1
The box of mattresses on the warehouse's third tier gave a muffled crack. TNO forced his eyelids apart, and the world immediately came crashing down on him in all its gray, suffocating weight.
A dull ache answered from every muscle—an unpleasant sensation he had thought erased from memory forever. Then came the gnawing hunger, the stale warehouse air thick with dust, and the background noise. That endless, irritating bustle below felt alien. After growing accustomed to the absolute authority and silence of his metaphysical domain, a human shell felt like a cramped, rotting spacesuit. Exhaustion settled over his shoulders like a lead anvil, turning every movement into an achievement.
— Fuck... I'd forgotten what being human felt like, — he rasped, barely managing to lift himself from the sticky mattress stained with machine oil.
He remained still for a moment, ignoring the commotion below as he listened to his own body with unconcealed disgust. TNO swore under his breath. His former feline grace was gone. A cobra's speed had become sluggishness; the fury that once fueled his entire mechanism had given way to burned-out reserves.
This was not the body of an omnipotent warrior.
It was Nomura's body. The body of an exhausted seventeen-year-old boy.
Returning to the material world felt like switching a game to hard mode, except someone had also burdened the player with a dozen debuffs while leaving the number of enemies unknown.
No—one variable was perfectly clear.
The Nomu remained the greatest immediate threat.
For some reason, he remembered the time when, still living as Taiko, he had assumed the burst capillaries in his damaged eye were merely another consequence of injury. Apparently, even then his eyes had been hinting at their unusual nature—at the irreversible mutations set in motion by the great fracture of All For One.
The latest memory surfaced next: Nana Shimura fleeing his domain. A top hero struggling in the snares of his world like a trapped bird, unable to meaningfully oppose him. Her escape would probably leave a scar on her soul as deep as the one All For One had left there years ago.
The irony was exquisite. She had seen nothing in him but "AFO 2.0".
TNO doubted he could have defeated her at the height of her strength in the material world. Inside his domain, however, he had no equal—assuming anyone else in existence was even capable of exercising that kind of control.
Black Hand, one of his servant Quirks, was now bound to her. Through that tether he would find Nana wherever she went, no matter which domain she tried to hide in. There remained a chance that interference between dimensions would disrupt the Quirk and sever the connection. The space between domains was an extraordinarily hostile environment for Quirks.
TNO did not fully understand the mechanism. Yet every part of him recognized it as if it were fundamental knowledge. A Quirk could not survive once separated from its matrix. Something immediately began devouring it—something TNO had named interdimensional entropy.
And true chaos lived inside that entropy.
On his return to the material world, he had managed to glimpse beyond the veil. The space there belonged to no one. It was not anyone's personal domain. His Byzantine eyes had allowed him to see what remained hidden from everyone else during the fraction of a second in which he squeezed through the corridor between his dimension and the material world.
The passage resembled the long, narrow neck of a bottle. Its walls thinned until the entire spectrum of the outer space showed through at the most basic energetic level.
It was chaos. Pure chaos made from energy—a hyperdense web pulsing in countless colors.
No. A web was the wrong comparison. A web implied geometry, order, and a point of origin. This place had none of those things. Nana Shimura had probably seen nothing but absolute, blinding darkness while crossing it, but the truth could not hide from his purple eyes.
For one brief instant, TNO may even have regretted being able to see so much.
But damn it, it had been breathtaking.
He had felt like the first explorer to witness an undiscovered universe. He had never heard of anything comparable outside ancient esoteric texts, stories of astral projection, the wheel of samsara, and other Buddhist spiritual concepts whose authors interpreted immaterial existence in a hundred contradictory ways.
What he had seen resembled primordial cosmic soup: countless forms of energy—perhaps elementary particles—racing through it like quarks inside superheated plasma. Why could he perceive them? His unique eyes were supposed to see only +alpha energy. That was merely one category of particle, while the "interspace" appeared to contain every possible kind.
TNO tried to count them from memory and discovered that his grasp of physics was not nearly as impressive as he would have liked. He made a mental note to study the subject once he found somewhere safe.
The obvious question followed immediately: could power be drawn from that place?
It was impossible to answer while he could not even imagine what the soup contained.
"Some kind of cosmic energy. That much is fucking obvious. But which particles? Who the hell knows. Photons? What else was there... electrons? No, those are part of an atom, not fundamental like quarks. Damn it, I can't remember. Photons definitely count, though. I don't know whether I can cross it the way Nana did—through that... white noise."
