Morning sunlight spilled lazily over the skyline of Musutafu, washing the world in a soft amber glow that never quite reached the gutters. Birds chirped somewhere above, their songs lost amidst the rumble of distant trains and the ever-present hum of city life. On the surface, it was just another day in a society built upon the myth of peace and justice.
But the slums knew better.
Far from the polished streets near U.A. and the hero agencies that towered like idols, the lower wards whispered with unease. The kind of unease that settled into bones. The kind no pro hero patrols ever addressed.
---
At a corner café just outside the 3rd district, two women sat close together, their voices low but anxious.
"You heard about the Takagi boy, right?" one asked, stirring her coffee absentmindedly. Her nurse's badge swayed with her movement.
"Which one?" the other woman, a middle school teacher, replied with a frown. "Oh, did you mean the one who vanished last weekend?"
The nurse nodded. "Yes, that's the one. His parents are tearing through the department, demanding answers. No footage. No witnesses. They just gone like that."
The teacher sighed, rubbing her temple. "I thought it was just another runaway case. But... it's not just him, is it?"
"No. There was a girl too. From the Naruse block. Quiet kid. Quirkless. She was last seen near the old market. Same story. Gone without a trace."
The teacher looked around, lowering her voice. "I overheard the patrol officers. They said the number of missing kids has doubled in two months. Most of them... they're from the slums."
"They always are," the nurse muttered bitterly. "No names. No faces. No media coverage. And certainly no heroes coming to help."
Their conversation trailed off, lost in the hiss of steaming milk and the drone of passing cars.
---
Several blocks away, inside the pristine marble halls of the Kinro Hero Agency, a very different kind of conversation was taking place.
Two young sidekicks lounged near the vending machines, sipping sweet canned coffee.
"Did you catch that report from Sector 5?" one asked, scrolling through a tablet.
His partner chuckled. "Another kid gone missing?"
"Yeah, they flagged it since he was a registered civilian. Apparently had a minor Quirk, something about vibrating fingertips."
The other shrugged. "At least that one made it into the system. Most of the time, those alley kids vanish and nobody even blinks."
"Yeah, well… what are we supposed to do? Sweep the gutters?"
"Don't let anyone hear you say that."
They both laughed.
Behind them, a custodian silently polished the glass, his reflection distorted in the shimmer. He wore headphones, nodding along to a silent rhythm—but his eyes lingered on the young heroes, unblinking.
---
Down in the crumbling heart of the Old District, the whispers took on a sharper tone.
An old woman hunched over her stall of roasted chestnuts, her fingers blackened by decades of charcoal smoke. She squinted as a police drone buzzed past.
"Used to be a bunch of kids playing down that alley," she muttered to the scrawny man buying from her. "Annoying little things. Loud, always hungry. Now? Nothing."
The man scratched at the stubble on his cheek. "Same near the canal. Not even footprints. It's like the streets swallowed them."
"You think it's some villain again?"
He shook his head. "No mess. No screaming. No blood. This? It is too quiet. Controlled. Like the old times—back when they cleared out whole blocks to make space for rich bastards."
"You saying the heroes know?"
"I'm saying the heroes look away."
---
But the truth was even darker.
Somewhere beneath the 7th district, hidden in the catacombs of a long-abandoned subway system, a different kind of world pulsed.
Fluorescent lights flickered along sterile steel corridors. Machines beeped in calculated rhythm. A woman in a white coat stood before a massive monitor, her eyes cold behind thick glasses.
"Batch Fourteen is secured," a voice crackled over the intercom.
She didn't blink. "Good. Begin neural mapping and compatibility screening. Prioritize low-exposure subjects."
Behind her, a row of tanks hissed with compressed gas. Inside each tube floated a child—unmoving, unconscious, but alive. Electrodes ran from their temples, chests, and spines into the walls of the machine.
A younger technician approached nervously. "Ma'am, there's… there's still no luck with the Magi interference pattern. The anomaly from last year—subject isn't replicable."
She turned her head slightly, her voice smooth like poisoned silk.
"Because that child wasn't meant to exist."
The technician swallowed. "Do we… pursue retrieval?"
"No. We observe. Let him reveal himself. Then we erase him."
Her heels clicked against the metal floor as she walked away, the screen still displaying waveforms of children whose names the world had already forgotten.
---
Back on the surface, Jetsling Beroba sat silently beneath the shadow of a forgotten billboard. A tattered blanket covered his shoulders, his body still as a corpse, but his eyes wide open.
He had heard the whispers. He had seen the pattern.
Two disappearances? Three?
They were only the surface.
He knew the truth.
More than a dozen kids—friends, allies, rivals—had vanished without a sound. Nina. Kazu. And so many more whose names were never written down.
No one remembered them.
But he did.
He would carve their names into the skin of this city if he had to.
And when he found the ones behind it—whether they were villains, scientists, or heroes in gilded uniforms—
He would become their nightmare.
Jetsling's eyes narrowed beneath the blanket's shadow, his voice a whisper no one could hear.
"Keep watching. Keep pretending. When I find you… there won't be enough heroes in this world to stop me."