The Higashi Distribution Hub.
04:50 PM.
The sky above the Musutafu industrial sector was the color of a fresh bruise.
It wasn't a natural sunset; it was a stagnant, chemical haze—a mixture of violet and charcoal gray that hung heavy over the metal roofs of the warehouses.
Inside Warehouse 4, the air was thick with the smell of ozone and the heavy thrum of the automated sorters.
Kaito Arisaka stood at his locker. He was a in his polyester shirt. He removed his high-visibility vest, the cheap fabric rustling like dry leaves. Folded it along the factory seams, his fingers moving with a terrifying precision.
He placed his hard hat on the top shelf, perfectly centered, exactly two centimeters from the edge of the metal.
Kaito's 5th Haken contract was officially over. He had spent months here in the logistics machine, auditing shipping manifests for hero-support gear.
His work was perfect. His record was spotless. His existence was a blank space in the company's payroll.
"Arisaka! What the hell are you doing?! Move! Get out of here!" the warehouse manager screamed.
The man, a veteran logistics head named Rikko, was a wreck of sweat and tremors. He was clutching a radio that spat out nothing but white noise and the distorted sound of someone screaming for an evacuation.
"I am finishing my exit procedure, Rikko-san," Kaito said. His voice was a flat. He didn't look up from his locker. He was busy aligning his pens in his briefcase.
"The HPSC just issued a total blackout! A Code Black!" Rikko lunged forward, grabbing Kaito by the shoulder, but his hand slipped off the slick polyester of Kaito's shirt. "The underground cargo... the Singularity Batch from the Osu ruins... it's breached! They're saying the whole district is a Dead Zone! We have to run!"
Kaito picked up his briefcase. The leather was scuffed at the corners, a humble tool for a humble man. He checked the bandage on his temple, pressing down on the adhesive.
The dull ache from Stendhal's sword hilt was still there, a reminder of his commitment to the bit. To being the victim.
"My shift ends at five," Kaito said. He checked his watch. "The transit authorities have reported a five-minute delay on the Higashi-Osu line. If I leave now, I will reach the platform exactly two minutes before the train arrives. If I run with you, I will sweat, and I do not have a change of clothes for the commute."
"You're insane!" Rikko wailed, his eyes bulging. "The trains aren't coming! The tracks are being swallowed by the ground! Look out the window, kid! Look!"
Kaito didn't look. He adjusted his collar. "The schedule is the schedule, Rikko-san. I suggest you focus on your own evacuation. Your heart rate is dangerously high. And I trusted the pros to do their jobs. Maybe the moment I arrived they're already finished."
Kaito stepped out of the warehouse doors and into the ash-choked afternoon.
-----
05:00 PM – The Industrial Warzone
KRA-THOOM.
The ground at the Higashi Rail Junction didn't explode; it reconfigured.
A mountain of techno-organic biomass erupted from the asphalt, three kilometers from where Kaito walked.
It was a sickening fusion of rusted steel girders, exposed high-voltage wiring, and pulsing, muscle fibers.
It was experimental product, All For One's unstable "Life-Force" extract and it was hungry.
It began to "consume" the district, absorbing the industrial environment into its own anatomy.
A transport truck was pulled into the mass.
SPLAT-CRUNCH.
Its metal chassis becoming part of the monster's ribcage.
-----
Three hundred kilometers away, All For One sat in a room chilled to a biting 18°C. He did not need eyes to see the disaster; his various sensory quirks fed him a digital-clear map of the chaos.
On the center monitor of his mental theater, the Higashi Rail Junction was disappearing.
It wasn't being destroyed by fire or explosives. It was being digested.
A massive, heaving pile of bio-organic matter—a mixture of rusted steel, exposed wiring, and pulsing, translucent muscle—was expanding at a rate of four meters per second.
'The Singularity Batch 0-9', AFO thought.
His fingers curled into a claw. This cargo was a raw, concentrated extract of "Life-Force" and "Regeneration" quirks, the precursor to his Nomu project.
It was unstable, hungry, and mindless.
Because Kaito had optimized the surface logistics so thoroughly, AFO's subordinates had panicked, fearing their illegal "blind spots" were being exposed.