The name came naturally. It fit perfectly.
Nana Shimura had somehow passed through that predatory entropy—through the White Noise—and destroyed AFO's barrier from the outside. All For One had miscalculated when constructing his prison; he had failed to look far enough beyond it. Nana's will had been so immense that her matrix endured the White Noise without fatal degradation for a meaningful length of time.
That bordered on impossible and created dozens of questions TNO could not yet answer. He was clearly missing a variable.
"A pity. I expected the purple eyes to reveal this secret as well," he observed philosophically.
TNO did not want to erase Nana's identity. She did not deserve such an end, just as she had not deserved her miserable death at All For One's hands. She had been a genuinely good hero—one of a rare breed that had nearly gone extinct. She had not chased wealth or fame. She had simply wanted to help people.
But she was gone. All that remained was a fragile ghost without flesh in the material world.
Even so, she retained something of absolute value: her Quirk and her will. Not an ordinary Quirk, either, but one All For One himself had likely wanted badly enough to attack her and expend enormous effort. She had fought to the death rather than surrender and become another slave within his system.
"We'll see. Perhaps I can obtain Float without unnecessary bloodshed."
Matrices could not experience physical pain in the conventional sense, even if phantom human reflexes insisted otherwise. His own evolution and growth mattered immeasurably more than her continued existence as a digital ghost.
An alliance remained theoretically possible, but diplomacy meant risk, time, and wasted effort. Allowing foreign matrices into his domain after the massacre with AFO's fragment would not merely be careless. It contradicted his predatory nature. Establishing a parliament inside his own head—a noisy assembly of other people's souls—would be absurdly inefficient.
She had mistaken him for AFO's servant.
How amusing.
"Let her see whatever she likes. He may possess hundreds of servant Quirks and rely on quantity to create powerful combinations. I will rely on quality. Every Quirk will complement the others."
Those were problems for the future.
The present required simpler solutions.
TNO swept a heavy gaze over the activity below. Hosu Port. His new point of departure.
First, he had to leave it alive.
2
TNO remained among the mattresses for a while longer, restoring the sequence of events.
The port. The Nomu. The woman from Osaka. Someone's arms pulling him from the water. Then the warehouse and the fall into his own domain, which had stretched into something a human mind could only call eternity.
Outside, judging by the workers' positions and the unfinished barricade, no more than ten minutes had passed.
The difference was unsettling. He had lived another lifetime, changed several times over, destroyed AFO inside himself, and constructed an entire theory of Quirks—while the material world had barely managed a breath.
— Current situation, — TNO whispered, forcing his thoughts into an orderly line. — Body exhausted. Injuries incompletely healed. Kaito's location unknown. The Nomu is alive and still following Kyudai's order. Several dozen civilians, police officers, one detective, and at least one hero who looks worse than I do are trapped inside the warehouse.
He slowly sat up. A dull pain answered from his lower back.
— Excellent.
Subjective years inside the domain had accustomed him to a body that knew neither exhaustion nor hunger nor the limited range of physical joints. There, desire had been enough to make space obey. Here, every action required contracting muscle, oxygen, glucose, and time. Matter did not oppose the will. It simply ignored it until the will found a physical means of expression.
TNO lowered his legs over the side of the rack and looked down.
The warehouse resembled a disturbed anthill. Forklift drivers carried bricks, cement bags, and metal components toward the main entrance. Other workers dismantled pallets by hand, dragged chains, argued, and got in one another's way. Police officers attempted to supervise the work while preventing the crowd from surrounding the wounded hero again.
Not one person below possessed a truly exceptional Quirk.
His Byzantine eyes distinguished +alpha through clothing and thin partitions. Most signatures were dim and simple: slight muscular enhancement, temperature tolerance, an extra joint, altered pigmentation, minor influence over a material. Useful in daily life or a narrow profession, nearly worthless in combat.
There was nothing surprising about that.
Mediocre Quirks belonged to most of the population. Naturally, most of their owners were not warriors. They were drivers, laborers, accountants, mechanics, and salespeople—the people who maintained an enormous system that noticed a Quirk only when it could demolish a wall impressively on camera.
A weak ability did not make its owner useless. Its value merely depended on the correct environment. A man capable of softening concrete for several seconds would mean nothing on a battlefield, yet could replace an entire crew of jackhammers. A woman with a precise sense of temperature would never defeat the Nomu, but might detect an industrial chemical failure before the automated system. Even the forklift operator who had nearly run TNO down could move in one trip what ten men would otherwise carry by hand.
