Might be some errors, updating this from my phone.
Next Milestone 800PS? Too much?
--<<>>--
"Do you know about the HPSC?" Nezu asked.
Nezu sat on the plastic chair, looking like an interviewer conducting an interview.
Akira took a long, slow drag from the medical pipe. And thought about the question for a moment.
"The Hero Public Safety Commission," Akira recounted. "Official government body managing heroes, licensing exams, agency regulations, and overseeing the hero society at large. Basically, the HR department for heroes. They decide who gets to wear the spandex and who gets arrested for vigilantism."
"In short," Nezu nodded, "the government body responsible for all hero-related activity in Japan."
"Sure," Akira shrugged, exhaling a plume of blue smoke that drifted lazily toward the ceiling. "They sign the checks and make the rules. What about them?"
Nezu didn't answer immediately. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a small, black device. It looked like a car key.
He placed it on the bedside table and clicked the center button.
Hummmmm.
A low-frequency vibration filled the air. It wasn't loud, but Akira felt it in his teeth. The air in the room seemed to shimmer for a split second, becoming denser, static. The ambient sounds from the hallway — the nurses paging doctors, the squeak of gurney wheels, the voice of the elevator — vanished instantly. It was as if the rest of the world had simply ceased to exist, leaving only this room suspended in a void of white noise.
Akira looked at the device, then at Nezu.
"Let me guess," Akira said, raising an eyebrow. "Anti-noise field?"
"Bingo," Nezu smiled, his whiskers twitching. "High-frequency sound isolation barrier. Nothing said inside this bubble can be recorded or heard from the outside. Not even by quirk-enhanced ears. It creates a localized vacuum for sound waves at the perimeter."
He tilted his head. "How did you know?"
Akira took another hit from the pipe, tapping the brass stem against his chin. "I have seen too many movies, Nezu. The 'Secret Government Meeting' scene always starts with a jammer. It's a classic trope. Next, you're going to tell me this conversation never happened."
"It is scary," Nezu mused, "how often fiction inadvertently mirrors the classified reality. Perhaps writers have a quirk for intuition."
Akira let out a chill giggle. It was a strange sound coming from him — relaxed, almost lazy, but with zero warmth. "Or maybe governments are just predictable. Power protects itself. Secrets require silence."
"Precisely," Nezu said.
The Principal hopped off the chair and began to pace around the room.
"You are right about the governing aspect of the HPSC," Nezu continued. "They manage the day-to-day operations. They handle the PR, the merchandise licensing, and the disaster relief budgets. But there is another side to the Commission. A side that does not appear on the website. A side that the public does not know about, because if they did, the fragile illusion of our perfect superhuman society would crack."
Akira had read enough spy thrillers and conspiracy theories to know where this was going. So he took a guess.
"Let me guess," Akira drawled, swirling the pipe smoke with his finger.
"They have a black-ops division? A top-secret assassination squad that takes out 'Enemies of the State' who are too dangerous for jail but too public for a trial?"
He meant it as a joke.
But nobody laughed.
He looked at Nezu. Who was frozen. He looked at Honoka. She was looking at her lap, refusing to meet his eyes. He looked at Recovery Girl. She too looked away and began to whistle.
The smile slid off his face.
"Bloody hell," he whispered. "The movies are scarily close to the actual world."
"They are," Nezu confirmed.
The Principal stopped pacing and looked directly at Akira.
"The HPSC employs several heroes who work... exclusively for them. These individuals do not appear on rankings. They do not have merchandise. They do not give interviews. They address the threats that pose a risk to the nation's stability. Terrorists. Radical ideology groups. Corrupt heroes who have fallen too far to be redeemed."
Nezu's voice dropped an octave.
"To run a society smoothly, sometimes you need a blade, not a hammer. Sometimes, you need to cut out the cancer before the patient even knows they are sick. Even though there are corruption cases from time to time —power tends to corrupt, after all — most of the time, they do their work efficiently. They keep the peace by waging a silent war."
Akira processed the information. It made sense. Of course it did. You don't maintain a utopia with just smiles and punches. Someone has to take out the trash. Someone has to do the dirty work so All Might can keep smiling for the general public.
He looked at his mother. He looked at his grandmother.
"So," Akira asked, his voice low. "Why do all three of you know about this? Nezu, I get. You're the smartest being in Japan. You probably know what the Prime Minister had for breakfast. But..."
He gestured to the two women.
"Why them?"
"Good question," Nezu said. "For myself, as you surmised, I am a strategic asset. I send them recommendations from time to time — promising students, potential threats, logistical advice. I play the game because U.A. needs political protection."
He gestured toward Honoka and Chiyo.
"As for them... they are the best doctors in Japan. And because they know me closely, and because they are trustworthy, I recommended them for a specific role."
"Health Care Directors of the HPSC's Special Division."
Akira's eyes widened slightly. "So... you work for the assassins?"
"We heal them," Honoka said quickly, finally looking up. Her eyes were desperate for him to understand. "We don't do the spy stuff, Akira. We don't plan the missions."
"We patch them up," Recovery Girl added gruffly. "When they come back broken, bleeding, or dying, we fix them. They are still people. And because someone has to. If we didn't, they would just die in a dark room somewhere."
"We don't ask questions," Honoka whispered. "That's the deal. We heal, we sign the NDAs, and we go home. The extra pay is just a bonus."
Akira nodded.
"Okay," He said, taking a puff from the pipe. "I get it. You're the medics for the shadow government. Cool."
