(A/N:- I'm sorry for being very inconsistent with uploading and I'm not going to give any kinds of excuses for it, and all I'll say is I'll try to be consistent with uploading, thank you for understanding.)
The Dome – Liberty Unity Dome – Same Time
Inside the sealed dome, the heroes had been trapped for hours. The monitors showed their world burning—cities in flames, civilians rioting, the Commission building stormed. And they could do nothing.
All Might sat against a wall, his face buried in his hands. Endeavor paced like a caged animal. Hawks stared at the ceiling, his feathers twitching with every distant crash. Best Jeanist had given up trying to maintain order among the panicking heroes. Mirko had kicked the same door so many times her foot was bruised.
Then, without warning, the lights flickered.
Every hero froze.
The massive external shutters, which had held them prisoner for hours, let out a long, mechanical groan. Then, with a hiss of hydraulics, they began to slide open.
Fresh air—smoke-tinged, chaos-filled, but fresh—rushed into the dome.
Captain Valor was the first to move. "The lockdown is broken! Everyone, move! We have a city to save!"
The heroes surged forward, spilling out of the dome like prisoners released from a cage. But as they emerged into the open air, the reality of the situation hit them like a physical blow.
New York was burning.
Not metaphorically. Actual fires raged in dozens of buildings. The streets were filled with people—not just rioters, but ordinary citizens, families, children, all caught in the chaos. Sirens wailed constantly. The air was thick with smoke and screams.
All Might stumbled to a stop, his gaunt face pale. "What... what have we let happen?"
"No time for that!" Endeavor barked, flames erupting around him. "We need to establish order! Contain the riots! Protect civilians!"
The heroes scattered, each heading toward the worst hotspots. But as they moved into the city, they quickly realized the situation was beyond anything they had trained for.
---
Downtown New York – Minutes Later
Captain Valor landed in the middle of a square where a massive crowd had gathered. They weren't rioting—not anymore. They were 'watching'. In the center of the square, a pile of bodies had been stacked. Corrupt officials. Commission executives. American heroes who had been named in the leaks. Some of the bodies were still in their hero costumes—masks torn, logos visible, the symbols of safety now stained with their own blood.
The crowd turned as Captain Valor landed. For a moment, there was silence.
Then someone screamed: "THERE HE IS! THE TRAITOR!"
The crowd surged toward him. Not attacking—not yet—but surrounding him, pressing close, their faces twisted with rage and betrayal.
A woman pushed through the front. She was young, maybe late-twenties, but her face looked ancient with grief. Her clothes were torn, her hair disheveled. She wasn't screaming like the others. She was calm. That was worse.
"You," she said, pointing at Captain Valor. Her voice was steady, cold, like ice over a deep ocean of fury. "You were at the press conference. After the Chicago incident. You stood there with the mayor and the Commission chief and you said it was a villain attack. You said twenty-three people died. You said heroes did everything they could."
Captain Valor's throat tightened. "Ma'am, I—"
"That was my son." Her voice cracked, just slightly. "James. He was eight. He had a healing quirk. Not strong enough to save anyone else, but enough to help especially for his own age. They took him from school. From SCHOOL. They told me he was being evaluated for a special program. I believed them because YOU were the symbol of that program. YOUR face was on the poster."
She pulled out her phone, her fingers trembling as she scrolled. She turned the screen toward him. It showed a photo—a boy with glasses and a gap-toothed smile, holding a crayon drawing of a hero in a cape.
"His body was found in Facility 8," she continued, her voice trembling but steady, each word a dagger. "The leaks showed the file. 'Terminated due to non-compliance.' That's what they wrote. Non-compliance."
She laughed—a hollow, broken sound that was worse than crying.
"Non-compliance. Do you understand how insane that is? He was EIGHT years old. He wasn't a soldier who disobeyed an order. He wasn't a criminal who broke a law. He was a child. A CHILD. Who missed his mother. Who wanted to go home. Who probably cried himself to sleep every night in a cold room surrounded by strangers in white coats."
Her voice cracked, but she pushed through.
