Chapter 6: The Clean Blade
The air in the subterranean pit beneath Roppongi tasted of copper, stale beer, and unwashed bodies. It was a suffocating sensory overload, a stark contrast to the sterile, manicured streets of the surface world. Here, the neon lights of Tokyo didn't penetrate. Illumination came from buzzing halogen floodlights pointed at a chain-link octagon in the center of the room.
From a rusted catwalk near the vaulted ceiling, hidden entirely in the ambient shadows, Rin and I watched the spectacle below.
"Place is a biohazard," Rin muttered, her nose wrinkled in disgust. She was crouched beside me, her hands hovering near her pockets, ready to pull a portal out of her Sanctuary Phasing at a moment's notice. "You sure about this, boss? These guys don't look like soldiers. They look like rabid dogs."
"Look closer, Rin," I replied, the butterfly lenses of my mask whirring softly as I activated my Emotion Sight.
Instantly, the dimly lit cavern exploded into a vibrant, chaotic painting of human psyche. My Year Three perception was a revelation. It wasn't just colors anymore; it was texture, density, and rhythm. The crowd surrounding the cage was a roiling ocean of jagged crimson and sickly, pulsating orange—pure, unfiltered bloodlust mixed with the desperate thrill of illegal gambling.
But I wasn't looking at the crowd. I was looking at the cage.
Two men were locked in brutal combat. One was a hulking brute with a Quirk that clearly mutated his skin into something resembling rhino hide. He swung wildly, roaring with every strike. His aura was dull, stupid, and entirely focused on violence.
The other fighter was a stark contrast. He was lean, perhaps twenty years old, wearing only loose fighting trousers and taped knuckles. His movements were incredibly precise. He didn't waste a single breath. When the rhino-man swung, the boy slipped under the guard with millimeter perfection, delivering three rapid, devastating strikes to the liver and floating ribs.
It was textbook. It was the CQC curriculum of Shiketsu High.
"His name is Daiki," I whispered, focusing my Emotion Sight entirely on the lean fighter.
Daiki's aura was fascinating. Amidst the ocean of the crowd's hot crimson, he was a pillar of freezing, jagged grey. It was the color of profound self-loathing, layered over the tight, disciplined geometric lines of intense focus. He wasn't enjoying this. He was punishing himself.
Down in the cage, the rhino-man, enraged by the liver strikes, lunged forward with surprising speed, managing to graze Daiki's shoulder with a massive, horned knuckle.
Daiki hissed as the skin tore. Blood welled up, bright and vivid under the halogens.
The crowd cheered, smelling first blood. But Daiki just sighed. His aura spiked with a sudden, bitter resignation.
He raised his bleeding shoulder, pressing two fingers to the wound. As he drew his fingers away, the blood didn't drip. It defied gravity, pulling out into a long, coagulating ribbon. In less than a second, the crimson ribbon crystallized, hardening into a razor-sharp, jagged blade of solid blood attached directly to his wrist.
Crimson Arsenal. An emitter-type Quirk that allowed him to crystallize his own blood into high-density weaponry.
With a blur of motion, Daiki stepped inside the rhino-man's guard. He didn't aim for the vitals. He aimed for the tendons. The crimson blade flashed, slicing cleanly through the thick hide behind the brute's knees. The larger man bellowed in agony, collapsing to the mat, immobilized.
The fight was over. Daiki stood over him, breathing evenly. He looked at the bloody, jagged crystal protruding from his wrist. His grey aura darkened into a pitch-black storm of absolute disgust. With a flick of his wrist, he canceled the Quirk. The blade shattered into a puddle of ordinary blood on the mat.
"He's highly trained," Rin observed, her eyes wide. "But why is he fighting down here if he's that good?"
"Because Hero Society is a brand, Rin," I said, my voice cold. "Three years ago, Daiki intervened in a villain attack. He saved a bus full of elementary school children from a hostage situation. But to do it, he had to use his Quirk. He had to bleed himself, create a scythe of his own blood, and sever the villain's arms."
"Jesus," Rin breathed.
"The villain lived. The children were saved. But the optics?" I shook my head in the shadows. "The children were terrified of him. The media called his Quirk 'villainous' and 'traumatic to civilians.' The Hero Commission pressured Shiketsu High to expel him. They didn't want a Pro Hero who looked like a slasher-film monster. They threw him away because his genetics weren't marketable."
I stood up, the bioluminescent purple trim of my cloak pulsing in the darkness. "He has the discipline of a soldier, but the society he swore to protect called him a monster. Let us see if he wishes to be a monster, or if he wishes to be something else entirely."
The locker room smelled of iodine and mildew. Daiki sat alone on a cracked wooden bench, meticulously stitching the gash on his shoulder with a needle and thread. He didn't wince. His eyes were blank, staring at the concrete floor.
"A steady hand," my distorted voice echoed off the tiled walls, layered and ethereal.
Daiki didn't jump. His Shiketsu training kicked in immediately. He dropped the needle, kicking off the bench and dropping into a low, defensive martial arts stance. His hand instinctively went to the half-stitched wound, ready to draw blood for a weapon.
