Morning broke over Musutafu like a slow bruise—pale light filtering through clouds swollen with last night's rain. The city, always alive, seemed quieter today. As though it too was waiting for someone to decide if it should flinch, scream, or pretend nothing had happened.
On digital billboards across town, the headlines scrolled cold and clinical:
[BREAKING: UNKNOWN PERSON KNOWN AS DELTA TARGETS HEROES. FIVE DEAD. COMMISSION RESPONDS.]
[VIGILANTE OR VILLAIN? PUBLIC OPINION SPLITS OVER THE 'WHITE DEVIL]
[DETRACT, TACTILE, SHIFT-LENS AND FLORET CONFIRMED DEAD. HERO COMMISSION DECLINES COMMENT.]
In smaller cafes, underground message boards, and whispered corners of the internet, another truth spread—unofficial, unfiltered.
The truth that heroes were being judged, not by courts or committees, but by something colder. Something unrelenting. Something wearing a white mask.
---
In the Hero Commission HQ, security had doubled overnight. Firewalls surged. Emergency meetings ran on every level. But no one could agree on how to spin what had happened in the Shinmei District.
"No footage. No comms. No telemetry. Every drone cut off before contact."
"It's the same pattern… All jamming protocols offline. It's like he erases reality about his existence at the scene itself."
Social media teetered between awe and outrage. #DeltaDeliverance trended alongside #DeltaDoom. Some saw a necessary purge. Others saw murder.
And for the first time, the Hero Commission lost control of the story.
---
In a modest apartment far from the towering spires of central Musutafu, Tensei Iida sat with an untouched cup of coffee.
The steam had long since curled into nothing.
He stared at the blinking cursor of an unsent message. Again.
[If you're still out there… I'm listening now.]
He couldn't bring himself to hit send nor he know whether it will be useful as no known method to contact that man call Delta. He just know that he able to hack the network.
He had replayed the scene from Shinmei a dozen times in his head according to witness or can also be call the one save by Delta at that place. The blue-white glow. The silence of that field. The way Delta moved—not like a man—but a sentence passed.
Even now, it made his heart race. Not in fear… but in dissonance.
'What kind of justice leaves five bodies in the cold and as corpse… and still feels righteous?'
Tensei reached out to his encrypted terminal. His fingers hovered before typing in a sequence—long, buried, almost forgotten.
A secure line. One name. Hiryu Kodai.
If there was one person left he could trust—it was him.
---
They met in a quiet café buried beneath a retired transit tunnel, its old metro signs still rusted above the doors. Officially, the place didn't exist anymore. Unofficially—it was where veterans who had seen too much found silence.
Hiryu Kodai was already there when Tensei entered, his arms crossed, gaze steady.
"Tensei," he greeted with a curt nod. "You picked a hell of a time to call."
"I think hell already called," Tensei replied, managing a ghost of a smile.
They sat at a booth in the back, shielded by half-drawn curtains and a machine that emitted low-frequency pulses—anti-surveillance tech. Old Commission hardware, repurposed.
Tensei didn't waste time.
"I saw him. I saw Delta."
Kodai didn't blink.
"I know. The reports are… limited. But I trust your eyes more than theirs."
Tensei leaned forward, voice low. "It wasn't random. He chose them. Shift-Lens, Detract, Tactile, Floret… all of them had stains beneath their uniforms. Hidden by bureaucracy. Buried by favors. The Commission knew."
Kodai lips tightened. "I always suspected Floret's side projects weren't just botanical."
"There's a file," Tensei said. "Redacted beyond belief. But it's real. And Delta? He's not just a vigilante. He's like a reckoning."
Kodai's eyes sharpened. He took a sip from his drink, then leaned in.
"The system isn't made from the will of steel, Tensei," he said. "It's marble. Beautiful on the outside. Cracked all the way through. You can't hammer it alone… but together, we can chip them away."
---
Kodai pulled a small drive from his coat pocket—an encrypted quantum key with rotating passphrases.
"I've been building something," he said. "Quietly. Carefully. A network. No ranks. No logos. Just clean heroes. Those not for sale. We call it the Silent Circuit."
Tensei frowned. "You think an unofficial whisper campaign can change anything?"
"No," Kodai admitted. "But it can protect people while we try. Gathering comrade. It can share what the Commission buries. And more importantly… it can help us understand Delta better."
Tensei's jaw tightened. "You want to work with him?"
"No," Kodai said. "I want to understand him. So we don't burn down the whole city trying to stop a storm we can't even see coming."
A beat passed.
Then Kodai asked the question that had lived in Tensei's chest for weeks:
"If we fight him blindly… how many more will die before we realize he wasn't wrong?"
---
Tensei terminal buzzed. He excused himself, opened the secure message in the bathroom under soft humming lights.
A single line of text, attached to multiple files:
[Civilian Hospital Project 92 – Confirmed Experimentation Site. Estimated target priority: High.]
Tensei scrolled through the attachments.
Photos of surgical rooms. Blood-stained reports. Data logs showing Quirk alteration tests on unwilling subjects. False death certificates. Children.
One line, handwritten in the margin of a scanned document, made his stomach twist.
[Clean test subject disposed. File closed. Burn original.]
'This is it,' he thought. This is where he's going next.
---
That night, the city breathed uneasily beneath dark clouds. Rain began to fall—quiet, insistent.
Tensei stood on a rooftop near the edge of the civic sector, watching neon lights blur beneath the drizzle.
He opened his secure device. Typed another message.
"Delta… if you see this: We're not all enemies. But if you go too far… I will stop you myself."
He hovered his thumb over the Send button.
Then he hit Delete.
Because it wasn't time for that yet.
Not quite.
He looked down at the mask in his hand. The same one he once wore with pride. Now, it felt heavier.
"If justice wears a mask… then maybe I need to wear one too."
Tensei Iida, once the proud Ingenium, placed it over his face once more.
And walked into the night.