from Sherlock. She knew he was training with his uncle, but the silence was deafening. She felt a growing sense of inadequacy. Sherlock was out there evolving, Bakugo was with a Top Hero, and she was here, being "utilized" as a face for a brand.
"Ready for the next set, Yaoyorozu-chan?" Uwabami chirped.
Momo forced a smile. "Yes, Uwabami-san." But inside, she was screaming for a challenge.
III. THE EVOLUTION: SHIKIGAMI AND THE SCOUTS
The mountain air had grown thin and icy as the sun dipped below the jagged horizon, but Sherlock felt a strange, internal heat—a byproduct of his cells working at a frantic, overclocked pace. He stood before a crashing waterfall, the roar of the water providing a constant, rhythmic white noise that helped him drown out everything but the calculations in his head. Thomas stood a few paces back, his arms crossed, watching with the critical eye of a man who had seen legends rise and fall.
"The math of your body is a burden, Sherlock," Thomas had told him an hour ago. "You move like a human. You have mass, you have drag, and you have gravity. A true master of the medium doesn't just use paper; they mimic its lack of weight."
Sherlock had taken those words and processed them through his analytical engine. He realized that his previous attempts at the Shikigami Dance were flawed because he was trying to turn his entire being into paper—a transformation that was too slow and metabolically expensive. He needed a middle ground.
● The Shikigami Dance: The Physics of Weightlessness
Sherlock closed his eyes and triggered his bio-generation, but instead of manifesting cards in his hands, he directed the output to his joints, the soles of his feet, and the small of his back. He created a microscopic, "negative pressure" lattice of paper fibers—essentially a series of biological air-bearings that sat between his skin and the atmosphere.
By manipulating the drag coefficients around his limbs, Sherlock effectively began to "cheat" physics. He wasn't turning into paper; he was using the paper to offset his own gravitational mass.
The results were instantaneous and terrifying. When he moved, he didn't just step—he glided. In this state, Sherlock was 60% faster than his peak physical speed. He could change direction in mid-air by venting pressurized paper fibers, allowing him to dodge with the erratic, unpredictable grace of a leaf caught in a gale. However, the cost was steep. The "Shikigami Dance" demanded a staggering 1.5x increase in stamina compared to his normal combat output. Every second he spent in this high-speed state felt like a minute of sprinting; his heart rate spiked, and the caloric burn was so high he could feel his body temperature rising toward a fever.
"It's not mastery," Sherlock wheezed, skidding to a halt on a patch of wet moss. "It's a sprint toward cardiac arrest. But for a short burst... I can become untouchable."
● Hardened Arsenal: Kunai and Shuriken
Once he regained his breath, Sherlock moved to the next phase of his offensive overhaul. He had realized during the Sports Festival that while paper was versatile, it lacked the "stopping power" needed against high-tier physical Quirks. He needed weapons that could pierce the armor of a villain like Muscular or the hide of a Nomu.
He held out his palm, and through a process of extreme fiber compression, he manifested four Hardened Shuriken and a single, sleek Kunai. These weren't the flexible cards he used for traps; these were "Pulp-Steel." By folding thousands of layers of bio-paper and infusing them with a high-density internal glaze, he created edges that were sharp at a molecular level.
"Why go back to ancient weapons?" Thomas asked, stepping closer to examine the kunai.
"Because they are aerodynamic constants," Sherlock replied, his voice regaining its calm, analytical edge. "My cards are susceptible to wind shear and friction. These, however, are designed for penetration. They allow me to deliver the Molecular Glaze as a physical projectile, bypassing elemental defenses and puncturing through reinforced targets. They are my 'Hard Counter' to durability."
He flicked a shuriken. It didn't flutter; it hummed with a low, deadly frequency, burying itself three inches deep into the solid granite of the mountain wall.
● The Silent Eyes: Origami Scouts
Finally, Sherlock turned to the most subtle addition to his kit: OrigamiInsects. He reached into his pocket and pulled out six tiny paper spiders, their legs so fine they looked like strands of hair.
"These are my sensors," Sherlock explained. He didn't just throw them; he breathed a spark of his Quirk's energy into them, establishing a rudimentary tactile link.
As the insects scuttled away into the undergrowth, Sherlock's consciousness expanded. He couldn't "see" through their eyes—a neurological feat he hadn't yet calculated—but he could sense through them. Every vibration the paper legs picked up, every change in air pressure, and every thermal spike was relayed back to him as a tactile map in his mind.
"I can sense anything within a thirty-meter radius of each scout," he noted. "They are the 'Silent Eyes' of the Magician. In a city like Hosu, they will be my informants."
But they weren't just for surveillance. Sherlock demonstrated the secondary function by snapping his fingers. One of the scouts, currently perched on a tree branch near Thomas's head, suddenly detonated. It wasn't a massive explosion—it lacked the chemical power of Bakugo—but it was a sharp, pressurized burst of paper shards and sound.
"The Paper Blast," Sherlock said. "It's not strong enough to Use in a battle , but it serves a more important purpose: The Stolen Second."
Thomas nodded, understanding the strategy. "In a fight between pros, a single second of distraction is the difference between a win and a grave."
"Exactly," Sherlock agreed. "If a villain is blinded or startled by a blast for even a seconds, that is enough time for me to calculate a finishing move or activate a Damage Transfer. They aren't meant to win the war; they are meant to cheat the clock."