"Now that you know," Nezu said, stepping closer to the bed. "I have a proposal."
The rat looked up at him, extending a paw.
"Would you like to join it?"
The room went silent again.
"Join the HPSC?" Akira asked.
"Join the program," Nezu corrected. "I think it would be perfect for someone like you. You have the mindset. You have the power. You have the willingness to do what is necessary."
Nezu smiled, trying to be reassuring.
"And don't worry. You wouldn't be a faceless drone. You would be working directly under me. I would handle your training. I would handle your assignments. No need to worry about the stupid corruption or the bureaucracy. You would be my personal student, operating in the shadows to protect the light."
"Nezu!" Honoka started to protest, sitting up and wincing. "He's just a boy! He just survived a villain attack! You can't ask him to become a hitman!"
"I am asking him to be a hero!" Nezu argued. "Just a different kind!"
"He needs to make a decision for himself," Recovery Girl interrupted, placing a hand on her daughter's arm to calm her down. She looked at Akira with sad, wise eyes. "He's not a child anymore, I mean, he is technically, but you know what I mean. We can't make this choice for him. He's seen too much."
Akira sat there, the pipe smoke curling around his head like a halo.
Join the shadows. Become a secret agent. Use his Red Flame to burn the villains that the law couldn't touch.
It was tempting. It was exactly what Wade, in his old life, would have thought was "cool."
But then, a memory surfaced.
Not of cool movie scenes. But of reality.
He thought of the Hida Mountains. He thought of the village square.
He thought of Sasha Izumi, glowing with water, fighting a losing battle. He thought of Shino Izumi, broken against a rock, telling him to run.
Why did they die?
Was it because they were weak? No. They were pros. Was it because Muscular was strong? Yes, but that wasn't the whole story.
They died because they were heroes in the traditional sense. They died because they were reactive. They waited for the villain to attack. They threw themselves in the way to buy time. They sacrificed themselves because that is what the "Symbol of Peace" philosophy taught them.
Save the innocent. Die trying.
And Muscular? Muscular laughed at them. He called them weak. He wasn't afraid of them. He wasn't afraid of the police. He wasn't afraid of jail.
If they had been different... if they had been ruthless... would they have survived?
If the society were different... if heroes were brutal against villains, instead of being symbols of peace... would Muscular have dared to come out of his hole?
All Might, Akira thought. The Symbol of Peace.
All Might suppressed crime by smiling. He made people feel safe. But he also made villains complacent.
If All Might haunted the villains, Akira mused, his eyes narrowing. If the Symbol wasn't a smile, but a warning... they wouldn't dare breathe.
But to change that... to change the fundamental philosophy of an entire society... you couldn't do it from the shadows.
Shadows keep the status under the table. Shadows clean up the mess. They don't stop the mess from happening. The HPSC wanted him to be a janitor, mopping up blood in the dark so the public could keep pretending the world was clean.
To change the system, you have to stand at the top. You have to be the one everyone looks at. You have to be the sun, even if that sun burns.
Akira took one last, long drag of the medical pipe. He held the smoke in his lungs, feeling the calm settle deep into his bones.
He exhaled a long, thin stream of blue vapor.
He looked at Nezu.
"Your proposal..." Akira said softly.
He paused.
"I refuse."
Nezu blinked. His ears dropped.
Honoka let out a breath she had been holding, slumping back against her pillows in relief. Recovery Girl closed her eyes, murmuring a silent prayer.
Nezu tilted his head, his curiosity piqued.
"If you don't mind sharing," Nezu asked, "could you tell me why you declined the offer? I was 97.5% sure you would agree. It fits your cynicism perfectly."
"That's the problem, Nezu," Akira said, handing the pipe back to his grandmother. "You're looking at my cynicism. You're not looking at my ambition."
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, looking at his hands.
"The system," Akira began, "is built to mold heroes into martyrs. It teaches them to be self-sacrificing. To be shields. Just like Sasha and Shino. They died because they played by the rules of a game that villains don't respect."
He looked up, his red eyes burning with resolve.
"Working in the shadows just maintains that system. It cleans up the spills. I don't want to be a janitor. I don't want to hide in the dark while good people die in the light."
"Then what do you want?" Nezu asked.
"I want to change the game," Akira stated.
"To do that, I have to reach the peak. I have to be the Number One Hero. I have to stand where All Might stands."
Honoka stared at him. "You want to be the Symbol of Peace?"
Akira laughed.
"No," he said. "The world will always have people like All Might. People who smile and wave and kiss babies."
He leaned forward, his gaze locking with Nezu's.
"I will become the Symbol of Fear."
Shock rippled through the room.
"I will be the hero that villains tell stories about in the dark," Akira vowed. "I won't just stop them. I will break them. I will make them so terrified of stepping out of line that they will police themselves. I want them to look at a crime scene and pray that All Might shows up, because if I show up, they aren't walking away."
He clenched his fist, a small spark of red flame dancing between his fingers.
"I will save people," Akira finished, his voice dropping to a whisper. "But I won't do it with a smile. I'll do it with fire. I will make the concept of 'Villainy' a death sentence."
--<<>>--
Now our MC has a target. What do think of the symbol of fear title?
Let me know.
Plus if you want, you can read up to +10 chapters (It's 9 right now, the final advanced chapter will be up soon) and support me you can alway join my P@treaon. (Just search up Joe_Mama p@treon on google.)