Society liked dividing Quirks into strong and weak. More often, the real distinction was spectacular and unspectacular.
If raw power was required, however, the field narrowed dramatically.
Valuable combat Quirks clustered among professional heroes, the military, and certain specialists: doctors, engineers, rescue workers, builders. Alternatively, they could be found on the Quirk black market Giran had once described. There an ability was treated as merchandise, without speeches about calling or civic responsibility. The seller named a price. The buyer assessed the risk.
In one respect, that system was more honest than hero society.
Not more humane. Merely more honest.
The police occupied an awkward middle ground. As professional heroes expanded, ordinary officers were pushed away from direct confrontation. They were left with investigation, cordons, and rubber bullets, as though a criminal with a rhinoceros mutation were obligated to respect procedure. The system deliberately deprived police of the means to destroy a serious threat, then expected them to hold the perimeter until a brightly dressed specialist arrived.
TNO watched the sergeant race between workers, wearing out his voice while keeping a hand close to his holster. Not to shoot the Nomu—a service pistol was scarcely more useful here than a whistle—but to contain the crowd if panic finally broke it loose.
Several denser +alpha signatures occupied the distant office. TNO immediately recognized one of them: sharp and even, like blades held under tension.
The detective from Osaka.
Her name still escaped him. It started with an M, perhaps.
Several police officers and a warehouse supervisor stood beside her, arguing over a building plan. They were probably searching for another exit or calculating whether the walls would hold.
They would not.
The Tiger Nomu had not attacked because it saw no need yet. It had already identified the building containing its target and was circling the warehouse, testing scents and exits. The predator knew how to wait. That distinguished it from Kyudai's earlier mindless specimens and made it far more dangerous.
A barricade of forklifts and construction materials might stop a vehicle or a small band of villains. The Nomu only had to climb onto the roof and open it with its claws. The workers were fortifying the one point it would probably never attack.
TNO placed his second foot on a metal brace and began climbing down.
Nomura's body protested every movement. His thighs shook; sweat made his palms slippery. Earlier, TNO would have blamed the weakness on the body's former owner. Now he saw the variables more accurately. Nomura had gone a full day without sleep, endured the body exchange, the conflict between two matrices, the attack in the cell, a prolonged pursuit, and near drowning. Even All Might's body would have demanded rest after that.
Limited resources were not a moral failure. They were a variable.
TNO hated variables beyond his control.
He descended carefully, testing every foothold. On the second tier he had to stop as a forklift carrying two pallets of bricks roared past below, nearly clipping the rack. Its driver shouted an obscenity at someone and vanished between the aisles.
— And these people built civilization, — TNO muttered.
His gaze lingered on the load: no less than a ton and a half. Then on the chains, the overhead crane, and the rows of heavy steel shafts.
Individually, the workers were weak. Warehouse equipment was not a weapon. But the weakness of individual elements did not imply a weak structure if those elements were connected correctly.
All For One had never understood that truth. He collected hundreds of Quirks and attempted to compensate for poor quality with quantity. TNO intended to work differently: every tool would complement the others and occupy a precise place.
Perhaps the principle could apply to more than Quirks.
He dropped from the final brace, landed poorly, and caught himself against the concrete. Pain stabbed through his knee. No one noticed. They were too busy saving themselves.
Good.
As long as they did not know who had been lying on the third tier, he retained room to decide.
Changing bodies would be the easiest solution. Dozens of potential hosts surrounded him: physically fit laborers, armed police officers, a wounded hero, a detective with a useful cutting Quirk. BodySwap could leave Nomura's exhausted shell here while TNO walked through a service exit wearing someone else's face.
He rejected the idea almost immediately.
After merging with Nomura's memories, he no longer believed in an "empty" body. Every host contained a matrix, reflexes, trauma, and will. He could probably suppress the owner for several minutes. What happened after an hour was unknown. A second internal coup immediately after the war with AFO's fragment was a risk no powerful Quirk could justify.
Besides, the Nomu was hunting Nomura's body. Whoever TNO left inside it would panic. Their screams would draw the police; Nomura's scent would draw the creature. In a crowded warehouse, that sequence would end with dozens of deaths.
He could label them acceptable losses and leave.
He could invent ten persuasive explanations.
But a retreat did not become a victory merely because the survivor described it beautifully.