In their rush to relocate the cargo, the containment tank had ruptured.
The fluid was now "consuming" the environment, turning industrial cranes into limbs and rail lines into veins.
"Doctor," AFO rasped. "The core is reaching the saturation point. If All Might strikes it, the resulting feedback will create a localized reality-tear. My DNA will be scattered across the prefecture for the HPSC to find."
"I know, my King!" Dr. Garaki's voice was a frantic screech. "But All Might is there! He's hitting it! He's feeding the singularity!"
-----
Backdraft stood behind a makeshift barricade of overturned shipping containers.
His arms were raised, the nozzles on his wrists thrumming with the pressure of several tons of water.
"Keep the pressure up! Cool the core!"
Backdraft roared.
Twelve specialized water-quirk heroes unleashed high-pressure streams.
SHHHH-WASH.
The water hit the glowing, pulsing core of the mass, a heat so intense it turned the air into a shimmering veil.
FSSHHHH.
The water didn't cool the biomass; it was instantly vaporized into an acidic green steam.
Backdraft felt his skin blister beneath his protective suit. The heat was bypassing his cooling gel.
"Captain! It's not working!" a young hero screamed beside him. "The water... it's disappearing! Look at the mass!"
"It's drinking the coolant!" Backdraft realized, his voice cracking with horror. "It's using the hydrogen to fuel the growth! Stop the pumps! Everyone, fall back!"
It was too late.
A lash of techno-organic muscle, a tentacle made of copper wire and gray flesh, whipped out.
It caught the young hero across the chest. There was no blood, only a sickening SCHLOP sound as the hero was absorbed into the mass.
"God... help us," Backdraft whispered, tasting the copper tang of ozone and his own vomit.
-----
Mandalay felt the mental strain like a spike driven into her skull. She was broadcasted into the minds of five hundred panicked warehouse workers, her voice the only thread of order in the chaos.
"To the North exit! Do not look back! Follow the green lights!"
Beside her, Tiger was physically pulling a woman out of a puddle of black sludge that had once been a sidewalk.
The ground was soft, pulsing with a rhythmic
THUMP-THUMP
that felt like a heartbeat.
"Mandalay! The buildings are losing structural integrity!" Tiger shouted.
He threw the woman toward the paramedics. "It's not just the ground! The concrete is turning into organic tissue!"
WHIRRR-SNAP.
A winch cable from a rescue helicopter snapped as the office block it was anchored to turned into jelly.
The building began to tilt.
Mandalay watched as a dozen people in the windows screamed, their faces pressed against glass that was starting to melt like wax.
"We can't get them out!" Tiger roared, his fist cracking against a pulsing wall of meat.
"There's nothing to grab onto! It's all becoming one thing!"
-----
05:05 PM
Endeavor was a pillar of violet fire. The heat he generated was so intense the asphalt beneath him turned into liquid tar.
He unleashed a Hellfire blast that should have incinerated a mountain.
ROAR-FSSHHHH.
The flames hit the Singularity mass, but instead of burning, the monster's surface hardened.
It turned the heat into a cauterized armor, a blackened shell of carbonized bone.
"It's adapting too fast!" Endeavor hissed. He looked over his shoulder. "All Might! Don't get close! If it touches you, it'll try to sync with your body!"
All Might didn't answer.
He was a golden blur, his movements creating localized sonic booms that cleared the green fog for a fraction of a second.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Every punch he threw was a kinetic masterpiece, but the feedback was becoming visible.
All Might was sweating, his golden hair matted with black grime and soot.
He landed a Detroit Smash directly into the monster's "shoulder."
The biomass rippled.
It drank the shockwave.
All Might stumbled back, coughing. A thin trail of steam rose from a puncture wound in his side where a steel girder had lashed out like a snake.
"It... it has no end, Endeavor," All Might panted, his chest heaving with a wet, rattling sound.
"The more energy we give it, the more 'real' it becomes. It's rewriting the district into itself."
"Then we burn it until there's no oxygen left to fuel it!" Endeavor roared, but even his voice held a note of desperate doubt.
-----
05:08 PM
Nighteye stood on a rooftop five hundred meters away. His fingers were dug into the concrete ledge so hard they bled.