"They strapped him to tables. They injected him with things that made him scream. They took samples of his blood, his skin, his BONES—I read the medical reports in the leaks. Pages and pages of procedures done to my little boy without consent, without anesthesia half the time, because they said it would 'skew the results.' He was a SCIENCE EXPERIMENT. Not a person. Not a child. Just... data."
She pressed her hand against her chest, as if trying to hold herself together.
"And when he finally broke—when he stopped cooperating, when he started crying for me every night, when he refused to let them take another sample—they labeled it 'non-compliance.' Like he was a faulty piece of equipment. Like he was a machine that wasn't performing to specifications. And they TERMINATED him. That's the word they used. Terminated. Not 'killed.' Not 'murdered.' Terminated. Like ending a subscription. Like closing a file."
She looked directly at Captain Valor, her eyes burning with a grief so intense it seemed to scorch the air between them.
"My son. My eight-year-old son who drew pictures of heroes, who wanted to be an astronaut, who used to hold my hand when we crossed the street because he was afraid of cars... they reduced him to a line item in a quarterly report. 'Terminated due to non-compliance.' And you—YOU—signed off on the budget that paid for his cage. You shook hands with the people who ordered his death. You smiled at press conferences while his body was being disposed of like medical waste."
She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried more weight than any scream.
"Tell me, Captain. Tell me what crime an eight-year-old could possibly commit that justified being treated like a lab rat. Tell me what 'non-compliance' looks like on a little boy who just wanted his mommy. Tell me—" her voice finally broke completely, "—tell me why my baby had to die so that heroes like you could feel safe."
She didn't wait for an answer. There was no answer that could ever be enough.
She just stood there, tears streaming down her face, holding the photo of her son—James, with his gap-toothed smile, his crayon drawing of a hero, his dreams of the stars—and waited for Captain Valor to say something, anything, that could make this right.
But there were no words.
There were never enough words.
The only sounds were the crackling of distant fires and the quiet, broken sobs of a mother who had lost everything to a system that saw her child as nothing more than a resource to be optimized, used up, and discarded.
Her calm finally exhausted, her voice finally broke, the ice shattering into a thousand jagged pieces. "WHERE WERE YOU?! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT HIM! YOU WERE THE FACE OF THE SYSTEM! YOU SHOOK HANDS WITH THE PEOPLE WHO MURDERED MY BABY!"
Captain Valor tried to speak, but no words came. His mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air.
"Don't." The woman held up her hand, cutting him off. "Don't tell me you didn't know. Don't tell me you were just following orders. Your NAME was on the approval list. Your signature was in the files. You KNEW."
"I... I never saw those files," Captain Valor whispered, but even as he said it, he knew how hollow it sounded.
"YOU SHOULD HAVE LOOKED!" she screamed, her composure finally shattering. "YOU SHOULD HAVE INSPECTED THE AREA FROM TIME TO TIME! THAT WAS YOUR JOB! THAT WAS YOUR DUTY! YOU WORE THE FLAG ON YOUR CHEST! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE BETTER THAN THEM! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE OUR PROTECTOR!"
More people pressed in. A man grabbed Captain Valor's costume, yanking him forward. "My brother was labeled a villain because his quirk was 'unstable.' They took him away and we never saw him again! Where were YOU?!"
Another voice: "My son was quirkless! They said he was a drain on resources! They 'disappeared' him! And you just smiled and waved for the cameras while it happened!"
Another man shoved a tablet in Captain Valor's face. On the screen—emails. Captain Valor's own emails, pulled from the leaks. Discussions about budget allocations. About "facility expansions." About "problematic assets."
"Read it," the man growled. "Read what you wrote."
Captain Valor's eyes scanned the text. He remembered writing these. Vaguely. They had seemed routine at the time. Administrative. Just part of the job.
''Quarterly disposal targets met with 94% efficiency. Recommend increased acquisition quotas for Q3 to maintain operational capacity.''
The words blurred. Disposal. Acquisition. Operational capacity. He had written about children like they were inventory.
"That's not... that's not what I meant..." he stammered.
"Then what DID you mean?" the man demanded. "Because the people in those facilities? They didn't get to explain themselves. They didn't get to say 'that's not what I meant.' They just disappeared. And you signed off on it. Every. Single. Time."