TNO had no desire to become these people's savior. He wanted to destroy Kyudai's weapon, take its power, and leave the port on his own feet. For the first time, all three goals simply required the same choice.
He would remain in Nomura's body.
The raw dryness in his throat made him search for water. Workers crowded around the dispenser at the far end of the aisle. Closer by, TNO noticed the sign for the staff restroom.
First, he should clean himself up and test whether his latest acquisition worked at all.
He pushed open the door.
3
The staff restroom was lit by a dim fluorescent tube that blinked at an infuriatingly regular interval. A stranger's face looked back from the mirror above the sink: gaunt, too young, black hair plastered to his forehead.
Only the eyes no longer belonged to Nomura. Purple light rested evenly across the irises, without a trace of human warmth, as though another space opened behind them.
TNO turned the tap. The pipe coughed rust, then released a narrow stream of cold water. He washed his face, held his palms against it, and listened to the body.
His heart beat slowly. Mite remained inactive. His own blood meant nothing to it; the Quirk only initiated restoration after absorbing someone else's. Until suitable material entered the body, it was a useless mechanism waiting for fuel.
Something rustled against the wall.
A cockroach crawled from beneath the waste bin. Fat, glossy, entirely indifferent to the catastrophe outside. It stopped beside a puddle and worked its antennae.
TNO froze.
The idea he had considered earlier now demanded a test.
He extended one hand and directed BodySwap at the insect.
The Quirk answered immediately. An impulse traveled through his shoulder, gathered at the base of his skull, and leaped toward the target—only to strike something dull instead of forming a connection.
Not resistance. More like the absence of a compatible entrance.
There was life before him, a nervous system, a primitive will to survive. But there was no human matrix for BodySwap to grasp.
The cockroach reacted to the disturbed air and disappeared into a crack.
TNO tried again, then a third time, changing the strength and direction of the command.
Nothing.
— Humans only, then, — he concluded quietly. — Or creatures with a sufficiently similar matrix architecture.
That eliminated the attractive possibility of occupying a bird or an insect and leaving the port unseen. A cockroach would have made an almost perfect reconnaissance platform.
A shame.
But a negative result was still a result. Now he knew one boundary of the tool.
A forklift roared beyond the wall, followed by a shout and the crash of bricks against concrete.
TNO looked at the mirror once more.
He could exchange bodies with a worker. A police officer. The hero sitting against the wall. Even the Osaka detective, if he approached closely enough. A new body would give him strength, while the Nomu continued hunting Nomura's shell.
The obvious solution.
Far too obvious.
Dozens of people occupied the warehouse. The exchange would leave one of them inside the exhausted body recognized by the creature as its primary target. The victim would panic, scream, and attempt to explain the impossible. Police would seal the exits. The crowd would scatter. The Nomu would follow Nomura's scent and carve through everyone standing between it and its prey.
Even if TNO escaped, he would carry away a foreign matrix, unfamiliar reflexes, and an unknown Quirk. Nomura had already taught him the price of that arrogance. A body was not empty clothing. Its owner always remained somewhere inside.
Changing now would not conquer freedom. It would purchase freedom at the cost of an uncontrolled massacre behind him.
TNO gripped the edge of the sink. The metal creaked beneath his fingers.
Compassion was not restraining him. He had no intention of pretending to be a savior, much less of considering these lives equal to his own. But a conqueror who burned the territory, its people, and his only road of retreat for the sake of one convenient step was not a conqueror.
He was a fugitive who had learned to justify fear beautifully.
TNO had spent long enough running—from Kyudai, from AFO, from Taiko's name, from the body he had surrendered to his brother.
— Enough.
BodySwap would remain the final option.
Not the first.
4
The hero still sat against the wall, his back resting on a crate. His costume was torn across the shoulder and side, while blood covered the skin around the bases of his quills. A casual glance suggested he had escaped serious injury. TNO saw otherwise: depleted +alpha, uneven breathing, and the fine tremor in his fingers.
Quillshear was not unharmed.
He was broken where the crowd did not know how to look.
The workers no longer surrounded him. The sergeant had successfully occupied them with the barricade, leaving the hero alone to watch them with a heavy expression.
TNO approached.
Quillshear lifted his head.
— They tried to throw me outside, — he said before TNO could speak. — After everything we do for them. After what that monster did to my partners.
Fear was not the only thing in his voice. Resentment had already begun to grow there—warm, comfortable resentment that made anyone but himself responsible.
That was what disgusted TNO.
