The rain had started again.
A thin, persistent drizzle blanketed the streets of Musutafu, turning the neon glow of shopfronts into watercolor smears. People moved like shadows beneath umbrellas, their footsteps drowned by the hum of traffic and the distant rumble of the city's underbelly.
Tense. Everything felt tense lately.
Even with his reinforced limbs and high-end mobility gear, Tensei Iida—Ingenium—walked slower than usual. His mechanical boots clicked softly against the pavement, but he paid little attention to the rhythm. Something in the air made him… wary.
No. Not the air.
The silence.
Ever since the incident at the Hiroshi ward logistics center—the one no hero wanted to talk about—the streets had changed. Crime rates were down, statistically speaking, but it wasn't the kind of peace that brought relief.
It was the peace of a battlefield after the killing ends.
Too quiet.
Too clean.
Too afraid.
Not only the criminal, even normal people also felt afraid. Even though most of the target were the criminal, no one knows when the blade will be turn to them.
Because the one that do this, do not register in any hero organization.
Vigilante. It pale in comparison to the people that call them self vigilante.
This act more align to villain that tried to erase their competitors.
---
Tensei visor adjusted automatically as he crossed into the western district, pulling up real-time threat data. Nothing showed on the radar. Just traffic patterns, minor reports, and the occasional illegal vending violation. His patrol should've been uneventful.
And yet, the moment he stepped into the shadow of that crumbling flyover… his breath caught.
There was no data. No chatter. No cameras online. Even the traffic cams mounted on nearby poles blinked out one by one as he walked by.
He slowed his pace, letting his hand drift to the side of his helmet. "Control, this is Ingenium. I'm in Sector 14-A near the South Line overpass. Are you getting my signal?"
Silence.
He tried again, switching to multiple encrypted channels.
Still nothing.
"Dammit…"
His eyes scanned the buildings. They weren't abandoned. Just… asleep. Lights in windows, cars parked neatly. But no movement. No sound. Not even the buzz of electronics.
Like the whole sector had just stopped.
He tightened his grip on the armor panel across his chest, feeling the thrum of his power core under the suit's frame. "Is this it…?" he whispered. "Is this where he appears?"
---
They called him Delta.
Or maybe they didn't. No one knew his name for sure. No footage survived. No confirmed witnesses remained conscious long enough to give reliable testimony.
Even if there were witness, most of them were children that got rescue. Children recounting the image of their savior can be said to be different for each one as that age most of them has high imagination that overlap the real appearance of that person.
Few things were clear. He had triangle shape on chest and shine with silver to white light. And he is human. But that only be known by the top brass.
For Ingenium he knows from just a rumors. And redacted incident reports.
And corpses.
Tensei had dismissed it at first—urban paranoia, villain-on-villain violence dressed in mythology. But then the Hero Commission started panicking. Heroes with high capture rates were benched. Dispatch logs went missing. Families were paid off to stay quiet.
And Tensei… couldn't look away.
He was a man who believed in rules.
In order. In accountability.
But how did you judge something that rewrote the rules?
---
"Come out," Tensei said aloud, his voice low but steady. "If you're here… then show yourself."
A flicker of movement—no, not quite movement. Interruption. As if reality skipped a beat.
And then he was there.
Standing at the end of the street, between two rusted fence posts, like a shadow peeled free from the wall.
Black armor. White photon streams pulsing through it like veins of lightning. No sound accompanied his appearance—just the thrum of suppressed fury.
Delta.
The legend. The ghost.
Up close, he was taller than expected. Broader, too. Every part of him radiated weight. Not just physical mass, but intent—the kind of intent you feel behind a weapon right before it strikes.
Tensei legs moved on instinct, adjusting his stance. "You… you're real."
Delta didn't answer. His mask offered no expression, no acknowledgment.
Tensei clenched his fists. "I'm not here to fight you."
Still silence.
"I don't agree with everything the Commission does," he continued. "But you can't just operate outside the law. What you're doing—killing, disappearing people—it's not justice."
Delta tilted his head, slowly. Not mocking. Just… curious.
Then, finally, he spoke.
"I'm not here to argue morality with a tool."
Tensei jaw tightened. "I'm not a tool."
"Then stop acting like one."
