Monoma woke to the steady beep of a heart monitor and the sterile scent of disinfectant. The agency's medical wing was quiet, lights dim. He turned his head—and found Mina asleep in a chair beside his bed, her head resting on her arms, silver hair spilling over the sheets.
She looked younger in sleep, the weight of her power absent from her face.
He sat up slowly. His body ached, but differently—like it had been rewired, stretched to new limits. In his mind, he felt… echoes. Three distinct presences, silent but clear:
New Order– A single rule, self-only. He could feel its shape: a command he could impose on his own biology once per day. Wave-Gravity Spiral– Defensive, space-altering. He could visualize the golden spirals bending gravity. Tele-Gravity Zone– Localized control. He could make an area heavier, lighter, or pin objects in spatial loops.
And his Copy time… he reached for the memory of Mina's quirk. It responded, steady and strong. No five-minute fade. A solid twenty minutes. And he could hold three memory-copies at once, though it felt like balancing spinning plates.
Mina stirred, blinking awake. When she saw him conscious, her eyes widened, and she hugged him tightly. "Don't ever do that again," she whispered into his shoulder, her voice thick.
He froze, then slowly hugged back. She felt warm, real.
"How long?" he asked, his voice rough.
"Eighteen hours," she said, pulling back but keeping her hand on his arm. "You burned through your stamina completely. Nurse Bari said your quirk factor… evolved. She's never seen anything like it."
Over the next day, they planned. Togi had tracked Yuki to an abandoned broadcast tower in Incheon, a needle of rusted metal overlooking the sea. This time, Monoma had more than bravery. He had a strategy.
They moved at dusk—Togi, Mina, Monoma, and the full agency team. The tower stood against a blood-orange sky, windows broken, stairs crumbling.
Yuki waited at the top, Ren's photo pinned over his heart. He wasn't looking at them; he was looking at the horizon. "I just wanted my brother back," he said, voice barely audible over the wind. "Mina… you will be my new family. Together, we'll be more than heroes. We'll be perfection."
"I already have a family," Mina said, light gathering around her hands. "And you took a brother from yours. That's not something harmony can fix."
Yuki's eyes snapped to hers, hollow and burning. "We'll see."
The fight erupted.
Yuki synced not just with Mina's telekinesis, but with Jae-Hyun's Sonic Sketch and Hiroshi's Kinetic Boost at once—creating a storm of solidified sound and kinetic explosions. The team scattered, using cover, but the tower shuddered under the assault.
Monoma moved silently through the chaos.
Rule imposed internally: My quirk cannot be synchronized.
Yuki tried to sync with him—and failed. Confusion flashed across his face. He tried again, his Synchronization quirk brushing against Monoma's copied abilities, but they slipped away, protected by Star and Stripe's conceptual defense.
Monoma didn't give him time to adapt. He created Spiral Gravity Wells around Yuki's limbs—each well a vortex of bent space, dragging Yuki's movements off-course, making his own amplified attacks curve away. Mina struck in the openings, her telekinesis sharper, fiercer, fueled by anger and protectiveness.
But Yuki adapted. He synced with the building's structural stress, feeling every groan of metal, every crack in concrete. The tower swayed. "If I can't have her," Yuki hissed, "no one will."
Monoma remembered Yuki's quirk—the feel of that sync, the invasive harmony. He didn't need to touch him. He had the memory.
He memory-copied Quirk Synchronization.
And then, he synced Yuki… with Luna's Echo Memory.
Yuki screamed.
His mind flooded with overlapping sensory echoes—every sight, sound, and sensation from the last day replaying at once, a cacophony of ghost inputs. He couldn't focus. His sync broke, the tower's groans fading.
Mina didn't hesitate. She gathered every ounce of her power, shaped it not into a wave, but into a form—a telekinetic dragon of coiled light, roaring silently as it surged forward. It hit Yuki, and he didn't get up.
Silence, save for the wind and distant sirens.
It was over.