Not defeat. Anyone could lose to a creature designed as a weapon. Even All For One had once lain in his own blood. But Quillshear was already transforming failure into moral superiority over the people he had failed to protect.
— They were afraid, — TNO replied.
— And you think I wasn't? I watched it tear people apart!
— You did.
— Then why the hell are you looking at me like this is my fault?
TNO crouched opposite him, never breaking eye contact.
— Because you're sitting here and treating your fear as proof of their ingratitude. They are not obligated to be braver than you. They aren't wearing costumes. No one pays them to go first.
Quillshear clenched his fists.
— You don't understand anything.
— I understand enough. You lost. It happens. But instead of deciding what comes after defeat, you're explaining why everyone around you is worse than you.
The hero surged to his feet. His legs failed, forcing him to catch the edge of the crate.
— Watch your mouth, brat.
TNO did not move.
He could break the man now. One sentence about his dead partners would provoke the first blow and turn the crowd's reaction into a weapon. The move was obvious—and therefore contemptibly small. Pain without purpose was simply wasted time.
— I don't care whether you like me, — TNO said. — In a few minutes, that creature will come through somewhere other than the door. It will open the wall or the roof. These barricades will delay it briefly at best. If you can still fight, tell me exactly what your Quirk can do. If you cannot, say so now and stay out of the way of those who can.
Quillshear's expression changed. The anger remained, but attention joined it.
— What makes you think you know that thing?
— It chased me across half the port.
— You're the boy from the water? The detective carried you in.
— Yes.
Quillshear studied his wet hair, torn clothing, and the dried blood beneath his nails.
— Why is it hunting you?
— Because its creator ordered it to.
— Who?
— If we survive the night, you may ask again.
TNO indicated the hero's injured shoulder.
— What remains of your Quirk?
Quillshear hesitated.
— I can launch quills from my forearms and back. Normally they punch through a few millimeters of steel. Right now...
He tried to raise several feathers. Three short needles emerged from his skin with a wet crack.
— Right now I have a few shots left. No more.
— Accuracy?
— I can hit a coin at twenty meters.
— Good. Then you aren't useless yet.
— You really are a little bastard.
— Yet you're still sitting here listening.
TNO rose.
— You have a choice. You can wait for the top heroes and hope the monster eats someone else first. Or you can help me blind it.
— And then what?
— Then I get close enough to finish it.
Quillshear looked over the thin teenage body in front of him and laughed without humor.
— Have you seen yourself?
— Unfortunately.
The hero opened his mouth, but a long metallic scrape came from the outer wall.
Not an impact.
A claw.
It moved slowly down the sheet metal, as though something outside were testing a can for weakness.
The entire warehouse fell silent.
TNO turned toward the sound.
— Decide quickly.
Quillshear closed his eyes. His breathing still trembled.
— The eyes, you said?
— Eyes, ears, and anything it uses to sense vibration. I'll tell you when to fire.
The hero pushed away from the crate.
— If your plan is shit, I'll come back from the dead and kill you.
— Get in line.
5
Monica Kaniyashiki stood over a warehouse plan spread across the desk. Sergeant Sato, the shift supervisor, and two port engineers argued beside her.
— The northern service corridor leads to the pump station, — one engineer said. — But the space between buildings is open. Seventy meters to the next cover.
— Seventy meters under that thing's nose, — Sato cut in. — No.
TNO approached the table and placed a finger on the central aisle between the racks.
— Evacuate through the northern exit in groups of five. Wounded first.
Sato gave him a tired look.
— And who are you supposed to be?
— The person that villain came for.
The room fell silent. The sergeant's hand settled on his holster.
Monica did not move. Her eyes merely caught on his changed hair and purple irises.
— Nomura Okutami, — she said. — Or should I call you something else?
— A name changes nothing right now.
— It changes a great deal in a report.
— If you want to write one, first make sure someone survives to sign it.
Metal scraped outside again, closer to the roof this time. Unease moved through the warehouse.
TNO traced the plan with his finger.
— It senses my body and knows I'm inside. The main entrance doesn't interest it. It is waiting for panic to reveal the crowd's direction. Send people out in small groups while I remain in the center.
— You want to use yourself as bait? — Monica asked.
— I'm stating that I already am bait.
— And then?
— Does the bridge crane above the loading line still work?
The shift supervisor nodded.
— On emergency power. The control booth is near the roof, though.
