Chapter 15: The Violation of Sanctuary
The morning of the rescue trial was characterized by an oppressive, heavy humidity that seemed to bleed from the gray clouds hanging over Musutafu. For the students of Class 1-A, the journey to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint (USJ) was a landmark event—a rite of passage into the world of professional disaster relief. But for Hiromi Higuruma, the excursion felt like the opening of a massive, multi-defendant trial where the jury had already been tampered with.
He stood by the boarding area of the bus, his charcoal-grey suit meticulously buttoned, his eyes tracking the movement of his classmates with the detached, piercing scrutiny of a lead prosecutor. Beside him, Momo Yaoyorozu was a mirror of his composure, though her eyes held a new, shimmering depth. Since their confession in the tea house, the air between them had changed; it was no longer just a partnership of convenience, but a shared destiny.
"The tactical loadout is synchronized, Hiromi," Momo whispered, her voice a low vibration beneath the boisterous laughter of Kirishima and Ashido. "I've manifested a localized communication dampener and structural integrity sensors. If the simulation fluctuates, we'll know before the faculty does."
"Good," Hiromi replied, his gaze shifting toward the distant dome of the USJ. "Efficiency is the only defense against the entropy of this world. But stay alert, Momo. The 'black ink' of my energy is restless. The law of this place feels... thin."
The Arrival and the Breach
The USJ was an architectural marvel—a sprawling, climate-controlled ecosystem designed to replicate every conceivable catastrophe. As the class filed inside, they were greeted by the Pro Hero Thirteen and their homeroom teacher, Shota Aizawa. Thirteen began a lecture on the "lethality" of Quirks—a speech Hiromi found fundamentally correct but philosophically shallow. To him, every Quirk wasn't just a tool for rescue; it was a potential instrument of a crime that had not yet been codified.
But the lecture was cut short.
In the central plaza, the space began to fracture. A swirl of dark, purple-black mist—the warp gate of Kurogiri—manifested like a bruise on reality.
"Gather round and don't move!" Aizawa's voice cracked like a whip. "Thirteen, protect the students! Those aren't actors. Those are villains."
From the mist stepped a man covered in severed, pallid hands—Tomura Shigaraki—and a hulking, brain-exposed monstrosity that stood twice the height of a man: the Nomu. Hiromi didn't flinch. He reached into his suit and gripped his dark wooden staff.
"Case File 002: The League of Villains," he thought. "The defendants have officially breached the sanctuary."
The Failure of the Law
The chaos was instantaneous. Kurogiri acted with surgical precision, warping the students into the various disaster zones to isolate and execute them. Hiromi and Momo found themselves in the Ruins Zone, surrounded by crumbling concrete and the jagged remains of faux-office buildings.
After a brutal, three-minute cleanup where Hiromi used his Heavenly Physicality to dismantle a dozen thugs—breaking limbs with the efficiency of a man snapping dry kindling—he and Momo sprinted back toward the central plaza.
They arrived to a scene of absolute carnage. Aizawa lay on the ground, his face crushed into the pavement, his arms snapped like twigs by the Nomu. All Might had arrived, his usual boisterous entrance replaced by a desperate, bloody struggle. Every punch the Symbol of Peace threw was absorbed by the creature's black, rubbery flesh.
"All Might-san! Step back!" Hiromi's voice cut through the thunder of the impacts.
Hiromi stepped forward, his Cursed Energy turning the air around him cold, thick, and viscous. He raised his hand, the darkness within his soul swirling into a localized vortex.
"Domain Expansion: Deadly Sentencing!"
The plaza began to transform. The mahogany walls of a grand courtroom rose from the concrete, and the towering, blindfolded figure of Judgeman manifested behind the bench. But then, for the first time in Hiromi's second life, the system glitched.
Judgeman's golden scales began to spin violently, erratically. The gears ground together with a screech of shearing metal. The golden scales flickered, then shattered.
"What...?" Hiromi's breath hitched, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck.
The Domain collapsed before the first charge could be read. The mahogany walls dissolved back into the smoke of the USJ.
"Haha! Did you think a brat's law would apply to a creature that doesn't have a soul?" Shigaraki rasped, his eyes gleaming behind the severed hand on his face. "My Nomu isn't a 'person,' Lawyer-boy. It's a doll. A collection of meat and biological instructions. You can't put a hammer on trial for striking a nail. There is no 'will' to judge."
Hiromi stood frozen. His greatest weapon—the absolute authority of the Law—had been ruled inadmissible. The Nomu was a legal void.
The Hand-to-Hand Audit
"Hiromi, get back!" Momo cried, her hands glowing as she manifested a tactical, high-grade tungsten shield to stand between him and the monster.
But Hiromi didn't retreat. He reached up and tore off his charcoal suit jacket, tossing the ruined garment to the floor. He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves, revealing forearms corded with dense, reinforced muscle. His white dress shirt was already damp with sweat and the spray of Aizawa's blood.
If the Law couldn't judge this thing, his body would have to enforce the sentence.
He flooded his entire muscular system with Cursed Energy until his skin took on a faint, bruised hue. "Reinforcement: Maximum Output."