The words cut deeper than they should have.
He stepped forward, wind pushing at the hem of his coat. "What do you want, Delta? Why start a war from the shadows? Why killing people? If you're a hero then you should do it through proper channel."
Delta didn't move. Didn't raise a weapon. Just stood in that same motionless posture.
"I already started it," he said. "The moment they built the first cage under a hospital and called it treatment. The moment a child disappeared and no one filed a report. You think I'm the beginning?"
A pause.
"I'm the answer."
---
Tensei felt his heart beating harder now—not from fear, but frustration. "Then why hide your face? Why not come forward? If what you're doing is justice, why not take responsibility for it?"
Delta didn't hesitate. "Because I'm not looking for permission."
His voice wasn't angry. It was calm. Too calm.
"Heroes talk about responsibility like it's a shield," he continued. "But when the cameras are gone and the files are sealed, who holds you accountable? Who speaks for the ones who never made it to the registry?"
Tensei hands trembled. "You think no one tries? That we all just turn away?"
Delta took one step forward. Then another.
The air shuddered around him as he moved—subtle, but enough that Tensei visor momentarily glitched.
"You're trying," Delta said. "But you're still serving the same machine. You plug holes while they make more leaks. That's not justice. That's just triage."
Tensei didn't back down. "And what you're doing isn't triage? You're just cutting out the infection. But who decides what's infected?"
Delta stopped two meters away. The white photon lines in his armor dimmed slightly.
"I do."
For a long time, neither of them spoke.
Rain hissed softly on the pavement. Somewhere far off, a train clattered along a line that didn't pass through this part of town anymore.
Tensei looked up, eyes locked on the mask.
"I could stop you."
Delta didn't laugh. But something in his body language tilted, like amusement brushing past him.
"No," he said. "You couldn't."
Tensei activated his leg boosters. The sparks hissed to life under his boots.
"Try me."
---
The street vanished in a blur of motion.
Tensei launched forward, engines screaming, wind screaming louder. His fist moved faster than a bullet, aimed for Delta side.
Delta didn't dodge.
He shifted—a sidestep so precise it felt rehearsed. Tensei strike passed through empty air. Before he could correct, Delta's hand was already at his side.
A flash of light.
The Delta Mover in hand, aimed down—but not at Tensei.
At the ground.
White light exploded outward in a horizontal wave, ripping apart the asphalt beneath them. Tensei flipped, bracing hard with both arms as he landed. Alarms screamed through his suit.
"His output is…" he whispered, staring at the damage. "That wasn't a weapon. That was a warning."
Delta voice echoed across the empty street.
"You came here with questions. Not with intent. That's the only reason you're still conscious. If you do not have enough resolve to stop me, do not think that you will be able to fight me."
Tensei stood, chest heaving.
He wanted to say something clever. Something righteous.
But all he managed was:
"Why?"
Delta walked toward him, slow and steady.
"Because they're afraid of you. Afraid of what you might learn."
Tenya blinked. "Who?"
"The ones who built the world you're trying to fix."
He stopped, barely a foot away now.
"Take a step back, Ingenium. Look deeper. If you still believe in your system… then you'll come back and try to kill me. But if you see it—really see it—you'll understand."
Tensei opened his mouth—but Delta was already gone.
No sound. No flash.
Just… gone.
---
It took ten minutes before the comms came back online.
"—nium? Ingenium, respond! Are you in position?! We lost you for a moment!"
Tensei exhaled shakily. "I'm here."
"You're… what? You're back on the grid. What the hell just happened over there?"
Tensei looked around.
The street was undisturbed. No damage. No data. The cracked pavement from the blast was gone—like someone had rewound the tape and overwritten reality.
"I don't know," he said finally.
"I don't know what I saw."
---
Later that night, as he sat alone in his apartment with his visor on the desk and his gloves discarded beside a cold cup of tea, Tensei stared at the encrypted feed logs from Sector 14-A.
Nothing.
Just ten minutes of static.
But burned into the edge of one corrupted frame… a single line of text.
One the data scrubbing system couldn't delete in time.
"Not all heroes wear cape."
Tensei didn't sleep that night.
He just sat, reading those words over and over again.
And wondering—
If the world he believed in was real…
Or just another mask.