— Raise a container filled with steel shafts halfway across the span. Stretch towing cables and chains beneath it. Route the fire-suppression foam into the central aisle.
Sato frowned.
— You want to catch that thing in a net?
— No. I want it to believe for one moment that the net can hold it.
TNO indicated the suppression tanks.
— The foam will clog its nose and eyes. Quillshear will destroy the remaining sensory organs. When it charges, drop the load and collapse the side racks. That won't kill it, but it will pin it long enough.
— Long enough for what?
— For other people escape.
Monica stared at him.
— You can barely stand.
— Which is why I need your Quirk.
Her fingers contracted by reflex. A fine cutting tension appeared in the air for an instant.
— I copied it by the water, — TNO continued. — But I need its limits. What can you cut?
— At nearly point-blank range, almost any homogeneous material if I can see the dividing line. Contact isn't necessary, but the gap cannot exceed a few centimeters. The thicker and more complex the target, the greater the recoil.
— Living tissue?
— Yes.
— Bone?
— If I can reach it.
Sato drew his pistol.
— You admit to copying a police officer's Quirk without permission.
— You may arrest me now. The villain will come through the roof, kill both of us, and your department will finally have a perfectly documented case.
— Lower the weapon, — Monica said.
— Kaniyashiki...
— He's right about the roof.
She turned toward the engineer.
— Begin the evacuation. No shouting and no general announcement. Have the foremen move people as though they're being reassigned to another barricade.
Then she faced TNO.
— Have you hidden anything about your plan?
— Everyone has secrets. But don't worry, they won't hurt anyone.
She plainly disliked the answer, but nodded anyway.
— After the port, you tell me everything.
— Well...
6
The first four groups escaped the warehouse.
The fifth had entered the service corridor when the roof tore open with a shriek.
The Nomu's claws sliced through sheet metal like wet paper. Smoke and cold night air poured through the opening. A massive paw followed, found a support beam, and pulled.
The roof truss bent.
— Everyone down! — Sato roared.
A section of roof crashed onto the upper tiers. Racks swayed; boxes and wooden pallets rained down. People screamed, but the foremen kept the movement from turning into a stampede.
TNO stepped into the central aisle.
He was no longer hiding.
Purple eyes rose toward the breach.
— I'm here, flea-bag.
The roar rattled every light in the warehouse.
The Tiger Nomu dropped from the roof on all fours, tearing through metal and concrete as it fell. TNO waited until the last possible instant. Its paw had already eclipsed the light above him.
Not because he felt no fear. Moving any sooner simply would not have worked.
The instant the claws came down, it felt as though boiling water had been poured into his blood. His heart kicked so violently that the pain reached his throat. The world narrowed to the falling paw, the cracks beneath his feet, and the single patch of open space he might still reach.
Adrenaline.
TNO had almost forgotten what it felt like.
Inside the domain, he had possessed no heart capable of losing its rhythm, no lungs that could run short of air, and no body that one mistake could take from him. Death had been someone else's problem there. He had existed beyond its reach for so long that he had forgotten fear did not return as a thought. It returned as weakness in the knees, cold beneath the ribs, and the animal urge to be anywhere but here.
He threw himself aside.
The impact split the floor.
TNO rolled between crates, feeling the weak body lag behind every command. The Nomu turned almost immediately. Burns still marked its muzzle, and one half of its head remained mangled from previous encounters. Its wounds did not close; dried blood mixed with fresh at every sudden movement.
The creature recognized its target.
Not the person. Not the soul.
Nomura's body.
That was the limitation built into Kyudai's order.
TNO sprinted down the central aisle. The Nomu followed, sweeping crates aside and wrenching rack anchors from the concrete.
— Now! — Monica shouted.
The fire system erupted in white foam. The stream struck the Nomu's face, sealing its nose and eyes. It shook its head and lost direction for one second.
— Quillshear!
Three needles pierced the foam.
The first entered its remaining eye. The second struck the ear canal. The third hit high, glanced from the skull, and vanished into the darkness.
Quillshear staggered. Blood poured from his shoulder, but he remained standing.
The Nomu roared and leaped toward the sound.
Exactly as TNO expected.
The cables stretched across the aisle took the creature's weight. One snapped immediately. Another wound around its front leg. A chain tightened across its throat. The Nomu lunged, dragging the fastenings with it, and the crane operator released the load.
The container of steel shafts fell.
The floor convulsed.
Side racks folded inward, burying the Nomu beneath metal, bricks, and concrete slabs. Dust rolled across the warehouse. For several seconds, only falling debris could be heard.