A teenager, no more than fifteen, pushed through the crowd. His eyes were red from crying. "You were my hero. I had your action figure. I wanted to be like you." He spat on the ground at Captain Valor's feet. "You're worse than any villain. At least they're honest about what they are."
Captain Valor looked at the crowd. At the faces. At the masks.
Because that's what he saw now—masks. Not literal ones, but the masks they had all worn. The smiles. The confident waves. The carefully crafted images of safety and hope.
And one by one, those masks were coming off.
A woman who looked like a soccer mom, her hair in a ponytail, her yoga pants stained with soot. Her mask had been "concerned citizen." Behind it: a mother whose child had been taken in the night.
A teenager in a hoodie, phone still recording. His mask had been "apathetic generation Z." Behind it: a boy whose brother had been labeled a villain for a quirk he couldn't control.
An old man in a veteran's cap, leaning on a cane. His mask had been "proud patriot." Behind it: a grandfather who had watched his granddaughter get led away by Commission agents and never come back.
And at the center of it all, Captain Valor—America's Top Hero. His mask had been "symbol of justice." Behind it: a man signing death warrants in quarterly reports, a man shaking hands with monsters, a man who had believed his own press releases while children died in basements.
Just then, more heroes landed at the edge of the square. Star and Stripe—America's number one, the woman who had inherited the will of the fallen Symbol—touched down with a team of U.S. heroes behind her: Majestic, the team from the New York shield, and several others.
Star held up her hands, her face serious. "Everyone, please. We understand you're angry. You have every right to be. But this violence—"
"ANGRY?" A man stepped forward, his face twisted. "You don't know the meaning of the word, lady. You've been flying around the world playing international hero while our kids got butchblack in basements paid for by our tax dollars!"
"We didn't know—" Star started.
"BULLSHIT!" another voice shouted. "The files had YOUR name on them too! You signed off on 'special operations'! You knew exactly what was happening!"
Star's face paled. Her team shifted uneasily behind her.
"You want to talk about violence?" The mother with the photo—James's mother—turned her fury on Star. "My son was EIGHT! He drew pictures of YOU! He wanted to be a hero like YOU and this so-called Captain Valor. I wonder what kind of Valor it is though? And your signature was on the same approval list as his! You signed off on the program that killed him!"
Star's hands dropped to her sides. "I... the information I was given..."
"The information was LIES!" the woman shrieked. "And you were too busy being the 'Symbol of Hope' to fact check it! You wanted the glory without the responsibility! The blood of my kid is on your hands too."
Another woman pushed through the crowd, holding up a tablet. On its screen, grainy security footage showed heroes—American heroes—dragging a teenager from his home. The timestamp was three years old. "This is my son. They took him for 'evaluation.' I never saw him again. And you—" she pointed at Star, "—you were on the oversight committee. You approved the operation."
The crowd's rage built, a living thing pressing in from all sides. Star felt hands grabbing her costume, pulling her, shoving her. Her team tried to form a protective circle, but the mob was too dense.
"You're all the same!" a man roared, spittle flying. "You wear the flag and wave the stars, acting like god damn representation of America, but you sold us out! You sold our CHILDREN out!"
A rock flew from somewhere, striking Majestic in the shoulder. Then another, hitting a young hero in the face. Then bottles, shoes, anything the crowd could throw.
"Please," Star gasped, "Let us help! We can fix this together!"
"FIX THIS?!" A grandmother, her face etched with grief, pushed to the front. "My granddaughter was seven. She had a quirk that could heal cancer. They 'repurposed' her. That's the word they used. Repurposed. Like she was a toaster." Her voice cracked. "You can't fix that. You can't bring her back. You can't give me back the years my granddaughter and I lost while you posed for photo ops and shook hands with the monsters who did this."
Star had no answer. None of them did.
A/N: If my story made you smile even once, that's a win for me. That's what I want to live for—brightening dull days and reminding people that joy still exists. My dream is to make a difference in someone's life through my stories, to someday reach a legendary level of storytelling, and spread as much happiness I can in this world, before I take my leave from this world.
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