His eyes were glowing with a cold, terrifying light. He was looking into the future.
He didn't see a victory.
"All Might, stop..." Nighteye whispered into his comms. "Toshinori, please. Listen to me."
"Nighteye? Give me a window! Where is the core?" All Might's voice crackled through the radio, interrupted by the sound of another kinetic impact.
"There is no window!" Nighteye's voice broke, a raw sound of despair that no hero had ever heard from him. "I see it. In seven minutes... you deliver a final strike. A 200% United States of Smash. The density of the punch causes the Singularity to collapse in on itself."
"Then I'll do it! I'll end it!"
"NO!" Nighteye screamed. "The collapse doesn't destroy it! It triggers a prefecture-level explosion! I see the green fire. I see the entire city district turned into a crater of ash. And I see you... I see you charring white at the center of it. Toshinori, we are already late! We are already dead!"
The radio went silent, save for the heavy, rhythmic
THUMP-THUMP
of the monster in the distance.
.....
05:10 PM
In Shinjuku Square, the giant "Cross Shinjuku" vision screen was no longer playing advertisements.
The digital cat was gone, replaced by a vibrating live feed from a news helicopter.
Ten thousand people stood in a silence so absolute it felt like the air had been vacuumed out of the city.
The camera shook violently. The pilot was screaming off-mic about the altimeter malfunctioning.
On screen, the Symbol of Peace was on one knee. All Might's cape was a tattered yellow rag, and his back usually a broad wall of reassurance looked dangerously thin against the backdrop of the forty-story mountain of meat and steel.
"He's not moving," a boy in the crowd whispered, clutching his father's hand. "Dad, why isn't he punching it anymore?"
The father didn't answer.
He couldn't.
He was watching the No. 2 Hero, Endeavor, unleash a frantic torrent of fire that seemed as small as a candle flame against the encroaching biological tide.
The crowd wasn't cheering. They were mourning in advance.
-----
The room smelled of stale coffee and high-end cooling fans. The Ambassador stood behind a row of analysts, his eyes fixed on a thermal map of Musutafu.
The district was glowing a deep, necrotic purple.
"Report," the Ambassador commanded.
"The Japanese 'Big Three' response has reached the point of diminishing returns, sir," a technician said, not looking up from his terminal.
"The Singularity is feeding on the kinetic energy of the All Might-level impacts. It's reached a density that threatens the local tectonic plate. If it ruptures, we're looking at a blackout for the entire Kanto region."
The Ambassador leaned in. "Is he there?"
"We have a signature. Moving through the 'Dead Zone' the area where the oxygen level is at 0.4%." The technician paused, his brow furrowing. "He's... he's walking. Constant pace. Four miles per hour."
"Subject: X," the Ambassador whispered. "Switch the feed to the Pentagon. They need to see how he handles this disaster."
-----
Kaito who is now Hero X, stood at the base of the pulsing mountain, a clinical anomaly amidst the filth.
"It's really worrying. How did this even happen? This wasn't in the canon right? What changed? This is even more devastating than the Musutafu fire" he muttered sofly.
'Another useless overtime. If this city was destroyed then my payroll will be held back for months' Kaito thought worriedly.
The Singularity Batch 0-9 roared, a sound of grinding gears and tearing sinew and unleashed its full mass.
Above him, the skeletal remains of the "Sunrise Plaza" skyscraper groaned.
The Singularity had eaten through the base, replacing the steel support pillars with pulsing, translucent veins.
The veins couldn't hold the weight. The million-ton structure began to tilt, its shadow falling over the evacuation zone where Mandalay and Tiger were still struggling to move the last of the wounded.
"GET BACK!" All Might roared, his voice a ragged shadow of its former glory.
He launched himself from the ground, his leg muscles screaming as he broke the sound barrier.
He reached out his hands, intending to catch the falling skyscraper, to take the weight of a million tons of concrete on his own spine.
Thousands of techno-organic tentacles, thick as redwood trunks and lashing with the speed of sonic booms, descended upon him from every angle.
WHIP-CRACK-BOOM.
But..
SNAP
Suddenly, the world stuttered.
The sound of the roaring fire and the crumbling stone cut out.