Then the mound shifted.
A clawed paw emerged.
— Move! — Sato shouted. — Everyone to the northern exit!
TNO walked in the opposite direction.
Monica caught his elbow.
— We bought time. That's enough.
— For you.
— If you go near it, it will tear you apart.
TNO did not answer.
Beneath the wreckage moved the thing that had already forced him to flee once. The fear had not vanished after the first surge of adrenaline. If anything, it had become clearer, almost rational. TNO watched the clawed paw scrape across the concrete and imagined what it would do to his rib cage. He saw his own arm torn away in a single motion. He saw one misplaced half-step—and the darkness waiting after it.
Experience as a killer did not grant him the composure to stare into the face of his own death. Killing and placing oneself within reach of those claws were entirely different skills. However far above humanity he considered himself, Nomura's body did not want to die. Beneath all the calculations, neither did he.
His elbow gave a faint tremor beneath Monica's fingers.
He could leave with the others. Let the heroes and police handle what came next. A reasonable thought. Almost a convincing one.
Then the Nomu tried to rise again.
It failed on the first attempt.
Its movements had grown heavier. A short but visible delay now separated effort from motion. One eye was gone, its hearing was damaged, burns constricted its muzzle, and needles remained buried in its head. The trap had crippled a front leg, the falling load had crushed muscle, and old and new wounds continued to bleed. No single impairment would have decided anything. Together, they changed the calculation.
He was still afraid to approach.
But what waited before him was no longer certain death. Only a very high probability of it.
Which meant there was a chance.
— Which is why it won't notice anything else.
He pulled free.
— Get Quillshear out. He did his part.
Something cracked beneath the wreckage. The Nomu freed a shoulder, then its head. A needle remained lodged in the eye socket, while the torn ear hung by strips of flesh. Damage accumulated, but pain was not enough to override the order.
TNO quickened his pace.
The fear went with him. Adrenaline did not make him braver or transform the weakened body into what it had once been. It only sharpened every sound, stretched time between heartbeats, and refused to let him forget the price of a mistake.
He was not walking toward death for the workers. He was not redeeming his past or proving himself worthy of the word hero. The weapon before him had already forced him to flee once, wounded Kaito, and continued to execute another man's command.
As long as it existed, Kyudai kept a hand around his throat.
That authority could not remain with an enemy.
The Nomu burst free and threw the container aside. Its twisted front leg struck the floor with a crack. The beast charged.
TNO met it halfway.
The first sweep passed over his shoulder. He had to block the second with crossed arms. The claws passed between his fingers, tore the webbing, and continued into his temple. Four trenches opened to the skull. The world tilted, and blood flooded his left eye.
TNO retreated two steps.
He could follow the weakened Nomu's movements. That was enough to keep the claws from his throat, heart, and abdomen. It was not enough for Nomura's body to avoid every wound. Each dodge purchased another cut across the shoulder, forearm, or thigh. Victory was not measured by remaining unharmed, but by choosing which injuries he could afford.
Mite remained silent. His blood ran onto the concrete, but the Quirk did not react. A closed circle could not be fed with what already belonged to it. Restoration required foreign blood, and the Nomu's blood remained outside his body.
Sato and Monica knew only about copying. TNO had not lied about that part: Snip Clip genuinely occupied his temporary slot. The rest of Oneself's architecture did not concern them. The power to take a Quirk permanently was more dangerous than any stolen ability. One did not reveal such a weapon to temporary allies merely because they had devised a plan together.
The Nomu leaped again.
TNO moved beneath the paw and swept his hand within centimeters of the elbow. Snip Clip opened in the narrow gap. The cutting line passed between artificially fused layers.
The front limb separated and crashed across the concrete.
Blood erupted from the stump. The Nomu roared, demolished a rack with its shoulder, and attacked more violently with its remaining limbs. It was no longer hunting. Pain and damaged commands had reduced Kyudai's order to the only form of existence still available to it.
TNO retreated toward the torn outer wall, deliberately leaving it a straight path.
Evacuation continued behind him. If the fight remained inside, one careless motion would bury civilians beneath the racks. Outside waited empty piers, concrete, and water. There he would not have to count other bodies as additional variables.
The Nomu followed.
They left through the hole in the cladding: two bleeding creatures, each refusing to fall before the other.