As Sherlock stood there, his right hand bruised and his body steaming in the cold mountain air, he looked less like a student and more like a scientist who had just finished building a weapon of mass destruction. He had the speed, he had the lethality, and he had the eyes. All that remained was the trial by fire.
IV. THE ULTIMATE VARIABLE: THE TEASE OF THE VOID
The training session had reached its physical limit. Sherlock stood in the center of a scorched patch of earth, his breathing coming in jagged, painful stabs. Around him, the mountain was a graveyard of shredded paper and splintered wood. He looked at his trembling hands, the skin raw from the constant friction and the chemical toll of bio-generation. He had the speed of the Shikigami, the lethality of the Hardened Arsenal, and the eyes of his Origami Scouts.
Yet, as he looked at Thomas, who remained standing with the unshakeable posture of a veteran, Sherlock felt the cold weight of a missing variable.
"Every great hero has a 'PlusUltra' moment, Sherlock," Thomas said, his voice echoing off the canyon walls.
"All Might has the United States of Smash. Endeavor has ProminenceBurn. They have a move that ends the conversation. A move that dictates the end of the world for their opponent. What do you have? More card tricks?"
Sherlock didn't flinch at the taunt. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a single, unremarkable sheet of white paper. He flicked his wrist. The paper caught the wind, spinning with a low hum before Sherlock triggered a microscopic, high-pressure release of his stored Quirk energy.
BOOM.
The single sheet detonated with the force of a grenade, shattering a nearby boulder into pebbles. The shockwave ruffled Sherlock's hair, but his expression remained grim.
"That's a blast," Sherlock noted, his voice flat. "But against a High-End villain or a crowd of enemies, it's a localized solution. It's not an answer to a catastrophe. I've been running the simulations in the back of my mind since the Sports Festival. If I want to survive what's coming—if I want to protect the legacy of my mother—I need a Zero-Sum move."
He looked out over the cliffside, his emerald eyes scanning the vastness of the valley below. In his mind's eye, a complex geometric blueprint began to render. He saw not just a sheet or a card, but a total atmospheric saturation.
"The Thousand-Sheet Blast," Sherlock whispered, the name tasting like ash on his tongue.
"I've conceptualized it," Sherlock continued, his tone becoming clinical to mask the underlying fear. "It is the absolute release of the 'Pulp' variable. Most heroes keep a reserve—a safety margin to ensure they can walk away from the fight. This move... it deletes the margin. It would require me to forcibly manifest every single fiber currently residing in my endocrine system. I would have to sweat, bleed, and exhale my Quirk until there is nothing left in my pores but air."
Thomas's expression shifted from challenge to genuine concern. "You're talking about a total biological purge. Do you have any idea what that does to a human body?"
"I've run the math," Sherlock replied, his gaze never wavering. "To execute the Thousand-Sheet Blast, I would have to synchronize my heartbeat with the generation frequency. I would manifest thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of micro-thin, hardened sheets in a single millisecond. It would create a localized vacuum, followed by a storm of razor-edged paper so dense it would act like a physical solid. It wouldn't just cut a villain; it would atomize the space they occupy."
But as he spoke, Sherlock felt a phantom dizziness just from the thought. The mental processing power required to guide ten thousand individual variables simultaneously was beyond anything a human brain was designed to handle.
"The cost is total," Sherlock admitted. "The simulation suggests that the moment the blast is released, my blood pressure would drop to critical levels. The mental fatigue wouldn't just be a 'headache'; it would be a neurological blackout. I would become unconscious before the first sheet even hit the ground. I would be dizzy, blind, and effectively dead to the world for hours, if not days."
He looked at his hands again. This was the "Tease of the Void"—the ultimate power that whispered to him from the edge of his potential, promising victory at the cost of his very existence. It was a move born of desperation, a final middle finger to a universe that took his mother away.
"It is a weapon of last resort," Sherlock said, his voice regaining its sharp, decisive edge. "I will not use it to win a spar. I will not use it to climb a ranking. But if I am ever backed into a corner where the only other option is the death of those I've sworn to protect... I will trigger the Void."
Thomas walked over and placed a heavy, calloused hand on Sherlock's shoulder. He could feel the boy trembling—not from fear, but from the sheer intensity of the will required to even contemplate such a move.
"The problem with ultimate attacks, Sherlock, is that they usually end the hero as much as the villain," Thomas warned. "Your mother reached for that void once. She tried to give everything to save everyone. Don't make the mistake of thinking that being a hero means being a martyr. A dead Magician can't perform the next trick."
Sherlock nodded slowly, the blueprint in his mind fading into the background, though the "Zero-Sum" equation remained etched into his subconscious. He wasn't a martyr by nature—he was a man of logic. And logic dictated that he keep the gun loaded, even if he hoped he would never have to pull the trigger.
"Hosu is the next variable," Sherlock said, turning toward the path that led down from the peaks. "I'll keep the Blast in the holster. For now, the Scouts and the Shikigami will have to be enough."
As they began the descent toward the city of Hosu, the mountain seemed to exhume a final, cold breath. Sherlock Sheets was no longer just a boy with a Quirk; he was a walking storm, contained only by the fragile glass of his own self-control. The "Magician" was coming to Hosu, and he was bringing the Void with him.