The colors of the sunset—the bruised purples and grimy grays—bleached into a blinding, stark white.
The rubble, the smoke, and even All Might himself were suddenly rendered in sharp, jagged, high-contrast ink lines.
Reality had become a high-spec sketch.
Hero X was already at the base of the building. He hadn't jumped; he had simply been there.
He didn't look up at the falling million tons.
He didn't brace himself. He reached out a single, gloved hand and touched the bleeding, organic foundation of the skyscraper.
SNAP.
V-ZIP.
The sound was a clinical click.
Instantly, the gravity of the entire structure was rewritten.
The million-ton tower didn't crash; it became as weightless as a dandelion seed.
It slowed, hovered for a fraction of a second, and then settled back onto its foundation with a soft, dusty
THUD.
All Might's hands slammed into the concrete a second later.
He had prepared for a bone-shattering impact. Instead, he hit a stationary, solid wall.
His momentum carried him forward, his face hitting the glass as he scrambled for a grip on a building that was no longer falling.
Almight looked down. He saw the man in the white suit.
"You're... you're late," All Might panted, his voice trembling.
Hero X didn't look at him. "You were in the way. Move."
-----
The Singularity sensed the intruder. It opened a thousand "mouths" across its surface—exposed steam valves and industrial vents—and fired a concentrated beam of raw, unrefined energy.
ZING. ZING. ZING
It was a white-hot spear of matter that vaporized the air it touched.
Endeavor lunged forward, his arms glowing violet. "X! Behind you! I'll shield—"
He began to manifest a Prominence Wall, his skin cracking from the heat he was generating to counter the attack.
Hero X didn't stop walking. He didn't turn around.
The energy beam hit his back
KRA-SHHH.
He stepped into the path of the attack. his hand rising in a blur of white fabric.
SNAP.
The energy didn't explode. It shattered.
The white-hot spear hit the back of Hero X's suit and broke into a thousand glass-like shards.
The shards turned into black ink-washes, dissolving into the air before they could touch the ground.
Endeavor's flames sputtered and died. He stood there, his arms still raised, his mouth open.
He was a hero who had spent his life fighting fire with fire, and he had just seen the beam itself get broken.
-----
Hero X didn't stop moving. He lunged forward, his feet barely touching the black sludge.
A cluster of pulsing, muscular vents opened on the monster's side, spraying a pressurized stream of necrotic bile.
SWOOSH
SWOOSH
SNAP.
With a flick of his fingers, the air itself seemed to harden into a crystalline barrier, shattering the bile into harmless, frozen pellets.
Hero X was a whirlwind of motion, a high-spec silhouette moving through the carnage with terrifying economy.
Every strike was punctuated by that dry, rhythmic sound of clicking fingers.
SNAP.
SNAP.
SNAP.
A lashing wire-tentacle tried to coil around his throat—he caught it, then the metal turning to liquid mercury in his palm.
SNAP
SNAP
A massive wall of concrete and meat tried to crush him—he tapped it, and the entire structure inverted, folding into a harmless cube of compressed trash.
The Pros watched from the periphery, paralyzed.
"Unbelievable"
"Is that even possible?"
"Are we going to help?"
"Help my ass! We will be a liability if we join in."
-----
All Might saw a man who wasn't fighting a monster, but rather disassembling a failed project.
Endeavor saw a power that didn't just burn; it erased.
Hero X vaulted into the air, his movements jagged and sharp, like a pen drawing lines across a canvas.
He landed on the "chest" of the beast, his palm slamming into the throbbing, glowing core.
SNAP.
The core's high-pitched scream was cut short, the sound dying in a vacuum of Hero X's making.
PITTER
PATTER
PITTER
PATTER
The biomass shuddered, its forty stories of horror vibrating with the force of a million tiny corrections.
Kaito felt the grit of the ash on his tongue, the stinging sweat in his eyes. He looked at his watch, 05:14 PM.
"I am going to miss the 5:15, well with this commotion.. the train station will be closed off." Kaito whispered, his voice a gravelly rasp of genuine, human irritation. "This is so slow."
He raised his hand for the final, absolute correction.
.....
05:14:30 PM
Hero X stood atop the trembling apex of the Singularity, his fingers poised.