Cold wind from the bay struck TNO's face. Emergency lights flooded the pier red. Storage tanks burned in the distance, smoke crawled between containers, and reflections from fire engines rotated over the water.
TNO wiped his own blood from the eye with the back of one hand. The wound at his temple did not close. It immediately began bleeding again, warm and sticky, flooding his left eye once more. Mite remained silent. Without foreign blood, it could not restore a single drop or mend even the torn skin. His fingers barely obeyed; two were almost severed at the base.
The Nomu stopped opposite him. Blood continued pulsing from its shoulder. No new limb grew. It shifted its weight onto three remaining legs, adapting to the lost balance. The trap, accumulated injuries, and blood loss had finally begun exhausting even its monstrous reserves.
— You're tired too, — TNO said.
The beast answered with a hoarse growl.
They collided again.
TNO barely escaped the claws. One strike opened his back. Another cut his cheek and removed part of an ear. In return, he swept his hands almost flush with the Nomu's body. Only centimeters remained between fingers and hide—enough for Snip Clip. Narrow cutting impulses removed strips of skin and muscle without physical contact.
Monica's Quirk could destroy the body at close range.
He needed what lay deeper.
Oneself felt Tiger as a dense, burning knot inside the Nomu's matrix. Muscular power, predatory senses, keratin armor, and claws were not separate functions. They were one mutation supporting the creature's entire architecture.
Cutting from a distance was insufficient. Oneself could not act across an air gap. To take Tiger, TNO had to touch the Nomu and maintain the connection until he seized the +alpha flow.
He waited for an overhead strike, stepped inside its arc, and allowed the Nomu to drive him against the concrete. Its jaws closed centimeters from his face. He pressed one damaged hand against its throat and wrapped the other around the bleeding shoulder stump.
Oneself opened.
The Nomu shuddered.
To an outside observer, nothing happened. No flash, no glow, no spectacular storm. Only two blood-soaked bodies locked together on the pier.
Inside, everything was different.
Threads of +alpha tore from the Nomu's matrix one after another. The bestial Pattern thrashed with them, unable to understand why the foundation of its body was vanishing. There was no complete human being to address—only a fragment of will grown beneath someone else's command.
It was difficult for him to say even a word, so he remained silent.
The purple light in his eyes deepened.
The final thread of Tiger separated from the Nomu and entered an empty layer of Oneself.
TNO felt its weight: immense, feral, not yet cleansed of instinct. The new power battered the inside of its container.
The mutation did not wait for him to adapt.
His spine arched in a convulsion. Something forced apart the bones at its base, tore through his clothing, and emerged as a long striped tail. The new limb struck the concrete, twitching beyond his control.
His human ears changed shape and migrated upward. A pair of triangular tiger ears covered in short dark fur rose through his hair. His cheekbones sharpened, his fangs lengthened, and irregular dark stripes appeared across his temples and neck. His hands remained human—no claws, only denser muscles and an unfamiliar weight in the joints.
TNO barely resisted turning around to catch sight of his own tail. The alien anatomy was already integrating with his brain, adding new muscles, new senses, and one more source of irritating signals.
The Nomu's body sagged. Its muscles lost density, its claws dulled, and striped fur fell away in clumps. Secondary modifications, laboratory-grown mass, and the order carved into its nervous system remained.
The foundation was gone.
TNO looked into its one surviving eye.
— You are no longer Kyudai's instrument. You may die in peace.
He shoved it aside.
The creature collapsed, breathing heavily—and rose again.
The order had outlived the Quirk.
Stripped of almost everything, the body still attempted the final action for which it had been released. The Nomu swayed, gathered what remained of its strength, and lunged.
TNO saw the trajectory.
The heart.
He could no longer evade completely. His legs buckled, his vision doubled, and the right half of his body barely answered. At the last instant, he turned sideways.
The claws missed his chest.
They severed his left arm at the shoulder.
Momentum carried the Nomu forward—directly toward TNO's remaining hand.
Five bloody fingers touched its chest.
Snip Clip closed one final time.
A web of thin lines spread across the Nomu's body. For one short instant, the creature remained frozen with its muzzle extended toward its target. Then the layers separated. Head, rib cage, and limbs struck the concrete as individual pieces.
Nothing spectacular.
Merely an instrument disassembled into its final components.
TNO took one step back. He attempted a second and no longer felt the ground.
He fell beside the Nomu's remains.
Blood spread across the pier, merging into one dark pool. Human and laboratory-made. His and foreign.
The border between them no longer existed.
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