Hiromi launched. He didn't use his staff; he used his fists. He slammed into the Nomu's side, the impact creating a shockwave that cracked the tiles beneath them. But the creature's "Shock Absorption" turned the strike into a dull thud. The Nomu didn't even blink.
BOOM.
The Nomu swiped a massive, clawed arm. Hiromi crossed his arms to block, but the force was like being hit by a freight train. He heard the distinct snap of his left ulna and three of his ribs. He was sent skidding fifty feet across the plaza, his heels carving deep trenches into the concrete.
"Hiromi!" Momo screamed. Her composure broke. She didn't just produce a weapon; she produced a specialized, multi-barrel 30mm auto-cannon, her skin turning pale as she used her own lipids at a dangerous rate. She fired, the shells tearing into the Nomu's chest, but the creature simply regenerated the gaping holes in seconds.
Hiromi struggled to his feet, coughing up a thick glob of crimson. One of his eyes was beginning to swell shut, and blood was leaking from a jagged gash on his forehead, matting his hair and dripping into his vision. The pain was white-hot, but in that agony, his legal mind found a terrifying clarity.
The Law failed because the Nomu was a machine. To beat a machine, he had to become an anomaly in the physics of the world.
The Spark of Black
The Nomu charged again, its speed breaking the sound barrier. All Might tried to lunge forward to intercept, but he coughed up a spray of blood, his muscular form flickering as his time limit hit the red zone.
Hiromi saw the creature's fist coming—a mountain of black meat. He didn't dodge. He stepped into the strike, his vision tunneling until the entire universe was reduced to the space between his knuckles and the Nomu's exposed brain.
The flow of his Cursed Energy, usually a steady, controlled stream, began to pulse in sync with the jagged rhythm of his failing heart. Within a millionth of a second, the energy and the physical impact aligned with the precision of a celestial event.
The air turned black.
Space itself seemed to fracture as a flash of black, jagged lightning erupted from Hiromi's right fist.
"BLACK FLASH!"
The strike landed squarely on the Nomu's pulsating brain. The power of a Black Flash—an impact to the power of 2.5—bypassed the "Shock Absorption" through sheer spatial distortion. It wasn't just a punch; it was a rejection of the creature's existence. The Nomu's head was snapped back so violently that the sound of its neck vertebrae grinding together filled the entire dome.
The creature staggered, its movements glitching as the central nervous system was momentarily scrambled.
"Now! All Might!" Hiromi roared, his voice cracking and wet with blood.
All Might didn't waste the opening. Using the final, dying embers of One For All, he lunged forward, his eyes burning with a desperate, grateful fire. "THANK YOU, YOUNG HIGURUMA! I'VE GOT IT FROM HERE!"
"PLUS... ULTRA!!"
With a final, earth-shaking burst of strength, All Might delivered a three-hundred-hit combo in the span of seconds, ending with the punch that sent the Nomu screaming through the roof of the USJ, disappearing into the clouds.
The Aftermath of the Verdict
The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating. Shigaraki, seeing his masterpiece defeated by a "cheat code," snarled and retreated into Kurogiri's mist, his eyes fixed on Hiromi with a new, obsessive hatred.
Hiromi stood in the center of the cratered plaza. His white shirt was shredded, soaked through with blood and grime. He was swaying, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps that whistled through his broken ribs. The cost of the Black Flash—the immense mental and physical strain—had finally overtaken him.
His eyes were glazed, the pupils blown wide as the adrenaline began to drain away, replaced by the crushing weight of his injuries. He tried to take a single step toward his jacket, but his knees simply stopped functioning.
"Hiromi!"
Momo was there before he hit the ground. She caught him in her arms, her tactical gear clattering as she knelt on the concrete. She was sobbing openly, her sophisticated mask of an heiress completely gone. She pressed her hands against the deep gash in his side, trying to stem the flow of blood.
"Stay with me! Hiromi, please... open your eyes!"
Hiromi looked up at her, a weak, blood-stained smile touching his lips. He reached up with a trembling, blackened hand, his fingers leaving a smear of red across her cheek.
"The... evidence... was conclusive," he whispered, his voice a ghost of its former authority. "Even a monster... can be... audited."
He leaned his head against her shoulder, his body going limp as he lost consciousness. Momo held him tightly, buried her face in his neck, and let out a raw, broken cry that echoed through the ruined facility. All Might, standing nearby in his deflated form, watched them with a look of profound sorrow and respect. He knew then that the boy who had just saved him wasn't just a student—he was a man who had stared into the void and demanded it pay its fines.
....
Author's Note:
This was a brutal, high-stakes turning point! By making the Domain fail, we established that Hiromi's legal powers have limits against non-sentient threats, forcing him to rely on his Heavenly Physicality and the Black Flash. Hiromi is now severely injured, with broken ribs, a fractured arm, and massive internal strain—this adds real stakes to the story. Momo's breakdown here solidifies her absolute devotion to him; seeing him nearly die has changed her forever.
50 power stone=1 ch extra
100 power stone=2ch extra
250 power stone=3ch extra