Below him, the district was a graveyard of industrial logic.
Above him, the sky was a jagged scar of green lightning and soot.
SNAP.
The first sound was a dry, heavy thud that resonated in the marrow of everyone within three kilometers.
The massive, pulsing mountain of Batch 0-9 froze. The lashing tentacles stopped mid-swing. The screaming of the metal hushed.
SNAP.
The second sound was higher, sharper like the crack of a whip breaking the sound barrier.
A shockwave of pure, white clarity rippled outward from Hero X's palm.
As the wave passed, the horror un-happened.
The techno-organic meat didn't fall; it dissolved into a cool, refreshing mist.
The rusted girders didn't crash; they flew backward, re-aligning themselves into the skeletal frames of the warehouses they had been stolen from.
The black sludge on the streets vanished, replaced by the clean, gray asphalt of a road that had just been washed by rain.
SNAP.
The final sound was a whisper that filled the silence of the Dead Zone.
In an instant, the "Sunrise Plaza" skyscraper was whole.
The glass shards on the pavement flew upward, stitching themselves back into pristine windows.
The toxic, green fog was replaced by the scent of ozone and summer evening. The forty-story nightmare was gone.
In its place stood the Higashi Rail Junction, looking brand new, as if the breach had never occurred.
The Pros stood in the center of the street.
Endeavor's arms were still raised, his flames dead.
All Might sat on the curb, his hands trembling as he touched the dry, clean concrete. They were heroes who had prepared to die in a crater; instead, they were standing in a miracle.
.....
In the lightless depths of his vault, All For One felt the feedback. It wasn't pain; it was the sensation of a limb being neatly, surgically amputated.
He stared at the monitors. The "Singularity Batch 0-9"—years of illegal research and biological engineering—hadn't just been defeated.
It had been deleted. There was no residue. There were no samples left to recover. It was as if he had never built it.
For the first time in a century, the Symbol of Evil felt the cold sensation of true powerlessness, but it was quickly eclipsed by a starving, hollow ache in his chest.
He looked at the white-suited figure on the screen, his breathing heavy and ragged behind his mask, saliva pooling in his mouth.
This wasn't a Quirk; it was a higher law. It was a power that sat above the throne of One For All, clean, silent, and absolute.
"It wasn't a fight," AFO whispered, his fingers trembling as they traced the silhouette of Hero X on the glass. "He wasn't fighting my creation. He was... correcting a mistake." A jagged, predatory smile pulled at his scarred face. The obsession took root instantly.
He didn't just want to kill this "X"; he needed to own him. To consume him.
All For One began to mentally map the traps, the psychological anchors, and the sheer amount of blood he would have to spill to cage a god.
Getting his hands on that power was now a priority equal to—no, higher than—reclaiming One For All.
"Who are you, Hero X? How beautiful you will look when I finally peel that power away from your soul."
.....
05:20 PM
Kaito Arisaka walked through the station turnstiles.
His polyester shirt was soaked through with sweat, the cheap fabric sticking to his shoulder blades in a way that made his skin crawl. The bandage on his temple was peeling at the edges, the adhesive ruined by the atmospheric heat.
He was exhausted. Not from the "fight"—that was just work—but from the sheer, crushing weight of maintaining the persona.
The "Cringe" of the Hero X entrance was a physical pressure in his chest.
He tapped his commuter pass against the reader.
BEEP.
The sound was the most beautiful thing he had heard all day. It was the sound of being a civilian.
It was the sound of 9-to-5 stability.
The platform was a ghost town. The news of the "Hero X at Higashi" was just hitting the phones of the commuters who had fled.
Kaito stood alone under the flickering fluorescent lights. He looked at his watch. 05:20:45 PM.
The 5:15 PM was late. The "delay" he had predicted happened.
The train station is empty. Due to the city wide announcements, all civilians are prioritized to go to safe zone.
"Sigh, which bastard caused this commotion?! Was it All For One?... Yes it must be him...All the bad things that happened in this world are his doing... Just like that bastard Danzo next door"
Kaito Arisaka just wanted to go home, take off his shoes, and forget that Hero X ever existed.
~~~~~
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(9 Advanced Chapters)