"I wouldn't," Rin's voice chimed in from the corner. She stepped out of a shimmering midnight-blue portal, leaning casually against the lockers. "He's not here to fight you, pretty boy."
Daiki's eyes darted between Rin and the shadows where I stood. He took in the moth-mask, the glowing lenses, the cloak. "Nocturne," he stated, his voice raspy. "The underworld is talking about you. They say you're a Quirk-stealing freak."
"People often confuse the act of borrowing with the act of stealing," I said, stepping fully into the dim light. "I do not take what is not freely offered. And I only offer gifts to those who truly understand their value."
Daiki scoffed, his stance not wavering. "I don't need anything from a shadow broker."
"Don't you?" I asked, activating my Emotion Sight.
The sheer density of his self-hatred was palpable. I could read the exact contours of his trauma.
"You hate it," I whispered, stepping closer. "Every time you activate your Crimson Arsenal, you feel their eyes on you. You hear the screams of those children on the bus. You were born with the soul of a protector, but the tools of a butcher."
Daiki flinched. The words struck with surgical precision. His hand trembled slightly where it hovered over his bleeding shoulder. "Shut up. You don't know anything about me."
"I know that your greatest desire is not to cause pain," I continued, circling him slowly like a predator. "You want to fight. You want to enforce your will on the wicked. But you want to do it cleanly. You wish to strike without leaving a stain on your hands. You wish to be an untainted blade."
Daiki's breath caught in his throat. The cold, jagged grey aura surrounding him suddenly flared with a desperate, piercing streak of silver hope. He lowered his guard, just a fraction.
"What do you want from me?" he asked, his voice cracking.
"The Commission discarded you because you didn't fit their aesthetic of justice," I said, stopping directly in front of him. "I am building a new justice, Daiki. One that operates in the dark, so that the light may remain pure. I need an executioner. Not a butcher. A precise, disciplined instrument of my will."
I held out my right hand. "Rin."
From her pocket dimension, Rin withdrew one of the two stored butterflies. It fluttered across the locker room, casting an amethyst glow over the grime-covered tiles, until it landed delicately on my outstretched index finger.
Daiki stared at the construct of pure energy, mesmerized.
"Accept my gift," I commanded softly. "And you will never have to bleed to protect this world again."
Daiki looked at the bloody needle on the floor. He looked at the jagged scar tissue covering his arms from years of utilizing his Quirk. Then, he looked at the butterfly. He didn't hesitate. He stepped forward, dropping his guard completely, and presented his chest.
"Make me clean," he whispered.
I flicked my wrist. The obsidian butterfly drifted forward, sinking into his sternum.
The reaction was entirely different from Akio's explosive light or Kenji's heavy kinetic pressure. The room grew suddenly, terrifyingly cold. A fine layer of frost crawled across the damp lockers.
Daiki gasped, falling to his knees. The jagged grey aura of his self-loathing was instantly annihilated, replaced by a blinding, pristine white light that bordered on translucent.
He looked at his hands. The blood from his shoulder wound had stopped flowing, clotting instantly. He didn't reach for it. Instead, he simply breathed out, focusing his mind as he had been taught at Shiketsu.
Absolution Edge. The synthesized knowledge flowed from the tether into my mind. A masterpiece of an extension Quirk.
In Daiki's right hand, the air itself began to fracture. A hilt of pure, condensed white light formed in his grip, extending upward into a three-foot blade of absolute, ethereal clarity. It looked like glass, but it radiated a silent, humming power that made my skin prickle.
It was a sword of pure metaphysical severance.
"Try it," I ordered, gesturing to a thick, solid-steel structural support column in the center of the locker room.
Daiki stood up. His eyes were wide, reflecting the pristine light of his new weapon. He stepped toward the steel column. He didn't swing wildly. He executed a perfect, horizontal kendo strike.
The ethereal blade passed completely through the solid steel without a single sound. No sparks. No grinding metal.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, a perfect, microscopic line appeared across the column. The steel hadn't been cut; its kinetic bonds had been severed.
"It doesn't cut flesh," Daiki whispered in awe, running his free hand over the unblemished surface of his own arm. He looked at me. "It cuts energy. It cuts stamina. It cuts the will to fight."
"A clean blade," I confirmed, crossing my arms. "A strike from that sword will bypass all physical armor and directly sever a target's consciousness or kinetic energy. You can incapacitate a villain without spilling a single drop of blood. You are no longer a monster, Daiki. You are a phantom."
Daiki deactivated the blade. The white light dissolved effortlessly into the air. He turned to me, the stoicism returning to his face, but the aura around him was finally at peace. He dropped to one knee, bowing his head.
"I await your orders, Sovereign," he said, the title slipping naturally from his lips.
"Keep fighting in the rings for now. Test the blade. Learn its limits," I instructed, turning back toward Rin's waiting portal. "When the time comes to strike at the rot of this city, I will call for my executioner."
I stepped through the portal, Rin following close behind. As the tear in space sealed itself, shutting out the grime of Roppongi, I smiled beneath my mask.
One highly trained, fiercely loyal soldier added to the board. The era of reckless vigilantes was over. The era of the Sovereign's Court had begun. And the Hero Commission had absolutely no idea what was coming for them.